Hi!
It's been 17 years since I started this blog! 17 years since June 12th, 2005. Can you believe it? I mean, the year 1989 was only 16 in 2005!
I'm going to try to switch to video but still type, because I love typing.
Actually I might do a subtitle file for the hell of it. Also make subtitles in Japanese (because my Japanese is absolutely horrible) and Spanish (because my Spanish is absolutely horrible and even worse than my Japanese.)
Something
Fishing Derby (Activision, Atari VCS, 1980)
There are actually Fish Derbies in the real world, which I don't expect to be shocking news to any of you. However I thought reading the rules to one would be interesting.
http://www.valdezfishderbies.com/pages/contest_rules.php
It's possible that I wasn't entirely correct about it being interesting. Sorry if you just spent 30 minutes of your life there that you will never get back.
Fishing Derby is by Da
Wow, I coined an historical term! Dr. Sparkle, thank you for giving me credit in this ^_^ http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1119 I like how they refer to it as burning out. Really, I still want to do this, RL just sort of burned its way in. Nelio! Yeah, a thing happened and I deleted my YouTube thing. I'll have to bring it back eventually. I still have all my stuff and going through the pain of moving it to a new place. Oh, and I do flinch every time they say "chrongaming". Anyway, hope
Skiing (Atari VCS, Dec 1980, Activision)
To me, Skiing by Activision will always be that cheesy commercial with the guy doing the bad French accent and playing the game poorly. I didn't really understand at the time what was going on with these "new Atari games" that had a different box style and didn't seem to be by Sears or Atari. The commercial for Skiing (which my friends and I thought was hilarious) really stands out in my mind, even though it doesn't strike me as funny today. Y
Checkers (Atari VCS, Jul 1980, Activision)
“Chess is like looking out over a vast open ocean; checkers is like looking into a bottomless well.” -Marion Tinsley
Marion Tinsley was the World Champion of Checkers from 1950 to 1990.
Other people only gained the title if Tinsley didn't show up to play.
He won the World Championship whenever he chose to play for it.
Jonathan Schaeffer was a computer scientist.
He lead the team that developed Chinook.
Welcome back to what I'm now calling Chronogamer LE. The LE stands for Low Effort. If I have to really work up any enthusiasm to play something then that's too much effort, so I will learn what I can about it, read the manual, maybe do some research and play it for as long as I can stand it. If I try to get more involved in it, I'll end up going down a sort of procrastination rabbit-hole where I put it off for, like, half a decade or more and it blocks me from moving forward. I've recently learn
Pele's Soccer (Atari VCS, 1980)
As I've said before: "I'm not a sports fan" so how I felt about this game surprised me.
Contrasting from our recent excursion into third-party software that had only two games to a cart, Atari's (the party of the first part) Pele's Soccer has 54 games promised for it on the front of the box and it delivers with 28 versions of two player and 28 versions of single player. The "versioning" is three variations each on modes of speed, modes of c
Boxing (Activision, Atari VCS, 1980)
We've seen a Boxing game once before! 1978 on the APF-1000MP. I'd actually recorded that play session on a VHS tape which now will not load anything because my VCR won't work. Well, the mechanical bits won't work. The electronic bits still work as a conduit to serve my old consoles. All hail the conduit!
Oooh, boy... boxing... I don't get boxing as a sport. I get that it takes skill, that it's a discipline similar to any skill that inv
Maze Craze: A Game of Cops and Robbers (Atari VCS, 1980)
Someone in the 70s realized that there was fun to be found by using a computer to generate random mazes with a simple algorithm and allowing people to race through it. The first maze game that I can remember appearing on a home console was for the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) and was cart #10 Maze, Cat and Mouse (1977). I don't know if this is the last "maze game" or not because I can't see into the future. (If I
Off topic, but my Xbox Live name is Chronogamer. If you play 1 vs 100 Live on the Xbox 360, then you'll know what I'm talking about. Last night, I (with the help of my lovely and brilliant wife) came in third out of a crowd of 42,000 in a Live game and won myself a copy of RezHD! Yay! By the way, if you're an Xbox Live person, please invite me to be your friend!
3D-Tic-Tac-Toe (Atari VCS, 1980)
I need to clear up any impressions I may have given about my feelings towards playing 3D-Tic-
Steeplechase (Atari VCS, 1980)
Before I get into the game, I want to get into the term "Steeplechase".
For me "Steeplechase" has always stood for the name of an amusement pier in Atlantic City (though there was one in Coney Island, too, I never saw it). I can't say my family and I went "down the shore" a lot when I was growing up near Philadelphia in the late 70's, early 80's, but the few times I went I remember two of the Atlantic City piers, Steeplechase Pier and Steel
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Stellar Track (Atari VCS, 1980)
The genetic precursor to Stellar Track is a main frame computer game called Star Trek, based on the franchise of the same name. You can read all about the history of the Star Trek Game at Wikipedia. It isn't that I'm too lazy to just paraphrase the entry, (though I am), but I'm more or less trying to keep this about the particular game rather than its history.
When you start a game of Stellar Track you're given a mission screen
Dogpatch (Bally Pro Arcade, 1980)
I could only find one game as having come out in 1980 for the Bally Professional Arcade - Dogpatch. In playing this game I was reminded of just how far video games have come over the last three decades. So, I created a video that serves to illustrate the vast gulf of differences between a game like this from 1980 and a game like the one to which I've chosen to compare it from a current generation console.
Hmm, my YouTube link broke with t
Checkers (Intellivision, 1980)
Yup, still on Intellivision, still in 1980, as we have been since, what? 2007? Sorry it's taken so long, we are only one game away from finishing 1980 Intellivision games and the penultimate Intellivision game for the year is: Checkers!
I didn't actually dread playing Checkers, especially after my better-than-dreaded experience with Backgammon. I was looking forward to jumping back into the Chronogaming groove. Checkers didn't disappoint me.
Okay, back some time in the closing days of 2008 an AtariAger was looking for an Emerson Arcadia 2001 and was offering an Apple IIGS in exchange. I've always wanted one of those, so I went for it, traded my extra Arcadia (I had to keep one if my chronogaming ever makes it to 1982) a few boxed commons and maybe one scarce (I was feeling generous, and I really did want to mess around with an Apple IIGS).
So, sometime in January, the exchange was made and a happy IIGS began its life in
Las Vegas Roulette (Intellivision, 1980)
The first step to getting people to stop bothering you about your gambling problem is to admit that you have a gambling problem, even if you don't really believe you have one. This might get those well-meaning, but annoying, dis-enablers off your back for a little while. This is actually a fairly useful step in most forms of addiction, but if you use it too often people will eventually realize you're just as full of excrement as you've ever be
US Ski Team Skiing (Intellivision, 1980)
Okay, prior to Skiing on the Intellivision we've thrice seen videogame versions of the real life, not-so-cheap thrill of strapping wood to one's feet and sliding down a mountain while standing up. The first came with the Magnavox Odyssey, called Ski, and I think I compared it to a lava lamp in its ability to provide a nice quiet Zen trance if you were open to relaxing and enjoying it.
The second version came bundled as a variation
Auto Racing (Intellivision, 1980)
We've seen an overhead view in our driving games before. Indy 500 and Speedway took the "camera" and hung it high over the track so that the field of vision encompassed the entire course. Such a viewpoint is useful for seeing "the big picture" but it limits the amount of detail one need bother to show.
Auto Racing for the Intellivision takes a different perspective, or, more specifically, a lower, more mobile perspective. In this case, th
Okay, not a chronogaming entry per se, but the gallery contains the promised pictures of the machines we saw at the awesome HAAG Expo from 8 weeks ago so that should be good for a look-see.
That's all for now.
EDIT: Oh, I noticed that linking to a Gallery in an entry puts pictures in the entry. Here's the link to the Game Shows gallery. (Just click on the HAAG 2007 link)
Gaming Expos HAAG 2007 Gallery
And if you like pretty lights and getting motio
Tele-Games Electronic Games Motocross Sports Center IV (Atari, 1977)
I kinda "get it" now but back in the late 70s I had no clue what was going on between Atari and Sears. It seemed like Atari stuff in other department stores was labeled "Atari" but Sears was a parallel universe where every Atari item was called something else. Combat was called Tank Plus; Air-Sea Battle was called Target Fun. The Atari Video Computer System was called the Sears Video Arcade, etc.
Suspici
UFO/Sea Monster/Break It Down/Rebuild/Shoot (APF MP1000, 1978)
I'll say one thing about this cartridge: it has motion.
Getting decent screenshots of any of the games on this cart was impossible for me, due to the constant motion of one or more of the elements on any given screen.
Well, except the menu . . .
UFO and Sea Monster are reverse variations of Sea Wolf style gameplay, almost.
UFO-1 just has you blasting alien drone
Yesterday I did write "National Instruments" but what I should have written was "National Semiconductor". I could go back and correct it in each of the entries in which I make this error, but I've decided not to because it would represent a larger waste of time than this paragraph apologizing for it. So, sorry about that.
Okay, this is a dedicated Pong clone. The Adversary, by National Semiconductor, is a lovely little console, resplendent in the faux woodgrain decor previously reserved for
Schach (Channel F, 1979)
I know, I said I was only going to do US releases, that's why this is a "mystery" game.
This is a quote from a post I made back in May of 2005
As far as I know, it's the only game program for the Channel F that didn't come out in the US. The cart, with that "glowing thinking light", was probably more expensive to manufacture and, based on past market performance of the Channel F, it was probably decid
There's already a list of all the games that came out in 1978 in this entry here. Rather than rehash that list with the only change in it being the addition of smilies or frownies, I think the electrons would be better spent on picking out a few of the standout titles from 1978, by system, while giving each system a general rating.
APF MP1000 -- Not Nearly As Fun-Free as I Thought It Would Be
This system really seemed to have some potential, but it was wasted on unimaginative games. Still i
Basic Math
Okay, don't talk to me about basic math, see? It ain't a game, see? It ain't fun, see?
It's math, man! It's not even "fun" math, like differential equations and shit. It's plussin' and minusin' and multiplyin' and dividin'. Phooey!
Blackjack
Oh, please, dear god, why? Why is it always Blackjack?
While the graphics for the Fairchild version of Blackjack are slightly more ambitious (remember the rounded, green dealer's table graphic?), Atari's Blackjack is superior in m
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