Speedway / Spinout / Crypto-Logic 1978
Before I do the Odyssey^2 thing, I must report another chronogamer!
Go and enjoy his blog, too, for a glimpse of . . . the future! While you're at it, start a chronogaming blog of your own. It's easy! Simply pick a system, research all the release dates, and play them in order! Okay, it's not that simple, assembling the roms/carts hardware etc can be a bit time consuming (not to mention expensive), and in some cases, figuring out the release dates is hard, but it is fun, um, often!
Something I immediately like about the Odyssey^2 is its opening screen commanding me to "select game". No it doesn't tell me what's available, but that would be asking for a bit much, don't you think? (Well, yeah, the Bally does do that. Hmm, and so does the APF. BUT, both do it with less colors.)
Speedway
I'm trying something different to provide "flavor" for these entries, namely, instead of a screenshot, or a boxshot, I think I'd like to just show the Player "avatar", if you will. That car directly above, is the shape you control in the game, Speedway, which I'm given to believe came on the pack-in cart for the Odyssey^2. A close-up shot reveals things that aren't really there: shadows on the left, sunlight from the right . . . it looks like it has a little more depth than it actually does, at least, to me, anyway.
This is a game similar in mechanics to Dodgem on the Bally Pro Arcade. You can move that car left or right to avoid cars that are moving down the screen on your road. It's not a bad little game, but it does become predictable. There's a repeating pattern in the descending cars every three or four cars. With a little practice, one could "beat" this game pretty quickly, or so I would assume. My son liked it well enough, but was ready to move on quickly.
Spin-Out
Why is it so often Red vs. Blue? Is it because Red vs. Green looks too much like Christmas, or Green vs. Blue is too hard to tell apart? Dunno.
In this two-player game, each player controls one of those cars and races them around the track. The directional control is what one would call "absolute" as opposed to "relative". To compare to Indy 500 (Atari, VCS, 1977): Indy 500 is "relative" directional control. As the car goes in a given direction, you steer to the right, the car steers to its right. In Spin-out, you move the joystick to the right, the car goes right, if you want it to turn to its left, you move the joystick up. The car moves in whatever direction you move the joystick. It does spin to face the direction in which it moves, so that's good.
Another good part of this game is the collision gameplay. If you hit your opponent, one of you may "spin-out" in place for a little while, while the other continues on as if nothing happened, laughing uproariously at their opponent's misfortune. This was fun, but, if I had to compare it to Indy 500, (its closest relative), I'd have to say I didn't enjoy it as much. There weren't enough gameplay variations and the steering seemed awkward. Still, I didn't dislike it.
Crypto-Logic
Can anyone figure out what I typed?
My son said he liked this one "the most on this cart" which brought a tear to my eye. I'll tell you why. He made me leave the room while he typed in his phrase and he hit the enter key to have the console scramble what he typed in. He called me back into the room and I started puzzling it out. It isn't a cryptogram, technically, it's a word scramble, spaces and all. Anyway, I started figuring out what he typed: it was "GRAET DAD". *sniff!* He said he liked it most because he got to type that to me. Isn't that sweet? For that reason alone, I can't say anything against this cart.
Next entry will be Las Vegas Blackjack . . . no I don't have anything sarcastic to say about it just yet. I'm trying to keep an open mind.
10 Comments
Recommended Comments