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Mezrabad

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Blog Comments posted by Mezrabad

    Guest

    Posted

    you're lucky your son is 7, he's old enough to play the games with you but young enough not to think of asking to be paid to play games with you.

     

    :) Actually, I owe him a quarter per game and I have to pay him at the end of every "era". Which means I owe him for the pre-VCS era. (though there were some RCA Studio II games that even I couldn't find it in my heart to force him to play. *shudder*)

     

    He makes me pay in other ways, too, sometimes with junk food. Usually he only asks me to play a game of his choice with him. Often, this means we play Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube and he kicks my ass.

     

    Sometimes, when I've had him play a particularly painful-for-him Odyssey game (he just didn't "get" Analogic and was frustrated to tears.) he just flat out won't want to try another (once bitten, twice shy, I guess.). that's when I have to start offering bonus cash and/or snacks as incentive. He's a pretty smart kid, and knows not to exploit this because he's begun to realize that not everyone on the block has the selection of games (modern and retro) to which he is privy.

     

    I know the blog is only up to 1973 at this point, but in our "lab" we're up to 1977. Thank the gods we can finally play Atari VCS games! He's genuinely enjoying those and has actually requested to play Surround/Chase a few times. We're on a bit of a hiatus now while I try to get the blog up to date, Ebay the stuff from pre-VCS and find the stuff for the coming years. (I think we may have to give the APF MP1000 a miss, unless somone can lend me theirs.) Anyway, thanks for the comment. :)

    Guest

    Posted

    I agree.  It is fabulous.  I've been meaning to say so far a long time.  Don't stop ever.

    Thank you! I'd like to appear gracious and humble but I've got to admit the first thing I did was yell to the rest of my family "Hey! Another person likes my blog! Whoo-hoo!" Then I did a little "blog dance". Thanks so much for saying so. I will do my best to not stop.

     

    I really like your blog, too, by the way. I hope you continue it and tell us what Teachers do on their summer vacations! :) (I always imagined they sat on the beach and wrote up lesson plans. Heh.)

     

    EDIT: I just noticed that I split my infinitive when I said "to not stop". I know that to be grammatically correct I would have had to say "to boldly not stop". I apologize for the error.

    Guest

    Posted

    I had a tooth start to hurt once. It's the "chronic" as in "it just doesn't stop" part of the pain that gets to me. It's the last thing you feel when you go to sleep and the first thing you feel when you wake up. If it is really bad, your dreams evolve plots to account for it as well.

     

    It's been a little while since you posted this. Has it been taken care of?

    Guest

    Posted

    I am convinced that this is pretty much the best blog in the entire world. Concept is great; writing is entertaining. Please keep going. Please accept my thanks.

     

    This is probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me about anything into which I've put effort, ever. Thank you for your kind words, they mean a lot!

    Guest

    Posted

    Hi there!

     

    Isn't the "Simon says" thing from Die Hard 3?

     

    Greetings,

    Manuel

     

     

    Hmm, there may have been "Simon says" stuff in Die Hard 3, but my flashback seems to extend back further than that to the mid to late 70s. I'm leaning heavily towards Underdog. I'll google around a bit, maybe I'll figure it out.

     

    EDIT:

     

    Okay, here we go:

     

    http://www.toontracker.com/totaltv/underdog.htm

     

    I also found a reference to "Simon Says 'Be my Valentine'" which I think is where this flashback is coming from. I didn't know that Underdog ran on TV for NINE freakin' years! I'm happy to find that the flashback fits right into our little chronology here, I remember watching it around the same time of life I was watching Ultraman.

    Guest

    Posted

    A shooting game on Odyssey. Cool!

     

    I heard you can cheat by aiming the gun to the light bulb to shoot but I am not sure if it's true and if it works on all Odyssey shooting games.

     

    Yes! The lightgun apparently reacts to any bright source of light including lightbulbs, other TVs showing the Odyssey and, especially, The Sun. It doesn't keep score, but when you hit a bright target off-screen the little bright square on screen does disappear. This could probably be considered the first "cheat code"!

    Guest

    Posted

    I agree, I am very unfair. :)

     

    I'll be the first to admit these "reviews" are extremely subjective and based on fairly short sessions with the system. Taking away points is a silly thing to do and is meant more to be humorous.

     

    Since I did invite voting for the system in the comments and since you are the first to voice an opinion then I will restore the points. :)

     

    Oh, and I actually LIKE the Odyssey! Honest! You will see.

    Guest

    Posted

    you have a pretty cool idea, going through every game chronological and all.

    if i had the resources i'd do that too.

    and thanks to you i've decided that i don't need to get an odessy  :D

     

    Dang, I knew I should've eBay'd all my Odyssey stuff before doing this! :)

    Guest

    Posted

    heheh, thanks scogey. I think the 70s will go by quickly enough. It's the 80s that I think I'll be in forever!

     

    Actually, I just thought about it and I take it back. The 80s might move a little quicker. What's slowing me down so much in the 70s is getting my 7 year old son to play these 2-player only games with me. We do have surprising fun with some of them (none that I've talked about yet) but every bad one reinforces the "crap game from hell" feeling that makes him not want to try any more of them. I shudder to think how hard it's going to be to get him to play anything from this era after he plays a few RCA Studio II games.

    Guest

    Posted

    Hi

     

    I thought Odyssey cannot display sprites but only dots but on the screenshot, I saw two tennis players on the screenshot.

     

    Does Odyssey can display sprites or you added them on the screenshot?

     

     

    That "screenshot" is actually a scan of the Odyssey's overlay for the game Tennis. (A painstakingly composited scan as the overlays are all too big for my scanner.) Those players never move from their spots. The Odyssey Overlays are like what the Vectrex system used to add color. It is a sheet of plastic that clings to the video screen. All the action takes place behind it.

     

    If I can get a good picture of the Odyssey in action with the overlays on it, I'll post it.

     

    EDIT: There, above is an actual screen shot of the game in action. You can see that the overlay just adds a little flavor while the Player Spots and Ball Spot does their thing underneath.

    Guest

    Posted

    This is really interesting stuff which I've never seen explained before.

     

    I'm going to risk asking a question and sounding like an idiot.

     

    Is the horizontal blanking period the time during which the electron beam is going back to the other side of the screen to start the next scan line? Kind of like a vertical retrace only a little shorter?

     

    Instead of sending it back to the other side why didn't they just move it down one row and have it draw things on its way back?

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