DoctorSpuds

Alright! The second draft has been completed. I'm very happy with this one, but it has grown in length. Just a smidgen. The first draft was approximately 95,500 words, that's a good length for a sci-fi novel. The second draft is 137,500 words long... It's longer than Return of the King. Part Two alone is longer than all but two of the Chronicles of Narnia books... And to be fair the one book contains roughly two books worth of plot, honestly it's laid out a bit like a TV show, I don't know if that's a good thing or not. It is long... but I don't think it gets very long winded. Most of what I've done is expand upon scenes, add emotion and movement to the characters and elaborate upon more vague elements of the plot. Frankly this could all be chalked up to an incredibly long character development project. It's still not done though. I will need to go back and retcon some of the geography, this is a real place with real landmarks that actually exist, it shouldn't be too extensive though. As it is now -bar the geographical shuffling- it's done. If you want to read it then I'll provide links below. As it is now you can read the entire book for free. Alcadon Home Page

Alright! I've finished parts one through three. I am worded out and just want to go to sleep. The epilogue, which is basically just me having fun, will be an absolute cakewalk. I've updated the website so all three parts, bar the epilogue are posted. If you wanna read them them just follow the links. Home Page Part One Part Two Part Three I'm so tired...

That's what the guy I bought it from thought, hooray I have the only example of a Tournament 2000 in a Mail-Order only box! Now if only people actually cared about Pong consoles.

I know a guy who has a Magnavox Odyssey II box with the big 'ol sticker on the front. Either way, it's a neat old thing. It's still a departure from the norm for this company, as every Tournament 2000 has the professionally printed box, I haven't been able to find another one like it on google images. (I know that's a low bar but still.)

Alright so it's a Tournament 2000 by Unisonic, on its own that's not very interesting but stay with me here. The box is unlike any other I've seen, it's most certainly not a standard Unisonic box. The thing is completely unbranded and it looks like the thing was printed with ink rollers. The console itself is the only thing that says Unisonic on it and the serial number is pretty high so maybe it was a budget thing to cut costs? Frankly its weird and cool and I'm happy to have it despite it being another Pong console. If anybody knows anything about this then feel free to let me know.

Thanks, that means quite a bit.

Links at the bottom: Alright so the second draft is going very well, I've completed the rewrites of parts one and two and am currently starting part three. I’m using the first draft as a basic template from which to work off of and am simply working my way through it adding, removing, and elaborating. I haven’t really touched the dialogue as I’m pretty happy with it. Right now I think it would be fair to call the second draft ‘the extended edition’ because I’m adding over 1000 words per chapter fairly effortlessly. As a note: if you are actually going to try and read my story I must warn you… Expediency is not my forte, a lot of stuff happens in this story. As it is now, part one and part two could be considered a book of their own, but there is a part three that wraps everything up and an epilogue that caps everything off. As it is now, the story is around 127k words long, (From the 95K of the first draft, oof) with more being added. This book is essentially two books written alongside each other that cannot be separated and to do so would leave both feeling stilted, rushed, and awkward. Frankly it’s laid out much like a TV show, with each chapter acting as an episode and each part acting like a season. (who knows, maybe I should talk to Netflix.) Part one needed a lot of work, I had absolutely no roadmap when I was writing it and was bouncing four or five plot ideas throughout it willy-nilly and honestly none of them stuck so there were a bunch of allusions to things that were never going to happen (It was a sea of Chekhov's Guns that were never taken off the wall). That has been cleaned up and is now an adequate introduction to the story and beginning of the plot. Several characters are given more page-time and are introduced earlier, scenes have been extended to give better context and I’ve really been trying to put an emphasis on the tone and actions of a character over using the word ‘said’ a thousand times (I’m still working on this so it might be a bit stilted in places.) All in all it was an exercise in continuity, either with having subsequent parts reference it more often, or write in story elements that are referenced later on that had no actual buildup. (Again, I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote the first part.) Part two had very little story that needed tweaking, though there was a bit, it was mostly just trying to give the characters character. Unfortunately it’s still pretty evident who is considered a main character based on how in-depth I go with them, some of them have their moments but I have a lot of side-characters who are rather glossed over. To be fair, I did do this to myself, I am juggling over 20 named characters and I can’t dedicate time to all of them, though I did try to give them a basic veneer of personality. I also had way too much fun writing the climax of part two. The dialogue/prose balance: I like writing dialogue and I like writing prose, though I lean more towards writing dialogue. I only use walls of text when the story calls for it, with either of the aforementioned, when there is absolutely no ability to inject speech and even then I’ll try to use the thoughts of a character to break things up. I’d rather move a story through the movements of a character coupled with them having a conversation with another. There is a lot of talking, and one could easily argue, a lot of unnecessary talking. It breaks up the walls of text and keeps everybody moving around, and I think it helps the story move faster overall. I am not writing this using conventional means, I am ignoring almost every bit of writing advice I come across in favor of doing my own thing. To be honest this is probably a bad thing. I’m trying to avoid commonly used tropes, despite my entire story being supported by them, because the real world doesn’t actually work like that, usually. Not every character has to grow as a person and change themselves, not every villain is irredeemable and not every villain is apparent from the start (Not every villain is a villain). Not every protagonist has to have a fatal flaw, sometimes they just have bad luck and they take it in stride. People can change, but they don’t have to. I’m sure if I find a publisher (big if), I’ll have to change almost everything about the story, which is why I’m putting the thing on Amazon first, but at the moment all of my work is free on my website. The second drafts for parts one and two are posted and in a readable state, though there are typos. I intend on going back through the whole book when I’m finished with text-to-speech software to catch typos (It works surprisingly well) and when I’ve done that I’ll do a blanket edit fixing all the typos and slashing extraneous/overused word (lot of those too). I don’t have a deadline for when this’ll be finished but I’m getting there. Wish me luck. Links: Site: Part One: Part Two:

So it wound up being the 7800 of the first/second generation then, Pretty good when it was developed but by the time it was released it was overshadowed by pretty much everything else, and the new consoles on the horizon were so far superior that it wasn't even funny.

No competition for me.

Man, I hate to do the cliché thing of calling the thing I’m reviewing ‘terrible’ right off the bat, but seriously, the RCA Studio II might just be the most woeful games console I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Just a warning, my Google-Fu is pretty weak for this console in particular, mainly because there isn’t a whole lot that exists on it, and because it was disco-ed so quickly. I got lucky recently. At my local game store he gets all sorts of weird crap in, and by weird I mean rare. I walk in a couple days back and what do I see sitting on the counter… an RCA Studio II, in the box, with six minty CIB games, with an original shipping box (for the games) from RCA in NC to a woman here in Madison. I threw out a number for shits and giggles (130$) and he immediately said yes. Now I own a boxed RCA studio II (Matching SN’s) with over half of the North American library, woo! I knew what I was getting into when I bought it, I know it’s a terrible system but… y’know, bragging rights? I decided to pull DSRT out of its pseudo retirement to review this sucker. So without further ado… The Studio II was RCA’s answer to the Fairchild Channel F, and subsequently the Atari VCS, but wound up being obsolete right out the gate. Just about every part of this machine can be criticized and detracted in some way, from the games, to the packaging the console comes in, to the console itself. Let’s simply start with the console. Right out the gate the specs don’t seem too bad, but then you take a look at the video chip and well: RCA CDP1861 "Pixie" video chip, 64x32, monochrome graphics. Oh dear… that’s not good, and the sound? An internal speaker capable of making simple beeping noises… Oh dear again. I’m pretty sure Magnavox was offering Dedicated Consoles with higher graphical and sound fidelity than this several years prior, by 1977 most bargain bin Pong consoles came with color. The console itself is a sturdy slab of beige plastic with a faceplate of burnished beige metal with ‘Studio II’ emblazoned on it. Immediately one will notice the two numerical keypads on either side of the unit, we’ll get to those later. I will admit that the build quality is fantastic, with the plastic shell being nearly half a centimeter thick, not a chance of it creaking in your hands. The keypad buttons are also extremely nice to use, they’re using rubber domes (I think) but you still get a satisfying dull click when you press down. But here’s the bad part of it all… it’s ugly, absolutely downright hideous. The entire thing is two-tone beige with chrome highlights, it reminds of the inside of a Winnebago, it is completely lacking any sort of style or visual appeal. The 2600 had the outlandish ridges and the soft angular design, the Channel F looked like and 8-track player, the Intellivision had the woodgrain coupled with the gold for the classy high-class charm. The Studio II looks like something you’d see in a school computer room or a church basement, or a daycare, it has no sharp edges so the kids can’t hurt themselves on it and it can survive being thrown into a wall. It’s positively dismal. Speaking of dismal, how about the packaging? The word unappealing comes to mind first and foremost. Any good game packaging has one of three things or a combination if the company is feeling ambitious: Pictures of the games, pictures of people playing the games (and having fun), and eye-catching artwork to draw in the eye of potential customers. The Studio II has one of those things, pictures of the 5 built-in ‘games’ (two could be classified as games, one is a tech demo, one is a drawing program, and the other is math), but you’d be forgiven for thinking they are just quick artists interpretations, there’s no way they could look that bad. They do, the artists renditions actually look better. There is also actual drawn artwork on the box. I know I’m not the pinnacle of artistic ability but these look like crap. Whoever they got to paint this stuff could draw a racecar but couldn’t draw a person’s face to save their life. The family sitting around watching, not playing, watching, a static image of some poorly drawn houses look so dissatisfied and disgusted that it’s almost hilarious. The woman is actually drawing her chin into her neck in disgust and the man is thousand-yard-staring into oblivion. Captain archer is playing bowling! And his face is falling off!Even the fairly clinical Sears Telegames system boxes were more appealing than this! Actually! No! RCA did have better artwork! It’s on the Owner’s manual! How else could they screw this up!? Well it looks like Atari got the inspiration for the initial 5200 from these guys because there is only one cord running out of the system. You could tear this thing apart looking for a power jack but you’ll never find one. The power and video use the same cord, which means if you lost the special AV switchbox made specifically for this console then you can’t play it. Because the system itself is also the controller that means that the cord running from it is very long, to account for the tiny cord meant to go from the switchbox to the TV, which means packing the system up is a hassle because the thing is, no joke, fifteen feet long and stiff as hell. You can also search the console for a power button but you’ll also not be able to find one, why? Because the AV switchbox is also the power switch! Which means you’d better have it in an easy to reach place otherwise you won’t be able to use the system! This is despicable, and the main reason why the Studio II is not worth owning today. If that switchbox breaks then you are sunk, if the cord from the console frays or snaps, you’re sunk, if one of the prongs from the switchbox frays or snaps then you’re sunk! This sort of innovation is an absolute hindrance as it makes the overall unit fragile and unwieldy to use in any sort of capacity, not that you’d really want to since almost half of the games are educational! Here is a list of the entire NA game library that I took straight from Wikipedia, I’ll also throw in my two cents on the ‘games as well’ 1. 18V400|TV Arcade I: Space War: You guide a missile from a static point to hit slowly moving enemies, boring. 2. 18V401|TV Arcade II: Fun with Numbers: Fuck no. The Parker Brothers Merlin does this better 3. 18V402|TV Arcade III: Tennis/Squash: Non-analogue Pong with a hilariously thin game field, boring and barely works as the ball will ricochet off of nothing. 4. 18V403|TV Arcade IV: Baseball: The game in its most abstract form, it mostly plays itself. 5. 18V404|TV Arcade Series: Speedway/Tag: Brilliantly boring, an insult to racing games. Getting a 2600 and Indy 500 is probably cheaper. 6. 18V405|TV Arcade Series: Gunfighter/Moonship Battle: Atari used this exact fourmula to make Outlaw, but did it better. Moonship battle may not be classifiable as a game, Imagine Space War but without that fluid motion or gravity. 7. 18V500|TV School House I: Learning, it came with quiz books! It’s quiz software! 8. 18V501|TV School House II: Math Fun: More learning but with math! 9. 18V600|TV Casino I: Blackjack: How about not. 10. 18V601|TV Casino Series: TV Bingo: Pixelated Bingo, bring your own cards and chips. 11. 18V700|TV Mystic Series: Biorhythm: Pseudoscience mumbo jumbo, just play Taboo the Sixth Sense on NES if you want to waste your time in such a fashion. Honestly the American library just blows, most of the games are not in fact games, they’re just learning software or things you could do without the need of a game console. At least overseas they got Pinball and Star Wars which are arguably more entertaining than anything we got over here. If it isn’t obvious, this thing did not sell well, not in the slightest. RCA estimated that they sold between 53-64k units total, with puts it in as a strong contender for rarest home videogame console, at least in North America. I know the Amiga CD32 is the current title holder but the Studio II is probably in the top ten. This damn thing is so forgotten that not a single ‘game’s journalism’ site that has posted a ‘most obscure’ or ‘worst ever’ console list even has it listed. The Studio II has been completely forgotten to time and you know what, that’s definitely for the best.