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Mezrabad

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Blog Entries posted by Mezrabad

  1. 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
     
    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!
  2. Mezrabad
    Okay, when I say chronogaming is not dead or sleeping, I don't mean this blog. I mean "there are other chronogamers out there" fighting the good fight!
     
    Now and then I'll type "chronogaming" into Google (ego-surfer!) just to get a nice warm feeling to see that the term actually gets tossed around out there like it's a real word! A lot of people, I'm sure, didn't get it from me. I think many get it from "Chrono Trigger" - but if it has anything to do with retrogaming I think it actually can be traced back to me. If it ever makes it into a dictionary someday, my parents, wife, children and their descendants will never hear the end of it.
     
    I may have coined the term (as far as I know) but it's the people who ran with it who deserve the credit for it actually propagating. The BIG standout is Dr. Sparkle with Chrontendo. For the record, if I'm ever able to get this blog out of the ground again, it's because Chrontendo has inspired me.
     
    Well, Chrontendo and the folks who continued to comment and read this thing years after I've written anything related to chronogaming (and Nelio! Thanks for fixing the links! You're awesome!).
     
    When I started the hiatus, (2008?), this blog had about 60,000 views and now it's above 200,000 or so. I know this is paltry by, say, "YouTube" standards but it blows my mind that people still find and read this.
     
    Things have changed so much since 2008! I mean, there are people who seemingly do "Let's Play" for a living on YouTube! There are probably "business models" out there for this sort of thing.
     
    I've always said this is more of a lifestyle choice than a "project". Writing is hard for me now, mentally and physically, by the way. I write all day at work and I'm probably getting some kind of carpel wormhole thing. Mentally, I'm much, much better than I used to be mood-wise, but it's so hard to focus these days.
     
    I can promise you that the writing would be even worse than it was before, so, you can look forward to that.
     
    I still have 90% of the systems and software I bought for this "project" back when I was first doing it so... where was I?
     
    Ha! Just kidding! I say that like I haven't been thinking about it for the last six years and saying "Damn, I need to get back to doing Chronogamer"
     
    I know darn well what game I do next: 'Maze Craze: A Game of Cops and Robbers'.
     
  3. Mezrabad
    Night Driver (Atari VCS, 1980)
     
    First, a look at the arcade game that inspired the home version.
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK_pwMItCPM
     
    I believe that video is captured from the MAME version. The yellow car on the screen would have been an overlay in the arcade. The lights represent the glowing reflectors on the sides of a dark road and as the driver of the car you use a steering wheel controller to keep your car on the road. The sound effects in the arcade original were engine sounds and drifting tire squeals. The arcade version of the game, in addition to a steering wheel, featured a gear shift and a gas pedal. There was even a cockpit version which was the first arcade game I can remember playing which attempted to simulate the actual posture you might have while doing the activity being simulated, which I thought was pretty cool. I use the video here because I'd just spent a half hour write-babbling about this, when I realized my articulation skills were just not up for it today... I think I need to read more books in my free time to improve... but while I'm posting Youtube links:
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RgIHCqzCF8
     
    The home version of Night Driver for the Atari VCS not only captures the gameplay of the original but it enhances the graphics by adding houses and trees to the scenery, as well as other cars coming towards you on the road. Of course, lacking from the home version is a gear shifting system (which I don't miss) a steering wheel and a gas pedal. The Atari paddle controller serves just fine as a steering wheel, and the red button works as an accelerator, or whatever you'd call an accelerator you can only turn on or off.
     
    Something I never knew about this game is that you are actually driving around consistent tracks. Tracks whose twists and turns are the same every play, and they repeat. Tracks you can learn and get better at. I never knew this, which is probably why I never did get better at it. Tracks 1 through 3 are progressively more difficult to navigate while track 4 is random. Tracks 1 through 4 all have a time limit. Tracks 5, 6 and 7 are the same as tracks 1, 2 and 3, respectively, but there is no time limit. You can drive on them as long as you care too. Track 8, like Track 4, is random but also with no time limit.
     
    The left difficulty switch allows you to toggle between your car going fast and even faster, in case you're up to the challenge. The right switch toggles whether or not you hear the honking of the on-coming cars so you can avoid the urge to turn into their lane because you're some freak who likes to anticipate the collision.
     
    If you compare this home version to the home version of Datsun 280 Zzzap, you can see that adding a few improvements to a home port can make up for the absence of a steering wheel, gas pedal and gear shift and actually make the game worth playing at home, even if it doesn't look exactly like the original. At some point in video game history, the Arcade Version was what every home port strove to imitate, and where it failed to match was where the criticism was often aimed. I like that the Atari programmers decided rather than just do a straight port, they could improve a game so that the gameplay was what mattered, not how close to the original it looked.
     
    Oh, and here's the video of the 2600 version. I <3 Youtube...
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEktzerp14s
     
    Home version of Night Driver aside, if you ever get the chance to play the cockpit version of Night Driver, I recommend you take the opportunity. It's a neat experience and a great early example of how, in 1976 -- before there was much of a home market -- arcade machine manufacturers were trying to provide unique experiences that weren't just about the graphics or the gameplay. There was a "feel" to playing a game with the interfaces and environments designed specifically for that game which a converted cab or PC running MAME just cannot capture.
     
    Next Entry will be Maze Craze A Game of Cops and Robbers which always struck me as a really odd and awkward name for a maze game...
     
    59344

  6. Mezrabad

    No CGE for me

    By Mezrabad,

    Nope, no CGE, but at least I'm working on this again.
     
    I've been cleaning up the old entries and making sure they've got formatting (like... paragraphs!) and links that work, and pictures that load and movies that actually play.
     
    If I feel like I don't have a big trailing mess behind me it may be easier to move forward.
     
    Oh, and is there any way to link someone to an old entry and then that entry displays links to the entries before and after it? when I go to an old entry it seems that's all I get, no connection to the rest of the chain. I'm trying to fix that by adding a <-PREV | NEXT -> link set on each entry, but if there's some setting I'm missing to allow that to happen automatically, I'd appreciate a heads up.
     
    I hope you're all doing well, I have a lot of reading to do here to get caught up.
  7. Mezrabad
    ...I left my dog in the car with the windows up and all of the plants are dead. The stretching sound you hear is a metaphor being abused.
     
    I've come to realize that it's taken me three years to get even halfway through 1980. Play-lag has reared it's ugly cliched head in this blog before, but now it has become actually detrimental to the experiment itself.
     
    The "vision" if you will pretend with me that what I'm doing actually takes some degree of vision and not just a large degree of OCD, was to play the early games in their context with each other. To be able to look at, for example, Atari's Maze Craze, and say, "Wow this is so much more fun than that maze game we played last year on the Bally Professional Arcade!"
     
    The problem is: I can barely remember playing Amazing Maze on the Bally Professional Arcade because I played it three years ago. I don't even remember playing the Fairchild Chanel F's Maze game. If I can't remember a game I played "two years ago" in the Chronology, (because it's been about four years since I've played it in real time), then there's a problem with how I'm approaching this. I need to make a better plan.
     
    Anyway, not sure what I'm going to do. When I first started this I spent a huge amount of brain space on it. Between getting the games, playing them and writing about them, time and money was being poured into this project, and I really loved it. I still love it, but I've been absent-minded about it for at least three years. Months and weeks will go by and I'll suddenly be "OMG, when was the last time I chronogamed?" I blame it on gainful employment, but my wife says I can't quit my job to play games and write about them.
     
    So, anyway, when I figure out what I'm doing, I will let y'all know. It has to be a version of chronogaming that I can sink my teeth into again, while at the same time, producing for it at regular intervals, so I don't reach a "WTF...why are all my fish dead?" point again.
  8. Mezrabad
    Dodge 'Em aka Dodger Cars (Atari VCS, 1980)
     
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGPcSd7DDLk
     
    This game is about an insane sonuvabitch who has no regard for your life, your passenger's life nor even his own life.
     
    The playing field is a four-lane circular track. The player races around it collecting dots. The player may only change lanes at four points on the track's circle. The crazy bastard in the other car is going around the track in the opposite direction and his sole goal is to ram you head on... That expression sounds familiar in this context, I think Sega put out this game in the arcades as Head On, but I'm not swearing to it, and I'm too lazy to go to klov.com to look it up.
     
    Anyway, this is a fun game. I explained the concept to my son (in the way I presented it above) and he took the bait and agreed to play before realizing it was one of Dad's "old games". It's a good thing that some of these games are worth dragging my son 30 years into the past for, otherwise, he'd write a scary book about me... (Chronogaming...an Abusive Trip Through My Father's Personal Hell was a working title during the RCA Studio II period...)
     
    While the concept is simple, the game play is fast and exciting. That other car -- no, it's more fun to think of it as a deranged driver -- always switches lanes at the last split-second to ram you and cause you and your car and his car, the crazy fool, to explode in a cloud of pixels. You anticipate the explosion; the sound of shattering glass; the flames rising out of the flowing gasoline...
     
    The cart has three games. You against the program, you and a second person taking alternating turns against the program, and you and another person taking turns being Christopher Walken. The third game is the most amusing, because at no point is a person required to just sit and watch. If a player clears the track twice, then two opposing cars are employed, and are both controlled by the other player. How is this done with one joystick? Well, if a car is at a lane-changing point, if it can change lanes in the direction of the given input, it will. It works and makes things very difficult for the one just trying to collect dots.
     
    Interesting to note; the crazy drivers can't make each other explode. We tried to get them together, and it's as if they exist in two different dimensions. It's okay though, either can wipe out the other player's car.
     
    Fun for the whole family, especially those who can't drive yet. It's also a good moment to share any horrifying drunk driving stories you know to reinforce the stupidity of driving while drunk, or of changing lanes to ram another's car head on.
     
    Next game: Night Driver or Why Not to Drive Drunk, Part 2.
     
    55,057

  9. 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.

    53,963


  10. Mezrabad
    Circus Atari (Atari VCS, 1980)
     
    One of the inspirations for doing what I'm doing here (even though it's been progressively less frequent) is the fact that "back in the day" I didn't actually get to play most of these games. Intellivision? I know one person that had it, and I only ever saw AD&D in action-but never got to play it. I had one friend with an Odyssey^2 and I never ever even saw it hooked up. I'd never heard of the Bally Professional Arcade back in 1981 and, though I'd seen the Channel F in catalogs, I'd never seen one "in the flesh" until 2002. So, it's always a pleasure, while in the process of getting through these games, to take out a game that, not only did I play it back in the day, not only did I play it often, but I actually played it often with other people, which is why I attach some significance to it, I guess.
     
    Circus Atari is based on an arcade game called Circus (Exidy, 1977). It could be described as a derivative of Breakout with a thematic twist. Your "paddle" is a teeter-totter that you can move right to left across the bottom of the screen. On the "low end" of the teeter-totter is a clown who is to become your projectile. Parading across the top of the screen are three rows of balloons (red, white (though I thought they looked yellow) and blue). A second clown comes into play by jumping out from one of the sides of the playfield when you press the button on the paddle controller. You have to maneuver your teeter-totter to catch that incoming clown on the teeter-totter's "high end", so that the clown on the "low end" is catapulted into the air towards the balloons. The goal being to pop as many balloons as you can, while scoring points and going through clowns as if they were a disposable commodity.
     
    The clowns are animated while they are projectiles, flailing their little arms and legs about in an effort to keep themselves upright while airborne. When up among the balloons, they'll pop as many as they come close to before falling back towards earth. When you fail to catch the plummeting clown, he becomes what is known in show business as "Circus Pizza" -- he lands with a splat, head grotesquely flattened on the floor of your tent, arms and legs still attached but wiggling like recently detached lizard tails. This never fails to amuse me. Never.
     
    (My corporate sponsors have informed me that some clown union has threatened legal action. I must point out, that the loss of life in funny ways is only funny in imaginary circumstances. My dark humor is purely in the context of the videogames of which I write.)
     
    (Ethics require me to admit that I actually don't have corporate sponsors and there is actually no clown union... as far as I know... it's more of a guild... I think...)
     
    The cartridge, as expected from Atari, has several game variations, mostly amounting to one and two player variations of: with and without overhead "bumpers", an easier version for beginners, and a two-player only version that has the players "share" the balloon field while alternating turns. This last variation is interesting in that if you don't "clear" a row, then your opponent might, getting all the good points. A feature of the game is that the red button allows you to switch the high and low ends of the teeter-totter to give you some flexibility in catching the poor, doomed, and yet, happy, soul.
     
    Speaking of doomed, yet happy... my children did groan a little as I recruited them for their reactions to this gender-neutral game. Their initial reluctance did give way because what child doesn't like to see a clown go splat? After about 15 minutes, I turned it off to write this, but they were actually interested in playing some more! I forbade this, of course, because I'm a power-abusing father.
     
    While I do think of Circus Atari as a Breakout derivative, it should be noted that, unlike Breakout which bounces the ball around in a straight line, circus clowns trace through genuine parabolic arcs...elegant yet simple in their mathematical beauty. Okay, not as simple as a line, but the arc does lend a certain, curvy grace to the flight path. In accordance with a law of physics, the clowns do soar higher and longer if you land the incoming clown further out on the edge of the teeter-totter. Sadly, the inevitably tragic ending of the clown is not intensified by this increased flight duration, but it does let you pop more balloons.
     
    Frankly, (may I call you, "Frankly"?) we only play it to watch helpless passengers of the equation describing a parabolic arc, often ending their trip in the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of show business. No business like it; no business I know.
     
    If I assigned numbers to games, I'd give this a good number. A number that everyone would recognize, but not be bored by. Probably a number created by multiplying two large primes and adding a one to it. Circus Atari is that much fun.
     
    Ironically, I'd been putting off this entry for such a long time, because I thought I was going to have to play 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe and I am admittedly hesitant to do so. I was very happy to double-check my previous entry and realize I had intended to play Circus Atari. However, what must be done must be done, and I do intend to play 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe next. And soon. Really!
    51481

  11. Mezrabad
    Adventure (Atari VCS, 1980)
     
    Okay, I"ve started this entry about six times! I'm trying to keep myself from babbling but what I keep writing is a long and pretty uninteresting description of the different elements of Adventure. I'm failing to capture the essence of the whole which is so much greater than just a listing of the separate parts.
     
    Rather than make another attempt at objectively describing Adventure, let's just activate Fanboy Mode.
     
    I think that it's safe to say that this is my favorite console game of all time.
     
    People look at it now and very often say the same thing they said in 1980: "those Dragons look like ducks".
     
    They see ducks, I see a whole freakin' eco-system.
     
    There are countless moments created by this simple little universe that are exciting and funny and interesting in unexpected ways. Dragons will suddenly find you defenseless, only to themselves be carried away by the Bat. Lucky Happy Accidental Dragon killings. Entering a room and *gulp*! Fighting all three dragons at once and surviving! Flying over the Kingdom in a Dragon stomach being carried by the bat... it's just awesome. If you allow yourself to be immersed in this game, you can still enjoy it 28 years after you first played it. I'm speaking from experience.
     
    I regard this game with reverent awe. I cannot begin to get into how many hours I've played it, over and over and over again. When I play, I am that square, running through the landscape, wary of what could come swooping in to swallow me up. When I was 13 and playing for the first time, I remember how my heart raced and my hands shook as I held the joystick and crept through the Blue Maze, (back when I didn't know my way around the Blue Maze!). I remember the jolt I would get when a Dragon would find me, and how desperately I would try to get away. The terrifying sounds of its "chomp" would cause me to visibly startle. The pathetic sound of its death (if I was lucky enough to have the sword with me) would fill me with relief rather than triumph. I would breath a quiet "I survived!" and would continue on knowing that there were still two out there...
     
    Adventure represents my first real videogame "high". To follow the drug metaphor, Odyssey 300 was my "gateway" game system. It wasn't enough to get me addicted, but enough to get me interested. From the moment I first saw Adventure being demonstrated in a Sears, I wanted an Atari. No games prior to that filled me with such a drive to play them. Adventure was my first "hard" addiction. It is the game that led me to embrace videogames as what other people consider to be merely my "hobby". The truth is, it isn't a hobby, it's my way of life. To this day I still seek to reclaim from new games that thrill I used to get when playing Adventure. Sometimes, I get close.
     
    Next entry, for no reason other than the cart is next to the Atari at this very moment, we'll do Stellar Track.
  12. Mezrabad
    Space Invaders (Atari VCS, 1980)
     
    According to Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Videogames by Leonard Herman (a book every classic gamer should own, soon to come out in its fourth edition!), Space Invaders came out in January of 1980 and is considered to be the first "Killer App" for a home videogame console. In addition, it was the first time a videogame company licensed another videogame company's arcade game for port to a home system.
     
    Okay, history portion over, I'll leave it to real historians to discuss such things (i.e. go get that Phoenix book); let's talk about this cart.
     
    We've seen versions of Space Invaders before on the Bally Pro Arcade (Space Invaders, later known as Astro Invaders) and on the APF MP1000 (Space Destroyers). Of the versions we've looked at so far, Space Destroyers wins for looking closest to the Arcade version of Space Invaders.
     
    Atari's version isn't much to see at first glance. The Invaders are yellow and blocky looking. There's only 36 of them. There's three protective bunkers instead of four. The cannon looks different from the cannon in the arcade. The scores are different looking, etc...
     
    One could go on about how it looks, but like so many will tell you: it hasn't always been about the looks. Good videogames can have a "groove" that you can get into while you're playing, a sort of zone that is enjoyable and addictive. This home port has that groove. I enjoy playing it as much now as I did during Xmas vacation of 1980.
     
    Of course, back then, I only had two standard Atari Joysticks. Today, I've got multiple joysticks with which to defend the planet, including a Wico bat, a fit-to-hand-form clicky Epyx joystick and my favorite to use now: a three button Genesis controller. I don't know how I used to play this game for such long periods with the standard joystick -- these days, my left thumb starts to hurt after only five minutes!
     
    Anyway, I should describe the actual game, though I doubt there's a single one of you out there that's never played Space Invaders.
     
    A 6x6 grid of space aliens stomp from left to right, right to left, getting a little lower each time they hit a side edge of the playfield. You control a cannon that can move right or left that fires up from the bottom of the screen. You can fire one missile at a time, and you cannot fire again until the previous missile either destroys an invader or disappears into space. The idea is to kill them all before they reach the bottom of the screen, i.e. "Earth". While firing at them, they are firing at you and you must dodge and utilize the cover of the three protective shields when needed. The shields are destructible, so if you or the invaders shoot the shields, they are eaten away, pixel by pixel. At some point the invaders will get close enough so that the shields disappear altogether which means it's only a couple of times left and right before they are literally "on" you. Periodically, a Command Alien Ship, will traverse the top of the screen. You should also try to destroy this ship, not only because it, too, is the enemy, but because it yields bonus points and helps your score. What's the point in saving the world if nobody is keeping score?
     
    The most notable sound effects are of the invaders marching side to side. It's a steady, tension building "tromp, tromp, tromp" which speeds up as the number of invaders becomes fewer and fewer. If you manage to survive by dodging the unceasing "laser bombs", you can see and hear the "tromp, tromp, tromp" get progressively faster. Finally, you have a lone invader zipping across the screen like some insane bunny. If you are able to kill the last one, the next attack wave will begin again shortly, and this time they'll start even closer. After a few attack waves, the invaders start so close to the bottom of the screen that they just have to go across the screen once before it is "game over".
     
    This is one of those games that can only end in your on-screen death. There's no way around it. You may get good enough so that you can keep playing without dying, but eventually you'll need to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom. Your biological imperatives are what will lead to the inevitable invasion and, we assume, the tragic destruction of your planet -- containing everyone you've ever known and loved. This isn't to imply a special effect laden ending, but you should die knowing that your failure has doomed the Earth.
     
    What is amazing about the home port of this game for the Atari VCS, is not only the fact that they've managed to capture the spirit and addictive qualities of the arcade game (to me at least) but they've included 112 variations of the game. It's four variations of playfield behavior (moving shields, fast laser bombs, zig zig laser bombs and invisible invaders) spread out in every iteration over 16 games. Then those sixteen different combinations of those four effects are distributed over seven different player variations: Single player, alternating turns for two-players, simultaneous competing two-player, simultaneous competing two-player with alternating shots, one cannon with two controllers - one moves left the other moves right, alternating fire & control between controllers and, finally, one player moves the cannon the other player fires it. 112 games in all. How the hell did they fit that on one cart?
     
    The two-player games can be fun but it's interesting to note that the "one cannon-two players variant where one moves left the other right" idea was first used in the Channel F game: Video Pinball -- which is version of Breakout. Space Invaders is sort of a re-skinned version of Breakout, but instead of deflecting a ball at bricks which disappear, you fire a missile at aliens which disappear. Breakout is kind of a single player version of Pong. So really Space Invaders is a logical evolution from Pong, but I digress...
     
    The simultaneous competing two-player is my favorite two player variation. You're playing your own game, but you need to make every shot count. If a shot misses, then that's points your opponent can take from you as you wait for your missile to disappear off the top of the screen. I also like the scramble when the alien control ship comes out. Only one can hit it! It's a chance to get ahead of your co-planet saver. Seriously, if the world is going to end regardless, the only thing you have left to enjoy is to try to score higher than your equally doomed friend! As you lay, barely conscious, watching your alien captors continue to destroy all you ever knew, wouldn't you rather be thinking "Well, at least I scored higher then my also-dying buddy!" instead of "Crap, the world is ending, AND I just lost to my friend, this day sucks!"
     
    I didn't play through every variation of every game for this. I did play through all 16 single player games and more than one of each of the two player variations with a carefully chosen co-player (who was a little annoyed that there were no power-ups and no way to beat the invaders). While it was fun to play the two player games, I still think I prefer the single player, "vanilla" variation the most. I must admit that I think there's a nostalgic factor at play here.
     
    Of all the games I've looked at so far, I confess nostalgia for playing Atari Space Invaders. Back in 1980, this cart represented an actual arcade game in my home. I only had to play it something like 200 times (four times for every dollar spent in the purchase of the $50 cart) and every game after that is gravy... like going to the arcade and playing for free!!
     
    Nostalgia isn't why I do this, but I can't escape the nostalgia for the next entry either: Adventure aka My favorite Atari game of all time.
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  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
     

     
    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
    NASL Soccer (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    The last Intellivision game for 1980! How long has it taken me to get here? Short answer? Too damn long!
     
    This is the first Soccer I've played in Chronogaming. The first soccer for a home vidoegame console was actually released in the European edition of Odyssey by Magnavox. They called it Football over there, which makes sense to me.
     
    Okay, Soccer, like Baskeball and Hockey before it, takes the approach of having a reduced number of players on the screen at any given time, but innovates with those players in a way which we will discuss later.
     
    Intellivision Soccer shows about a third of the field at a time, and as your players travel left or right down the field, the camera view pans. This idea of panning camera over a playfield that "exists" off the edges of the screen has been used before in Football and Auto Racing on the Intellivision. Soccer takes the idea a little further. While the camera pans over the field, the players "wrap around".
     
    For instance, if the camera is panning to the right, a player that scrolls off screen to the left will scroll back on screen from the right. This allows you to pass accurately to a player that's "off screen" knowing that they're not there yet, but they will be. This isn't the first videogame to do let you aim "off screen", Asteroids, in the arcades, allows you to practice this virtual type of aiming. If I'm not mistaken, Soccer is the first home videogame to try it. This is a very clever way to make up for the reduced number of players on a large playing field in a game where passing is the key to playing the game well.
     
    Something we enjoyed about this feature, was that the wrap-around effect for a controlled defensive player worked like a teleporter. Rather than chase down a player with the ball, one could run in the opposite direction, teleport (wrap-around) and show up on the other side of the screen, cutting the player with the ball off!
     
    A feature we had to get used to is that you can only shoot or pass the ball if the player with the ball is moving, and then, you can only kick it in the same direction the player is moving. My soccer-playing son had a hard time with this. He correctly pointed out that in soccer, one often must stop the ball, and then kick it, to pass effectively. He's right, of course, but I'm sure the developers knew what they were doing with what they had to work with.
     
    Another odd thing is the inability to switch control to other players on the field. If you pass the ball, the computer controlled recipient will run to meet the ball but only if the computer determines that computer controlled player can receive the pass. If the receiving team member cannot get to the passed ball, it goes out of bounds. After a failed pass, one can't help but feel that they'd have gotten the guy there faster, if only they'd had control of him! When defending, your computer controlled players don't always effectively pursue the offensive player in posession of the ball. This could, um--hypothetically speaking--lead to a person yelling at the slightly anthropomorpic pixels on the TV screen. Not that I did that, no, sir!
     
    One last innovation that I've never seen before: while you are defending and your goal is visible on screen, you not only control your defensive player with the controller disc, but you can move your goalie up and down with the action buttons to attempt to block the a kick on goal! This effectively allows you to control the movement of two distinct objects in different locations on the screen simultaneously and in real time. (Is that redundant? Am I making sense or did I overserve myself Red Bull again?)
     
    That wrap-arounds it up (Ha! I slay me!) for Soccer and the Intellivision games released in 1980.
     
    Next entry, we take a slight time-warp by looking at Dogpatch on the Bally Pro Arcade and a very similar "mystery" game from more recent times. (Hopefully, I'll make a keen video of it on my expected iMac. Hurry FedEx! )

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  15. 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.
     
    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.
     

     
    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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  16. Mezrabad
    Backgammon (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Sadly, I've been dreading having to play this game. Like most games I dread playing (sports, for instance) it's a great hinderance to moving forward with chronogaming.
     
    So, tonight, I had a spare hour or so (family goes to bed before I do on most nights) and decided to get over this little hump in my chronology.
     
    Boy do I feel stupid for having put it off. This is a well designed version of backgammon. The play field, like the play field for Roulette, is very easy to read. The keypad and disc is used to play. The dice rolls, use the disc to select a piece and choose the number on the keypad available from your on-screen die roll to move. When done, press "enter", and the game continues. Press "clear" to start the turn over. Press "8" to reset, if it just looks hopeless. It's a really simple and clean interface. My only complaint, is that when selecting pieces with the disc, you can only move around the selectable pieces clockwise (unless my disc is just busted). This is slightly annoying if you overshoot the piece you wish to select, otherwise, very easy to figure out what to do, even without an overlay or manual.
     
    Seems whenever I have to play a backgammon video game, I have to relearn how to play the game itself. Took me half of the first game to figure out what the hell was going on, and then three more games to get the hang of it again. I finally won the fifth game, and I will say it was a simple, satisfying pleasure to do so -- somewhere between skipping a rock all the way across the surface of a pond and getting a channel tuned in perfectly just before a TV show starts (from back when that sort of thing was an appreciated art).
     
    If you like backgammon, you should dig this version of it, which, as far as I know, is the last version of Backgammon to come out for a home videogame console... (someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, please, I'm pulling it out of my head and haven't actually looked that up.)
     
    Backgammon is one of those games that has been around a very long time, and Supercat once pointed out something about the game that made me appreciate it more. It's all about being able to see the probability of getting the right dice rolls to position your pieces to lower the chances of your opponent to be able to advance. Okay, he didn't say it that way, he was explaining something about the doubling cube, but it lead me to that insight. I'm still not any good at playing it, but I no longer dismiss it.
     
    Jeez, I don't even have my "left to play on Intellivision in 1980" list around... which means the next entry will be a surprise!

    (32934)


  17. Mezrabad
    As EricBall very correctly pointed out, it wasn't long after figuring out that this machine might work, that I realized that it's little better than a door stop without a floppy drive.
     
    Fortunately for me, I discovered the CFFA! This is a card that plugs into the innards of an Apple IIGS with a Compact Flash card as a hard drive. You can have as many 32MB hard drive images as you can fit on a compact flash. So, I quickly, and without really reading anything about it, ordered one and then ordered a compact flash card with 256 MB on it. I would have the equivalent of 8 32MB hard drives for my IIGS. Floppy drive-Schmoppy drive!
     
    Well, of course, I still needed a floppy drive. The CFFA comes with a 16MB CF card in it with everything needed to boot the computer up in ProDos... and then what? I write programs in Applesoft BASIC?
     
    Okay, so more homework was needed. Turns out, there's a program called CiderPress and that let's you create images that you can then put on a compact flash card! The CF card has to be formatted already, though, by software on an Apple II. The CF Card is not hot swappable, meaning if you boot up one card, you can't switch to an unformatted card while the thing is turned on. So... my 256 MB card remained in it's little wrapper until...
     
    Last month! I finally got an Apple 5.25" drive. I was able to boot up the IIGS with the CF card that came with the CFFA, format one of the floppies in the drive and copy over some necessary stuff to the floppy. Then I turned the machine off, stuck in my 256MB CF, booted from the floppy and formatted the first two 32MB sections of the 256MB card.
     
    Now, I could copy some stuff onto the CF card using Ciderpress and some awesome images some wonderful people had already created and Presto! I'm running the awesome graphical interface of the IIGS 6.0.1... wait, hmm, not enough memory. Okay, we can try 5.4.1... hmm, hey, this doesn't seem to work either.. okay, how about Prodos 4! Hmm, still graphical, wait.. how do I move the cursor? Can't I use the keyboard?
     
    Turns out, that without a Mouse, you can't use any of the graphical interfaces! Not that they'd be any fun to use without a mouse, but I was hoping to be able to tab around for a little bit. Also, turns out that the programs I'd flashed onto the other virtual hard drive were all programs to be run in that mouse control interface.
     
    So, I've ordered a mouse and am still waiting for it to arrive, but this is a lesson for those who would just dive right in to this sort of thing without doing their homework. To my credit I only posted on a message board once asking for help (I'm back to doing some research while I wait for the mouse.)
     
    Back to the drawing board as they used to say. My goal is to somehow boot up some of the older games that were on the Apple II, but they didn't use ProDOS, they just used something called DOS 3.3. So, while I'm waiting for that darn mouse, I'll be looking for some Apple II disks to see if I can get something to run from them.
  18. Mezrabad
    Okay, back sometimes 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.
  19. Mezrabad
    Math Fun (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Wow, it was hard to find the instructions for this from internet sources! The Intellivision Lives site only has instructions for the Learning Fun I cartridge, which has instructions for two different games. As far as I can tell there's only one game on this cart and it's called Math Master.
     
    The Math Master, surprisingly, must be the ape that runs down the screen towards other animals. It's up to you, the player to solve problems so that the animals move out of our primate cousin's way. (Yes, the principle of "common descent" means that every living thing on Earth is related to every other living thing on Earth, so it's our cousin, but I digress...) So the math problem pops up and you enter the answer using the Intelly keypad. The cool and interesting thing about the input, is that as you put the numbers in they show up as if you were doing the problem on paper.
     
    The problems are displayed in vertical manner. There's probably a "math" term for that, but I don't recall what it is. Anyway, the problems are setup the way you'd see them in grade school, and you'd have to work them out like you would on paper. So if you were to see 12 (on the top) x 6 (on the bottom) you'd have to type the 2 first and then the 7. It actually makes sense and makes it easier to do the addition, subtraction and multiplication problems. It also makes sense because they reverse the input direction it for the division problems. With division, you'd write the answer starting with the larger columns first, so with 128 divided by 2, you'd type in 6 and then 4. Though if the problem were 64 times 2 you'd type the number in 8, then 2, then 1.
     
    Am I describing this well enough? Sorry, I don't have time for a second draft.
     
    Anyway, there are multiple difficulty levels, though I wasn't able to figure them out completely. The Learning Fun documentation says there are 18 levels. But I could only get different colors of the numbers 1, 2 or 3 to show up. I got different colors to show up by proceeding the entry with a press to either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. This would change the color of the cursor and make it possible to type in that color of 3, 2, or 1. Since there were five different colors for 1 and 2 and four different colors for 3, that makes, what, 14 numbers?
     
    I don't know if it was like that in the original game or not. I was playing a "rev. input" ROM on my Cuttle Cart 3 (awesome piece of hardware. Love it) because my original Math Fun cart was either broken or just plain won't play on my Intellivision II. Anyway, if "rev. input" means "revised input" then I'll probably never know what the original cart was like.
     
    Some of the problems (particularly reached by setting problem level to "5-red" and then either 2 or 1) could get tough. You can have up to 99 problems in a game. The first few would start out with simple division or multiplication but then it would start throwing out 79 x 78 or 27 x 39. I'm sorry, I can't do those in my head anymore (basically, I do the math for the 9 times 27 and then do the 3 times 27x10 and then plan to add it to the first product I got for 9 times 27, but then I forget what I got for that. That's just an example, but there were a bunch like that). I guess I just need more practice, or an abacus.
     
    The "game play" is really more of a "dramatization". The gorilla, with no control exerted by you, comes down the screen on one side of the river. (player two is on the other side) He runs into an animal and stops. A problem pops up. You get it right, the animal gets out of the way. You get it wrong and the ape jumps into the river, where he encounters more animals and math. The math gets easier in the river, but if you get it right you're back on the land again encountering tougher problems.
     
    The graphics for the animals are recognizable. I saw bears and kangaroos on land, as well as cat- and antelope-like beasts. In the water, I only saw hippos and crocs. Maybe they were trying to encourage me to stay out of the water by reducing the variety of life available in that environment.
     
    All in all, as a math program a teacher might give a good student to play as a reward (in the early 80s), it was mildly amusing and did give me problems I had to concentrate (harder than I'd care to admit) to solve. As a videogame given to a child by her well-meaning parents, oh god, no. This would be one of those "play your Math Fun before you watch TV" games parents could use to discourage children from watching TV.
     
    Anyway, I'll inflict Backgammon on myself next time. 30443
  20. Mezrabad
    Las Vegas Roulette (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    The first step to getting people to stop bothering your 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.
     
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  21. 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. Event 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
  22. Mezrabad
    NBA Basketball (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Wow, I've started and stopped writing this entry about five times. I'm just not sure what to say about this game. Like the era in which this game was born, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to compare it to the Atari Basketball title that proceeded it. As George Plimpton might've said, NBA basketball is clearly more sophisticated and lifelike than its Atari counterpart. There are three players on each team, instead of one, and you can pass the ball to your artificially intelligent team members. You can block shots, and you can choose to shoot either with a set shot or a jump shot. At first glance, when comparing the feature set of Intellivision's B-ball offering to Atari's, you'd think that Intellivision's game is the superior.
     
    In fact, I'm not going to argue that NBA Basketball isn't the superior version. However, I will say it was a lot easier to sit down and start having fun with Atari Basketball than it was with this title. Like all Intellivision sports titles, the manual is terrific, (and if you want to win, read that booklet! ) There are four speeds, "play ground", "high school", "college" and "pro". While the learning curve isn't what I would call "steep", it's still a little curvy so we started out in "play ground" mode to get our heads in the game.
     
    "Play ground" mode is pretty damn slow. So slow, in fact, that we started referring to the defending teams player as "zombies" because they put their arms up and sort of shamble around moaning "braaaiiinnss". Actually, we were the ones moaning as we made our way through an entire game on this setting. It felt long enough that by the time we finished the first game on "play ground", we were totally spent and had to go play Fallout 3 for a little while to get our second wind. During the second session (and what I had to promise to my son would be our last session) we cranked it up to "Pro". "Pro" is the speed at which one says "that's more like it!". However, like Hockey, if we hadn't put ourselves through the painful lessons of the "play ground" speeds we would have had a tougher time jumping in as pros.
     
    As an aside: Something I've noticed, which I should have noticed before, is that designers of sports videogames in this era made a conscious choice to have players run out to their positions on the field. This strictly theatrical decision creates an illusion very reminiscent of its real-life counter part. Players don't just appear in place ready for tip-off, they have to run there, while the crowd roars. While completely besides the point, it should be noted that the crowd in NBA Basketball roars with the exact same roar as used in every other Intellivision sports title that has a crowd thus far.
     
    Because team members have been added to this incarnation of basketball, passing is now implemented. For passing purposes, the control pad is a model of a basketball court. When your player has the ball, you can pass the ball to a spot on the court by pressing the corresponding location on your keypad's court. Your on-screen player throws the ball to the spot on the court you've chosen, not to another player. It's up to one of the other players on your team to anticipate the throw and get there when the ball does. Fortunately they are controlled by the computer, so often this works. When it doesn't, the other team will either intercept the pass or your ball will soar out of bounds. True to the presentation of basketball, if it goes out of bounds, the ball must then be thrown in by the opposing team to bring it back into play.
     
    Other offensive features are jump shot and set shot. The basic rule is, the closer you are to the net the better chance your shot will go in. There's even a nice diagram in the manual with the percentage zones. You have a much better chance of making a shot with a set shot, but it's also more likely to be blocked by a player on the other team. Any shot that makes it to the net, but not through it, will rebound with a resounding "boing" and the ball goes to the team that catches it.
     
    As for stealing: we weren't able to steal the ball from each other, but the artificial team members seamed to be able to steal it from us. Maybe we just sucked, but there it is. Oh, and we weren't able to foul each other, either, it just isn't a feature. Since they were able to put penalties in NHL Hockey, I'd been looking forward to fouls in NBA Basketball, but you can't have everything, right? (Where would you keep it?)
     
    The short story of how we feel about this game: It's a well done simulation of basketball and it's very interesting, but for pure fun we still prefer to play Atari's Basketball. This isn't exactly fair or objective, I'm sure if we were true sports game fans, we'd have loved this title for all the aspects of the real game it models. While we respected it, we just don't laugh as often while playing it as we do when playing Atari's version.
     
    Next we'll look at US Ski Team Skiing on the Intellivision.
    28705
  23. Mezrabad
    Sea Battle (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Sea Battle is a console title that does much more than one would expect a console title to be able to do in 1980.
     
    Each player has a harbor and a limited number of naval units. The object of the game is to get your troop transport ship into your enemy's harbor by negotiating your fleets through the archipelago between the two harbors.
     
    Like Space Battle (Intellivision, 1980) this game has a strategy phase and a combat phase. The strategy phase is played out on an overview map of the island region. Each player builds up to four fleets at a time, each comprised of up to three ships--from a total of 13, and sends them on their way towards the enemy harbor. The game takes full advantage of the Intellivision controller's keypad. Instead of creating your fleets using an on-screen, easy-to-see-by-your-enemy interface, you create fleets by hitting the keypad icons of the ships you want in that particular fleet before deploying it into your harbor.
     
    When you or your enemy deploys a fleet, all that either of you can tell about if from the strategy phase view is how many ships are in it. When the fleet starts to move, your enemy may be given a slight clue as to the fleet's composition because a fleet may only move as fast as its slowest ship.
     
    Safety tip: it's up to you to remember what you put in each fleet. You do NOT want to think you're going into a combat with a submarine and a destroyer and not finding out until you get there that you deployed a mine sweeper and a troop transport! To help you with this, each of your fleets is a different color. It does help. Some.
     
    Controlling the ships in the strategy phase is interesting because you can only control one fleet at a time. Basically, you send a fleet sailing in a particular direction, and cycle around to each fleet providing course correction as needed. You don't have to worry about smashing into an island in this phase because your captains know to stop before hitting a landmass.
     
    There's an Exxon Valdez joke here somewhere, but I'll leave it up to the reader.
     
    Ship captains cannot avoid what they cannot see, and they cannot see mines. You can use a mine layer unit to put little floating magnets of death in spots which you know your enemy must pass through. However, sharp-eyed admirals may notice if a fleet seems to moving slower than normal through a narrow straight. This is the invitation for him to send sweepers in to clear things up before proceeding.
     
    When two opposing ships get close, all movement stops and the players get to make an interesting choice. If neither player decides to fight the enemy fleet, movement resumes and the fleets go on their merry way. If either player decides to engage, then combat phase is entered.
     
    Combat phase zooms the camera into the fight, kind of like Google Earth can zoom in on your old high school (hey, they made the parking lot bigger!). In this view, you and your enemy can see what each is up against, as each ship type has a unique icon. In combat mode, ship types have actual "stats" beyond just speed! The actual stats are in the manual, not on the screen, but you can look them up if you want (don't expect your enemy to wait while you do.) Weapon power, armor rating, momentum, firing ranges and damage all play a role in these combats. Most importantly in the combat phase a ship has a targeting reticule. Hold down the "aim" button and you can move the targeting "X" out from the ship you currently control. Try to move your ship into position (which moves the "X" too) so it can fire at another ship. So, you prepare to fire by aiming your "X" directly north, for example. Move your ship so the "X" moves over the enemy ship, or where you think the ship will be, and fire. You can't fire while holding down the aim button, so it's aim, move, fire when in range, rinse, lather, repeat. This is hard to do while your enemy is doing the same thing to you, but I imagine people using real ships in real navies feel the same way. Some ships sink after one hit, others can take a few, it depends on the weapons of the hitter and the resilience of that which is hit.
     
    Oh, and don't let one of your ships ram a landmass. In combat phase, landmasses ram back!
     
    Different ships have different ammo. The submarine or PT boat sends torpedos. Battleships and others fire salvos. Salvos require better aim, as salvos can pass over a ship and miss. Torpedoes aren't as finicky, they'll hit ship on the way to their "X" spot but as shot from the PT boats, their range is very short. Conversely, when shot from the submarine, torpedo range is very long--but you only get one sub. Like the strategy phase, you can only control one unit at a time, so while you're bravely maneuvering your speedy little PT boat into range, your enemy can be using the longer ranged guns on his battleship to take out your sitting duck of an aircraft carrier.
     
    Can't take the heat? Retreat! If you hit the retreat button you have to out-dance your opponent's ammo for another 15 seconds before returning to the strategy phase view again. Of course, if your enemy has a relatively fast fleet of ships, they can always catch up and re-engage.
     
    Overall, this game is brilliant. It is the type of game that would become more enjoyable the better you and your opponent get at it and the better you know each other's style of play. It's kind of like chess, except on an ocean, in real time and each piece is actually a fleet made up of smaller sub-pieces constructed of floating steel that can propel tons of metal several miles through the air to sink each other.
     
    EDIT: Since writing this originally, my son and I have gotten to play again. I was able to win a game quickly by sending all of my ships at once (leaving behind a mine layer) and overwhelming my son's defenses on our first game. However, my son is a quick learner. He found he did better with a single ship strategy. He mined his harbor entrance points and sent out one ship at a time to attack my incoming fleets. He was usually able to do a lot of damage to each of the ships in my fleet while only losing one ship himself. This was especially effective if he found my mine sweepers. He would take the sweeper out first (as it was never the ship with which I was primarily defending) and damage the other ships before I could kill his lone attacker. My survivors would continue on, only to sink to a watery grave when we hit his mine fields. He enjoyed it a little more during our second session of play, probably because he understood it better and winning did nothing but improve his enthusiasm.
     
    Next Entry: NBA Basketball. 27958
  24. Mezrabad
    NHL Hockey (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Okay, I'm really behind in this blog thing. According to Wired, the blog is dead and now everyone is all a-Twitter. Personally, I can't imagine myself being limited to a certain number of characters, but I can certainly understand how a reader might want to limit themselves to such. I mean, there's a lot to read out there.
     
    Anyway, the latest game in the chronology was NHL Hockey for the Intellivision.
     
    Say anything you want about the controllers for this system and I'll probably agree with you. Not because I think you're necessarily right, but because I'm really lazy and don't feel like arguing. My general peeve comes with the fact that when using the controllers on the Intellly II, which is what I have, it that it is hard to know when I've actually depressed one of the side buttons. That's a really difficult drawback to work around in a not-as-slowly-paced sports title like hockey. That being said, once again, I think it's amazing how much information the makers of NHL Hockey manage to put in the manual and how many features they manage to implement in the actual game.
     
    For instance, what would a hockey game be without penalties? Knocking the crap out of your opponent and hoping to get away with it in hockey is as legitimate a tactic as pretending to get tripped by an opponent and hoping they get a card for it in soccer. NHL Hockey implements a penalty system by allowing you to swing your stick at any opponent. If they have the puck, that's alright--the ref's okay with that, but you can also swing your stick at an opponent who does not have the puck. This will knock his legs out from under him and you have a two out of three chance of getting away with it. If you don't get away with it, one of your players goes to the penalty box for an amount of "simulated" time. If you do get away with it, then hey, getting to knock someone on their butt is its own reward.
     
    I think that it is interesting to note that playfield vs. atmosphere space in games is changing. By playfield, I mean the actual space in which your action and game takes place. By atmosphere space, I mean the part of the game that is largely decorative and unaffected directly by anything you do as a player. Hockey, for instance, mostly takes place on the ice; you don't throw the puck in the air, so there isn't the need for air space like a basketball game might need. So, if you look at a screenshot of NHL Hockey... what? No, I don't have one, go find your own, sheesh... the ice only takes up the bottom half of the screen while the the top half contains scoring elements. Keeping score and track of penalty time is an important part of the game, yes, but half of it? I guess it's the price of this 3D-look for games (pioneered by Basketball for the Atari VCS) that make you feel like you're in the stands rather than in the eyes of a bird nailed to the ceiling directly over the ice.
     
    Something I don't know if I mentioned about most Intellivision games we've seen, is that there always seems to be at least four speeds to every game. If you turn the game on and activate the disk, for the most part, you get the fast version of whatever game you're playing. If you press "1" on the keypad you get the slowest version of the game; "2" and "3" get you faster versions. Hockey also implements this feature. The irony of this type of system for we modern gamers is that the slowest speed might be easy enough to play, but, invariably it is fairly dull. The faster speeds are much more interesting to play but require some time to master and the controllers are so awkward to use that "more interesting" doesn't help.
     
    The goalies in this game were very difficult to get a puck past. First, my son and I played against each other and neither of us could score against the other. Then I played against his un-manned controller and I still couldn't score against the brick wall of a goalie. It took the combined might of my team, with one member in the penalty box, and his team to actually get the puck past my own goalie. The trick was to knock the goalie down and shoot him while he was down. I think we managed to do it by having one of my players hang on to the puck while my son knocked the goalie down. While the goalie sat on the ice, counting his teeth, I let my son steal the puck and shoot at the vacant goal. This was not easy to do. I don't even think we were playing on one of the faster modes.
     
    Eventually our game devolved into trying to get away with beating up each other's players and goalies. Can we blame this on the game or on our own appetites for violence? If we blame our appetites, must we not also blame society?
     
    I continue to have a really hard time slogging through the sports titles for the Intellivision. I'm just not into them. I also recently discovered that I should have started the year off with Space Invaders for the Atari VCS, because that was released sometime in January of 1980. See, that would've been a kick ass start to 1980, I mean, that would've given me some momentum. Oh well, it's not like this is a science. Here's to more chronogaming in 2009, for 1980.
     
    Next entry: I don't even know! Basketball? Didn't I already do that? Did I take my meds today? Damn I feel old.
  25. Mezrabad
    Word Fun (Intellivision, 1980)
     
    Hey, did anyone else notice the complete revamping of intellivisiongames.com? They've had the same site up for years and its always looked circa 1999-2001 design style, but now they've got something that looks like it's database driven. Well, good for them.
     
    I actually have a Word Fun cart, purchased in Tulsa, Oklahoma for $5 in 2006. It wasn't until I plugged it into my Intellivision II in August of 2008 that I found this sucker doesn't work with Intellivision II. For my purposes, I was suddenly happy I had purchased Intellivision Lives! for the Playstation 2. This marks the first Chronogaming title that I had to resort to playing on modern hardware!
     
    Word Fun is one of two education titles that used the Electric Company name. If you remember The Electric Company, you'll remember that it was the quirky, off-the-wall, directed-at-a-slightly-older-audience, half-sibling of Sesame Street. It only ran new episodes from 1971 to 1977 and thereafter was in reruns until going off the air in 1985. (according to Wikipedia) So, in an odd way, Word Fun and its companion cart, Math Fun were like the very, very last episodes of The Electric Company, and done entirely without Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman or Rita ("Heeey yoooou guyyyyys!") Moreno.
     
    Word Fun epitomizes a tradition of education games on home console systems: instead of having one, really good game that's fun and educational, it has multiple games that are educational.
     
    Word Fun is: Crosswords, Word Hunt and Word Rockets.
     
    Crosswords is an electronic Scrabble. Each player is given a rack of letters from which they assemble words. The object is to earn the most number of points while taking turns putting words in a grid so that they intersect with the words already placed. If you've played Scrabble or ever filled in a crossword puzzle you know what I'm talking about. The interesting feature of this is that you can't end your turn until your opponent approves the word! This encourages kids to come up with fake words and bullshit their opponent into believing they're legitimate. This is a valuable skill and I approve of it being cultivated. However, Crosswords is one of those games I like better in the real world as Scrabble. Also, Scrabble has those word trays that are handy to use as iPod Touch stands.
     
    Word Hunt puts each player in control of a monkey that they each send out to capture letters. A player uses the letters to build up to three words in a time-limited round. There's also the option of sabotage. A player lacking in ruth (ruthless) can send his monkey out to simply deprive the enemy of much needed letters.
     
    "Ha ha ha! You wish to spell the word 'fish'? Try doing it with out this 'h', you fool, as I deprive you of it to spell 'hate'!"
     
    There is even the option of tossing a letter away if you aren't going to use it yourself, but still wish to deprive your bitter, word-building, jungle rival!
     
    The longer your words, the better your score and, like the game Crosswords your opponent has final say on what constitutes a legitimate word. ("Hayt" is a real word, it's the name of Duncan Idaho's ghola in Dune Messiah! What do you mean you've never read it? You're already 10 years old!)
     
    Aside: Word Hunt seems to have the uncanny ability to actively anticipate and attempt to prevent the players from spelling naughty words. No matter how hard we tried we were unable to find the necessary letters to spell something offensive. This was disappointing and we don't know if it was a feature in the game or a failure of ourselves.
     
    Word Rockets was fun in a "this reminds me of playing Space Invaders in the arcade only without the sheilds, aliens or cannon" way. A word with a missing letter in it sails across the screen and you must fire at it with one of the letters available from your arsenal to complete it. F*g can become fog, or fig! This is about as much fun as it sounds but it is the only single player game on the cart, so it was the only one I was able to play without having to pay my son in gil. (yes, now he accepts imaginary, online currency as payment for playing old games with me.) Anyway, it added some much needed videogame action to the cart, and was probably what the average four or five years old of the era would've enjoyed most.
     
    Next time, we play NHL Hockey, continuing my slow but inevitable grind through the well documented sports titles of Intellivision's debut year. 25092
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