Mezrabad

meloncholy. this is all I can remember about videogames from my childhood in no particular order punctuation or spelling . Everything I can remember about video games prior to 1987 spring of 1986, college roommate asks if I've ever heard anything about Nintendo? I reply "no" spring of 1986, person on dorm floor has an Apple II and a copy of Karateka 2: Wrath of Dude. Laughed heartily. Junior year (1984) two D&D friends talk about Mail Order Monsters sometime in High School, I get a C64 (1984?). No disk drive. I did buy Gateway to Apshai and loved it. Spent all night playing it with a friend. Bought it at King of Prussia and read the instructions aloud like a big dorky ham. Received an atari 2600 with combat pack in a blackjack cart and space invaders for Xmas from my dear now dead Granmom. Had to be Xmas of 1980. Later get Outlaw, Adventure, Circus Atari, Surround (with the McGroary's at a sale at Penny's in 69th street). Slot Machine (for some reason). Skiing, Pitfall. Indy 500. Slot Racers. Space Combat. I don't remember what else. I remember playing Superman and Asteroids at Mike Bair's House. I remember an Odyssey^2 at David Cregan's house, but don't remember it ever hooked up. Tommy Malone had a ColecoVision. I think I remember playing Venture on it. At the bowling alley arcade. I remember playing Seawolf. Astro Fighter (with Cregan). Venture. Battlezone. Asteroids. Space Invaders. Pac-Man. Missile Command. Galaxian. Star Castle. Omega Race. Space Wars. Q-bert. Tempest. (Some game with the statue of liberty in the background?) At our corner WaWa there was a Zaxxon, a Q-bert and a Dragon's Lair if I recall. PONG in the bowling alley in New Paltz, NY. Checkmate in the basement of the franklin institute circa 1978. Atari Football (cocktail) at the Pizza Hut at Barkely Square. Dark Castle on the Macintosh. Robot Odyssey on Jeff Glasse's Apple II Circus Atari in a restaurant somewhere. 5200 games at Bair's: Breakout, Countermeasure, Space Dungeon, Star Raiders. playing a sit-down Space Wars cabinet at Chuck Cohen's fraternity on new year's eve, 1990. Joust at Pizza Hut. Armor Attack with George Wyatt somewhere. Lunar Lander in a Mall in Quakertown. (7th grade?) Boot Hill at the Wynnewood Bowling Alley along with pinball machine, Eight-ball. Showing Susan McConnell Tetris at Einsteins Arcade on the Drag. Watching Bailey play D&D on his Intellivision. Stunrunner at Granite Run Mall with Regina and others. Regina realizing she was with a bunch of geeks. Hard Driving .... where? Planetfall on the C-64. Zork on Glasse's Apple II. Some D&D game at some games convention at Widener's campus. No idea what it was, but if I ever see it again, I'll recognize it. Seeing the Fairchild in a JC Penny's or Sears Xmas catalog circa 1976. Seeing the Coleco Arcade (I remember the triangle carts) in a catalog (never saw it in person). 8-track robot, 2-xl? quiz wiz, xmas 1979. Merlin. gave it away to a kid in Canada. made his day. hand-held football. played it like a fiend. Thanks uncle joey. hand-held baseball, too, not as good as football, but I remember sound-effects better. some cart-based balloon breaking game on the c64 loaned to me by Pat Donhahue. Music Maker on the Ti994a along with Return to Pirate's Isle, Pirate Adventure. breaking in to Jeff's house to code the waste of time treasure hunt game (though we typed it in surprisingly well) Borrowing a supercharger, dragon stomper and escape from the mind master for a weekend. bitmapping Mickey on the Ti. bitmapping the enterprise on the c64. writing a text adventure game that let user walk around Mike's house but Jeff playing it and trying to break it. the fucker. the C-64 at the Rice's house. the TRS-80 at Bob-johnsons' house. some Pyramid game? The sands of Egypt on some computer in a games and gadgets at King of Prussia. Ulysses and the Golden Fleece for sale at the original Software Boutique in KofPrussia. Eliza for the Apple II. Getting Jeff the extra memory for it for his birthday. Tom Malone single-handedly programming our senior year project for basic programming class. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Jeff's Apple II. and on Evie's IBM. Text adventure Donkey Kong by Tom on his xerox pc? not sure . . . Vic-20s in the store. 10 print "hello" 20 goto 10. har har. TRS-CoCo. same as above. Shopping for PCs in 1981 with Fr. Menihan and seeing a Commodore Pet. First and only time. Playing Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II at the George Washington Motorlodge at some PC convention thing. Saw something for Sesame Place then, too. Kill the smurfs fan hack on the c-64. Kung-fu fighting sound sample on the C-64. All the cool SID, C64 midi tracks from Danny Destefano. (Star Trek was the best.) CD-rom demonstration with Jeff and George back in 1984 or so. Laser-disk commercial seen with Cregan late one nite. " world on a silver platter . . ." Tom Malone ripping it up on Zaxxon. He had the game down cold. Afterburner in the airport when I arrived in Austin in 1987. Crazy Climber at KofP mall. Some greenish car game. gear shifting, pedal, steering wheel.? Sprint 8 at Polynesian village in WDW, 1979. Star Rider at Contemporary Hotel, WDW 1983? Vaguely remember seeing a FireTruck game, but never played it. Superbug was familiar. Rally-X was at bowling alley arcade in UD. Ditto Donkey Kong. Rip-off, Space Fury. I remember those in the arcade. I feel these memories were more than half my lifetime ago, most of them were about 25 years ago. The fact that I think I'm actually recalling all of them bugs me. There should've been more. There should've been so many that I wouldn't be able to recall them all. I'm not in this for the nostalgia. remembering all this just fills me with melancholy. friends I'll never see again. years I'll never get back. part of me wishes I'd spent more time playing videogames as a teen so I wouldn't have all these lost friendships to mourn. I can't remember everything. I just wish I could stop trying to. I wish I had paid more attention when everything was happening. I wish I would remember to do that with my life even now. suddenly my son is 9. my baby boy. the person I held in my arms when he was less than 30 minutes old. less than a day old just rocking with him in the hospital room watching weird blockbuster rental tornado home-movies. He's too big to hold anymore. i weep over it. i weep over my life and the years that just drip away one after another. turning 40 soon. how much life left? how much time?

Well, try the version of a skill-slot concept I just posted in the Homebrew forum and tell me if it repels the anti-funtons. No scoring yet, and the reels should have symbols in different sequences (not sure those things will fit in 2K, though) but it Hey cool! I'll check it out! (I love having a Cuttle Cart 2!)

I've sent my notice that I'd buy this item, warts and all. What he's saying is that when you turn your Intellivision on the CC3 only reacts properly 90% of the time. 90% is an "A" in every school I went to and I would still buy and enjoy it, even if it only works 90% of the time. Hell, I already have a NES, a SNES, an Astrocade and an Arcadia 2001 for which 90% successful start-up would be an improvement.

I'd fogotten Crane had a hand in Basic Programming. He didn't mention it in his RetroGamingRadio interview either. It seems that aside from the games mentioned he spent a lot of time working on the operating system for the Atari 800. Oh, and I should have said that he made three games for the Atari 2600 while he was working for Atari. I think we all know that he did more than those three for the Atari 2600, but I wanted to make the correction. Interesting stuff about Bob Whitehead, is he still working in the industry? It's not a name I hear too often outside of its original context. "Captain, they're bombarding us with Anti-Funtons! What should we do?" "Quickly, everyone grab a jar of detox gel and get to your quarters. Hoshi and Vulcan Chick, you're with me."

Crane did three games for the 2600 while he was working for Atari: Outlaw, Canyon Bomber and Slot Machine. I'm fond of Outlaw, but sort of "Meh" on Canyon Bomber (though I did like Sea Bomber) and I'm downright annoyed at Slot Machine. I've got no ability to criticize the game technically. I can only legitimately criticize it as a player. As a player, I'm shocked by the fact that, like many of the RCA Studio II games, I not only have zero fun, I have un-fun, or negative fun. To put it in, um, scientific terms: "This game takes away 'fun' particles from the player." How can anything do that and make it out of Crane's office? Slot Machine will be the subject of my first question to David Crane if I ever get to ask him anything. I really hope the answer is something akin to: "The Atari Goons were standing over me. They made me make it. They made me release it before I'd finished tweaking it. Yes, technically, it may have been pretty impressive...but as a game...*sob*sob*sob* (10 minutes later) I thought Pitfall would make up for it, but really once something harmful is out there, there's no taking it back . . ."

In 1979, did real slot machines offer any sophistication beyond 1-5 line payout? Certainly real slot machines were and remain popular features in casinos; if Atari told David Crane to program one on the 2600, what was he supposed to do? Using some of the programming tricks that were developed later, it would certainly be possible to code a nicer-looking slot machine, but even then 2K isn't a huge amount of code to work with. I do think the payout tables should have been reworked to be more interesting, but otherwise I'd say the game shows a level of technical competance roughly comparable to other 2K cartridges of the era. The real problem is simply that 1979 slot machines, whether real or simulated, weren't really much fun. Okay, it was a cheap shot a David Crane (and I should know better than to make a comment relating even tangentally to technical issues. I've often admitted and demonstrated my ignorance, though not always in that order.), I stand corrected. It wasn't Crane's fault that marketing or whoever came up with the idea that a slot machine would be fun for a home system. If someone was making me write games like this I'd quit and join my own start-up company, too. But, jeez! I couldn't even enjoy disliking this game. I had expected to feel some nostalgia (we had it back in 1981 at my house) but it gave me nothing. It was all monotony down to the last monetary unit. Even the colors were very dull. At least the Channel F and the APF had colors. Not that it helped them much, but points for eye candy. If I had to play one, I'd play the Channel F, though technically, I can't, because it didn't come out until 1980 (which I discovered after writing about it earlier in 1979). Who knows, maybe I'd feel more kindly to Atari's Slot Machine if I knew that David Crane wrote it for his mother or something. I do agree with your point, supercat, slot machines, real or simulated, mustn't have been much fun back in 1979. All three video slot games I've played thus far were difficult for me to enjoy the tiniest bit. I know there are some more in my future (Odyssey^2: I'm certain of. Bally Astrocade? Maybe. Not sure.) Hey, wait. I played Slot Machine on Ubikuberalles' Altair and even it didn't seem as bad as Atari's. Maybe it was the novelty of an all text machine.

heheh. I picture somone strapped down watching a tv with wide eyes of terror and sweat all over their face while the TV has a little word bubble coming out of it saying something like "we thank you very sweetly, for doing it so neatly". I couldn't bear to mention David Crane being the sadistic programmer of Slot Machine because in the context of 1979 no one knew what greatness he would be capable of achieving in just a few short years.

Slot Machine a.k.a. Slots (Atari VCS, 1979) I theorize that in the mid 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense had conducted experiments on non-violent methods of torture. Back then, apparently, violent methods of torture were frowned upon. I’ve heard that, in some circles, they are still frowned upon, even today, but I digress. So, the DoD went to Atari and said, "We want you to make a simulation that will suck the very life-energy out of the person interfacing with it. We want it to be simple to use, and we want it to be so awful that prisonersguests will actually request torture in exchange for not being forced to suffer through this activity. That way we'll have their permission to torture them and can extract some real information." Atari experimented with a few ideas, (one of which became Hunt & Score), but the actual program they selected to demo to the DoD was considered to be “too life-draining.” One high ranking official was quoted as saying, “That’s enough! I don't even have the energy to puke anymore.” However, the Department of Defense, though no longer interested in what Atari had developed, were impressed and they began to inquire about tank sims. That's another story, possibly for another time. Atari, was left with this "worse than torture" program into which they had invested dozens of dollars with no way to recoup their expenses. Finally, some programmer, apparently with a history of abuse, said "Hey, we can make a game out of this!" And that's how Slot Machine came to be. Really, that's all I have to say about it. 8186

I remember Adventure making me "nervous" when I played the 3rd game for the first time. Not knowing where I was going to find the dragons bugged me. A friend and I jumped out of our skins when a Mamba snake attacked us for the first time in Gateway to Apshai. I think one would consider it a "startled" type of scared rather than a "disturbed" type of scared. Alone in the Dark for the PC was very creepy playing it for the first time. I think it's time to scare my kid with that one. As an adult, Realms of the Haunting had a part in it that creeped me out. So did the original Clock Tower for the Super Famicom (translated and played on an emulator). Sytem Shock 2 had some really creepy moments. Nothing to make me cry out, but certainly gave me the chills. Fatal Frame I + II are two of the creepiest games I've ever played. (haven't played III yet). Not only do they give me the chills, on occasion, I've actually jumped and made noises which my wife said "indicated true terror". (no I didn't scream like a little girl). Gotta love how it is possible to become so immersed in these things, no?

Ah, those sneaky basterds!! Hey, I dig the "games that time forgot" pieces! Thanks for linking to them. With regard to memories...I wish I had more that were arcade related! I spent high school being an extroverted, extracurricular activity kind of student who was busy all the time. Rare was it I had the chance to spend a block of time at the arcade or hours and hours playing what would become a beloved game. I'm seriously going to have to make a list and try to recall every single arcade game I ever played "in its natural environment". I'm going to bet that its a pretty short list. It just galls me to think I had all that money from paperboy tips and I spent it on, what? I don't even know...

Just thought I'd mention that this stuff has me drooling all over my keyboard. I just got my TI working (needed a power supply) and have been cursing out Return to Pirate's Isle. To have some kind of flash cart ability would be cool.

I get more out of the arcade version, too. I like how there's a slight delay between pressing the button and the bomb dropping, as if I'm yelling "Fire!" and a bunch of guys are hoisting a bomb over the edge of the blimp. It's also more about hitting those 3s and 4s before my opponent gets to them. I think I see what you mean regarding the puzzle aspect of it. With only 3 misses allowed, I'm much more careful with my shots. It's interesting to play the early home videogames and then take a year by year tour on KLOV or in MAME. It seems that many of the games we probably saw for the first time as kids on our own TV screens were originally arcade games that we didn't see in the arcades because we were too young to go there very often. I do remember Pong, Sea Wolf, Checkmate, Circus, 280Zzzap, some Dodge 'em like game, Gunfight, Boothill, Sprint 8 (the big one with the 8 steering wheels). I wish I'd kept track of them when I was seeing them, but "'cade spotting" wasn't something I'd thought of doing back then.

Canyon Bomber/Sea Bomber (Atari VCS, 1979) Crater Digger? Pit Maker? This game hearkens back to a simpler time, when all the human mind could handle was one button. Picture a canyon extending from mid screen to the bottom in depth and stretching from one side of the screen to the other in width. Now, fill it to the brim with multi-colored blocks, each layer of blocks having its own color, like Breakout only going down. Or, better yet, view a screenshot taken directly from Atari Age's entry for the cart. Now take some of the flying vehicles from Combat or Air-Sea Battle and have a yellow vehicle fly over this canyon from one direction while a red vehicle flies over from the other. Press the button on your controller to make your bi-plane/bomber/helicopter drop a bomb. The bomb falls through the blocks like a bath toy sinks through bubble bath foam. Drop as many of these bombs as you can, one at a time, before your aircraft flies off the other side. You have no control over your aircraft. It just flies steadily across. This sequence repeats with different aircraft and different flight speeds until there are no more blocks to hit (which will re-fill the canyon), or until both players accumulate six misses. High score wins. A miss is constituted by failing to release a bomb during a flyover, or releasing a bomb that hits no blocks. A variation of the game is to drop bombs until a player reaches 1000 points or more and misses aren't counted. A variation of the skill level is "bomb recall". On difficulty "A", once you drop a bomb, you can't drop another until it hits. On difficulty "B", if you drop a bomb that looks like it isn't going to hit anything, you may "recall" it by firing another. The bomb's downward velocity is consistent with gravity, but how long they fall depends upon the speed of the plane they fall from and how close they are to the edge of the canyon. Later in the level, your ability to aim becomes a factor as the targets available become fewer. The A.I. for the one-player versions of Canyon Bomber is, as the manual describes it, "steady". Dropping a bomb as often as possible is all it does. The funny thing about this is that this A.un-I. initially scored higher than me because I was trying to take careful aim from the beginning of the game. This just wastes time. The key to scoring better than the AI is to bomb the hell out of the canyon in the beginning, when it's impossible to miss blocks, then start being careful and selective when the pickings get slim. It becomes just a matter of hitting at least one block each flyover until your enemy runs out of misses or until your score is higher than theirs. The deeper down a block is, the more points it is worth, so that's what you're aiming for. Please be aware: while I may be giving you an obvious strategy for playing the game, this does not mean I am recommending that you play it. This bomb-dropper just isn't much fun. Bright colors. Dull gameplay. It may be a good game to play with very young children or very old adults, but even they will grow tired of it quickly and begin whining and wetting themselves in an attempt to get ejected from the living room. I've tried playing it solo. Meh. I've tried getting my kids to play it with me and with each other. There's just not much call for it in these parts. My son played it for about two minutes before asking if we could play Atari's Bowling again. (We did, and we had fun.) FYI: Atari had a Canyon Bomber machine in the arcades back in 1977. The display was black and white, featuring blimps and bi-planes to act as your bomb vehicles. The canyon had more of a rocky appearance to it, and the targets were little white circles with numbers on them. The numbers, of course, represented points you earned when you destroyed them. It's available in MAME. There is somewhat of a saving grace on this cart, though, and that's in the second-fiddle game, Sea Bomber. Sea Bomber is a little like the arcade game Depthcharge. Using your button you drop the bomb. Using your paddle you set the depth at which you'd like your bomb to explode. The bomb vehicles are the same as from Canyon Bomber, but the bombing field this time is a sea-scape, starting off at light blue and darkening as you reach the bottom. Watercraft traverse the screen at different depths and you need to annihilate as many as you can. The deeper they are, the higher they score. Witness the screenshot, also from Atari Age's entry for the Canyon Bomber cart. Your shots fall straight down, as if through water. You must take into account your target's speed, depth and direction, the direction and speed of your aircraft, and the speed your shot sinks. If you wait too long to plan a shot, your plane may have taken you beyond dropping range for your chosen prey. From flyover to flyover, the only consistent factor is the speed at which your bomb falls while the speed of the aircraft and watercraft changes from flyover to flyover. Madly bombing and hoping for luck will not serve you well. If you've got this cart and you've been disappointed with Canyon Bomber, Sea Bomber makes up for it a little. FYI: Depthcharge is also available in MAME, though there may be other games more similar to Sea Bomber; I just haven't seen them yet. Hmm, next 1979 game? I honestly don't know . . . it's a surprise! Well, not really, I just don't know what it will be yet.8135

That's up there with your story about the decade or so it took you to amass 250 MB of Comodore 64 software and how you could download the entire library (a few CD's worth) in a few days. Imagine how, say, a librarian from the Library of Alexandria from 2000 years ago would feel about this story. I know that a librarian from 50 years ago would be impressed, too, but I use the Library of Alexandria as an example because every scroll there was either unique or had to be hand-copied from a scroll that had been temporarily confiscated from ships at port. It took hundreds of years to accumulate their collection; a collection which was comparable in size to your download. The amount of books you downloaded was probably equivalent to a set equaling "all the books in the world" at one point in time during the last 2000 years or so! Yet, it was acquired in less than two days, stored in a machine that fits on a single desktop, gathered with all the effort it takes to click a mouse button and done on the merest whim. If I ever get too old to be amazed by things like this, I want someone to beat me to death with anything that's handy. Someday, I want it all on Google and indexed so that if I ask any question, Google will automatically write me up a 10-page, double-spaced summary with some nice links for further reading. After that, maybe just deliver it all wirelessly into my brain so I can just know whatever I want.

I wonder if all the sellers that put "RARE" on their auctions have learned to do so in a eBay workshop, or from some kind of "eBay for dummies" book. It's almost like they've been told it will attract buyers in the same way I imagine sellers have been told that "L@@K" does. I wish there were some numbers that could empirically illustrate its effectiveness or lack thereof, preferably the latter, then I'd just send them the link.

That's awesome! Did either of the prof's ever see this?

Elf Bowling, heheh. Regarding the putting of people next to other people when the alley is empty I will offer two guesses: 1) It's easier for the manager/owner to "keep an eye" on the people there, and 2) if they have to polish the wood at closing it's easier to do it to two contiguous areas. Okay, really, I have no idea. Yeah, bowling shoes creep me out. My favorite thing about bowling alleys are what can only be called "classic" vending machines. The ones that shoot out the soda into a cup, or dispense hot chocolate and coffee. I also like the ones that you have to lift a cover to take out your ice cream. I think the only places I see those types anymore are at bowling alleys. Maybe it's just been a really long time since I've been to a bowling alley and all of those have been replaced.

Glad to hear it arrived safely and worked out well for you. I hope that he will list them again. Do you happen to remember the sellers ebay user ID? Sure, it was aka2002kids. I'd have left the guy positive feedback but since eBay pulled the auction there's no way for me to do so.

Bowling (Atari VCS, 1979) I was in a bowling league when I was in middle school. My team won the league championship two years in a row. I don't remember my average, but when I was 13 years old, my high score was 191. I don't think that's a great high score, (though I've never beaten it since ), and I'm certain my average wasn't very impressive, but it disturbs me to suddenly realize that I may actually be more qualified to talk about videogames based on bowling than videogames based on any other real world activity. Damn, that's one crappy realization nobody should have to start their day with. Enough about me, let's talk about Bowling! We've seen an interpretation of the great sport of bowling on four previous systems. (RCA Studio II, Fairchild Channel F, APF MP1000 and Odyssey^2) On each of those systems the ball would oscillate just in front of what traditionally would be the foul line. The player would have to time their release of the ball as it was moving back and forth. Atari decided on a less abstracted approach which allows the player to position a figure on screen that actually animates and rolls the ball. In an interview with Digital Press at CGE 2005, Larry Kaplan described this figure as the first multi-colored sprite in home videogames. I question the accuracy of this, as the Bally Professional Arcade appeared to feature multi-colored sprites in its built-in game, Gunfight, released in 1978. I'm no programmer and perhaps the term "sprite" is more refined than I thought it was, so your mileage may vary. Regardless of the little multi-colored bowler being a "first" for Atari, Bowling for the Atari VCS is the best version of the game that we've seen so far. The ability to position the release of your ball is welcome, as is the graphical improvement of controlling a human figure which looks like it's rolling its ball. No scoring simplification is used; if you get a spare, your frame is totaled with the pins you knock down with your next ball, as it should be. The presentation of the scoring is good enough. Similar to the Fairchild version, you're only shown whether you spare, strike or leave a frame open while your total is displayed above it all. An additional touch occurs after rolling a strike or a spare, the player is given a little "way to go!" in the form of a palette flash for the bowler sprite and a celebratory audio cue All of the above, while fine and dandy, are not what make Atari's version of Bowling the best I've seen so far. What does it for me is the simulation and visual presentation of the pin action; when the ball hits a pin, the resulting trajectory of the pin is displayed! I'm pretty certain other versions have simulated pin interaction, for instance, Fairchild's Bowling allowed me to pick up a split, but Atari's version is the first to provide visual cues for what's going on. Instead of the pins going from a "standing" state to a "knocked down" or simply a "no longer there" state, Atari's pins "slide off" the alley in a number of directions; towards the gutter, diagonally towards the back or straight back, depending on the angle of the ball. It definitely adds to the experience and helps the player decide how to curve the next ball. I forgot to mention the curves! A standout feature of most of Atari's offerings is the variations of play on each cart and bowling has three variations to it in addition to allowing one- or two-player games. One variant allows the players to control the curve of the thrown ball, a gift I'm positive some bowlers think they have. If you've ever seen someone twist their body and wave their arms to try to redirect their rolled ball, then you know what I mean. Another variant allows the player to control when the ball begins to curve but after the curving starts, the player can do nothing. The last and most simple variation is straight shot only; line it up, throw and watch it go. (no lofting, please) The only drawback to Atari Bowling on the VCS, and this is only a slight drawback, is that it supports a maximum of two players. I only mention it because Odyssey^2's bowling supported four. If I were to start having weekly chronogaming parties, I think I'd actually choose the Odyssey^2 version for the ability to support four players. Also, and I'm not saying this is necessarily a drawback: I was unable to produce a 7-10 split. I tried hitting the center pin dead on, which is what produces the 7-10 in real life, but I couldn't get this evil split to show itself. Maybe, the game is better off! In my book, the 7-10 split is the Kobayashi Maru of bowling, so I didn't exactly "yearn" for it. It might've been excluded for gameplay improvement, but it seems doing so would "water down" the simulation. I don't know it isn't there for certain, I just know I was unable to produce such a split. Oh, so the only reason I give Bowling merely a and not a is that I'd rather hit a real bowling alley with my kids. In fact, I think I need to do that soon. Next entry . . . Canyon Bomber! 7995

That's a great title and concept. Did you alter the terrain to look vaguely like a college environment or were they out in the same mountains that the tanks would've been? Either would be pretty funny, I'm just curious.

Very happy to report that I got my Bally Astrocade 72-in-1 Multicart today and it is great! Once I deciphered the binary listing of programs I was all set. I was really pleased to see a copy of ICMB Attack on there that had been altered to allow for play with out the special and extremely rare handmade controller for it. Very glad to have this.

Wow, so Human Cannonball pre-dates all commercially packaged releases of Artillery games, unless we count the text-only version Artillery or the 143-line BASIC program published in 1977 as War 3. Thanks for pointing me to wiki and the really informative article over at Armchair Arcade.

Oh, sure, my grandfather used to tell me stories about sitting around the 'ol ENIAC and calculating artillery tables! In fact, he said he wished there were a way he could do it in the privacy of his own home in front of the television without all those uptight University of Pennsylvania professors around. Is there an example of an Artillery Duel style game in the home (pc or console) or the arcade prior to Human Cannonball? Surely there must be something on the TRS-80, the PET or the Apple ][, maybe even the Altair? I agree with you Eric, there certainly should be something, but I can't find an example of it outside of the example you mentioned (which wasn't exactly publicly accessible).

Yeah, we enjoyed the cheap laughs ourselves, but it seemed that's all their was after the "window" levels started. Hey, I can't believe I just noticed this, but this game is like an Artillery Duel without the Duel. I wonder which came first? Was this an attempt to have an Artillery Duel type of game without the war theme or was Artillery Duel a way of improving on the Human Cannonball theme. I would imagine it's the former, but I don't know. Time to check over at KLOV I guess. ---A brief search a KLOV didn't reveal anything. For some reason, it would bug me if H.Cannonball actually predated any instance of an Artillery Duel-style videogame. I don't know why, it just would.

I think I'd like the game better if there were some clear logic to the arrangement of the screens. I don't disagree, there is a lack of elegance to the map layout. As it is, the only way one may improve their time in it seems to be to brute force their way through learning the shortest paths. But hey! Who cares? We get to be Superman! (Woooosh!)