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Gabriel

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Posts posted by Gabriel

  2. Posted

    No, never heard of them, lol! But it sounds like something I might have liked. Did they fly?

     

    Really? Maybe it was just my world, since I saw them displayed in several local stores prominently. I was fascinated by them.

     

    No, they didn't fly. They were very basic plastic kits.

     

    Do a search for 1977 Goodyear blimp model kit. There will be pictures and videos of it in operation. From the perspective of a grade-schooler in the 70s, I thought they were pretty awesome.

  3. Posted

    Gipson's Department Stores, based in the North East, or Gibson's Discount Centers, based in the South?

     

    Obviously not an answer to the question, and completely unrelated.

     

    I had almost completely forgotten about Gibson's. Lingyi's post brought a flood of memories coming back, although the Gibson's I recall probably isn't the same chain as Lingyi's.

     

    I don't associate Gibson's with video games. I'm pretty sure they were long gone from my neck of the woods by the time I was enthralled with video games in 1981.

     

    The one I recall was on a little strip mall. It was actually next door to the previously mentioned Winn's I liked so much. The store originally had a completely different decor which I really don't clearly remember. Then there was a fire when I was very young which caused the store to have to remodel and start over. After the remodel they were much more what I'd now call Wal-Marty.

     

    I remember getting Star Wars toys there. In particular, I remember getting a Kenner Die Cast Millennium Falcon from there, and I regretted that for years, because I really wanted a Y-Wing because I thought the Y-Wing looked cool.

     

    I got numerous Goodyear blimp models. Any kid who grew up in the 70s probably knows the one I'm talking about. It had a light and motor in it, and you'd color these pixel paper things to make colored messages scroll on the blimp.

     

    I have pretty vivid memories of a Stretch Armstrong endcap display. I also remember them selling the big Shogun Warriors and Godzilla toys. And this was the age of SLIME. I don't know how many of those little plastic trash pails I got with green slime or green slime with plastic worms in it.

     

    I have a Star Wars board game story related to Gibson's, but that's long and even more off topic than I've already ventured.

     

    Maybe they sold video games. I think they had a watch/electronics counter. My age was in the single digits, and I hadn't really discovered video games yet. I only cared about the toys.

    • Like 2

  6. Posted · Edited by Gabriel

    My Atari 2600 was from Woolco. I think I also got Adventure from there. It was also the only place I've ever seen a real-live Astrocade.


    My aunt bought me Pitfall II from Target. At that time they had the games in individual security boxes on hanger racks on a wall. It was very odd at the time. But long before that, my aunt had bought me Othello from Target for Christmas. However, I had been playing with the difficulty switches on my 2600 and since I was a moron, I thought the Othello game was defective. We spent one of the days after Christmas waiting in line at Target to exchange the game for another copy. Mainly what I liked about Target was their Intellivision demo unit. I'd sit and play Tank Battle on that with other kids while my family shopped.


    When I got my copy of Pac-Man, my aunt and I went to Sears. It turns out it wasn't the street date for the game yet. It was a Saturday and I think the street date was the following Monday. However, one of the clerks thought my aunt was cute and said he'd sell us a copy from the back if she'd go out with him. She agreed. We played Pac-Man all weekend. The date was probably a bad one, though. She refuses to speak about it to this day. Sears was also my first exposure to the 2600. They had the console in the garden center demoing Target Fun. I picked up the controller to play and one of the employees snatched it out of my hand and told me it wasn't for children.


    I bought Swordquest: Earthworld with some birthday money from K-Mart. I returned it and exchanged it for E.T. the same day. I was much happier with E.T.


    There was this one shop on the local mall called The Game Peddler. They sold videogames and tabletop games. I liked going there for the 1 or 2 years it existed. One of the first things I got from there was Star Voyager. My mom had bought it for me, but what she had really wanted me to get was Demon Attack. She liked Demon Attack better. I managed to play that into going back a couple of weeks later and getting Demon Attack as well, so I got both games I wanted.


    I think a couple of my games were from Service Merchandise. I have some firm memories of getting Space Invaders from there, but I can't recall any others.


    I got my copy of Asteroids from Circus World. I was pretty excited about it at the time. Then I got the game home and saw that it wasn't Asteroids and was instead a game about shooting globs of sherbet. My recollection is that Circus World was a really good place for games, but I can't recall any other 2600 games I got from there.


    Kay-Bee Toys is another one I have memories of thinking was really good for 2600 games, but I can't recall ever buying anything there until the post crash bargain bin period. I got Stargate from there. Stargate blew me away. It was a 2600 game that could compete with a 5200 game.


    I got Empire Strikes Back from Toys R Us. This was in the early 90s. Yes, Toys R Us still had huge numbers of brand new ESB carts well into the 16 bit era.


    I'm almost certain I got at least a game or two from Montgomery Ward, but I can't recall a single one. The only thing I can recall is my mom buying a Coleco ADAM from there.


    Despite always hanging out in Dillards and watching their demo Odyssey 2 running Quest for the Rings, I can't recall ever getting a game from there either. I did often play their Atari 2600 which they had running Dodge 'Em most of the time.


    JC Penney had a gaming section, but they were more of a Colecovision place. I can't recall ever getting any 2600 games from there, but it's possible.



    Edit: Crap. I forgot some more.


    Winns was the store where I bought my very first Atari game with my own money. I bought Night Driver. It was priced at 24.95. It was my first realization that not all video games were great. Winns was one of my favorite stores when I was little. They had a great toy section for the time. I also got a lot of model kits and Choose Your Own Adventure books from there.


    There was also an Eckerd's near me. I remember they had 2600 games. I'm not sure if I ever bought one from there, but I used to be there all the time, so I'd be surprised if at least one of my games didn't come from there. Now that I think of it, I think my copy of Yars Revenge was bought there.
    • Like 3

  7. Posted

     

     

    "Rogers’s record on the classic Atari arcade game Centipede, for example, had been listed on the Twin Galaxies site as being 65,000,000. The second-highest score, 58,078, barely comes close. (As of Monday afternoon, those rankings were adjusted after Rogers’s scores were removed.)"

     

    I don't follow TG at all, but how could crazy scores like Centipede not be questioned? From what I understand, there were many like this. A super high score well above the 2nd ranking, no evidence, and a "round number" ... how could anyone take this seriously?

     

    Because the high score wasn't on arcade Centipede. The 58,078 is on Atari 5200 Centipede.

     

    This is how many of his high scores were. They were on games that few people care about because of lack of popularity or simply oddball ports. I imagine there are many people here on the forums which can easily beat a 58,078 on Atari 5200 Centipede, but who is going to go through the effort of a video filmed in front of a TG judge (one of the good ol boy network), and all to come in second to a fake score of eleven quintillion. And getting those fake scores removed takes a lot of people complaining for months. Who is going to bother?

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    Maybe it has already been mentioned, but I discovered today that Harmony Gold has licensed Robotech to Coleco to make old school style tabletop mini-arcades.

     

    It looks like the only thing Coleco has to show is a drawing of the side panel of the mini-arcade. And they have a link to a video of the GBA Macross Saga game.

     

    So, yeah. Harmony Gold and Coleco. Birds of a feather.

  14. Posted

    Super Robot Wars V

     

    Accidentally ran across a video of it. Saw the Yamato. Saw english subs. Bought it. Played it all the way through. Then started a new game and played it all the way through again.

     

    Stands as the only TRPG I've played all the way through twice back to back. I'll be playing it again in a a couple of weeks. Because I get to control the Yamato, Nadesico, Strike Freedom Gundam, Nu Gundam, Gundam Z, and many other units I had no idea how much I'd end up liking. It even introduced me to Cross Ange, and I ended up buying the anime series and liking it.

     

    Best purchase I've made for my PSTV (Vita).

     

    If it had Macross mechs, I'd probably hardly ever play anything else.

     

     

    Dragon Warrior III

     

    I've had it for decades but only recently spent much time with it. Now I wonder why I haven't been playing it all along. Definitely a true great and something that will be going into my regular rotation. (I play Dragon Warrior 1 from start to finish every couple of years.)

     

    Just the joy of being able to select classes for my characters, name them, and then explore a huge overworld was wonderful. I had almost forgotten how much I used to enjoy getting a ship in these types of games and being able to wander the world to any compass point I desired.

     

    But I wish it had more prestige classes other than just the Sage.

  16. Posted

    The First Xenosaga game comes to mind. You would play for like 10min..and then watch 20+ min of cutscenes. In fact, there were so many cutscenes, that all of them were compiled into chronological order and released on a DVD as a movie. I own it in fact...somewhere...

     

    As someone who played all three Xenosaga games to completion, I want to say that this is definitely NOT my experience with the games.
    I can see how someone might get that impression playing through the opening act of the first game, though. All the Xenosaga games have horrible pacing, and the first game front loads a lot of cutscenes in the opening act, including one of the longest cutscenes in the series at the end of that opening act. It kills any gameplay momentum dead. And, in truth, for years I had never progressed past the first point where the player acquires Ziggy because of the absolutely numbing stop, go, mostly stop pacing of the beginning of the first game.
    Each game in the series took me about 80 hours from start to finish. Others say much shorter times, but when I play RPGs, I play to enjoy. So I explore. I do side quests. I grind a bit, because the battle system should be there to enjoy. I can safely say that none of the Xenosaga games played themselves or had anything resembling the majority of their runtime eaten by cutscenes. But yeah, getting through some of those 30 minute cutscene segments which ask you to save before another 30 minute cutscene segment is just enthusiasm killing.

  17. Posted

    There was some Dreamcast football game I bought for a buck or two out of a bargain bin in the early 00s. I played it for a while and was doing horribly. I set the controller down to look through the instruction book to see if there was something I was missing. I forgot to pause.

     

    When the snap timer ran out, the game automatically snapped the ball and the quarterback was taken over by the AI. It completed a play and gained yardage. I stopped reading the instruction book as I watched the CPU complete play after play, scoring first down, moving down the field, eventually getting to the 2 yard line, and after a few plays putting a player over the top and scoring a touchdown.

     

    When I had been controlling things, I couldn't even get a first down, much less score. My playing was actually a hindrance to the game.

     

    I powered the game off, put the disc up, and never played another football game of that vintage or later.

    • Like 3

  19. Posted

    Does anyone have any first hand experience with the Kemco RPGs?

     

    They're liberally slathered across the Playstation and 3DS stores, and before that I had run across them in tablet app stores. Most seem to have fairly polished anime promo art to act as the face of a game which looks very much like something made in a semi-recent version of RPG Maker.

     

    The consensus I've seen is that they're bad to average JRPGs with a strong 16-bit era philosophy about them. I see a lot of comments that they're shorter games, taking about 15 hours to play through.

     

    I suppose I shouldn't care. I have a huge backlog of RPGs to play which are probably better. But I am curious. Can anyone share any specifics about some of these titles they've played?

     

  24. Posted

    I'm very fond of the Genesis versions of Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin'. I still play them to this day. I'd pick either one over any of the current gen racing franchises.


    That said, there's a huge chunk of nostalgia there. Setting aside whether the games were barely acceptable when they were new, they definitely haven't aged well. While I feel the gameplay still works as well as it ever did, there is no artistic expression to really save the game from its 3-4 frames per second presentation.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    I agree. It doesn't get much better even with an NES Advantage. There's something severely off about the control of the game. It's just an unpleasant port to play despite the higher accuracy to the arcade it represented at the time.


    I'd definitely choose 2600 Pac-Man over the NES version. I'd also easily choose the 5200 Pac-Man with default controllers over the NES version even with an NES Advantage.

    • Like 2
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