Space War, Math Quiz I + II
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One of the problems I thought I would face when starting this project would be an inability to concentrate on and get past the games at hand, given that there are a lot of great modern games that I'm still hankering to play and complete. I do have days where I just want to sit down and play a Gamecube, Xbox or PS2 game and I enjoy them. But there are other days, like today, where I will stare at my shelves of Current Gen and just yearn to go churn through the chronology.
However, I'm in a kind of limbo as far as moving forward in the chronology. I don't want to start playing the "new" games from 1978 before I've "laid to rest" the games about which I've yet to make an entry. So, I don't feel like I can really move into 1978, until I've finished writing about 1977. It's this kind of compulsive arrest that has kept me from accomplishing pretty much anything to which I've set my mind during this lifetime! 
Onward I must chug, if only to later move onward. Looking at the notes I wrote for Videocart #5: Space War, I'm left with feelings of ambiguity about how I felt about it.
"Space War didn't suck so much. Same as Desert Fox in space but with no aiming. Benjamin and I played about 10 minutes."
And that's all I had to say about it?
So I had to find my cart, hook up the VES and check it out again. You know what? It is like Desert Fox in space, only there's no rotating your ship to aim.
Videocart #5: Space War
Two ships, two space docks and space debris. A war in space! Each ship has an energy store which depletes each time the ship fires, collides with space debris or the enemy ship, or when it is hit by enemy fire. The space dock replenishes that energy. Run out of energy and your ship explodes for which your enemy gains a point. You also only get 20 shots before you can fire no more. Which is a nice touch and seems to be taken from the original Spacewar! design.
The movement is simple, nothing like the original Spacewar! Up, down, right or left on the joystick takes you in the corresponding direction on the screen. You can only fire horizontally in either direction, which is useful if you end up on the other side of the enemy.
This Space War is a lot like the RCA Studio II's Moonship Battle, except for the fact that, it is in color, has space docks for replenishing energy, has better shaped ships, has space debris and doesn't suck like the RCA Studio II game did. Hmm, I guess it isn't really that much like it.
This isn't a great head-to-head battle game, but it holds a scent of the potential for what home videogames may offer someday in the "pretend to kill your friends and loved ones" genre. The energy depletion model is nice, like hit points in D&D. You may be bleeding, but you're "not . . . dead . . . yet!" It shows that there may be possibilities for "dramatic comebacks" in future games. You knowhatamsayin? "If I can just make it to my starbase, I might be able to win...crap." You just don't see that same kind of drama in "bang, Gotcha. You're dead." gameplay.Anyway, it seems we had fun with it for about 10 minutes when we did the game back in June. Regretfully, I wasn't able to get my son to join me for a "nostalgic" replay. (In fact, it's hard to get him to join in for anything "old" since one of the RCA Studio II replays.)
Green just flying casually, minding own business.
Green runs into a mine!
Green gets shot by Blue!
Damn. I guess it's not that easy being Green!
next entry: Videocart #6: Um. . . don't remember what that will be. Oh wait, now I do. yuck. both carts numbered 6 and 7 are Math Quiz carts. (Math Quiz I and II, respectively.)
Look, why don't I just do them right now? It won't take me a whole entry to bitch about them.
Every programmable videogame console maker thought they had to include a math game to try to convince the general population that videogames could be used as a force for good, or at the very least, for math. I'm not going to treat these two as "games" because they're "edutainment" and they barely qualify for the "tainment" part. So, next entry we'll talk about Videocart #8: Magic Numbers, which had a pleasant (for me) surprise in it.
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