Word Fun (Intellivision, 1980)
Hey, did anyone else notice the complete revamping of intellivisiongames.com? They've had the same site up for years and its always looked circa 1999-2001 design style, but now they've got something that looks like it's database driven. Well, good for them.
I actually have a Word Fun cart, purchased in Tulsa, Oklahoma for $5 in 2006. It wasn't until I plugged it into my Intellivision II in August of 2008 that I found this sucker doesn't work with Intellivis
Forward to present day (2005, to those of you reading this in some 25th century museum/blog-vault), videogame volleyball will/has evolve/evolved into poly-polygonal, progressively scanned-tily clad women bouncing around on exotic beaches and buying each other cute gifts. Back here in 1972/73, where I am, Volleyball for the Odyssey is the primordial soup of videogame volleyball. Don't forget, those little figures on the Überlay are static; frozen eternally in those positions. The only movement on
Do you remember Biorhythms back in the 70s or early 80s?
I remember eating at a place called Ollie's in Clifton Heights, PA on Baltimore Pike. They had a Biorhythm machine. You put in your birthday and the day for which you wanted your Biorhythm reading. It would spit out a little card with graphs on it detailing how your life would be on that day. (It would also beep while doing so, for that "I'm computing" effect.)
Rubbish, of course, but it was fun with a group of other kids high on c
I can't believe I almost forgot about Percepts!
Percepts was the free Odyssey game you got for registering your Odyssey. You know the drill, you fill out a little slip of paper and mail it in to Magnavox. They get your personal information for nefarious marketing purposes and you get a free game. Not a bad deal!
This game would fall into the "Simon Says" category in that you must determine where to go on the screen and get there before your opponent does. It also uses cards. Percepts com
Well, 1976 has come and gone and what have we learned?
*We've learned that Hockey, Tennis and Handball are the first things game designers thought of when putting together a dedicated console.
*We learned that if I were to try to play every single dedicated pong console that ever came out, even just from 1976-78, I'd be buried in them and I'd be bored stiff after the second one.
*"Videocarts", as the Fairchild VES calls them, made their debut in August 1976. This is the start of a Go
Dick and Jane try to ignore the Baseball player standing on one foot in their living room.
Baseball for the RCA Studio II isn't terrible. If you can look past the monochrome graphics, the sluggish control of the outfielders, the uninteresting beeps, there's actually a game that's merely annoying.
Player at the "A" keypad starts off at bat. Player at the "B" keypad pitches and plays the field first. To pitch, player "B" depresses "5" to send a straight ball, "8" for a hook left (up, relat
Three games, one cart! This is getting out of hand . . .Before I talk about the individual games on this cart, I should point out that this entire cartridge uses the keyboard and nothing but the keyboard. I don't know why, but I find that admirable. This console actually uses its keyboards while other consoles only have half-hearted attempts at keyboards (Atari, Bally).
Match Maker! Odyssey^2, 1978
This is one of those "deja vu" games, we've seen it on other
The 1978-1979 school year was significant for me.
Other than seven people to whom I'm related, I no longer know anyone I'd ever met prior to the school year of 1978-79. Anyone I knew, peers or otherwise, before that school year, is either dead or is now 28 years in the past and I've got no hope of getting in touch with them and even less hope that they'll remember me.
I almost got into just how many friends I've made and kept each year since 1979, but the amount stops growing in 1991 and
Prehistoric Safari
Shooting Gallery is a kick-ass add-on to the Magnavox Odyssey. There are four games in the add-on, each with it's own Überlay. Three of the games use game cart #9 and the fourth uses #10. The add-on comes in its own box with a GUN! A realistic looking gun! The kind that will get you playfully blown away if you playfully aim it at an officer of the law. So, uh, DON'T do that, 'kay kids?
In Prehistoric Safari, you have the gun, you are the Mighty Hunter,
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
As EricBall very correctly pointed out, it wasn't long after figuring out that this machine might work, that I realized that it's little better than a door stop without a floppy drive.
Fortunately for me, I discovered the CFFA! This is a card that plugs into the innards of an Apple IIGS with a Compact Flash card as a hard drive. You can have as many 32MB hard drive images as you can fit on a compact flash. So, I quickly, and without really reading anything about it, ordered one and then orde
Two Home Videogames for 1975:
Atari PONG (aka Sears Tele-Games PONG)
Magnavox Odyssey 100
Sadly, I do not have Atari PONG yet. I wasn't intending to include it as part of the chronology (prefering to stick to programmable consoles) but I've changed my mind as it's too important to just skip over.
I actually HAVE a Magnavox Odyssey 100 so I can talk about that one, but it's not its turn yet.
So, I'm going to skip a day or two (maybe make a place holder?) and leave space for Atari
Star Battle (Bally Pro Arcade, 1979)
Two years ago, back in 1977, a little movie called Star Wars was released. People who made videogames noticed this and immediately began coming up with videogame scenarios from it. One of the first games inspired by Star Wars for a home videogame console is Star Battle for the Bally Professional Arcade.
I don't know if I'm just tired or if my second week of being caffeine-free is just lowering my IQ even further, but I'm at a loss to a
Las Vegas Roulette (Intellivision, 1980)
The first step to getting people to stop bothering your 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 been and
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
Breakout, Atari VCS, 1978
Okay, a chronogamer has to always be thinking about the relative future (though technically, we're always thinking about the past.) which is why I haven't been writing lately. Mostly I've been letting go of the past (goodbye Odyssey games! It was fun! Um, sometimes!) so that I can afford to play the games to come. Oh, I also bought a brickwall on ebay and I've been slamming my head against it for about two weeks. Wait, did I say brickwall? I meant a Sony PVM 2530 mo
States (Magnavox Odyssey, 1972)
The overlay is a map of the USA. There are 50 cards, each highlighting a specific state with three questions about the state. There's an answer brochure ("Affairs of States") and what can best be described as a paper version of the overlay. They refer to it as a "study map", but it reminds me of a place mat they give my kids to color when we eat at a diner.
The questions are cute and range from little rhymes to help your memory with learning the captials t
Last night, I read an announcement that DP blogs were going to be lost in a transfer to the new bulletin board system. The announcement posted at 9:20 the site went down again at 11:50 (central time.). 150 minutes to find the announcement and back up a blog was given to us.
Things of which I am aware: DP is free for me. Many people work hard and spend money to keep it running at no cost to me. The person doing the conversion was doing it in his free time and I am not ungrateful for his effor
When you play games on the RCA Studio II, you have to change your whole perspective on life.
You have to remember that you're lucky to even live in a world where such a thing as videogames exist. Then, you must remember that you are one of the few citizens of this planet who can spend money on videogames without having to worry about eating. Being so fortunate, how can you not greet each day, at the very least, with a faint smile?
You know that if you choose to do so today, and if you ma
A few words about the term "Crap Game from Hell".
While I was cajoling my son into playing Handball with me, I billed it as the "Last Crap Game from Hell from 1972!!!" This term isn't meant to malign the Odyssey or its games. It rather serves as a warning to my son that the game I'm asking him to play isn't going to be easy to enjoy, but that I need him to do his best for me. We tend to enjoy these old games a lot more when we expect that they are going to be hard to enjoy. Calling them "Cra
PGA Golf (Intellivision, 1980)
This is another game where many of the details of the real world sport are taken and compressed into an extremely realistic simulation. Now, I'm not able to say they've managed to simulate everything, but what they did consider in the design of PGA Golf and how they chose to display it, works pretty well for a golf videogame in 1980.
The screen is dominated by an overhead view of the current hole. Conventional golf course elements are used: the fairway, the
Math-a-Magic! / Echo! Odyssey^2, 1978
Okay, this should be short and sweet.
Because of the Odyssey^2 keyboard, Math-a-Magic is fairly usable as far as Math edutainment goes, however, it really doesn't count as a game. Yes, there's a timer, so you can see how many problems you can do in a certain amount of time, and yes, a "music noise" is played every time you've answered 10 more problems correctly, but it's just not a game. You can pick from four operations (addition, su
I get the impression that Dick and Jane up there are just looking at the screen and wondering what the chunks are supposed to be.
Space War is the only game we played on the RCA Studio II that we didn't hate with rabid hatefulness.
Is it anything like what you think of when you think of "Spacewar"? No, no it isn't, because there are no dueling spaceships.
There are two games. One where you shoot a guided missile to destroy large and small UFOs and another where you fire shots that ri
Lots of pictures, thought I'd make it its own entry.
Here are the participants that took, what, 6 months to play through?
They seem like such tiny piles . . .
Here we have the 1978 Atari VCS family with their enlightened 7800-only cousin from the future and the underused but kinda cool keyboard controllers. The Cuttle Cart 2, for those who don't know, is used to play games on Atari hardware for which I no longer have the original carts.
Canyon Bomber/Sea Bomber (Atari VCS, 1979)
Crater Digger? Pit Maker?
This game hearkens back to a simpler time, when all the human mind could handle was one button.
Picture a canyon extending from mid screen to the bottom in depth and stretching from one side of the screen to the other in width. Now, fill it to the brim with multi-colored blocks, each layer of blocks having its own color, like Breakout only going down. Or, better yet, view a screenshot taken d
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