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DamonicFury

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    EricBall

    Posted

    I, for one, am optimistic about this particular reboot.  As great as the original Babylon 5 was back in the day, it hasn't proven to have much popularity beyond it's original audience.  So it really could use some kind of return to make it more relevant and interesting to younger folks.  (If you don't agree, that's fine... enjoy your VHS/DVD/new remasters of the classic 90's show!)  A sequel series is sadly out of the question as far too many of the original cast are sadly no longer with us.  (And we already know the final fates of many of the characters anyway.)  So a reboot just makes the most sense.  The ideas and themes are likely to remain very much in play in this reboot, but JMS will have a chance to improve on things that he feels didn't work out as well as he preferred the last time, as well as enjoying the benefits of far better CGI and a chance to engage with more modern ideas.  Yeah, it could easily go poorly... you just never know how things will shake out... but I certainly will be giving it a chance with the hope that B5 will have a long and successful new life.

    • Like 1
    Cafeman

    Posted

    I don't know why, but I love seeing people's orderings of the Star Wars films!  Just about everyone has a different list!  Thanks for sharing yours, Cafeman!

     

    Mine isn't wildly different, but I do enjoy Revenge of the Sith and Solo more than most people, and Force Awakens less than others....

     

    Ep5 > Ep4 > Ep6 > Ep3 > Solo > Ep8 > RO > Ep7 > Ep1 >  Ep2

     

    Some thoughts: (skipping over praise for the OT and criticism of the first two prequel movies, I have nothing new to say there.)

     

    Episode 3 does a surprisingly good job of fixing the flaws of Episodes One and Two.  Anakin is largely likable and heroic, if clearly flawed, through the first part of the movie, which is so important to what needs to come later in the film.  I wish so much we had seen that kind of characterization for him in AOTC.  And the music, the action scenes, and the all the new worlds we see are top-notch Star Wars.  (JJ and Rian could really have taken some notes on creative world building from this film!)  Yeah, the clunky dialogue (though much improved from TPM and AOTC) and a few problematic scenes hold it back from OT greatness, but I feel it still does Star Wars better than any of the other films.

     

    Solo is just so damn fun, and gives my all time favorite character a moment in the spotlight.  And I just generally enjoy the hell out space outlaw stories, so I'm really biased in favor of this one.

     

    No need to get into The Last Jedi here, my take is very similar to Cafeman's.

     

    Rogue One is good but it's so uneven... the first half moves so damn slowly, with the excursion to rescue/assassinate Jyn's father being particularly painful to re-watch.  And I'm not personally thrilled with it's darker take on the Rebel Alliance.  But once the team arrives on Scarif everything falls together and suddenly it all becomes amazing!

     

    And finally, The Force Awakens.  I can't express enough how impressed I am with this new set of characters... they're well-written, well-acted, fun, funny, have great chemistry together, and are fully worthy of the Star Wars legacy.  And sure, I love seeing Han and Chewbacca back in action!  But so much of the story is a less impressive version of Episode IV.  The physics of Starkiller base are ridiculous even by Star Wars standards, and the casual way they figure out how to destroy it is just insulting compared to how difficult it was to learn how to attack the Death Stars.  The way the Falcon is constantly crashed into things with no ill effects just sets my teeth on edge every time.  I wish a moment or two had been taken to explain how Rey became so powerful so quickly.  R2 and 3PO are barely in the movie.  And I mourn the lost opportunity to unite the original trilogy team on last time.  I know the writing on this one was rushed to fit Disney's arbitrary Holiday 2015 deadline, but I really wish they had been given more time to get it exactly right.  

     

    • Like 2
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    I'd never call it a great game, but I can enjoy an occasional round of Space Attack.  If actually you're trying to win, it can get interesting for a while (but with practice, yeah, it eventually gets too easy.)  I'd actually rather play it than Atari's 2600 Star Raiders, but yeah, pretty much any of the other 2600 starfighter games are superior.

     

    I'm not sure the primary reason for M Network was to lure Atari owners over to Intellivision (although, I'm sure they wouldn't have minded that outcome!)  More likely, it was just to make money by porting their games over to the more popular platform.  It's not like all M Network games were inferior to the Intellivision versions after all, but you know that, having given glowing reviews to Lock n Chase, Astroblast, and Dark Cavern.

    • Like 2
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    I hear ya, and you're right... the standard controllers ARE terrible and they were an awful mistake.  The 4-port switchbox isn't THAT bad though (I use that thing all the time,) but for those that don't like it, the 2-port model is readily available.  

     

    But man, this thing has a SOLID game library!  It's a bit small (all the better for completists), but there's not that many duds in it.  And most of the games are still affordable, even with the box!  It's a real collector's delight.

     

    I hate that controller alternatives for this system are hard to come by.  But having one makes a HUGE difference!  The Coin Controls Competition Pro is a nice all-in-one analog alternative.  The Wico stick is a good analog alternative, but it's rare, needs a Y-cable that can also be hard to find, and works best with a keypad add-on that's REALLY hard to find.  

     

    There's also adapters for using a standard 2600 analog stick (or a Sega pad) that are vintage (Masterplay) or more recent (AtariAge's Redemption), but are also somewhat hard to find these days.  An adapter can also be built to use old analog PC joysticks.

     

    Like you, I'm hoping an attractive alternative appears soon.  The system has always deserved controllers as good as its internals and its library.

    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    I'm very fond of this game on the Colecovision and Atari computers/5200, but less so on the 2600. I mean, it's an amazing port considering the 2600's limitations, but thanks to inferior controls, graphics, and music, I'd just rather play one of the other ports instead. Even on those systems, it can be frustrating, but there's a real thrill in the race to the top while "Hall of the Mountain King" plays at an increasingly frenzied pace. If it were easier, it probably wouldn't be as heart-racingly fun.

    • Like 1
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    Whew, at least I'm not going crazy. I guess its like if a company released a game on the Xbox 360, for example, and later re-released it on the Xbox One even though the 360 version will still work on the Xbox One, Its not quite as strange as I though.

     

    Admittedly, it's a little strange that Atari Corp. re-branded the 1979 Atari computer hardware as a game machine in 1987! It wasn't a huge hit, of course, but it probably did accomplish the goal of allowing them to sell off some of their excess inventory of Atari computer carts. It's nice for users that that some of the very best computer games got cart re-releases, making owning and maintaining a disk drive somewhat less necessary.

    • Like 1
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    The modern criticism of this game is completely fair. There absolutely ARE many 2600 games that are more fun to play now than this one. But the game really was a revelation to those of us who played it in 1982. Up until this point, the 2600 had generally been giving us good (If rarely great) copies of games and play styles we’d already experienced via arcade games, board games, card games, etc. But it hadn’t yet given us something new we hadn’t yet tried elsewhere. But with Pitfall! we now had something we hadn’t played before... a graphically excellent action adventure game across a huge environment.

     

    Yes, in a real way, Adventure had done something similar earlier, and I would never want to take anything away from that outstanding achievement. But instead of icons that mostly only vaguely looked like what they should, nearly everything in Pitfall! was actually easily identifiable and animated. Pitfall Harry himself was amazingly well represented compared to previous game characters, and unlike Adventure’s square, he could run, jump, climb and swing on vines - yawn-inducing now perhaps, but amazing in 1982.

     

    No criticism of this review is intended... it’s looking-back approach to an admittedly now-dated game is right on target. Just wanted to give a back-in-the-day perspective to why this game was so popular and groundbreaking back then and remembered fondly by us old folks today, despite gameplay that doesn’t stand up quite as well as many of its contemporaries.

    • Like 3
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    Looking forward to checking out your magic once again with Frantic someday!

     

    One thing lacking vs the arcade is the robots won't collide into each other in the 2600 version. I'm starting to feel the urge to work on Frantic again, which has this feature.

    Before I do that I need to update SpiceC to use the new CDFJ version of CDF. CDFJ adds a second Jump Datastream for John, which allowed him to free up ~450 bytes in WoW which he'll be using for sound effect data.

    • Like 1
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    I felt the same way about the 5200 for a long, long time. And I certainly wouldn't ever discourage someone from checking out any computer from the 8-bit line... they were awesome back in the day, and they're awesome now. But there's something quite appealing about the 5200 despite its shortcomings (by which I totally mean the original controllers) The look and feel of the console and carts is absolutely fantastic, and as a collector, the low cost and high quality of the limited number of games in its library is very appealing. Unlike the 2600, you can collect a full set without being a zillionaire. Even the Holy Grail of the system, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, can be had for well under the cost any of the dozen or so Grails for the 2600. And unlike those ultra-rare 2600 games, BBSB is absolutely excellent.

     

    I wouldn't recommend the 5200 to a casual retro gamer thanks to the need to either find alternative controllers or maintain the original ones, but for a Atari enthusiast or collector, it's actually a whole lot of fun!

    • Like 1
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

     

     

    when I got into Atari I had a Flashback like many did

     

    Huh, I had assumed all this time you were an O.G. Atari guy with your high level of interest and knowledge of these games. That's actually really cool that you picked it all up so many years later! Had you really not played much Atari at all until the Flashbacks?

     

    Night Driver is one of the eight older games that I know EXACTLY what date I first played it on... December 25, 1981, when my family first got our Atari. It is indeed a fun game!. I actually even like the sounds... the horns especially give the game an extra bit of tension.

    • Like 1
    DoctorSpuds

    Posted

    I would never, however, spend 100+ dollars on a game, that's my limit, that's why I still find it so confounding that people will shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a game that hasn't even been properly coded.

     

    It's actually rather nice to have a price cap when it comes to collecting, just so it doesn't get out of hand.

     

    Agreed! The $100 cap is a good one to have. I think I've only broken it once (fellow 5200 collectors will know EXACTLY for which game!)

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