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Mezrabad

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  1. Mezrabad
    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 I do forget to mention in the video is how you "spike" the ball. I wasn't able to demonstrate it, but my computer opponent sure did. Repeatedly. When you're above the net, you move that top player closest to the net and hit the Action Button to make the ball move faster when you hit it over the net. I couldn't do that.
     
    Also, in the video, I repeatedly mistakenly say "Magnavox Odyssey" when I should be saying "Magnavox Odyssey2" ("Magnavox Odyssey Squared" or, if superscript is unavailable, "Magnavox Odyssey Shift-6 two")
     
     
     
  2. Mezrabad
    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 David Crane. David Crane apparently also programmed Outlaw (1978), Canyon Bomber (1979) and Slot Machine (1979) all for the Atari Video Computer System. Atari doesn't let anyone know who designs their games. Game designers are kept frozen in a vault under Atari Headquarters and only brought out of the vault when a new game is needed. One night, someone left the door to the vault open. Four designers escaped. Not being able to feed themselves due to not having any marketable skills, or even human language, they had to do the only thing they knew - game programming. All of this has been carefully documented elsewhere in case you think I'm making this up.
     
    Fishing Derby consists of two fishermen sitting across from each other on docks. The goal of the game is to collect 99 pounds of fish before the other. On the playfield there are six rows of fish. Rows 1 and 2 weigh 2 pounds each, rows 3 and 4 weigh 4 pounds each, rows 5 and 6 weigh six pounds each. Each fisherman lowers their lines and tries to hook a fish by moving the hook in front of the fish. When the fish is hooked it will slowly swim to the surface. When a player presses the red button, they're able to reel the fish in faster. There is a hazard of a shark swimming above the topmost row that will eat your fish off your hook so one must always be wary of the shark. Also, there's an interesting mechanic that only one fish may be reeled in at a time by either player. So, if you've both got a fish on the hook, the person who hooked theirs first may reel it in while the other waits. I guess there are ways of using this to your advantage, to not just delay the other person's poundage accumulation, but also to wait for the shark to be more on their side. I did not explore this tactic, but it's a thought.
     
    This game is fun. It has moments where you think you're going to get a fish up and, suddenly, you hit the shark losing your fish. There are many "so close!" moments. This is a game that is much more fun to play with a friend, but playing with the computer is good practice. I have yet to beat the computer playing with the computer on Beginner and myself on Advanced. The difference between the two settings is that to catch a fish on Beginner, you just need to get the end of your line near the fish's mouth. To catch a fish on Advanced, your line has to practically be right under the fish's nose.
     
    (( Thankfully, a post on Atari Age forums has finally helped me to figure out which way the difficulty switches on the 7800 need to go to be (A)dvanced (to the right) or (B)egginner (to the left) I'm trying to remember to put the Spacetime Protective Barriers up (aka parenthesis) when talking about things "not yet of this time" ))
     
    Oh, something different about this game from games that have gone before it: the surface of the water, in addition to providing a sort of "depth perception" to the body of water, actually "shimmers" like the surface of a pond or lake. Well, "like the surface of a pond or lake" in the sense that it is always changing - horizontal lines of blue and light-blue seemed to randomly wax and wane on the surface. It's a nice effect and I'm at a loss to think of another game on the Atari where something was animated in this way simply to provide eye-candy. The surface design has nothing to do with the game play and merely provides an animated aesthetic. Come to think of it, the fishermen also seem to provide a flavor that also doesn't contribute directly to the game play. I wonder if this is the first home videogame to do that? I just can't think of others at the moment.
     
    Thank you for reading my ramblings! I might make a game play video of the one-player game to see if my paranoia about the shark is true or not... I swear that sucker gravitates to the left during the single player games. I immediately just played two or three more one-player games, me=hard vs. computer=easy. I lost every time. I don't think my losses are entirely shark-related but if I can blame a shark. I will. Yes, I believe in having irrational prejudice towards sharks.
     
    Oh, I got through the entire article without including any fishing-related puns. My cognitive therapy exercises must be working or maybe I just wasn't feeling all that abusive today. Please feel free to put any fish-puns you care to make in the comments. Yes, I'm giving you license to make really awful fish-puns. Oh, the horror! The horror!
     
    Next time... back to Atari with Pele's Soccer!
  3. Mezrabad
    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 everything is going well here. See y'all again soon, but you've heard that before.
  4. Mezrabad
    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. Yes, it's on YouTube.
     
    I do remember spending a very focused Saturday afternoon trying to qualify for the Activision Skiing Team. Apparently this has become known as Game 3b (because one plays the third game on the cart with the difficulty settings on "b"). To qualify, your time had to be under 28.2 seconds. I distinctly remember beating qualifying, but I don't remember if I got 28.17 or 28.19. I think I took the actual picture. I never sent it in for the patch, though. This is among my few remaining childhood regrets. Fortunately, um, most of my childhood regrets have been vastly overshadowed by my many adulthood regrets. Such is life.
     
    There are two types of Skiing games: Slalom (Games 1 - 5) and Downhill (Games 6 - 10). The games increase in challenge, but it is possible to get to know each course well. Tonight, I popped the cartridge into my Atari Video Computer System, reviewed the manual, selected Game 3b and after about four tries had my time down to 28.46. A few more tries it was at 28.21 (grrrr) and then finally I hit 28.14. I'm still a spiritual member of the Activision Skiing Team. Go me. Yes, I took a picture.
     
    I had forgotten that the left difficulty switch when set to "a" would let your skier ski off the trail and through the woods, even making it possible to ski around the mountain. I remember finding that concept very interesting as a teen. I loved the idea of parts of the "world" persisting off-screen. All in all, Skiing is one of my better remembered games from back in the day and I honestly feel that Activision can thank their marketing department for selling it to me with that cheesy commercial.
     
    Addendum: I think one of my fondest memories of the Atari was being stuck on the couch for a couple weeks with a broken ankle playing Adventure. I'd broken it while skiing. Maybe that's why I had to get the cartridge.
     
    Addendum duex: Anyone else remember the Flintstones episode where there were spies and one of the code words was "slalom"? Was this the cold war creeping in on our childhoods?
     
    Okay, we're done with 1980 for the Atari VCS and it only took me from August of 2009 until April of 2021. Ha. I'll start working on the games for the Odyssey^2 next. It's been a very long time since I hooked up my Odyssey^2. Looking forward to seeing how it goes.
  5. Mezrabad
    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.
    Chinook is the computer program that plays checkers.
     
    Their story is a great story which I would love to tell you.
    Instead, I'm going to tell you the short and crappy version of that story.
     
    Chinook almost beat Tinsley in 1992.
    In 1994 they played against each other again.
    They played six games to a draw.
    Tinsley had to stop playing because he was in a lot of pain.
    The pain was cancer.
    He died a few months later.
    Chinook never defeated Tinsley.
    Tinsley's death inspired Schaeffer.
    Schaeffer's computer program "solved" Checkers in 2007.
    What that means is that the computer knows all the ways to play the game so that it either wins or draws.
     
    A much better version of that story can be found here:  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/marion-tinsley-checkers/534111/
     
    I don't really have anything to say about Activision Checkers.
    It's a good version of Checkers. It's easy to play.
    The graphics look fine.
    There are a total of four games on the cart.
    Three games against the computer. (Novice, Intermediate, Expert)
    The Novice game takes about 15 minutes.
    The Expert game can take about 2 hours because the computer takes longer to think.
    The Intermediate game takes more time to play than the Novice game and less time to play than the Expert game.
    I bet you already knew that part about the Intermediate game.
     
    The fourth game is a two-player game.
    For the two-player game I needed to find another person.
    Every person I tried to drag into my house ran away from me.
     
    I decided I would cheat by having another computer program choose my moves for me.
    I chose the website MathIsFun, which has a Checkers game.
    I put Activision Checkers on Novice.
    I put MathIsFun Checkers on Hard.
    Activision Checkers won.
    Apparently that website is for kids, so don't be impressed.
     
    You might have thought I was going to have Chinook play against Activision Checkers.
    That would have been smart, but I didn't think of it until just now.
     
    Chinook is here: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play/
    Let me know if you win.
     
     
  6. Mezrabad
    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 learned I can blame ADHD for this, so, yay for me.
     
    Oh, by the way, I found Random Terrain's page that presents some optimal guessing regarding the release dates of games released to be played on the Atari VCS. Nice Job, RT! Your have made it a lot easier for me to get back into this.
     
    Bridge (Atari VCS, 1980, Activision)
     
    The manual for Activision's Bridge will not teach you to play Bridge. You have to have that knowledge ahead of time. You can get that knowledge from YouTube. You'll learn that it normally takes four people to play this game. You can learn everything you need to get started in about 10 minutes or even less. If you have three other people that you want to hang out with and try a new card game, then this could possibly be an interesting game. Maybe. I'd have to really like at least one of the other people involved to even think about playing any card game these days. Okay, I take that back. I did enjoy playing some Texas Hold-em prior to the Pandemic, but there was money involved and also an attractive woman, so, I guess we understand what motivates me. (It wasn't the money.)
     
    Activision's Bridge is for a single player. Like the manual, I don't want to teach you anything about playing Bridge. Sorry. Kinda. Don't look at me like that, just go to YouTube.
     
    Regarding this video game: I can see that there is planning and some tactical thinking involved. I can see the appeal of playing this as a social card game with other people. I can see the appeal of having a video game version of Bridge to help a player practice to improve how they play the game. I can even appreciate Activision's Bridge as a way of exploring how to think about playing the card game Bridge. These are worthy and noble pursuits and I admire the courage it must've took for Activision to produce this as one of the four games they debuted in 1980. (Edit: This game DID come out in 1980, but it was not one of the four debut games. They were: Boxing, Checkers, Dragster and Fishing Derby. I'll get better at playing these things in order now that I have a better order for them, but I've dreaded playing Bridge for so long that I needed to get it out of the way so that I could just get back to doing this.)
     
    That doesn't mean I have any interest in ever playing it again. Also, I'm a little resentful that I've learned to play a card game that I'll probably never ever play. This is where I'd give the game an emoji rating but it's been so long since I've posted I don't even remember how to do them. In this case it would be one of those "meh" emojis.   Oh... okay, that was easier than I thought it would be. Thanks for reading!
     
    I might go on YouTube with these articles and show actual game play. I know that I've almost done this in the past and then deleted my YouTube. Sorry about that.
  7. Mezrabad
    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 challenge and goal size. The playfield is interesting in that it's a scrolling vertical field. As you move the ball up or down it, the field scrolls up and down with it. It's another good example of "there's more to this playing area than meets your eye" that was emerging from videogames more and more. Yes, some videogames don't need that, Fishing Derby and Boxing, for example, do just fine without it but I really like the idea of using it to allow the player to focus on "what's happening right now" while being aware of a bigger picture. That's not a very good way to articulate it, but I do like this style of game. I can see how it might not work as well for sport-ports like hockey (where seeing where your team-members are helps) or basketball (important to see the big picture) but for this simplified version of soccer it works.
     
    You only have three players for each team and they're locked into a triangle formation, the "forward" at the apex of the triangle and two "backs". You can pass the ball among the members of your little triangle but it takes some practice. I started playing the easier two-player game (game 28) (EDIT: Nelio correctly points out that this is a typo and I was playing the easier one-player game. It's entirely possible though, that I WAS playing the two-player game by myself, which would indeed make it pretty easy.) and unexpectedly found that I enjoyed it. I advanced through a number of the variations, trying them out as I went, finding that the harder it got the more work it felt like and the more my button-thumb began to protest. Regardless, it kept my attention for far longer than I thought it would. I've yet to play it with either of my kids, but I look forward to trying it out with my son, who used to play soccer (ages 5 to 8ish)
     
    I think the real plus of this game is how, even on the easiest level, if you're doing pretty well (say, you've scored twice and your console opponent hasn't scored at all yet) the computer player improves its game. The goalie becomes more reactive and I'd swear the blue triangle of the enemy move faster, but again, I tend to imagine these things. Your mileage may vary.
     
    For me, personally, it was a lot more fun than watching professional soccer, which, to me, consists of a lot of this:
     

     
    There are penalties in the two-player games that do not exist in the single-player variations that I'm looking forward to experiencing with my son. It would be nice if they could simulate penalties for excessive ear-flicking.
     
    While I don't like watching real world Soccer, I must admit there are sometimes amazing moments like this one:
     
    (EDIT: Awww, I can't even remember what this gif was, but the link has died. Oh well.)
     
    which even makes an "professional sports neutral" person like myself feel begrudging admiration even to the point of tingles.
     
    Anyway, sorry for the "half-entry", I really can't count this game as "completed" until I've enjoyed it a bit in the two-player mode. Since I'm a bit retentive about splitting entries into two parts, I'll just edit this one with the two-player information after I've played. (Edit: no, this never happened because OF COURSE it never happened.)
     
    Golf is the next game in the pile. (EDIT: When I pulled a bunch of games out of the closet I'd actually thought about doing Golf, but then I noticed Bridge. Bridge is one of those games that I was never able to get myself to play and now that I've finally done so, I'm SO glad it's over. I should do Golf soon. It's funny, because Golf and Bridge are both games that my parents both like to play fairly regularly in real life these days and I just cringe thinking about either.)
  8. Mezrabad
    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 involves using the brain and body. I just don't like that competitive boxing's goal seems to be to punch someone until they're unconscious. Other sports might have greater risk for more serious injuries, it just seems odd to me that boxing still happens as a spectator sport. Enough about my bleh-ness on the subject.
     
    Boxing is one of six titles (Six? I don't know why I've always thought there were just four.) in 1980 to be released by a third-party. I'm never totally sure about who the first two parties are. I assume that one would be you, the consumer. The other party would be... the company that manufactures the console itself, in this case, Atari. But which one of those counts as the "first-party" and which is the "second-party". I'm going to guess that Atari would be the first and the consumer would be the second and then out of NOWHERE, comes the third-party, only doing stuff because the first and second parties have done something first.
     
    So, Activision. You know that something named Activision has something to do with the game because they spend precious screen-space to emblazon a logo on the screen to read "Activision". Without squinting, I could tell what the screen was supposed to be: two boxers facing each other in a boxing ring. I always thought it was a pretty fair representation of the sport. No need to complicate things by adding the rest of the body. The point is to knock each other out and the head is the best way to do that.
     
    Bob Whitehead, the designer and programmer had said that he decided to make the rounds two minutes, instead of however long they are in boxing, because... and all he says is "You'll see." I think what he was saying was "Because your button-thumb can't take much more than two minutes if it can even survive that."
     
    This is a tough game for your button-thumb. This is an Atari VCS game I recommend playing with an anachronistic (( Genesis )) controller if at all possible. I thought it was just my old hands complaining, but my son said that he definitely started to feel it after just two games, too.
     
    My son thought it was fun in a very simple way - like most games from this era. Not quite the strategy of the games he's into now (DOTA2), but it was short so no biggie. We both particularly liked the animation of the punch landing on the face of the other player and how it collapsed into the rest of his head. We were slightly disappointed that there was nothing to celebrate a KO other than the score changing to show "KO" but we weren't really surprised either.
     
    The game has difficulty options which control the speed you move. A difficulty and you're moving slower, B difficulty and you're moving faster. If you want to give your boxing opponent an advantage, set your difficulty to A and theirs to B. If you want a fairly tough game, put yours at A and play the computer on B. You'll likely manage to win, but your thumb will be sore so who's really the winner?
     
    I decided to see what the computer would do if you just let your player sit there and do nothing. The reactions varied. Sometimes the computer would come over and immediately start beating on the uncontrolled player-boxer and other times it would pause a few moments before starting the beating. Regardless, about "halfway to KO" the computer would step back a bit, as if to give the player a break, but still dancing around as if to say "So... you gonna fight or what?" and then continue beating the snot out of the uncontrolled boxer-player.
     
    Quick video here of the computer (console player?) player beating the uncontrolled boxer-player. No, it's totally not exciting but I posted it anyway.
     
    http://youtu.be/WSyW3lKDsSE (Yes, it's a dead link. I'm sorry.)
     
    Anyway, it was fun to see Boxing again. If I had to pick a way to compare it to the Atari games that had come out before it, and I'd say it seemed more "solid" and the graphics seem better defined with no blinking.
     
    (( Warning: Anachronistic Reference
     
    I asked my son "Who's that Pokemon?" and he immediately said "oh, ha. Geodude." ))
     
    Annnnd, next time... let's try Fishing Derby, a game I don't think I've ever played!
  9. Mezrabad
    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 could, I'd have warned people about 80s hair.)
     
    This maze game decides to have a theme, and that theme is not merely "racing your buddy through a maze". Instead, it's a complex, textured and many-layered game which can be fraught with societal implications even to this day. It's not a game of cat and mouse! It's a game of Cops and Robbers! Which is totally different because if a mouse fights back, the cat is still gonna win. If a robber fights back, the outcome can be less certain. So, I could totally wax on that, but let's talk about the game instead.
     
    The cart contains 16 game variations with each variation further able to be varied by setting increasing parts or the entire maze "invisible". More on the invisibility aspect later. Players each have their little "cops" on screen, starting at the same point on the left side of the maze. The goal is to get through the maze to the exit all the way over on the right side of the maze. Yes, this sounds just like the other "maze" games so far, but wait...there's more!*
     
    *the phrase "but wait...there's more!" is over-used and a bit hokey and the creator of this blog would like to apologize profusely for its use.
     
    The game variations let you put "Robbers" in the maze. Two, three or five, depending on your selection. The Robbers start at the other end of the maze and randomly run through it. If you're playing the A difficulty game, your Cop moves just as fast as the Robbers. If you're on the B difficulty game, they move faster than the robbers. Players must maneuver through the maze, racing towards the exit, while avoiding the Robbers. This involves a lot of backtracking while trying to dodge the Robbers. How do you dodge the Robbers in what is essentially a single lane maze? You have to hope they take a turn down a blind alley giving you a chance to sneak by. I'm not going to lie, this is fun and depending on your emotional investment in the game, it can be intense (in a fun way).
     
    I will say that it's much more fun to play all of these with a partner but it's not necessary. You can easily play all of the games with just you leaving your Cop partner sitting alone at the starting spot. The 16 games the following variants with the number of Robbers or, in some instances, the visibility of the maze.
     
    Robbers - This is a race to the end of the maze, but Robbers come after you from the right side and will "take you out of the game" if you know what I'm sayin'. It's interesting because your little Cop doesn't disappear, it just becomes inert and doesn't move. We like to play that the dead Cop isn't really dead (yet) but yelling out to his buddy, "You gotta make it out, Louie! You gotta tell my family I died heroic and stuff...". (To keep things simple we pretended both Cops were named Louie.)
     
    Blockade - There's a variant that does let you play a cool trick on your opponent. By pressing the button you can drop an illusory wall to make it look like the bit of the maze you just passed through is actually a dead end. Yes, your opponent can just pass through this pretend wall, but it's a cool trick and if they weren't paying attention to you, they can fall for it.
     
    Capture - Another variant has the Cops doing what cops do in a game of cops and robbers, they can catch the robbers. Your goal is to get to each of the robbers and touch them before your opponent does. First to get all of them wins.
     
    There's no reason to not enjoy this game for a little while if you've ever felt some degree of satisfaction after getting through a maze. I fully intend to make an actual game play video of some of the more dramatic moments and linking y'all to it. I just didn't want to put off writing a new entry while I was still feeling the urge to write an entry.
     
    I wanted to talk about the "invisible" maze options. In most of the variants, if you choose to activate the invisibility option, the "invisible" parts of the maze will not be invisible. You will see your partner and the Robbers making their way along the invisible parts, and if you have a good head for mazes you can use their mistakes to your advantage. It's also possible to have an "auto peek" game or a player peek game. This allows you to see the invisible part of the maze for a brief moment. The problem is that your opponent will also see it.
     
    (( Martin Brundle-Fly would have been good at this. ))*
     

     
    (( Yes, by including that gif I AM admitting that I know things about the distant year of 1989, but I couldn't resist. ))
     
    (( From now on, if I decide to type something "out of character" for whatever year I'm currently deluding myself into believing I'm in, I'll put those anachronistic comments in double parenthesis. ))
     
    Scouts - Also in "invisible maze" you can sometimes have "Scouts". Scouts are your friends who run ahead of you briefly and show you how the maze runs. It's still invisible, but it probably keeps you from breaking your joystick slamming your Cop into an invisible wall because the Scouts give you some idea of where you can go.
     
    There, a quick and dirty entry. I'm likely going to add to it with a gameplay video as well as a discussion of a maze generating algorithm.
     
    EDIT
     
    Still no gameplay video my attention span might not last long enough to do one. I went ahead and did a cringe-worthy pair of videos talking about the maze generating algorithm that I can only hypothesize is used in Maze Craze. I'm a little annoyed at both Quicktime (which seems to want to crop any clip you add to the end of another, instead of just fitting it into the frame... if anyone knows a setting I'm missing, please let me know.) and YouTube, which also seems to decide to crop things. Well, I shouldn't be surprised that there is a learning curve and that freestuff has its limitations.
     
    The links to these videos are:
     
    Part 1: http://youtu.be/WJBIxAHV28k (EDIT: I'm pretty sure neither of these work anymore.)
    Part 2: http://youtu.be/XdoPmLaxf8A
    As always, constructive and sincere criticism is welcome, particularly with regard to any facts that I just blatantly seem to make up on the fly.
     
    My next entry should be Activision's Boxing.
  10. Mezrabad
    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-Tac-Toe. I wasn't dreading it because I thought it would suck, I was dreading it because it was going to require a bit more brain power than my energy levels are prepared to muster on the weekends.
     
    3D-Tic-Tac-Toe is a 4X4X4 take on the traditional 3X3 version of the game. Not that I think any of you don't already know this, but it is played by you (X) and an opponent (O) taking turns placing your markers on locations in a 4X4X4 grid. The first to place four of their symbols in a row wins. In traditional Tic-Tac-Toe, there are eight ways of lining up your markers three in a row, and it's very easy to learn how to force a tie once you've played only a few games. After all, there are only nine positions to occupy. In a 4x4x4 cube however, there are now 64 slots to occupy and 76 ways of lining up your markers. You have to have the ability to plan ahead and visualize well to win against the program.
     
    3D-Tic-Tac-Toe has 9 games on it. Game 9 is for you and another human to play. Games 1 through 8 are progressively harder single player versions where it's you against the program. Game 1 is the easiest, where the program only looks one move ahead and only takes a few seconds to make a move. This one isn't hard to beat, and only took me a few tries. For Game 2 the program looks two moves ahead and takes three seconds or less to make its move. This is noticeably more difficult than Game 1, but after playing for about 30 minutes I was able to improve enough to beat the program about three out of five times, more if I chose to go first.
     
    Game 3, the program looks three moves ahead, and can take up to a minute to prepare its move. This is where I got my butt kicked repeatedly. Yes, I got better, in the sense, that after playing for about an hour, I got better at seeing the early phases of what the program was doing, and prolonging the inevitable loss, but lose I usually did. Over and over.
     
    Game 4, 5 and 6 each look the appropriate number of moves ahead. Game 4 can take as much as three minutes to plan it's next placement. Games 5 and 6 up to 10 minutes or less. Game 7 looks ahead nine moves, and takes 10 minutes or less to do so. Game 8 will also look ahead nine moves, but take up to 20 minutes to make a decision.
     
    3D-Tic-Tac-Toe is the type of game that, were I a sufficiently advanced player, I'd prefer to play on an emulator, because I could get through the "AI thinking" times that much faster. However, given my current level of play, Game 3 was as high as I was able to get. I'm just not a good enough thinker/planner to do well at this, which is exactly what I had anticipated, and what I was dreading. I can't really comment on how good the AI was, all I know was that it is much, much better at this game than I am.
     
    So, this game uses the joystick. When it's your turn you move the cursor through the levels to wherever you want to place your piece, and hit the button. This is not a hard interface to learn to use. On the other hand, it does take a little practice to visualize what is going on on the board. You're playing a 3D game on a 2D screen, and while the program does manage to display everything clearly; it is up to you to get used to reading it. I played 2.5 hours and I'm still not used to reading it.
     
    Like Chess or Stellar Track, my Inner Geek rejoices to see 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe on the system (Yes, I remember not liking the VCS version of Chess, but I'm still impressed that it exists on the Atari VCS). 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe oozes the mystique of "You'd better be ready to think, or you're getting your butt kicked." If I'd been playing it back in the day, when it wasn't so easy to find something else to play, I could easily see getting addicted to it, and actually improving my game over time...though honestly, that didn't happen with Chess so who knows?
     
    Playing 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe for two-and-a-half hours last Saturday afternoon doesn't do it justice, but it was certainly exercise for my flabby little brain. Given how time quickly flew, I'd say I had fun playing it. However, it wasn't the type of fun that I wandered around after going "wow, that was fun!" it was more like: "Whew, the life has been drained from me, was I really playing that long? Did the sun set already? Why am I so hungry? Who are these short people calling me 'Daddy'?"
     
    I recommend giving 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe a try, but be warned, the "brights" ("waaay above average" and above) among you might do alright, but the "tweens" (which is "above average" but below "waaay above average") may pull a brain muscle like I did.
     
    Though I can't find my little "what to play next" grid, I know I haven't yet played Dodge 'Em, so that's getting chronogamed next.

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  11. Mezrabad
    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 Pier. For a 516kb image of Steeplechase Pier, click here. The linked picture is quite a bit before our time, but in some twisted symbolic way that only quality writers can pull off, Steeplechase Pier and the amusement piers like it are a cultural grandparent to our beloved pastime of video games so I don't feel entirely off-topic to bring it up here.
     
    If you go to that linked picture you can see people on "holiday" in 1910. 99.99% of the souls in that picture are undoubtedly worm food by now, (with the possible exception of the children on the lower right corner). However, to most of them Steeplechase Pier and Steel Pier were highlights of their holiday. 30 years later, the children and teens going to those places with their families would likely have the same sense of nostalgia so many of us retain from going to arcades in our growing up periods. Hmm, what was my point... oh yeah. In the 2070s, the pictures we have of our Arcades from the 70s and 80s will somehow look as grainy and as dated as this does to us now. Time and populations are really weird that way.
     
    Okay, I admit it, I didn't have a point, but that's a cool picture of Steeplechase Pier and I wanted to share.
     
    Anyway, the word "Steeplechase" was associated to that pier for me, and somewhere along the way, I learned it also has something to do with horses jumping over hurdles in a race. I was surprised to learn that Steeplechase originally refers to racing from the church steeple of one town to the church steeple of the next town, jumping over whatever got in the way -- ditches, fences, walls, hedges, creeks, etc. Steeplechase for the Atari VCS is more about the horse-hurdles variant.
     
    With two pairs of paddles up to four people can compete in two different race types with three levels of difficulty for each. The first three games are regularly spaced hurdles with beginning, medium and hard difficulty. The last three games are irregularly spaced hurdles, also with beginning, medium and hard difficulty. If you are playing with three other people, I can't see that it makes much of a difference which difficulty level you play, but if it's just you and one other person, the remaining horses are controlled by the computer, and then it does matter, because the computer is tough to beat.
     
    So, what's the game anyway? Okay, four horses each with their own lane race across the side-scrolling screen from left to right and jump over the hurdles approaching them from the right when the trigger button on the paddle controller is pressed at just the right time to have the horse jump over the obstacle. (Yeah, it's a run-on sentence. Just deal with it.) If the player presses the button too soon, or too late, the horsey graphic performs a grimace-inducing, knee-bending stumble-slide which slows your horse down.
     
    The "paddle" part of the paddle controller is used to control how long the horse spends in the air when jumping over the hurdles. The hurdles are of different widths: narrow, not-so-narrow, and friggin' wide. The paddle controller moves a height bar on the right side of each horse's lane. If you're a starting player, you just set that bar as high as it will go, and if you time every jump just right, you know that you'll clear even the friggin' wide hurdles. However, the horses don't actually progress towards the right side of the screen while jumping. The more time the horse spends in the air, the further they will fall behind the other horses. In a beginner-level game, the player can get away with just jumping with the bar set high. A more nuanced style of play involves setting the bar to match the length of jump needed, this allows the horse to spend less time in the air for the narrow and not-so-narrow jumps. This increased attention to not only timing your jumps but also your jump efficiency is a necessity to getting even close to beating the game-controlled horses of games 2,3 and 5,6.
     
    Here is a YouTube video I found that shows a full game of Steeplechase (being played on an emulator, but hey, I'll take it) (Edit: there's no link anymore. Discovering this in 2021.) (EDIT in 2022 I found another example.)
     
    Gameplay footage captured by Retro Smack.
    Retro Smack on YouTube
     
    (EDIT Jun 2022: So, does internet etiquette dictate that I should tell this YouTube I'm linking to their video or is it perfectly cromulent to just link to it and forget about it?)
     
    This game is not what I would consider an attention grabber. Nothing explodes, nothing moves very quickly, and yet, you'll find yourself frantically trying to keep up with the jumping and the height bar as you spend a lot of time looking at the other horses' collective rear. Steeplechase is an easy game to understand, but I do not consider it a simple game to play. Putting the height bar on the opposite side of the screen actually made it a little tough to pay attention to the height of the bar and the timing of the jump. Also, the thrill of successfully jumping a barrier is not as positively rewarded as the punishment and negative impact of watching a horse crumble to its knees after failing a jump. After a few races and seeing her horse hit the ground again and again, my daughter was ready to turn in her saddle and frankly, so was I.
     
    Sadly, I was unable to muster the enthusiasm from my other two family members to give it a shot, nor was the daughter interested in playing again, even if I could get the others to play. Lesson here: if you have a four player game, get everyone to play it with you first, otherwise, it may be hard to get them all to play after they hear the grumbling of the first guinea pig.
     
    Kudos belong to Steeplechase for creating game-controlled opponents with simple but effective A.I. In the easiest games, the competing horses are clumsier and their jumps aren't as well timed. For the medium level, their jumps are well timed, but they might not be jumping efficiently. For the hardest level, if you're not playing perfectly you will be eating their dust/mud/turf.
     
    Next time we play... Circus Atari!
     
    As a sort of PS: The manual for Steeplechase reminds me that while consoles like the Intellivision and Odyssey^2 were pushing "serious" fun, by calling their games simulations, games for the Atari at this time were all about having fun. There's a lot of space in the manual spent on describing the attributes of each of the four horses involved in the race. While none of the horses seemed to have any intrinsic differences that I could detect, it's an interesting contrast. Intellivision manuals went out of their way to describe in detail every last feature of a game, down to describing the sound effects. The manual writers for Steeplechase had no problem including "flavor" material to make a customer reading the manual chuckle a bit. While such marketing-driven humor rarely ages well, it's still interesting to see.
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  12. Mezrabad
    37362
    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. Here is an example:
     
    If you choose to accept it. HA. You have no choice.
     
    A good beginner's game is recommended in the manual to be between 25-35 Aliens with as many Stardates as you can get. In my experience, those sized games are the most fun.
     
    You exist in a galaxy consisting of a 6x6 grid of quadrants. Amongst the 36 quadrants are the number of aliens you're hunting as well as your two starbases. When you start the game, you don't know where anything is. Here's what your Galaxy Map looks like at the beginning of the game. You can see that it tells you you're located at Quadrant 3,2 (third quadrant from the left, second from the top).
     
    You can't see anything. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
     
    At the moment the only thing you know is that you're in a Red Quadrant which tells you you've got alien ships near by. If you perform a Short Range Scan, you can see them.
     
    He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him. I'll chase him 'round the Outer Nebula and 'round Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!
     
    (That example is taken from a different playthrough, so don't let that quad coordinate confuse you.) Yes, you're the ship that looks a little like the Enterprise, and your enemies look a little like Klingon starships.
     
    If you found yourself in a green quadrant, you could be more relaxed and take a Long Range Scan to see what occupies the quadrants immediately adjacent to the one you're in. Here is an example of what the galaxy map looks like after I've scanned it from two locations: 3,2 and 3, 5.
     
    No, this isn't drawn to scale.
     
    You can see that in the quadrants surrounding my scans, there are numbers. A "20" means there are two alien ships and zero star bases in that quadrant.
     
    Later on, from this next scan, you can see that I've found a Starbase, shown by the indicator "01" at quadrant, 6 (across) 5 (down).
     
    Finally! I hope their restrooms are clean.
     
    The strategic part of this game is being aware that you have a limited amount of Stardates to spend, and knowing that every time you warp from one quadrant to the next, you're burning up a stardate. For instance, warp to a location three quadrants away and you're burning up three stardates. The game demands that you balance searching for aliens with slaughtering them. You also have to consider repair trips to your starbases as well.
     
    Coupled with the strategic aspects of this game are the tactical aspects. When you do warp into a quadrant with enemies in it, you have two ways of taking them out. Weapon 1: Photons can only be fired in a straight shot down a row, column or a diagonal in a quadrant, but are guaranteed to hit and obliterate target in their path. Weapon 2: Phasors are a sort of radial destruction beam that dissipates as they spread like ripples on a pond. They are guaranteed to hit the enemy ships in the quadrant but damage decreases with distance. You choose the direction to fire the Photons, but their main disadvantage is that you may need to scan the quadrant before firing, leaving yourself vulnerable to attack. You choose the power level of the Phasors, the advantage here is that you know you're going to hit whatever is in the quadrant, but you don't know necessarily how much damage you're going to inflict. If it isn't enough, then expect return fire.
     
    Here is an example of a quadrant with no enemies and a starbase in it.
     
    Check the tires, change the oil, but don't try to sell me a new air filter, dang it.
     
    The gray background is indicative of a starbase's presence. To dock at a starbase, just warp on top of it. So, why dock at a starbase?
     
    Well, you use up energy as you travel from quadrant to quadrant (100 units per quadrant), you use it up warping from sector to sector within a quadrant (10 per sector), you lose energy when you are "hit" by the enemy, and you use it up firing phasors (up to 999 units in a single shot, though that's overkill). So, one good reason to visit starbase is for fuel. However, in addition to losing energy when hit by enemies, your various ship functions can be damaged. You can lose your Short Range Scan, your Long Range Scan, your Photon Launcher and/or your Phasors! I have found an effective combat tactic to be warping into the center of a quadrant, and firing off a good sized phasor blast before even scanning the quadrant. This will usually take out two or three of the aliens in the quad. If I waste time doing a short range scan just to see where they are, then they all get a chance to try to damage me after that scan.
     
    This is a game I wish I had discovered back in the day. I'd seen Star Trek on a home computer or two (probably a TRS-80, but I wouldn't swear to it) and was very curious about this type of game. Now that I've found it, while I don't think I will choose to spend a lot of time playing it beyond what I have for this article, I can say that were I to have had this back in the day, it would have been a huge time sponge. Each time you start a new game, depending on where you are in the galaxy, and depending on how many aliens and stardates, you have to plan your strategy differently. There are difficulty switches which control the effectiveness of your shields and your phasors, but I've been keeping them on Novice. Here is what I'm used to seeing when I finish a game.
     
    Seriously, NO ONE wants to be Ensign Crusher.
     
    Which means I suck. However, I find it hard to believe that if I wiped out 60 out of 61 aliens and ran out of time, that we'd still need to surrender to them, but the game needs to have boundaries I guess.
     
    I have gotten as high a rank as Commodore.
     
    Commodore (64) On the Bridge!
     

     
    I think I've played about a dozen games now, and I've only won once . The highest rank achievable is Admiral and it's based on your use of resources in addition to actually defeating the aliens. Okay, truth be told, I'll probably continue to play until I see an Admiral ranking. So far, I prefer the recommended "beginner" games, with between 25-35 aliens and 35-40+ stardates. The games with less aliens also give less startdates. Since the aliens can appear in quadrants in groups of 1, 2 and 3, with less aliens it's possible to find your targets spread out over the galaxy and hard to reach with the amount of star dates you're given. When you get many aliens and many stardates, you may have plenty of time to track them all down, but it can be a long and tedious process.
     
    I've found screenshots of this game on the webanets, but they'd been taken with an emulator which grabs just a single frame. Due to the programming technique used to display the text in this game, the only decent screenshot is a good ol' fashioned picture of the TV. Here are some of the remaining screenshots.
     
    When you warp into an occupied quadrant, it's good to do so with phasors firing.
     
    To the last, I grapple with thee. From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
     
    This is what you want to see after you've fired some phasors blindly.
     
    Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space!
     
    By the way, it looks like I've just killed an alien but still have a full compliment of photons and energy. The status displayed here is the status displayed prior to me firing any phasors. To see my current status, I'd have to use the Status command again. The Commands are selected all via moving the joystick left or right and pressing a button to make your selection. It seems awkward at first, but one gets used to it quickly. Programming in warp coordinates also quickly becomes second nature, though I won't get into that here. I do recommend you play this game with the instructions!
     
    The background is green - the quadrant is clean!
     
    I had to ruin the Star Trek quotes to make a Ghostbusters reference. I apologize to everyone.
     
    This is not an action game by any stretch of the imagination. It is a "thinking" game, and it is a chance to play a game formerly limited to big computers on your itty bitty Atari VCS. While there's little chance of interesting my son in Stellar Track (as long as we've got Spore sitting on our Mac), it has certainly kept me engaged the last few evenings. heheh, 'engaged', that's, like, a warp pun...
     
    Next entry: Steeplechase. Yeah it's another Sears game, why the heck not?
     
    (EDIT Jun 2022: fixed the photo links and associated an album, though I don't know why the TI 99/4a picture is in that album.)
  13. Mezrabad
    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 the forum upgrade. Bummer. Until I figure that out here's a direct link:
     
    Dogpatch session with Daughter (Edit, Jun 2022 -- Ugh -- breaks my heart that I may have lost this video. Not only was it something my daughter and I were doing together, but I can make cool banjo sounds with my mouth.)
     
    See how far we've come? Before, in 1980, we were pretending to be rednecks sitting out in the backyard shooting at cans with our shotguns, now we're using sophisticated Wii Remote Controllers to shoot at cans which we now know should be recycled. Also different, is that the cans in the Wii version crumple slightly with each shooting, subtly implying that being shot at multiple times may cause things to be blown apart. That realism just wasn't apparent in the 1980 version.
     
    Dogpatch is actually a hoot and a holler. It's fast paced, it's challenging - and when you and your co-player get a volley going - it promotes giggling. If I remember my MAME correctly, this is another title that began life in the arcades. The home version is easily as fun. The Bally controller is well suited to the game, as the gun-handle-with-trigger styled controller suits the flavor of the game perfectly. The paddle portion of the Bally controller is also good for controlling the angle of your redneck's shotgun. My daughter and I played two games of "99 Cans" each for the video - and neither of us complained. My son was disappointed to have missed it after seeing the video and has insisted on playing Dogpatch with me later. Sadly, rare is the old game that my children will request playing more than once. Dogpatch is one of those exceptions.
     
    By the way, try playing Dogpatch in an emulater... it just isn't the same! You don't have the feel of the controller grip, the trigger action or the smoothness of the paddle rotation. While I'm all for emulating the games which I can't find or afford, Dogpatch is a perfect example of a home version of a game best experienced on the original console's hardware and controllers. Emulators just cannot do it justice.
     
    I hope the video will suffice to act as a few thousand words cause I'm done for now.
     
    I loved being able to put that video effect in with iMovie, not to mention edit the shots down to just the highlights of the gameplay. Before I got the new computer, I had no way to edit the movies and had to do everything in one shot. I'm so glad I don't have to do it that way any more!
     
    Next entry we start working through 1980 on the Atari VCS namely: Space Invaders!
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  14. Mezrabad
    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. It was an elegantly simple implementation of the game of checkers. As with Backgammon, the visuals were very clean and easy to understand. In fact, the visuals were very much of the same style as the Backgamon visuals. Red and black board, little round pieces and a dash on them if it is a stack of two. In this case a "king".
     
    The controls without the overlays were a little hard to figure out, so much so, in fact, that I did have to dig into my "big box of Intellivision manuals and overlays". Once I had the overlays installed, and had read the manual ("Read this manual if you want to play a winning game of checkers!") it was a breeze: playing Intellivision's Checkers was pretty fun. I was able to win regularly against computer on Lo Skill but am ashamed to say I gave up trying to beat it on Hi Skill. I may try again yet, but I was impatient to win so I could record the video I mad below. (EDIT in 2022... I "fixed" this mistake and then realized there was a mention of it in the comments so I had to go back and unfix it. My error-integrity field is still strong.)
     
    Normally, I put board-games-turned-videogames into the class of: "Aren't these more fun played with another person? If you have another person, can't you just use a real board?" I think I've changed my stance on this, taking into account the era these early video board games were introduced: See, "now-a-days", if presented with a Checkers videogame, one is tempted to say, "No thanks, I'd rather play a different videogame." However, one may still enjoy playing Checkers (on a board) with another person. In fact, I know my kids and I like playing checkers... though usually we just play videogames... hmm, may have to change that practice.
     
    Back in 1980, however, Checkers (and chess and Othello and backgammon) were sometimes the only form of gaming available when you went other places and gamed with other kids or even grown-ups. I remember going to a summer camp where we had a bunch of checker and chess sets and that's what some of us did every other afternoon or so. Checkers on Intellivision (and Atari, etc) was actually a good way to practice for playing against real people. Yes, playing a game like Adventure (coming up in Atari 1980) was its own reward, but I finally understand the value of being able to play against a computer opponent: it may help you improve your game for when you play against that big kid from the 8th grade, or... anyone, that was just an example...
     
    The really notable thing about this version of Checkers is your reward for winning against the computer. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but have we heard this extensive amount of music in a home videogame before this one?
     
    I've recorded and posted it as a YouTube video, with which I will leave you.
    Like a lot of these videos, they went away with a YouTube channel I had at some point and deleted in a fit of idiocy stemming from a deep depression.
     
    The music I mentioned, if memory serves me, was a chip-tune version of Ride of the Valkyries, originally by Brothers of Metal. (okay, not that one.)
     
    That's all, piece out! (get it?) Next time we do NASL Soccer, which I think is a form of Soccer but, judging by the name, you use your nose to play it.
     
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  15. Mezrabad
    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 my home. So, why get a GS?
     
    Well, for one, it's essentially a beefed up Apple II. I've wanted an Apple II since I knew of its existence. Of course, the desire to have one because it was new and interesting in 1980 has been replaced by the desire to have one because I can now most easily afford it. Also, the 12 year old I was in 1980 still clamors for it. I appease this clamoring by getting the IIGS, in the reasoning that somehow, using the GS, I'll get to play some Apple II games.
     
    So, I have it. I scavenge a power cord from some PC-thing and plug it in--this is nothing but the IIGS unit, by the way--I plug it in and turn it on and hear a low pitched >dunk<. It takes power without screaming or smoking, and there's a little light glowing on the front of the box. Oookay, so far.
     
    The back of the machine has some connections with tiny little icons. One of the connections looks like an RCA plug, so I'm thinking "RF". Fortunately I have an RF connector on my VCR, so I pilfer an RCA cable from something in the living room, hook it up to the GS, plug it into the Game switch, turn on the VCR, turn on the TV, turn on the GS...>dunk<...no picture.
     
    Unplug the RCA from the game switch and plug it into a yellow video input on the front of the VCR, change the input selector and.. hear the >dunk< but this time I get a picture! A black background with an oscillating cursor and a message "Check Startup Device".
     
    Okay, this is a good sign. It probably means I need some kind of disk drive with an operating system in it, but it's a start.
     
    I figure a couple of obvious things I'll need. A disk drive, a keyboard and maybe a monitor. The TV will work for a while, but someday, I'll need a real Apple monitor.
     
    So, I go to Goodwill Computerworks. I haven't been there in a few years, but I remembered that they used to have a lot of Apple II stuff on their shelves, as well as some IIGS stuff. I start looking around... nothing but a monitor cable with an Apple logo on it for $3. It might be useful someday, so I get it. At checkout, I ask the counter person about Apple II stuff and they say... "Well, not for sale, but you could take a look in the Museum..."
     
    This Goodwill has a museum dedicated to early computing--a quite nice one actually. It's the first time I've ever gone out shopping for computer parts only to find that what I was looking for was not just no longer available... it was enshrined as a part of a museum exhibit. True story.
  16. Mezrabad
    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 been and may even cause them to stop lending you money.
     
    Despite my lack of enjoyment for any gambling game where you don't get to lose or win real money, Las Vegas Roulette is well-done, provided you like to play Roulette for its intrinsic "gamey" qualities.
     
    The betting table dominates the screen and allows for all the bets one can normally place in roulette. The type of bet is determined by where you position your chip on the board using the controller disc. For example, if you want to split your bet between two adjacent numbers, you place your chip right on the line between the two numbers. The manual describes 11 different categories of bets that can be placed (though, I could only come up with nine): Straight, Street, 5 Number, Line, Square, Split, Column, Dozens and Halves. I suppose you could split the halves up into Red/Black, Odd/Even Bets, but that still only brings it up to ten.
     
    To generate a random number from a spin, Las Vegas Roulette displays a slotted, numbered strip across the top of the play field containing numbers from an American roulette wheel. When a spin is started, the strip of numbers cycles from left to right and the ball moves in the opposite direction just below the numbered strip. Eventually, both slow down and the ball comes to rest in one of the numbered slots. It's a nice solution to the design problem of wanting to show the process by which the random number is generated without taking up the screen real estate that a big roulette wheel might require.
     
    My problem with Roulette, as a game, is that I fail to see any way to cleverly manipulate your bets so that you have a better chance of winning more money than the odds against your bet. For instance, a straight bet pays 35 to 1 but the odds against are 37 to 1 against. I guess that's where the thrill is supposed to come in, the thrill of "beating the odds". To me, it just seems like bad math.
     
    Anyway, bottom line is: Las Vegas Roulette is well designed and allows for all of the betting mechanics of regular Roulette. If you like Roulette as a game, with or without the betting, then this is a good substitute for what would be a really long drive to Vegas for most of us.
     
    Speaking of Math. Next entry we'll look at Math Fun.
     
    29961
  17. Mezrabad
    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 in an Atari VCS game called Street Racer. In this case instead of paddling your car to the right and left to avoid obstacles, you moved a skier right and left to get through gates. The big plus on that game was four people could play it.
     
    The last and most recent if I'm not mistaken was Alpine Skiing on the Odyssey^2, which I'd have to actually get out and play to remember it, unfortunately. I seem to remember a mountain involved and trees shaped like mushrooms but that's all I got. Crap, maybe I should go read whatever the heck I wrote about it... (goes and reads)
     
    Wow, I played that 1979 game in November of 2006! Cripes, I'm crawling through 1980 at a snail's pace. Full time jobs suck.
     
    Anyway, cool things about Alpine Skiing was two player, split screen simultaneous. Which is a cool idea if the game is fun, but I don't remember the game being terribly fun. Multiplayer and ambitious, but about as much fun as eating snow. Don't get me wrong, eating snow is always fun, in concept, but after you eat some, you're kinda like, "ew, I'm still thirsty and my tongue is frozen".
     
    Intellivision US Ski Team Skiing, on the other hand, is fun. You can play with up to six players, each taking turns skiing a downhill or slalom slope. There's only two slopes but you can change the degree of steepness depending on just how much you want to challenge yourself. The shallowest slope can be set to 1. If your skis aren't pointing almost directly downhill, you're not going to go very fast or very far. The manual (read the manual to conquer the slopes!) advises the rankest of beginners start at slope setting 4. 4 is indeed a good start, but it wasn't long before I found myself trying 10, 13 and finally 15. Eventually, the best time I was able to achieve on any of them put me squarely in the category of "Hot Dogger" but I easily spent a good 40 to 60 minutes trying to improve.
     
    So, what sets this apart from Alpine Skiing? How has simulated skiing evolved since last year? (1979?)
     
    Well, the cheapest answer is to say the trees look better. A better, more thoughtful answer would be to say this game, in addition to letting you jump over moguls (don't remember if Alpine Skiing did that) let's you "edge".
     
    "Edging" is for making sharp quick turns while continuing in the direction you'd been going before your momentum catches up with the direction you've just turned your skis. I think it could be best compared to "drifting" in a racing game. It really adds a lot to the challenge and it requires some practicing to use it effectively. Initially, when I first played Skiing, I wasn't edging at all (hadn't read the manual) and thought the only thing I could do was jump. Edging added a certain degree of depth to the game which, before I knew to edge, was just a prettier version of Alpine Skiing.
     
    This game also has four versions of run speed. If you want to really be in pain, set slope to 1 and play it on the slowest setting. Normal speed and slope 10 was nice and comfortable for me. Maybe I'll take a youtube video, not to show my mad skillz (which aren't really anything to show off), but to get the concept of edging across better.
     
    Anyway, that's all for now. Dang, I've still got five games left for the Intellivision's debut year. At this rate I'll be done 1980 Intellivision, sometime in August. To think I was hoping to be in 1984 by now! Ooo, I think I'll do Roulette next. I think it's the first version of Roulette out since the version that appeared on the original Odyssey in 1972. Cool.
     
    29,694
  18. Mezrabad
    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 directly over the player's car at all times, moving with it, and the vantage point is so low that we can only see a portion of the track at any given time. This gives the game a feeling of driving in a larger, contiguous world rather than several different isolated arenas. In fact, the five tracks offered are all on one big map. You can see and even access the other tracks by leaving your chosen course and driving through someone's lawn! Like putting shifty eyes on a blackjack dealer, this feature adds nothing to the gameplay in itself, but gives an ineffable boost to the experience overall.
     
    While some of the Indy 500 games are about getting around the track as quickly as possible during a single race, Auto Racing is about trying to improve your driving skills so that you can get around each turn of the course as efficiently as possible. Navigating your, um, auto, around a course is a collection of subtle steering nudges, careful braking and controlled drifting . . . LOL, does anyone ever call them "autos"? I mean, "auto racing" isn't an unfamiliar term, but "auto" by itself just sounds weird. "Hey, you kids, get off of my auto!", "I need a jump, my auto battery died"! *snort* "I've got to hurry, I'll be late for my Auto Pool", heh. heheh. Yeah, what was I saying again, something about navigating a track? You want to be good at navigating the track because if you go off the track you may hit a tree, a house or have to crawl painfully slow through a lake. The grass also slows you down a good deal, so keep off of that, too.
     
    Something realistic about the steering: if your car is not moving, you can't change direction. Yes, this seems like it would be an obvious requirement, but its addition reminds me of how much I didn't miss it in Indy 500, where cars could spin in whatever direction you wanted, regardless of motion. The version of this game that I have uses relative steering. You push the disc to the right of "midnight" and your car steers to its right. There's also a version called absolute steering which points the car in whatever direction you push on the disc. Can't say which I'd prefer as I haven't tried the absolute version. I suppose one is just as easy to get used to as the other.
     
    You get to choose your "auto", by the way. You've got five in your garage each with its own intrinsic characteristics. Besides each having a unique color, some are faster than others while others handle the "cornering" better. Two of the cars are differently colored, but identical in speed and handling. This is for the purpose of two-players racing against each other.
     
    Which brings me to where this title can really do whatever the opposite of shine is: two-player races on Auto Racing can be a real drag. Because of the close overhead perspective, (which is a Good Thing in single player,) the maximum distance between you and your opponent is limited. If one of you gets to far ahead of the other, you are both yanked back to a checkpoint. For instance, if your opponent slides into a tree or a house and you keep going...yank. I suppose it could be enjoyable if both racers were skilled enough to not crash at all, but one race can take a long time otherwise.
     
    It is Auto Racing that has introduced me to the affliction I'm calling "Intellivision Thumb". The disc on the Intellivision controller is interesting and innovative, but in trying to control my race car I'm afraid it can become a little painful. Perhaps this is the type of pain one gets used to over time, but while intently trying to improve my cornering, I began to feel discomfort which eventually outweighed my desire to continue playing.
     
    If I were more literarily inclined, I might do more of a compare and contrast between Auto Racing and Indy 500 since the two were similarly themed games on systems known to be rivals. However, since I'm getting tired of typing, and you're probably getting tired of reading I'll leave it at this: Auto Racing is more realistic than fun and Indy 500 is more fun than realistic but both have their thrills and laughs.
     
    Sorry, no screenshots or videos this week. I'm finding that the prospect of adding those is more often a demotivator to writing an entry due to the extra work involved. I think I'm going to focus more on actually playing the games and writing about them rather than adding the "multimedia flair" with the hope that this will allow me to get to more games and entries. I mean, I'm still in 1980 for crying out loud, I was hoping to be in 1983 by now!
     
    Next entry will be Armor Battle. 18995
     
    EDIT: crap, I didn't save my initial edits correctly so you were forced to read my crappy grammar and poor spelling which I thought I'd corrected. Jeesh, I'm going to have to hire an editor someday.
  19. Mezrabad
    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 motion-sickness...
     
    HAAG 2007 Fly-Through
    (Sorry, this video is no longer available.)
  20. Mezrabad
    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.
     
    Suspicions of conspiracy often played in my mind. Did Atari know that Sears was blocking Atari products from its shelves and replacing them with rebranded copies? Were these watered down versions or were they just as good as the "real" thing? The world may never know! (Look, I know we know, okay? I just didn't understand then.)
     
    One such rebranded (or prebranded) property is the Atari Stunt Cycle sold in Sears as Tele-Games Electronic Games Motocross Sports Center IV. This unit boasts several unique features that sets it apart from other consoles that come fully loaded with several variations on a PONG. Most notably the console resembles the throttle controls of a motorbike. The right-hand throttle is used to accelerate the on-screen motorbike to take it through a series of tasks, depending on the game. The left-hand handle is simply a handle that has a nice rubbery texture to it. The sound effect which accompianies the acceleration of the motorbike shows promise...
     
    Motocross Sound Demo on YouTube
    (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. )
     
    The occasional beeping sound in the middle of my revving is the Motor Bike sprite sliding on its head.
     
    The downside to the cool pontential of this sound is that during game play it became an annoying "vreeeeeeem". I'm not saying this is unrealistic, motor bikes make the same sound and some may argue that it's just as annoying. I'm saying it isn't very pleasant to overhear from the next room.
     
    Motocross Sound Demo II during gameplay on YouTube
    (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. )
     
    (by the way, 2:49 isn't a bad time for a five year old.) All of the sound comes directly from the console itself, so forget about practicing late into the wee hours, your family will not be pleased.
     
    To accelerate, there's a gear shifting scheme acheived by turning the throttle towards you quickly and then releasing it slightly (Trin's video demonstrates this). This technique of accelerating is related to the way that real motorcycles shift through the geers. When it's time to shift a real motorcycle, one releases the throttle, squeezes the clutch and uses their left foot to "toe" down or up to the next gear. Instead of releasing the throttle in Motocross, the player quickly turns it towards them and then forward again. This is exactly the wrong way to shift gears on a motorcycle because one should never rev an engine while the clutch is engaged ("rev it to the red!!") so, if you learned all your motorcycling skills from Tele-Games Motocross, you're going to have to unlearn them when you get on a real bike.
     
    The games in Motocross are pretty simple. The playfield consists of three levels, all of which are connected by a screen wrap-around effect. As the motor bike drives off the right side of the top level it reappears on the left side of the middle level and this is consistent when it drives off the right of the middle level (it shows up on the left side of the bottom level). Each game involves moving through those three levels with various goals. The first game, and most simple, is called Drag Race and the challenge is to get the motor bike through the course as quickly as possible by accelerating it quickly but without over revving it and sliding on your head. (Always dress for the ride AND the slide!)
     
    In addition to the "head slide" state there's also a "wheelie" state. If you accelerate just enough, you'll do a wheelie (in case I'm spelling it wrong, a wheelie is when your front wheel is off the ground and you're bike is continuing to move forward.) Motocross uses the wheelie state for a game called Motocross where the player must pull a wheelie over a barrer by accelerating the throttle as they approach it.
     
    There also Stunt Cycle. This is the most fun on here. If you were alive and watching TV during the 70's you will probably remember the Happy Days episode where Fonzie does the motorcycle jump and slides into the fried chicken stand. Well, this is similar. You start out with eight buses sandwiched between ramps and every time you successfully jump the lot they add another bus. This game is challenging and fun at first but then it gets hard and finally merely frustrating. If you're not going fast enough when your bike reaches the buses, you will not have enough forward momentum to sail over them. If you are going too fast, you may make the jump but not the landing. Yay! Another opportunity for a head slide!
     
    Okay, I blew most of my attempts to get decent gameplay footage, but here's a nice shot of the head slide.
     
    Stunt Cycle Head Slide
    (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. )
     
    You should be informed that there are Expert and Novice variations of each of the Cycle games. The Expert level involves much more sensitivity in the control making it more difficult to not over-accelerate into a head slide.
     
    I should also mention that there is a "Sports" in the title of this console because there are also 16 PONG variants you may enjoy by plugging in the paddle controllers. The games support between two and four players and include such Pong hits as Pong, Hockey, Street Hockey and Street Tennis. I'm officially "for" anything that involves up to four players, but I would doubt anyone will ever purchase Tele-Games Motocross blah blah blah so that they can play more Pong. On the other hand, if one doesn't already have a Pong dedicated machine, this is a nice way to get one bundled with a pretty cool Motocross game.
     
    With the exception of Atari/Sears PONG and the Coleco Tel-Star Arcade, that wraps it up for the 70s! If I should acquire either of those units in the future I'll insert them into the 80s but now, it's onward and forward! Next entry we'll jump back to 1980 and start playing the Mattel Intellivision (also known as the Sears Super Video Arcade ... oh no! Sears must've gotten to Mattel, too!) 17133
  21. Mezrabad
    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 drones that move across the screen. The UFO that scores the most hits, wins. Yee-haw!
     
    UFO-2 is the exact same thing, except you're blasting alien passenger saucers (or what I imagine to be saucers containing sentient beings.) hit the most saucers and you win. Yee-awn!
     
    Sea Monster has you in ships a little more domestic and floaty. This time you're shooting at Sea Monsters that traverse the bottom of the Sea Screen. There's a catch to this one. Hit the Sea Monster, gain 5 points. Hit one of the cute friendly fish and you lose all your points. One strategy is to hit the Sea Monster once or twice and then don't fire at all, thus keeping you from inadvertently destroying friendly sea life. This was a little fun.
     
    I'll mention that the sounds for these games are all quite adequate. No complaints there.
     
    Below are three links to .mov files that try to capture the essence of these games in about a megabyte, each.
     
    (DEAD LINKS WERE HERE AND ARE NOW GONE)
     
    Break it Down and Rebuild are interesting. In the former, there are rotating square perimeters at the bottom of the screen. Player to clear theirs with the least amount of shots wins.
     
    Rebuild is the exact opposite of Break it Down. You have to shoot "invisible" places at which a part of the rotating square perimeter appears when hit. Hopefully, the attached .mov's display the essence of the gameplay.
     
    (dead links were also here but this time I'm proclaiming it without using all-caps)
     
    The last game is called Shoot with three variations. Shoot a Little, Shoot and Shoot a Lot.
     
    (one more removed dead link)
     
    The variations are only in the amount of ammunition with which one starts the game. You and your competitor each control a laser-cannon-like device which fires a solid beam up the screen. You're trying to hit either of the square blocks that are going back and forth across the top. When you strike them, you gain points and they change color, speed, or both. When you run out of ammo, your game is over and the person who does the most with their starting ammo wins.
     
    I'm astonished by my lack of anything even moderately amusing to say about these games. These games are neither bad enough to activate my sense of humor nor good enough to activate my sense of fun. Maybe I'm just tired from OVGE, which was awesome by the way.
     
    We've got One. More. 1978. APF. Game! I was lucky to "win" (purchase) a working copy of Brickdown/Shooting Gallery and we'll look at that one next.
  22. Mezrabad

    Schach for Channel F

    By Mezrabad,

    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 decided they wouldn't make enough money on Chess (which is the English word for Schach) in the US market. That's just my idle speculation, however, and I'd be curious to know if a reason has ever been given.
     
    I've no intentions of altering this cart into a multi-cart. For one, I don't have the mad skillz. For two, well, even though it isn't worth a ton of money as-is (at least, not in Germany), even though it isn't really, really rare, I think that it is rare enough that I'd rather keep this copy intact as just a Chess cart. A poor analogy might be: "if you had an original copy of "Citizen Kane" would you colorize it?" Yeah, that's actually a pretty useless analogy. I welcome someone else to give an analogy that would better express how I feel. Just read my mind and see what you can come up with.
     
    I played this cart only a few times after I got it. I just don't seem to have the time to have a game of Chess anymore. (I'd rather write rambling blogs about it) For the record, I wasn't able to beat it again. I think I won my first game because I was excited and focused, which usually makes me smarter and better looking.
     
    Here are pictures:
     

     
    Shh! It's trying to think! It only takes about 10 seconds, tops, for a move. I haven't won since I beat it my first lucky game. It's that damn, eerie, "thinking" light that rattles me.
     

     
    This is how the chessboard looks. When a move is made the coordinates of the move show up on the side. Which, uh, I should've gotten a picture of I guess.
     
    Next entry should be the other "mystery" game for the Channel F.
  23. Mezrabad

    1978 Retroview

    By Mezrabad,

    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 it should be said for the record that it boasts the best looking Blackjack and Hangman to date, and the second best looking Baseball game (Bally beat it, graphics-wise).
     
    EDIT: I almost forgot, APF MP1000 beat all the others to the punch on one thing: AI opponent in a videogame version of a boardgame. Catena, the first videogame version of Othello, had an AI opponent. I imagine the APF Backgammon had an AI opponent too, but I'm just speculating.
     
    The APF doesn't come close to threatening the RCA Studio II's title of Worst Game Library Ever and it was a unique and pleasant experience (despite my whining) to get a look at the games I was able to find. However, I'm really disappointed that not a single person has volunteered even a description of any of the games for this system that I wasn't able to find. Either it's a lot less collected than I think it is, or people are just really unwilling to share their experiences, as rare as those experiences may be. Specifically, I'm really, really curious about Dungeon Hunt so if anyone can tell me anything about it, with screenshots, I'd still be much obliged.
     
    BTW, if anyone can lend me the games that I still need to play for the APF MP100, I'll purchase an additional $50 worth of stuff for Child's Play during this year's drive.
     
    Odyssey^2 by Magnavox -- Much, Much More Fun Than I Thought It Would Be
    Let's just say I had really low expectations for this system, my experience with it having been limited to emulation. That's no insult to the emulator, it's more of a comment on how much better a game library can be when you use the actual console and controllers for which it was designed. I'm not saying I had a spectacular time, it just was much better than I imagined it would be. While not spectacular, I should admit that I spent a whole lot more time playing Baseball, Cosmic Conflict, Computer Golf and for some reason, even Las Vegas Blackjack than playing games for any other system to date. For example, I probably spent two hours playing Computer Golf. That's got to be a record. I don't even like playing golf.
     
    Atari Video Computer System -- Almost, But Not Quite As Much Fun As I Remember It Being
    Okay, my expectations for this were a little higher than what was met, but not by much. I was expecting to be "Very Happy" and was only "Happy", which is acceptable. This system has the longest list of games we enjoyed: Basketball, Braingames, Breakout, Codebreaker, Outlaw, Slot Racers and Space War. It also has the longest list of games released for it in 1978.
     
    Bally Professional Arcade -- Less Fun Than I Expected
    My experience with this system was darkened because my controllers weren't and aren't working up to spec. In a poetic, forgiving mood, I can say the difficulties with the broken controllers probably serves as a temporal echo of the technical problems that hassled this system during its first year of release, most notably the faulty systems shipped during its launch and the overheating problems that plague most of these consoles to this very day (I'm referring to 2006). In a less poetic and less forgiving mood, I just curse, though I try to make it rhyme. I think I'll start hunting for a broken system to salvage its controllers, otherwise, future games, no matter how good, just won't be enjoyable. 1978 games that I did like for this system, despite my wonky controllers, were Gunfight, Football, Tornado Baseball, 280Zzzap and Clowns. I would consider this system's launch year library and its initial purchase price as the least bang for the many bucks needed to get this console.
     
    Fairchild Channel F -- More Fun Than It Should Have Been
    This system just doesn't get the love I think it deserves, but I can understand that, as I can be exceptionally forgiving of underdogs. Dodge-it and Video Whizball were neat concepts and we had more than a little fun playing them. Still, the number of titles released for it in 1978 was small and it doesn't come as a huge shock that this was the last year that Fairchild released new games for this system in the U.S.
     
    As per usual, I'll have pictures up of all of the "new" stuff used for this year's crop of games, but probably not until tomorrow. Next entry will be looking forward to 1979.
  24. Mezrabad
    Normally I do a retroview of the year I just slowly dragged everyone through. I'm not going to do that right now. Now, I want to post the lists of the games I've been chronogaming. The jpgs are suitable for printing and putting on your chrono-corkboards that I'm certain each and everyone of you have hanging in your living rooms by now. You may also use them to make chrono-t-shirts or even tatoo them onto the backs of your children for use as handy and mobile references.
     

    Firstly, here is 1972 to 1976. Witness the stunning lack of PONG dedicated consoles in 1976. That isn't because there were none made, but rather because I seriously didn't want to spend a lot of time thinking about PONG variations when I knew that in 1977 I'd pretty much see them all in Video Olympics on the VCS.
     

    Here's 1977. Still some Stand Alone consoles I'd like to play, and I still can, of course.
     

    Here's 1978. I was shocked to find some titles that I'd accidentally ignored, in addition to the ones I had intentionally ignored. How did I miss Miniature Golf or Super Breakout? Obviously, I'll need to rectify this soon. The Telstar Arcade is the big No-Show in 1978. I had dismissed it as a PONG-a-like, but I realize now that was a mistake. I'll probably retrogame it while I'm chronogaming the early 80s. I'll be retrogaming within chronogaming. Wheels within wheels, man. The universe is complex, but we cope.
     

    Ah, 1979, the year we just finished. Took me too damn long to do so, but we do what we can.
     
    Now, let us look into the future . . .
     

    1980 is the year of the Killer App for home videogames. Yes, the chronology swells a bit here, but the basketball in the python doesn't come along until 1982-1983--Sadly, I haven't made the lists for those years yet.
     

    This is as far as we'll look ahead for now. I don't reckon I'll start chronogaming 1981 until spring of 2008 or so. Of course, my estimates have been off before, seeing as how I'm reaching said estimates by simple pulling them out of my ass, which, I guess, is where I keep them.
     
    So, before I start 1980, I mean to take care of a few of the games from the past that I've missed.
     
    Coleco Combat (Coleco, 1977) (Assuming I can get it to work again)
    Atari Video Pinball (Atari, 1977)
    Miniature Golf (Atari VCS, 1978)
    Super Breakout (Atari VCS, 1978)
    Take the Money and Run (Odyssey^2, 1978)
     
    And remove from the blogs, until appropriate to add, the games I did too early, namely:
     
    Checkers (Zircon Channel F, 1980)
    Slot Machine (Zircon Channel F, 1980)
     
    And any other errata I find that "need" to be corrected.
     
    I know, I know--I'm supposed to just be doing all of this for fun, so little mistakes like the above shouldn't matter. Well, being anal retentive is part of the fun.
     
    So, next entry we'll be treading over for the first time some parts of 1977 that we missed. 13350
  25. Mezrabad
    Chronogamer is two years-old today!!!
     
    Just for anyone wondering if the decrease in frequency of entries is any indicator of a flagging enthusiasm on my part, please let me assure you it is not. Real life has gotten a little bit in the way of my passionate pursuit of this effort, but this effort will indeed continue just as passionately, only slow.
     
    To prepare for the next era of chronogaming, I've managed to get most of what I think will see me through to the Great Crash of 1983-84. There are a HUGE amount of systems that were available and "alive" during this era and I think I've managed to get everthing to allow me to play most of the games on the original hardware.

    The awesome Cuttle Cart 3 will get us through the Intellivision Library.
    The equally awesome Cuttle Cart 2 will get us through the Atari VCS library.
    I've got a Vectrex flash cart to get us through the Vectrex stuff.
    AtariMax for the 5200 will serve us in all 5200 needs with the exception of Bounty Bob Strikes Back.
    I have all but two of the carts released in the US for the Emerson Arcadia 2001. (Looking for Spiders and Grand Slam Tennis.)
    John Dondzilla's Odyssey^2 cart will get us through most of the Odyssey^2 games and I've got real copies of each of the Masters of Strategy series so, no worries there.
    I've got 8bitdomain's great Bally Professional Arcade Multicart, so, check that system off, too.
    The final releases for the FairchildZircon Channel F are still sitting around, too, so I'll finally get to them.
    Hmm, what am I forgetting?
     
    Oh yeah, the Colecovision. No, I haven't gotten one yet, an issue I plan to resolve at CGE if possible. If anyone wants to sell me a working Colecovision and schlep it to Vegas to sell to me, I'm all ears. I intend to use a multi-flash-cart for this system, too. I've bought the attachment that works with the Vectrex FlashCart, but haven't tried it out yet. I may go ahead and get the product similar to the AtariMax 128 5200 flash cartridge, though I can't recall what it's called (ColecoMax?).
     
    I predict that it will take me a long time to get through this era, unless I seriously figure out my schedule. My initial "off the top of my ass" estimate would be about five years to chronogame everything from 1980 to 1984. I mean, we're talking hundreds of games. If I ever get an Xbox 360 and a copy of Oblivion add two years to that estimate.
     
    And now for something completely different ..
     
    show of hands, please: If I could get the cost to $15 how many people would be interested in a book called, Chronogaming, Volume 1 1972-1976? I'm thinking something about the size of a Prima Strategy Guide, color, of about 50 pages, each pair of pages devoted to each game with lots of pictures and screenshot along with a less blog-like (ie spell checked and tighter) chronogaming entry for the game. It would mostly be about the Odyssey with a few of the typical PONG dedicated's thrown in before the dawn of the Channel F. Anyone?
     
    Your show of a hand does not constitute a promise to buy. Heck even if nobody buys one, I think I want to make one for myself. It would be cool to have it on my coffeetable, if I ever get a coffeetable.
     
    Also been working on www.chronogamer.com. If you've been reading this, then you've seen it, more or less, but dig the crazy Odyssey pink.
     
    Anyway, Happy B-day to Chronogamer (again it isn't my birthday, just the blog's).
     
    Next entry should be Bally Pin.
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