Two games, one cart! Again!
Bowling! Odyssey^2, 1978
First off, in my book at least, ANY game in the 1970s that allows for four players gets my thumbs up. Not necessarily WAY up, but definitely "up".
Bowling! allows for up to four players. It uses a similar bowling formula that we've seen before on both the RCA Studio II and the APF MP1000: Oscillating ball at the bottom of the alley, press the button to send it and then use the controller for a one shot chanc
Bowling / Micro-Matchup, APF, 1978
Bowling didn't suck. It's good for very young children or really smart dogs. This beats the RCA Studio II's built-in game of Bowling, in that APF's is a) In Color and b) actually has the ability to perform the complicated math calculations involved in spares and strikes.
(Yes, I'm still taking cheap shots at the RCA Studio II. It's part of the healing process.)
To Bowl, one must hit the fire button when the ball
For those of you playing along at home this is Videocart #21-Bowling, for the Zircon Channel F.
I wonder if they actually changed its name to the "Zircon Channel-F"? All of the carts released during what is known among Channel F fans as "The Zircon Era" have the Zircon Empire's name and address on the back of the cart. I'll scan a picture of it one of these days.
Bowling (Channel F, 1979)
The Title (system, year) format was one of the ways of presenting the ca
Bowling (Atari VCS, 1979)
I was in a bowling league when I was in middle school. My team won the league championship two years in a row. I don't remember my average, but when I was 13 years old, my high score was 191. I don't think that's a great high score, (though I've never beaten it since ), and I'm certain my average wasn't very impressive, but it disturbs me to suddenly realize that I may actually be more qualified to talk about videogames based on bowling than videogames based on
Isn't that a pretty Überlay? Well, I think so, too.
Sorry, this is a long one! I originally wrote it for a post at Digital Press which had only 49 views and 1 reply before I let it slip in to the oblivion of the archives. *sniff*. I learned my lesson: Forums are for conversation, not essays. Blogs are for long babbling kook-talk and that's the way I like it!
There are two games described by the manual for Interplanetary Voyage. The second game in the manual is called "Uni
Blackjack, APF, 1978
Blackjack. Again. I'm really sorry, all of you must be really tired of hearing me bitch about the fact that this game shows up on nearly all the systems. So, let's just get it over with, shall we?
Okay, the only thing you must know is that you can choose the number of decks up to four that the dealer draws from, which is cool. The graphics are ugly. The suits are green and black.
EDIT: Let this serve as an
Videocart-3
NOTE: I hope I'm not risking the ruining of an illusion for some of you, but I'm not, actually, playing each of these games on the day that I write about them. In some cases, like for most of the Fairchild and RCA Studio II games coming up, I played them at the very beginning of the summer. So long ago, in fact, that I had even forgotten that I had taken notes after we had played them. I found the notes today and realized that in some instances they won't offer me much help. Here
Las Vegas Blackjack! Odyssey^2, 1978
Another system, another inevitable release of the game the crowds must've been howling for back in the 70s. Blackjack.
This time its official title is: Las Vegas Blackjack! (Hmm, what's up with the exclamation point? Seems the last cartridge had one for each title, too. Maybe part of a marketing decision? We'll see if they keep it up.)
I dragged my feet to play this title. I really didn't want to. I've never been able to en
Black Jack/Acey Deucey/Poker (Bally Professional Arcade, 1979)
Death and Taxes.
And Blackjack.
With the exception of the Magnavox Odyssey, Black Jack has appeared on every cart-based, home videogame system released in the United States thus far (up to 1979). It is surpassed in its occurances only by versions of Baseball which also appeared on the Magnavox Odyssey while a version of Black Jack did not.
I'm probably covering old ground here, bu
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
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
Baseball. In the real world this game was what America's "pass-time" used to be. Back before videogames.
Like Odyssey's Football, this game is asking you to pretend that you are playing a simulation of the game of baseball, however, this game takes one step towards being cooler than the Odyssey's attempt at a football sim: This game introduces Player Stats. Ooooo! It's probably the first example of persistent player stats in a home video game.
When selecting your team, a
"Grandpa, why does your leg phase in and out of existence when you walk?"
"What? Oh, well, that's just my Blinky Leg."
Basketball, Atari VCS (1978)
The solution to the problem of animating a human figure has many approaches. (I'm not an animator so forgive me while I just talk off the top of my ass.) You could do it the Hard Way, which would be filming a person moving around and redrawing every frame exactly as it appears OR the Easy Way, which would be to just draw something that va
Rather than a lengthy compare/contrast of Computer Intro and Basic Programming, like I had intended, I decided to look at each individually. Initially, my first attempts to write about the two displayed a tendancy to bash Atari's offering for merely being unlike Odyssey^2's offering. I decided it didn't make for a fair comparison, nor was it very fun to write, so, I'm doing it this way instead.
Basic Programming (Atari VCS, 1979)
Machine Gun KittyKats was the name of the game I was going
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
For the record, I'm out of actual 1978 Odyssey^2 carts. The remaining carts for the year 1978 will be played using the wonderful Odyssey^2 Multicart.
Baseball! Odyssey^2, 1978
I'm almost certain that if I took a look at every (programmable) home videogame system ever made and eventually intended for a TV in a living room in the USA I'm pretty certain I'd find a Baseball game for it.
For some reason, as a youth, I never took to enjoying the real-life game of Ba
Baseball, APF, 1978
Is there a system anywhere in the universe of programmable game consoles that doesn't have Baseball on it? I guess I'll find out sooner or later.
Another "green"-ish game. The controls are similar to other Baseball games. The outfielders are moved with the joystick, though you can't move them after the ball is pitched. They're spaced a little oddly, so there's usually a gap in right field that the computer player manages to hit to more oft
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
Jeez, just when I thought I had it all working I go and break a controller.
I've been really excited about playing the Bally Professional Arcade because it has a four player option on some of its games and they've got a true joystick/paddle/trigger controller combo thing going on with their interface, PLUS a 24 key-keypad. Bally spent money on their interfaces, at least that's the way it looks to me.
I do have FOUR Bally controllers. Unfortunately, I only have one which
Bally Pin (Bally Professional Arcade, 1979)
Off the top of my head, I'd have to say Bally Pin is the most fun we've had on the Bally Professional Arcade yet, and it's possibly the most addictive fun we've had with a videogame in our chronology thus far.
Like the various videogame portings of Baseball, Black Jack or Hangman represent attempts to mix the older school leisures of sports, cards and puzzle games into the new past-time on the block, so too, does the attempt to
Backgammon (Intellivision, 1980)
Sadly, I've been dreading having to play this game. Like most games I dread playing (sports, for instance) it's a great hinderance to moving forward with chronogaming.
So, tonight, I had a spare hour or so (family goes to bed before I do on most nights) and decided to get over this little hump in my chronology.
Boy do I feel stupid for having put it off. This is a well designed version of backgammon. The play field, like the play field for Roulette, i
Backgammon (Atari VCS, 1979)
Two games in a row from which I expected very little and yet found so much!
Backgammon on the Atari VCS is one of the best videogame versions of the 5,000 year old board game that I've seen to date. The APF version worked well enough, but typing in the moves via their keypad was painful. Atari's solution is so appropriate that I'm tempted to call it elegant. The paddles are the perfect controller for this game. Press the button to roll the di
Backgammon (APF M1000, 1978)
Backgammon is an ancient and respectable game. My experience with it, prior to chronogaming, is limited to wondering what the design on the back of my checkerboard was when I was in grade school. Remember those? You'd have a checker board (or chess board) and on the other side there'd be these two dozen triangles and we'd be like "what the heck is this design?" and some other kid would always say it was backgammon but nobody knew how to play
Is there such thing as an obsessive compulsive disorder that procrastinates?
Okay, so I've been busy. Since I had my moment of discouraged truth a few years ago, I've managed to keep my job, my kids have continued to survive and I've been to Japan.
Let me try to express my feelings about Japan with a very intense understatement.
Japan is cool.
I know... it makes some of you uncomfortable when I get all gushy and emotional about stuff, so I'll just
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, the camera hangs d
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