Astrocade Video Reviews

[Astrocade Video Reviews]

On 12/17/2019 at 10:33 AM, ballyalley said:

It really has been awhile since I've posted anything into this thread.  It isn't that I have stopped making Astrocade videos; I just have forgotten to post links to this thread.

 

 

 

My latest Astrocade non-video art video overview covers "The Pits" by Rex Goulding from ARCADIAN 3, no. 10 (Aug. 12, 1981): 108.

 

 

 

"The Pits" is one of my favorite games for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade with Bally BASIC or "AstroBASIC."  On December 16, 2019, I noticed that "placelogohere" made a gameplay video of the game and posted it to YouTube on September 16, 2017.  As of yesterday, two years later, I was only the second person to watch the video.  What a shame!  You can watch "placelogohere's" gameplay-only video of "The Pits" here:

 

 

I thought it would be a good idea to make a gameplay video of "The Pits" with some explanation of the game; thus I created this video.

 

 

 

You can watch the video on YouTube, here:

 

 

 

 

 

You can watch and/or download the video from archive.org, here:

 

 

 

https://archive.org/details/ThePitsRexGouldingBallyAstrocadeArcadian1981

 

 

 

This isn't the first time that I've tried to shine a spotlight onto "The Pits" to give it some well-deserved attention.  In Episode 4 (August 2016) of the Bally Alley Astrocast, I covered this game with Chris (the podcast's co-host).  You can listen to that podcast here:

 

 

 

http://ballyalleyastrocast.libsyn.com/podcast/bally-alley-astrocast-004-sea-devil-and-the-pits

 

 

 

The object of "The Pits" is to move the small dot in the upper-left corner past the pits to the center of the medium-size box in the lower-right corner.  The clunker is that the pits move up the screen all the time and can catch you.  Each time the screen rolls up it counts as one move.  A successful trip in 16 moves is doing well.  This BASIC game is available for Bally BASIC and "AstroBASIC" and can be downloaded from BallyAlley.com.

 

 

 

"The Pits" is a perfect example that gameplay is the true measure of a game's value and that graphics can be completely secondary to the core gameplay experience.

 

 

 

Adam

 

Is their a way to get these excellent Basic games on a cartridge so you can play these on an Astrocade without typing them in?