Search the Community

I'm brand new to this place, though I've browsed the forums before so I'm quite familiar with the site. Dracula Hunter is a game I've been fascinated with for the past month or so, even written an article on the Lost Media Wiki about it. Apparently the game got shipped out to the United States that saw practically no success, can anyone confirm this?

Schach (Channel F, 1979) I know, I said I was only going to do US releases, that's why this is a "mystery" game. This is a quote from a post I made back in May of 2005 As far as I know, it's the only game program for the Channel F that didn't come out in the US. The cart, with that "glowing thinking light", was probably more expensive to manufacture and, based on past market performance of the Channel F, it was probably decided they wouldn't make enough money on Chess (which is the English word for Schach) in the US market. That's just my idle speculation, however, and I'd be curious to know if a reason has ever been given. I've no intentions of altering this cart into a multi-cart. For one, I don't have the mad skillz. For two, well, even though it isn't worth a ton of money as-is (at least, not in Germany), even though it isn't really, really rare, I think that it is rare enough that I'd rather keep this copy intact as just a Chess cart. A poor analogy might be: "if you had an original copy of "Citizen Kane" would you colorize it?" Yeah, that's actually a pretty useless analogy. I welcome someone else to give an analogy that would better express how I feel. Just read my mind and see what you can come up with. I played this cart only a few times after I got it. I just don't seem to have the time to have a game of Chess anymore. (I'd rather write rambling blogs about it) For the record, I wasn't able to beat it again. I think I won my first game because I was excited and focused, which usually makes me smarter and better looking. Here are pictures: Shh! It's trying to think! It only takes about 10 seconds, tops, for a move. I haven't won since I beat it my first lucky game. It's that damn, eerie, "thinking" light that rattles me. This is how the chessboard looks. When a move is made the coordinates of the move show up on the side. Which, uh, I should've gotten a picture of I guess. Next entry should be the other "mystery" game for the Channel F.

Video Chess (Atari VCS, 1979) Someone in one of the forums (AA or DP) asked what was our most disappointing Atari game back in the day? I responded "Video Chess". I think I meant to say "Basic Programming" but at that moment, my answer was "Video Chess". For the record, I take that back. As a teen, here's the problem I think I had with Video Chess in a nutshell: Long move times for the AI. Each successively difficult level of play takes the VCS longer to make its move. Level 8 is the learning level and the playing for real games start at level 1. Quoting from the manual, here is how long the AI can take for each move on each level. Level 1 - 15 seconds Level 2 - 30 seconds Level 3 - 45 seconds Level 4 - 2 min., 45 sec. Level 5 - 3 min., 15 sec. Level 6 - 12 minutes Level 7 - 10 hours Level 8 - 10 seconds In case you missed it, you should take notice that level 7 takes 10 hours. I think that, at 14 years old, I was hoping this cart was going to help me improve my chess game and I was disappointed to find out that the really challenging levels of the game were just going to take too damn long for me to play. "Too damn long" must've been anything over 30 seconds. Ah, the impatience of youth! Another issue I had as an impatient 14 year-old was the cursor's response to the joystick input. It seemed so slow to respond that it felt like it was taking me as long as the VCS to make my moves. If you're a serious chess player, this game will probably not satisfy you in a reasonable amount of time. If you are not, then, here in 1979, this is probably the only videogame console option for your single-player chess needs. The only other of which I am aware is only being sold in Europe under the name of Schach for the Fairchild Channel F. When I took out this game recently to chronogame it, I found that I was much more able to appreciate it now that my hair has greyed some and I'm not in quite the hurry I used to be. Level 1 is challenging enough for me and waiting 10 seconds isn't a problem. Either I was a much better chess player 25 years ago, or I just had higher expectations for myself. There's mostly no flicker, with the exception of the cursor. Think about that for a minute. 32 chess pieces, every type of piece is distinct, identifiable and none of them flickers. The cursor flickers, but that's okay; cursors are supposed to flicker. In addition to chess playing mode, there's a mode that allows a player to set up any kind of chess situation they'd like and then play it against the VCS. That's pretty cool. I now think the joystick response isn't all that bad, but I've found that I prefer to use a Genesis controller. So, shame on my teenaged self for not appreciating this cart when I first saw it. A small drawback is the fact that the whole screen blanks and flickers crazily when the VCS is thinking about its move. If you're the type of person that can suffer a seizure from certain types of flickering lights, I don't recommend you test yourself against this cart. If you're a beginning to intermediate player and you can't find someone to play chess with you then Atari's Video Chess will do, otherwise, you'll most likely find it more satisfying to play a friend.

Space Invaders aka Astro Battle (Bally Pro Arcade, 1979) Okay, my research on this is sketchy, but as far as I can tell: Bally-Midway distributed Space Invaders in the arcades in the United States. The rights to do so, I assume, were purchased from Taito, the company that owned the game and distributed it in Japan. Since Bally has this Professional Arcade for the home it only makes sense that they'd do a home version of Space Invaders for it, since it was the single most popular arcade game of all time, if you don't count past 1978. Fast forwarding a little bit, Atari, in January of 1980, released their home version of Space Invaders and apparently they went directly to Taito to get the rights to do so. So then, I'm guessing, this was why Bally had to change the name of their home Space Invaders to Astro Battle. *shudder* Okay, that's enough of that. I should probably avoid talking about the history as much as I should avoid talking about the technology. The other home version of Space Invaders released in 1979 was Space Destroyers for the APF MP1000. (Bally is on the left, APF is on the right) So, the immediate differences we see here are different sprite colors for the Bally and less columns (8 compared to 11) and less rows (4 compared to 5) than the APF version. APF's version is great if you're looking for an "as close to the arcade" experience as possible. However, there is something to be said about adding variations to the home videogame experience simply because one couldn't get that variation on a single cabinet in the arcade. Bally attempts this by offering four skill levels: Novice, Amateur, Intermediate and Professional. The differences between the levels are simply increasing speed and enemy firing rates. The effects of such are that anyone in your household could play long enough, at least on Novice, to decide whether or not they enjoy the game. Beats the heck out of being destroyed repeatedly and quickly in Professional, Intermediate or even Amateur mode. I should mention that, to me, the Bally controller with Space Invaders is a little annoying. Maybe it is just the particular controller I use, but that pistol grip fire mechanism becomes really uncomfortable to keep firing after a few rounds of invaders. If there's ever a game that requires rapidly firing a weapon with this controller, it's gonna hurt. Bally Space Invaders limits the player to six screens of invaders. After screen six, they've invaded and it's Game Over for you, earthling. Perhaps since I'm used to the arcade style of playing until death, it seems odd to me to do it that way. This is what it looks like when they've invaded. The reason I include that shot, is that you don't get to see the Game Over message for very long. Once it's "Game Over", the Bally gives you a second-and-a-half to check your score and then it dumps you back to the game selection screen. It's very annoying, especially if you have a score of which you wanted to take a picture. This is one of those games you'd better be running through your VHS or Betamax if you want to be saving any screenshots of your high score. By the way, this is a one player only cart -- no alternating two-player play mode. Having a buddy with you, keeping an eye on your score, is a good way of actually finding out what your final score was. I never thought about this before, but could Space Invaders be considered the first game with a continuous soundtrack? It isn't much, musically, but it certainly sets a tone. Here, again, the Bally's sound capabilities really come through as the audio output of the "invader march", the base explosions, the saucer -- all sound great. The Bally Professional Arcade just seems to have this ability to produce rich deep bass tones that I'm not getting from the Channel F, VCS or Odyssey^2. So, to sum up Space Invaders for the Bally Pro Arcade: yay for color, yay for difficulty levels, yay for audio, boo for ADHD Game Over screen, meh for controller. Overall, it gets a happy face. Next entry we'll look at Star Battle. 11067

This is going to be a lot less interesting than one might hope, sorry to say. The "fun" part was figuring out how to set this up on my TV so that I could take cool simultaneous screen shots. See, I've got a wide screen and it lets me view two channels at the same time. That way I could take side by side pictures of both boards. I nearly had a solution that would have only required purchasing an RF to coax adaptor when I realized that, of course, my wife had the camera in Florida with her and the kids this week. This led me to the solution I used, which was far less elegant, but didn't involve having to leave my house and purchase anything. Basically, I used one RF switch box hooked up to a VCR hooked up to a monitor. The consoles hooked to the RF switch by going through a multi-channel switcher that I had stopped using once I had gotten a decent S-Video switch box. Unfortunately the multi-channel was only good if there was only one system on at a time. The two systems generated a lot of interference for each other that caused both boards to look like a good, old-fashioned RF interference moiré-lined mess. I couldn't look at it very long; made me feel a little sick, this partially contributed to not putting both of the systems through all of their paces. Okay, on with the vs. As far as I can tell, the Fairchild chess program Schach only has one skill level. The trouble here is that even if someone had put the instructions online, they'd be in German, wouldn't they? Anyway, I've never found them online so the point is moot. I did discover another feature of the Fairchild; if you're in the middle of a move that you're not sure what to do, you can have it make "the best move" for you. Just thought that was cool. The Fairchild program doesn't seem to have an option for playing either side. You play White. Period. Atari has the option of switching the board up so that it plays white. So that's what I did. Consequently, Atari always gets the first move. On Fairchild's only skill level it can beat Atari at its lowest skill level: the beginner game on game 8. It isn't a very exciting game and Fairchild doesn't win because it makes great moves, but only because Atari seems to play "safe" as one would expect from a beginner mode. Fairchild "stalemates" with Atari on its game 1. In fact, both players beat each other down to a King, Rook, opposite Bishops and five blocked pawns each before getting caught in the stalemate. Now when I say "stalemates" I mean a situation sets up where both programs make the same set of 6 or so moves, over and over and over again. It's like a feedback loop that neither one of them can break out of. If either one of them were programmed to be creative at this point it wouldn't have been so bad, but both wouldn't budge from their attempts to convert the board based on the one plan each of them had. It was very frustrating and dull to watch. After three iterations of it I finally had to go in and kick Atari's ass with some unconventional "human" moves. (I drew it out of its pattern by aggressively moving my king around, killing pawns and talking smack; something Fairchild wasn't programmed to do) Anyway, after that little experiment I was left with no energy or enthusiasm to continue the experiment. It's just not that fun to be the lackey that sits there, switching between programs and duplicating each machine's move. It's like playing chess by myself but having no say in what moves are made. Dull, dull, dull. The machines are still set up for play. I may do one more game between Atari game 2 and Fairchild's one and only. I foresee a victory for Atari. Next entry we're going to try comparing Atari's Basic Programming with Odyssey^2's Computer Intro.

Slot Machine a.k.a. Slots (Atari VCS, 1979) I theorize that in the mid 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense had conducted experiments on non-violent methods of torture. Back then, apparently, violent methods of torture were frowned upon. I’ve heard that, in some circles, they are still frowned upon, even today, but I digress. So, the DoD went to Atari and said, "We want you to make a simulation that will suck the very life-energy out of the person interfacing with it. We want it to be simple to use, and we want it to be so awful that prisonersguests will actually request torture in exchange for not being forced to suffer through this activity. That way we'll have their permission to torture them and can extract some real information." Atari experimented with a few ideas, (one of which became Hunt & Score), but the actual program they selected to demo to the DoD was considered to be “too life-draining.” One high ranking official was quoted as saying, “That’s enough! I don't even have the energy to puke anymore.” However, the Department of Defense, though no longer interested in what Atari had developed, were impressed and they began to inquire about tank sims. That's another story, possibly for another time. Atari, was left with this "worse than torture" program into which they had invested dozens of dollars with no way to recoup their expenses. Finally, some programmer, apparently with a history of abuse, said "Hey, we can make a game out of this!" And that's how Slot Machine came to be. Really, that's all I have to say about it. 8186

Casino (Atari VCS, 1979) All right, this is another game which makes it possible to play Blackjack on the Atari VCS. I approached this cart with some pretty low expectations. I have a very hard time getting into Blackjack games on videogame consoles, though I do remember enjoying Odyssey^2's Blackjack game well enough -- must've been the keyboard. So, I check out the directions (thanks Atari Age!) and find out that it supports up to four players! Well, we only had three players after I conscripted my son (9) and daughter (5) into service. The two-player version of BJ supports splitting and doubling on appropriate hands, which is cool, but there's no room on the screen for splitting in the four-player version. The difficulty switches are implemented well. One difficulty switch makes the game more luck-dependent by forcing a shuffle every hand (makes card counting useless). The other switch changes the rules between Casino I rules and Casino II rules (are these real rules or just what Atari calls 'em?) These rules change at what total the dealer will stand and add the ability to win a hand if you take three or eight hits without busting. That's a pretty weird rule change. I've always thought "five hits and no bust" to be a win. On the four-player game you win your hand if you don't bust with only three hits, but on two-player, the card maximum is eight. We never saw anyone get eight cards without busting. Stud Poker is a lot like Blackjack. Each player (and the dealer) is dealt two cards. You evaluate the potential of your hand and place a bet or fold. Everyone gets another card and bets again. When everyone has five cards everyone's hand is compared to the dealer's and if a player's hand beats it, they win their bet. The betting seems odd to me, but I'm not familiar with regular poker to know if it is odd or not. As each card is dealt and the betting starts, a bet must exceed the maximum bet from the previous round of betting. It's fun for Stud Poker, but as in most electronic games of chance, I feel as though winning any points is more up to the luck of the draw than any skill. Speaking of luck, I'm lucky that I had to play this cartridge, because otherwise, I might not have ever played Poker Solitaire. Poker Solitaire, the last game in this Casino, is quite an addictive game. You draw 25 cards one at a time and have to build the best poker hands by laying them out in a 5x5 grid. You're awarded points based on the poker hands you manage to build in the five rows, five columns and two diagonals. According to the directions, the highest possible score would be 3,340 points and would involve 4 Royal Straight Flushes, 5 Four-of-a-Kinds, 2 Straights and 1 Straight Flush. I haven't quite worked out what that would look like, I've got a long time before I get close to a "perfect game"as my high score is currently 820. I haven't worked out any strategy for this game, yet, but certainly some moves are better than others. However, if the cards aren't there, they simply aren't there. More often than not my score is a dismal 400 or less. One piece of advice playing this game: don't judge it if you play the version found in Atari Anthology; the control scheme (no paddle) is infuriating. Trying to tap a d-pad to get the cursor to go one space to the left or right (and not two or more) is annoying. Just thought I'd mention it. Overall, this is a good cart and a big improvement over the 1st generation Atari Blackjack cart. The Blackjack and Stud Poker games are fun if you've got more than one player and Poker Solitaire is really addictive. If you've got a real set of cards and some poker chips, I'm pretty sure that most folks would have a better time playing the card games sitting around a table instead of in front of the TV. However, Casino isn't a bad bet bad way to kill some time, for a few hands anyway. I get to play Superman next! I'm very excited about it and looking forward to seeing how my kids enjoy it.7485

Human Cannonball aka Cannonball Man (Atari VCS, 1979) You're given a cannon, a crazy fool inside the cannon and a water tower, which we affectionately refer to as "the bucket". There are three variables: speed, cannon angle and distance from the cannon to the water tower. In the first game, a speed is randomly generated, representing the speed at which the Cannonball Man will be shot from the cannon. You must try to select the cannon's angle which will allow Projectile Man to land in "the bucket". The bucket is maneuverable, which we actually did not know at first. Let me tell you, the first game isn't too hard without knowledge that the bucket can move, but with that knowledge it becomes much easier. The directions for these old games continue to have useful information and we need to remember to read them. Your game objective is to get Mr. Ballistic into the bucket seven times before you turn him into circus pizza seven times. There are eight game variations, each with a one and two player version. The game variations increase the difficulty. Game 1 is as I described, given the speed of Mortar Man and a fixed position cannon, select the angle of expulsion. Game 2 pretty much the same as game 1, but the cannon is further away from the bucket. Game 3 gives you a random cannon location and you must choose the angle and speed. Game 4 lets you choose the position of the cannon, but the angle and speed are randomly generated. Game's 5 through 8 are pretty much the same as games 1 through 4 except for two very important differences. First difference: the water tower is no longer movable -- there's no fudging your numbers; you either get the variables right or your man is a greasy spot on the midway. Second difference: the other twist adds a "window" through which your little ballistic friend must travel. The window is a gap in a barrier which continuously moves down the screen between your cannon and the bucket. If you don't time your shot just right, Missile Dude hits the barrier and becomes cannon fodder, um, of a sort. This is another game that, like Sky Diver, awards a consolation prize for failure. When your flying fool misses the tower completely or hits it from the side he will subsequently hit the ground with a nice splat sound. The word "Ouch" appears over his formerly ballistic body. The pre-window games are fun enough. The challenge is mostly just recalling what speed and angle combination work best at what distances. A well-considered guess can feel pretty good when you pull it off. If the repetitive gameplay doesn't scare you off, it is possible to get pretty proficient at the first four games. Just try to remember the distance, speed and angle combinations and be ready to move that water tower when needed. The "window" games are harder and a bit frustrating. If you bother to get good at the first four games, so that you know the angles, distance and speeds very well, then you may be able to do well enough at the window games so that they are challenging and not frustrating. The problem I have with the gameplay is that it is fun, but only up to a certain point; that point being when it starts getting too damn hard. There's nothing about the game that keeps us coming back for the real challenge (frustration) of the window levels other than the continuous abuse/death of a humanlike figure, which doesn't have as much draw for us as one might think. What's difficult to tell is whether or not we would've gotten "into" this game back in the day, when games were expensive and purchases were few and far between. If this were the only Atari VCS game we owned, I think we would've enjoyed it to the point where we might have tried to get good at the harder levels. Since we now have access to way too many games, it just isn't a good enough thrill on which to blow a lot of time and effort. We'd much rather play Sky Diver than Human Cannonball. I don't know what game is next; probably Casino. 7352

Hockey! / Soccer! (Odyssey^2, 1979) / 7160 Okay, I made a mistake. I think I said that I was going to talk about Hockey! / Soccer! after my first Odyssey1979 entry and I didn't and then I forgot about it. Sorry about that. Let's start with Soccer! This title isn't deserving of its exclaimation point. The action is a little slow and a little awkward. The soccer ball doesn't go very far when we kick it, even when using the action button. You can only control the keeper plus one soccer player at the same time. While you're controlling the one player, the other players stumble around like the robots in War of Nerves!. The way to play this game is close to how one might play real soccer in that it's better to pass the ball than to try to run it down the field with a single player. Regardless of the control management scheme, however, Soccer! just plain feels slow. Now, I know I was just complaining about Thunderball! being too fast but there's a happy medium on this system and I'm certain I'll find it. Hockey! is a lot closer to that happy medium. Maybe the players on the ice move faster, or maybe passing seems to be handled a little better, but whatever the reason, both my son and I had a much better time playing Hockey! than Soccer!. Soccer! consists of two five-minute halves, while Hockey! consists of three five-minute periods. Amazingly, Soccer! feels like it takes longer to play than Hockey! does. It is nice to play these games with participants in the shape of human beings instead of paddles. Off the top of my head, I can only come up with previous versions of Hockey on the Magnavox Odyssey and the Fairchild Channel F. I can't come up with any previous iterations of Soccer released in the US. So, what we have here are the best versions Hockey or Soccer to be found on any home system in 1979. Next entry will be Sky Diver for the Atari VCS. I mean it this time.

Thunderball! (Odyssey^2, 1979) Thunderball! is a video pinball game in the tradition of APF Pinball (1978) or Atari Video Pinball (1977). However, what served as flippers in those games was really just a barrier which you could turn on and off to prevent the ball from exiting the bottom (or sides) of the screen. In Thunderball! we are given what actually could pass for flippers and it goes a long way towards giving this attempt at pinball a much more authentic flavor. I will describe the play of this game as fast paced. The ball moves very smoothly and exactly as one might expect, if one expected the playing field to be tilted towards the player at a 45 degree angle. If I were a talented pinball player, or even a talented videogame player, I would say that the fast pace is a lot of fun. However, my talent, being what it is, merely leads me to feel that anything that happens in this game while I'm playing it is due to luck, because my overall feeling is a complete lack of control. This feeling most likely goes away after one develops some proficiency at Thunderball! but neither my son nor I seem able to keep a ball in play long enough to get better at keeping the ball in play. I would need to spend much more time getting better at this game than the actual amount of time I have or care to spend on it. I don't consider this the fault of the game. One of the problems with these whirlwind chronological tours of gaming is that some games may require more time for which to develop a taste than I'm willing to invest. Maybe I could get better at a particular game with some practice, but when gameplay initially seems to depend completely on luck, there's just no incentive for me to explore it further. I'm the same way with Pachinko or slot machines in the real world. I'm not saying that Thunderball! depends on luck, I'm saying that it depends on a type of playing skill or an understanding that I currently do not posess, so, to me, it seems like luck. Anyway, if you like pinball, give this a shot, it is certainly the best pinball game we've seen yet. Here's a movie of it in action. Thunderball! (3.68 MB) (Dead link.) 7136 Okay, that finishes up the Odyssey^2 for 1979. Yes, I still need to write more about Computer Intro, but I'm not done with it yet, so I'll talk about it later. Instead, we'll start working on the Atari VCS and Sky Diver.

Showdown in 2100 A.D. (Odyssey^2, 1979) Takes the old idea of a duel between gunfighters and gives it a "futuristic" setting, the 22nd Century!!! The cowboys are animated in a similar manner to the main characters in I've Got Your Number and War of Nerves, but of course, these guys have hats. The "trees" are a way of replenishing one's ammunition. Just touch a tree that's the same color as you are and you get more bullets. Running out of ammo seems to be a standard feature in a cowboy themed gun duel game, but the ability to reload is new and I found it to be a nice touch. The trees also serve as pinball bumpers. If you shoot one you may set up a wild series of ricochets that could kill you or your opponent. This feature gave my children a lot of giggles as each would find it absolutely hilarious when the other shot themselves with a ricochet bullet. Looking at the other gun duel games available at the time there's Gunfight on the Bally Professional Arcade and Outlaw on the Atari VCS. Gunfight's design on the Bally Professional Arcade beats out Showdown in 2100 A.D. due to a few factors, one being the ability to control the angle of the shot and another being the better graphics and sound. Gunfight may be a better design, but we had many more laughs while playing Showdown. Outlaw on the Atari VCS, like so many games on the VCS, has a great deal of variations and that alone gives it more replay value than Showdown. Outlaw also has destructible environments which add a lot of fun. Yet, again, we laughed a lot harder playing Showdown. At first glance, on pure technical merit, I'd rank the Gun duel games on the three systems that had them as: #1 Gunfight, #2 Outlaw and #3 Showdown. (Oh, and I almost forgot about Gunfighter for the RCA Studio II which I'll rank fifth out of four.) On the other hand, Showdown in 2100 A.D. has something that neither of the other games have and that's a single player mode with a computer controlled opponent. In fact, it even has a zero-player mode. If you start a game and leave the controllers alone, both gunslingers will become computer controlled and will shoot it out. It can be fun to watch, especially due to the ricochet gameplay. The single player opponent isn't much of a challenge, but the fact that it exists give major points in my book to the Odyssey^2's version. If I were shoveling out original retail price cash for any of the three*, I'd say that Outlaw for the Atari gives two-players the most for their money. However, considering Showdown's single player mode and the fact that we laughed most and hardest while playing the two-player game, I'm going to say that Showdown is our favorite gun duel game from the era. If it were 1979 and we had to choose a gun duel game that we could only play for 15 minutes, I wouldn't hesitate to slap Showdown in before the others. I've got some movies of the action in Showdown. You may also want to check out the I've Got Your Number entry for gameplay movies I added. (See the link at its earlier mention.) Blue Shoots Red! (1.22 MB) Blue gets the drop on Red. Riccochet Shot! (1.65 MB) Red gets pulled back by some trees and then Blue pulls the 'ol ricochet shot on him. Red's Revenge (1.91 MB) Red, entirely fed up with blue, demonstrates an interesting morphing of Blue's corpse while repeatedly shooting it into a pile of mush. (ALL DEAD LINKS REMOVED. I AM FULLY AWARE OF MY MANY FAULTS.) *Ignore, for the moment, the fact that Gunfight was a built-in game for the Bally Professional Arcade.

War of Nerves (Odyssey^2, 1979) This is another great example of a game that didn't seem like much when I played it single-player but blossomed into a real giggle when I played it with my son. You control a general and your mission is to lead a bunch of robots into battle to catch the enemy general, who also has robots. The challenge here is that you lead, you don't control. The robots can disable each other and you can heal them by touching them. There's a play balancer in that as robots on your team become disabled your remaining robots move faster. There's trees all over the playfield around which the robots and your general must maneuver. As a single-player game, this didn't cause any "whooping" from me. Then I played it with my nine year old boy and suddenly we were having fun, and I mean fun. We were yelling at our brain-dead robots, we were yelling at our generals and we alternately begged for mercy from each other's robots. ("I'll give you power! Wealth beyond measure! Just let me go, please!") I don't think it was "fluke" fun either, in that it had nothing to do with whales. No. I mean in that it wasn't a "one shot, we happened to be in a good mood that day" type of fun. There was just something about the dynamics of the game that made it quite enjoyable for us. I'm not saying everyone could sit down with another person and enjoy War of Nerves but I am saying that I think we could sit down with it a second maybe even a third time and still have fun with it. Other than the screenshot at the opening, I wasn't able to get any movies or screens that weren't really blurry or just plain dull looking. I really only want to spend the bandwidth when it's worth it. That's it, I'll talk about Showdown in 2100 A.D. next entry.

I've Got Your Number! (Odyssey^2, 1979) 6870 This is an educational title pretending to be a game. Each player controls a human shaped figure that starts on either side of the screen. An equation shows up at the bottom middle of the screen. A question mark denotes the unknown element of the equation. In the main playing field is a sea of about a dozen or so shapes, symbols and numbers in two groups each rotating around a center symbol. The object of the game is to be the first player to correctly select the shape, symbol or number that replaces the unknown element in the equation by moving the human shaped figure to the correct symbol. If you touch the wrong figure with your human shaped thing, then you are sent back to your starting side and have to go after the correct one. You use the button to make your creature duck its featureless head underneath symbols you don't want it to touch. The game is designed for either the very young, or the very, very old. My daughter took a few turns before she understood the point, but she was unable to really get a handle on controlling the Odyssey^2 joystick (it was her first time using it, she's good at using a Genesis gamepad but just doesn't seem to get joysticks). The equations are pretty simple. For instance. "OOO=3?" in this case the correct answer would be "O". Or how about this one: "***=?*" in this case the correct answer would be "3". It is barely math, it is more like "Pre-Math". I see where the design is coming from, they're attempting to create an isomorphism for the player; alowing them to suddenly perceive "***" as equally representable as "3*". I wish someone would make a hack of it and put in equations like: (SSSSSSO*SSSSSSSO)=(SSO*SSSO*SSSSSSSO)=? just for the hell of it. All in all, it's an education title. I will say one thing, however, the human shaped figures were animated surprisingly smoothly; they weren't from the standard Odyssey^2 set of characters, either. They were bigger and moved very differently than anything we've seen yet. Maybe I'll post a little movie of them later if I can enlist my son to help me while I hold the camera. Here's a pair of movies. (DEAD LINKS. YES I'M SORRY. SO SORRY.) See how smoothly they're animated? Pretty cool. Also note that the default background color is blue, but it changes to the color of whoever wins the point. Something odd. Some of my Odyssey^2 boxes have stickers on the side in Japanese. I think I'm playing Odyssey^2 imports from Japan! Ooo! (Translates to: "Play Arithmetic Game" so, really it's just "Fun With Numbers") That's it for now. I'm in my final semester of college. I apologize for how infrequent my entries have been for the past year. Being a full-time student again is like always having voices in the back of my mind saying "Shouldn't you be working on X?", "Don't you have more reading to do for your class?", or "Why, WHY do they always come to me to die!?". I'm saying that there always seems to be more to do. Well, I've got one more paper to write, one more quiz to take, one more final exam to sit for, three more online discussions to wrap up, books to order for next session and then, finally, I'm free until January 7th. Yippee! On December 20th, I'll be a very relaxed guy, probably for the last time, ever. After I graduate in March, I'll have to find a job and then work for the rest of my life. Bummer. Whose idea was that?

Out of this World / Helicopter Rescue (Odyssey^2, 1979) Out of this World! is a "graviteasing" space race. A better way to describe it would be a one dimensional Lunar Lander knock-off. You control a lander module by using its retro rockets to regulate its descent to the lunar surface. Your fuel is limited, which promotes an aside subject. Armstrong and Aldrin had a similar issue when they were landing on our moon: they had a limited amount of fuel and had to find a safe place to land the Eagle. Apparently they were indeed about to run out of fuel when they managed to find a nice place to land. Would "we" (as a species) have ever come up with the "Lunar Lander" class of videogames if they'd had an easy time of it? Let's get back to the matter at hand. I should say "at thumb" because to control your descent you don't use the joystick, you just press the button to activate your retro rockets. Land at too high a velocity and your ship becomes a chunky pixel pile; take too long to land and your ship runs out of fuel, falls to the lunar surface and becomes a chunky pixel pile. After landing successfully you receive a fuel bonus and must rendevous with the orbiter module. I don't like making fun of the graphics of early games because A) it's too damn easy and B) it's besides the point. However, in this case, I must point out that the orbiter module looks like the side view of a dreidel. This is especially cool if you received the cartridge as a Hanukkah gift. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel! I made you out of little purple squares . . . So, after landing, you must take off again and join up with the Space Dreidel. This doesn't have to be like the gentle landing required to survive contact with the lunar surface. You just have to collide with the dreidel and you're good. What I don't "get" is an orbiter without a predictable period, this one seems a little random. Cool Thing: There are three gravity settings. Lunar, Mars and Jupiter. These increased gravity settings don't seem to accelerate your spacecraft's descent, but you do have to slow it down to nearly zero to prevent the pixel pile from forming when on Jupiter gravity. Helicopter Rescue! is a daring lifesaving mission! To start, you have to rescue people from the roof of the DOOMSDAY hotel which, right away, brings compelling questions concerning the sanity of anyone staying at a hotel that not only chooses DOOMSDAY as its name but also spells it in all-caps. After this sophomoric reflection on bad foreshadowing, one must proceed to pilot a helicopter. Before I bitch about the game, let me say, I loved this helicopter. You can move the helicopter up, down, right left. It doesn't tilt or give you any sense of copter control movement, but this baby does rotate. I don't mean a top down view of rotation like in Combat I mean a very smooth side view of a helicopter turning around. It is quite cool. Here is a movie of an entire rescue in action. Note the smooth rotation of the helicopter. (Dead Link. I do remember the rotation of the helicopter being exceptionally smooth, though.) It doesn't look so bad, but that's all you do! You move the chopper over to the hotel. Hold down the button to lower the basket. The person gets into the basket. Hold down the button to raise the basket. Move the chopper over to the rescue pad. Lower the basket. The person disappears. Raise the basket. Repeat. You have two minutes to perform as many rescues as you can stand. The graphics actually surpass the gameplay due to surprisingly good graphics and surprisingly stale gameplay. This has to be a first in home videogaming history. Sadly, this phenomenon has been duplicated ad infinitum, especially in recent years. Overall, I can only roll my eyes. If they could do the cool copter graphics in the Helicopter game, why couldn't they have improved the graphics for Out of this World? Why couldn't they have added some thruster or gravity elements to Helicopter Rescue? Both games seem like half a design. I wish they'd combined them somehow into a single game that was more fun.

I find it hard lately to take screenshots of games for which I know screenshots and even well crafted home movies already exist. I also find it to be a little off-putting to my actually sitting down and trying to play a game, thinking "okay, I'll need to take some pictures of this". For now, I'm going to stop worrying about the visuals for these entries and simply "blog". Invaders from Hyperspace (Odyssey^2, 1979) Freaky game. You and your co-player are protecting two planetary systems from alien attack. The two systems each consist of four planets orbiting a central planet. At the start of a game, each player has a system colored to match their ship. The red ship starts out with four red planets orbiting a single red planet and the yellow ship starts out with the identical yellow compliment. Two enemy ships, one colored purple and the other colored green, suddenly warp into the screen space and start shooting planets. Every shot that hits a planet cycles that planet through a selection of colors. Each enemy ship is trying to turn your planets to their color. In fact if you do nothing with your ship, (let it be destroyed or just land on a matching colored planet and stay there) the enemy ships will start to fight with each other regarding how the planets should be colored. It's not all about decorating choices. Having a planet with a color that matches your ship gives you a place to hide and a place to resurrect after your ship is destroyed by either the enemies or your co-player. Let's talk about your co-player, the little booger. This is not a cooperative game. Your goal is to kill 10 of the alien ships before your co-player does the same. If that means knocking him out every chance you have in order to reach 10 kills, then so be it. No, there's no points for killing the other player, but it does take them out of the action for a little while and leave the tasty point causing alien ships all for yourself. This game is more fun with another person, especially if they understand that it's nothing personal when you kill them repeatedly while leaving them no friendly planet on which to regenerate. This can be fun! While it sounds a little abusive, be aware that though you may have eliminated a place for your co-player to regenerate, chances are an enemy ship will make one for him as it shoots the planets and cycles them through their color pallettes. Some cute touches to this game. If you run into a planet that's the same color as your ship, you get to "dock" with the planet and you are protected there. While you may be protected, however, you aren't earning any points. If you run into a planet that is a different color than you are, it results in your mutual destruction. You will eventually resurrect on a matching colored planet, but the planet you just ran into is gone for good. There are eight such destructable planets. The central planet of each of the two systems is invulnerable. The goal of the single player game is to keep as many planets alive as you can while racking up the enemy kills to 10. Which means the best one can do on single player is not running into any planets and leaving all eight of them intact. It's not very difficult and much more fun to have a pain in the ass human controlled competitor trying to peg you every chance they get. We had some fun with this game--particularly yelling at each other for changing a planet's color (we're a red planet! a peaceful planet! we don't want to be yellow!) and there was always an enemy ship, planet or co-player to avoid or fire at. I'll give this game a "smile" rating, because we enjoyed it.

Alpine Skiing, (Odyssey^2, 1979) Unless I'm forgetting a game, we haven't seen a Skiing game in a home videogame context since 1972! Skiing for the Magnavox Odyssey was fun for its day in a Zen sort of way. Alpine Skiing is less fun but has some perks. I wonder what made them choose the Alps? Why not Andes or Himalayian Skiing? First perk: it's two player, simultaneous. Points to any game that attempts to force people to play together, even if it the overall experience is mediocre. Good games lead to happy bonding opportunities; bad games lead to shared suffering, which is also a type of bonding opportunity. Second perk which really part of the first perk, Alpine skiing gives us a pseudo-split-screen slolom course with alternating red and blue gates. Player one and two share the same randomly generated course but each on their own, private half-a-screen. From the top center of their respective side, players pull back on the joystick and try to steer their skiers through gates that come up from the bottom of the screen. The gates look like trees or mushrooms, depending on how your Rorschach swings that day and can be oriented either horizontal or vertical. You'll either have to make your skier go through them from side to side or from top to bottom. The action button makes you go about 30% faster but usually has the effect of making us crash into the next gate quicker. The idea is to get through the course in the shortest amount of time while passing through each of the 55 gates. If you miss one, then it just becomes a matter of who gets the least amount of gate misses. It's almost like a driving game, in that one must steer through a course, but unlike Bally's Dodge 'Em or Atari's Street Racer (hey, which also had a skiing title in it somewhere) your skier has vertical and horizontal velocity components rather than an ability to simply strafe left or right with a paddle twist. As the skier turns to go left, it slows down like a real skier would and take a little time to establish the pre-turn speed again. My son and I aren't able to get the hang of this, and find our little skiers careening down the slope, constantly missing the gates, or hitting the sides of them. My son likes to take his skier over to my side of the screen and act like he's cheating or something by trying to trip me. Though the sprites can overlap, the skier images can't actually interact, so while he's harassing me, his course violation count just keeps rising. The fact that we can cross over to each other's side makes the split screen screen seem a "pseudo" instead of a "bona fide" split. What is cool about the split is that the sides can maintain two seperate "hill speeds", in other words the gate mushrooms can move up faster or slower on one side than the other, so one player can hit the finish line while the other player is still breaking their little virtual neck, over and over, like some tragic figure in Greek mythology. I'm going to rate this a "meh." It isn't awful, but it isn't too much fun either. I should mention that we do like the way the skier falls on its face after hitting a gate. Yeah, so, maybe we are sociopaths, what's your point? Next time we'll play the Hockey / Soccer cart for the Odyssey^2. Computer Intro part 0001 Getting a little deeper into Computer Intro, it should be noted that in addition to allowing one to program with hexadecimal codes, one may also program in Odyssey's assembly language. So, instead of typing two lines with 60 and then 13 you can type it all at once "LDV.0.13" which, I think, is "load register 0 with 13". The Computer Intro manual has backflaps with the codes and pictures of all the little built-in characters made for the Odyssey^2. I'm not sure if Computer Intro will give us a way to make our own characters, but I think it might allow us to choose one of the built-in graphics and move it around. I'll try putting in the first sample program for the next entry.

This review bears no relation to the Kiss album from 1979 with the same name. That album came out in 1979 and now it's after 2000, man. For you Kiss fans, it doesn't take x-ray eyes to see that despite their charisma they could be accused of dirty livin'. If you get the joke then you sure know something. Yes, even in hard times, I've got a magic touch. Hah! I know, I'm hysterical, but save your love for the Odyssey^2. I've been reorganizing my "house of doom" into a single "wall of doom", i.e. trying to get all of my videogame stuff on display and immediately accessible. I'll have some pictures of this work in progress for another entry so please look forward to it. In the meantime, it's about time I fire up the Chronogame machine and do some old games. Dynasty (Odyssey^2, 1979) Like the APF MP1000 game, Catena, before it, Dynasty is a videogame version of the board game known as Othello to some and apparently Go to others. I've heard so much about the ancient game, Go, but I've never actually played it to confirm just how closely it resembles Othello. Regardless, the Dynasty manual says it is based on Go, but if any of you have played Othello then you know this game. Like Catena, there is a computer opponent for you in Dynasty. I'm certainly not a ranked Othello player but I know when I'm facing an inferior opponent and the computer player for this game was pretty easy to beat. Graphics-wise the colors of the opposing armies are easy to distinguish, and they even supply a different colored version for TVs that could only produce a black and white picture. Hmm, some of you young folk out there might not understand what I mean by that. Once upon a time, TV was only in black and white, though, technically, it was actually "greyscale". At one point, color TV was available, but Black and White TVs were still cheaper to produce and purchase. An Atari VCS has a switch to convert its games to black and white for easier visibility on a black and white TV set. Some of the later games may ignore this switch and use it for other features (I don't remember which ones do), but originally, it was for the cheaper black and white TVs that a kid probably had in their bedroom. Y'know I had a black and white TV in my bedroom, but I don't think I ever played my Atari VCS on it. Damn, what a missed opportunity. Aside: I do remember watching my in-room B&W TV set late night on December 8, 1980. I remember The Tonight Show getting interrupted by a special report that told me John Lennon had been murdered outside a New York City hotel. True Story. Anyway, it is pretty cool that there was a black and white version of Dynasty on the cart in case it was hard to distinguish the default colors on a black and white screen. Gameplay is painless. When it is your turn, you move a cursor around the board and select the spot in which you want to place your "army". The CPU does the same, but, of course, does it much quicker. The manual boasts that it can make 100,000 electronic decisions a second! For some reason, I don't think this will be the last time I hear that boast about this system. Another feature of Dynasty is that, in two player mode, it allows a timer to be set for a more advanced player, a timer that only runs during the advanced player's turn. So, if I were to play my son, I might give myself a time limit of maybe three minutes and my son would win the game if I didn't beat him in three minutes. It's a nice feature and one that wasn't in the APF version. The sound effects are inoffensive and harmless, there really is no animation to speak of, but the graphics serve their purpose just fine. All in all, there's nothing to dislike about this game other than the slightly IQ challenged AI. If I really wanted to play me some Othello, I'd probably rather get the board game itself and play someone face to face, but lacking an opponent, this game serves its purpose well. Next entry, I think I'll check out Alpine Skiing. Computer Intro, part 0000 As I play through the 1979 Odyssey^2 games, I'm going to try to spend a little time each entry looking at Computer Intro, a cartridge that will supposedly allow me to program simple games into my Odyssey^2. First of all, let me commend this system for the Computer Intro manual (recently purchased from Zach Meston, thanks Zach!). The manual is a friendly, simple introduction to Assembly Language programming. How many books were out in 1979 that were actually friendly introductions to Assembly Language progamming? The introduction explains a lot of neat things about computers, how big they used to be, how much smaller they got, how much faster they'll get and how much information they'll be able to handle someday. (I think their estimates are based, in part, on Moore's Law, which would be appropriate since there were Intel chips in the Odyssey if I'm not mistaken.) The first example starts off by diving right into hexadecimal programming (!!!). It has you start a program with the opcode "60" which is for "Load Register 0." This thing lets you talk to the freakin' processor!! Is that cool or what? When I think about the money my parents spent on the Atari Keyboard Controllers and my copy of Atari Basic Programming, I cringe at how much more I would've learned had I been given an Odyssey^2 with a copy of Computer Intro. This is pretty exciting stuff and I say that with no irony in my tone what-so-ever. How many people around here got their start programming on an Odyssey^2 back in the day? Anyway, very excited about this. How come this wasn't called "Computer Intro!" ? (Where's the exclamation point?)

After my last entry, two very generous individuals offered to lend me their Space Destroyers cartridge!!! Fortunately, one of them lives right here in Austin, TX, not far from me! We met in a McDonalds parking lot and exchanged the warez (I gave him APF instructions as collateral. He's actually buying my whole APF Collection when I return Space Destroyers.) I brought it home and experienced the awe and wonder of a really good Space Invaders clone on the APF MP1000. Space Destroyers (APF, MP1000) This is a simple port of the arcade game, Space Invaders. I say "simple" because it doesn't try to add anything to the original, it merely emulates it and does a damn good job. The movie below is nine seconds of it in action, but beware, its almost 3 megabytes big! (Can you imagine how frickin' huge 3 megabytes must've seemed back in 1979?) (DEAD LINK to movie. I'm so ashamed. Oh goodness. Someday I hope I'll recover these. Someday I hope I just make YouTube videos about all of this stuff but honestly I do like the sound of my own typing much more than I like the sound of my own voice.) The sound effects are perfectly cromulent. The gameplay is as close to the original as one would want it. I did notice slight slow downs when there was one Invader left zipping across and a shot traveling up the screen. Other than that, I'd say, "perfect." Let me show you an odd thing about this cartridge. See how much bigger it is than the cart featuring our old friend, Hangin' Chad? Yeah, I know, but it gets weirder. The thing is: All the APF carts other than Space Destroyers are the same size and they were all packaged in a generic green box which had no game identifiers on it. (Just like the boxes for the Bally Professional Arcade carts.) Yet, all of the boxes seem designed to fit cartridges the size of the Space Destroyers cart. According to the gentleman that loaned me the Space Destroyers cart, he's got a few of the boxes for the other APF carts and Space Destroyers fits them perfectly. Oh, so another neat thing about this cart. It conveniently has a list of all the other carts that came out which work with the APF MP1000 consoles. Here's another odd thing, which I've mentioned before. My APF MP1000 console has Rocket Patrol built into it. From everything I've read, the APF M1000 didn't have Rocket Patrol built in. Yet, My APF MP1000 console is labeled "M1000." Which either means it is labeled wrong, or we don't know what the real difference between an APF M1000 and an APF MP1000 is. One last oddity is that, like a few other carts, Space Destroyers says it will only work on the MP1000. Yet, here it is working. So, go figure. Before I wrap up things for the APF, there are some errata in previous posts about some of the games, that I need to straighten out. Blackjack: I found instructions for Blackjack. Once I learned how to do something besides take a hit, the game was much more pleasant. It can deal up to FOUR decks which breaks previous deck holding records on other BJ carts! It offers you insurance when the dealer has a face up. You can win if you have five cards that don't go over 21. Boxing: I mentioned before that there are three AI driven boxing opponents with different alliterative names yet indistinguishable fighting habits. THAT was an incorrect statement. I played it again yesterday and say that each computer opponent has a boxing style primarily concerned with their offense. Horrible Harry punches every 3rd beat. (one, two, PUNCH, one, two, PUNCH). Slugging Sam swings every other beat (one, punch, one, punch) and Jabbing Joe stabs at the air every beat (jab, jab, jab, jab). Just thought I'd mention it as I wasn't kind when I spoke of the variation in opponents before. (Hey, it'd been a month or so since I'd played it. Gimme a break.) EDIT: Just added some pictures. Just got back from selling the APF. *sniff* It's the first time I've sold off a collection for a particular system in one big fell swoop! Now I have to work on selling my RCA Studio II stuff. Well, for the last time, I end the APF. I can't say the same for 1978 because if I ever get a Telstar Arcade or a Coleco Combat (or even just get to play one of them) then we'll have to warp back here again. I'm still waiting to play Atari PONG on a model C-100, too. Anyway, one last shot of the little family of carts.

For those of you playing along at home this is Videocart #21-Bowling, for the Zircon Channel F. I wonder if they actually changed its name to the "Zircon Channel-F"? All of the carts released during what is known among Channel F fans as "The Zircon Era" have the Zircon Empire's name and address on the back of the cart. I'll scan a picture of it one of these days. Bowling (Channel F, 1979) The Title (system, year) format was one of the ways of presenting the cart title that Flack suggested, and I like it. Thanks Flack! We've seen a few interpretations of Bowling over the years. RCA Studio II, APF and the Odyssey^2 all had their own takes on the sport. It was one of the few games that didn't suck completely on the RCA Studio II and the other two systems didn't exactly get it wrong either. It felt like I wasn't able to do splits on those systems, though, that could mean I'm just not very good at splits. I could never do seven-ten splits in real life, either. Channel-F Bowling gets all the technical aspects of the sport correct. The scoring is accurate, no "15-for-a-spare-30-for-a-strike" fudging here. The game keeps track of the pins you earn after a spare or a strike and adds them appropriately. It also handles splits. I was surprised when I was able to spare a seven-ten-six split. They don't show the six (or is the four?) pin sliding over from the right to knock the seven, but the seven pin did go down. Also, like every other Bowling game, it is possible to curve the ball. At any point after you roll it, you initiate a hook or a slice by pushing the joystick the way you want the ball to go. You can't un-do the curve either, so you have to be careful not to curve the ball when you initially roll it, or it will go straight into the gutter. Hmm, gutter. That reminds me, I'd better talk about the graphics. The graphics are Channel-F level graphics. (I'll post screenshots later, so check back often!) The pins look like air hockey paddles, which is better than just a square. In fact, I bring up the pins because they were Good Thing. The rest of it was very sparse, like PONG sparse. The designers did go the extra mile by providing a frame record at the top right of the screen, displaying the strikes, spares and opens for each frame played. So overall, points away for graphics, but points added for screen layout. The thing about Channel-F Bowling that didn't work the most, was the speed of the ball and the fact it can't be adjusted. It's fast, especially for my four year old. It was hard for her to get a bead on it when she was preparing to roll it and it was hard for her to curve it when she wanted to, once it went sailing up the alley. I'm not saying that this makes the game bad, per se, but it makes it harder to play with my kids, which is bad. CORRECTION! EDIT: Actually what's bad is trying to play these games without having directions for game settings. The speed of the ball CAN be changed! We were playing 2 player and I must've been hitting speed 2 in response to the "S?" question, thinking it had no effect (the directions on the cart say nothing about it). But G=2 and S=1 was fine for my little girl, provided she didn't twist the joystick around the wrong way and throw everything into the gutter. /EDIT Also on this cartridge is a Bowling variation called Splits. In Splits the program sets up random configurations of shots that can be hard to make. It's a neat idea and makes for good practice. I gotta give them credit for including it on a Bowling cart first. Despite this addition, this isn't the title I'd pop in if I wanted to play a Bowling game. In the Bowling system wars, I'm going to have to consider the Odyssey^2 to currently hold the title of "Best Bowling Game, So Far". Odyssey^2 Bowling is pretty, has a four player option and is the most fun. Next entry it's back to the MESS emulator for Slot Machine.

Checkers (Channel F, 1979) This was what the U.S. got instead of the Saba Schach game I wrote of a few days ago. Checkers? Don't misunderstand me, I like the game of checkers, it's what most people learn before moving on to Chess and I'm no exception. The US gets Checkers and not Chess? It just seems wrong, insulting even. How does it rate as a checkers game? Not bad. The controls make enough sense that one can jump right in. My only complaint is that the AI always gets to go first and there's no option for two people to play against each other. Of course, the big plus is there IS an AI to play against! It just isn't a huge challenge and I'm not aware of any difficulty settings that can be changed. It should be noted that I don't have the Checkers cart. It's pretty rare and the few times I've seen it on ebay it was in big lots with other stuff and was going for a pretty penny. A pretty penny I wasn't willing to part with, especially since it was emulated well enough for a game of Checkers. With regards to sound: Thankfully, there's very little sound. What they do choose to use is really annoying. When the computer player picks a piece to move, the piece blinks and you hear a high pitched "beep beep beep". I don't know if it would be so painful coming out of the actual console, but coming out of my TV it hurt me the first time I heard it. I turned the volume way down after that. Here's the screens from the MESS version. Nothing terribly impressive to look at but not un-fun to play. If you're a kid and no one wants to play checkers with you, this isn't a bad cart to have. Next entry, we go Bowling!!!

The 1978-1979 school year was significant for me. Other than seven people to whom I'm related, I no longer know anyone I'd ever met prior to the school year of 1978-79. Anyone I knew, peers or otherwise, before that school year, is either dead or is now 28 years in the past and I've got no hope of getting in touch with them and even less hope that they'll remember me. I almost got into just how many friends I've made and kept each year since 1979, but the amount stops growing in 1991 and has remained exceedingly small ever since. Now, before I depress myself, what the fuck was my point . . . ? I had one, I swear. Oh, yeah, the Videogame line-up of 1979!!! Anyone with whom I've ever played a videogame, other than my family, I met after 1979. That's all I wanted to say. I honestly had no intention of getting into counting the number of friends I've made since then but what a nice, cheery way to start an entry! In 1979 there were still five, count 'em, FIVE systems on sale to the general public: the Atari VCS, Odyssey^2 by Magnavox, The Bally Professional Arcade, the ??? Channel F and the APF M1000. The APF M1000, or MP1000, was about to morph into the Imagination Machine in 1980 and then it would die a horrible death. 1979 marks the last year a game was released for just the original console portion and that game was: Space Destroyers (APF MP1000, 1979) which I don't have, so don't even go there. Fairchild Semiconductor stopped selling the Channel F in the US in 1978. A company named Zircon bought the rights and began selling the system with seven games that hadn't been released previously. According to some sources I've read, Zircon did this in 1982, other sources say 1979. Have I kept track of those sources? No, because, damn it, I'm a time traveller, not a frackin' historian. For the sake of getting the Channel F "out of the way" as well as keeping it out of the log jam of systems that's going to occur farther down the timestream in 1982, we'll be covering its remaing US games, this year, with two special mystery games, one from across space and the other from across time. Zircon Channel F #19 Checkers #21 Bowling #22 Slot Machine #23 Galactic Space Wars #24 Pro Football #25 Casino Poker #26 Alien Invasion The other two are surprises, but you won't have to wait too long. No, I'm not telling you right now! You'll have to wait. Or guess. And, no, they've got nothing to do with porn! Jeez, ya pervs . . . Bally Professional Arcade had a short year, but it was easy to find almost all of them. Amazin' Maze / Tic-Tac-Toe Astro Battle aka Space Invaders Bally Pin aka Astrocade Pinball Blackjack / Poker / Acey Deucey Star Battle Odyssey^2 had a fair sized crop. Alpine Skiing Computer Intro Dynasty Hockey / Soccer Invaders from Hyperspace I've Got Your Number Out of this World / Helecopter Rescue Showdown in 2100 A.D. Thunderball War of Nerves And last, but certainly not, well, you know, the Atari Video Computer System had a biggish year: Backgammon BASIC Programming Bowling Canyon Bomber Casino Football Human Cannonball Miniature Golf Sky Diver Slot Machine Superman Video Chess Now, there's been some question about many of the Atari games and the actual year of the release vs. copyright date. For instance, Superman is copyright 1978 by Atari but 1979 by DC comics. Maybe they wrote it in 1978 and got permission to release under DC license in 1979? I have no idea. I went through Atari Age and the Digital Press Collector's Guide for my dates, I wrote down the games for that year and moved on. I wasn't Mr. ErrorChecker. So, if there's a game in the wrong year, please let me know. I won't necessarily move it, but I'm curious enough to know about it. I'll say it again, mostly to remind myself, this is for fun. If I spent too much time playing historian I'd never get to play anything. Speaking of history, as I understand it, the Intellivision was only test marketed in 1979 and only in Fresno, California. It didn't go nationwide until 1980. So, despite all the games with 1979 copyrights, I'm not playing INTV until we start 1980. Back in October, I said I'd be done 1978 by Thanksgiving 2005. ROFLMFAO! I guess I'm neither psychic nor very smart. I'll finish when I finish, but it may get a little tricky over the summer with some other stuff going on. Next entry we'll skip right over the APF MP1000 (I don't have the one cart, Space Destroyers, from 1979) to the Channel F's first Mystery Game! Be sure not to avoid it!

Bally Pin (Bally Professional Arcade, 1979) Off the top of my head, I'd have to say Bally Pin is the most fun we've had on the Bally Professional Arcade yet, and it's possibly the most addictive fun we've had with a videogame in our chronology thus far. Like the various videogame portings of Baseball, Black Jack or Hangman represent attempts to mix the older school leisures of sports, cards and puzzle games into the new past-time on the block, so too, does the attempt to forcibly integrate Pinball with its younger sibling, the Videogame. Ports of Baseball, Black Jack or Hangman may not always hit their mark in the fun zone, but their technical accuracy usually isn't very far off. Pinball, on the other hand, seems to have evaded capture. Looking at some of the previous translations of Pinball into the videogame realm, we find Atari Video Pinball (dedicated console, 1977), APF's Pinball (APF M1000, 1978), Fairchild's Video Pinball (Channel F, 1978) and Thunderball (Odyssey^2, 1979). The Atari Video Pinball console (un-chronogamed as of yet, sorry) and APF's Pinball each have their little pluses and big minuses, the minuses having to do with their failed attempts to simulate flippers. Channel F's Video Pinball isn't even pinball, it's a Breakout clone; mention it not. Thunderball for the Odyssey^2 is just too fast for me to appreciate, though, it at least makes an attempt to get the flippers right. As I've said before, I am not a person who plays pinball in the real world. Other than a few games of Eight Ball at a bowling alley back in 1979, I've since, more or less intentionally, limited my exposure due to a lack of interest. Bally Pin makes Pinball interesting to me again. Rather than feeling like each flipper is merely a gate keeper designed to prevent the ball from leaving play, the flippers on Bally Pin are implemented in such a way that they can be used to actually direct the ball to an intended destination. This adds greatly to the feeling that one is playing a game rather than passively participating in a pachinko session. There's still a luck factor, but for the first time it feels like skill and intent have something to do with a high score. Bally Pin comes with two pinball playfields: Red and Yellow. Yellow seems like the easier field, but that's just my opinion. Each field has traditional pinball elements in them: targets, drop targets, bumpers and spinners. The targets light the bumpers. Hit all the targets during one ball and you increase your score multiplier. The targets and lit bumpers reset at the beginning of each ball, so, to lose your ball is to lose your target progress. Unlike the targets, the drop targets stay hit between balls. Eventually, if you drop them all by hitting them, you'll get a score multiplier. Only after clearing all of the drop targets do they reset. The spinner doesn't seem to do anything. We thought it would rotate the bumper lights, or reset some of the drop targets, but we haven't yet observed such behavior. The flippers and the plunger are the only devices the player manipulates to directly affect the course of the ball. Regrettably, there is no "nudge" simulator, though players should feel free to contort themselves in an attempt to do so, as it amuses the other players. Before ball launch, the plunger moves up and down in its slot. For a "low force" introduction of the ball, you activate the plunger at the top of its oscillation, for a high force ball injection you activate the plunger at the low point in its oscillation. I know we will again see this player-reflex technique of allowing a player to choose the amount of force to be applied in a particular context in the future, but I can't recall seeing it before. This may be an innovation unless I'm forgetting something in one of the golf games. There are four flippers. Two left flippers and two right. The controls for activating these flippers are so awesome that I'm going to give them their own paragraph! If you're not familiar with the Bally Professional Arcade controller then you should be told that they are thought of as "pistol grip" controllers; they are actually shaped how I imagine the handle of a Colt .45 is shaped. The fire button is in the spot where the trigger of a gun would be and one activates it with very much the same finger motion one would use to fire a gun. The joystick portion extends slightly up from the grip and doubles as an 8-way joystick/paddle combination. Not only can one move the joystick in eight directions, one may also twist the knob like a paddle. So, how is a controller such as this used to play Bally Pin? Well, to be quite honest, a controller isn't used at all, instead we use two! Each controller's trigger acts as a flipper button! It is quite effective as a control mechanism for pinball. Of course, Bally Pin is more than its controllers. The ball and flipper movement is smooth, the ball speed is manageable, the playfield goals are readily apparent (take out the targets). Instead of merely trying to keep the ball in play, the player can increase their scoring capacity by clearing the drop targets or by lighting all the bumpers with their targets to achieve a 2x or 3x score multiplier. It's very engaging and very addictive. My entire family participated in a four-player game last night, and I didn't even have to coax or beg them to play again. Really! They simply wanted to, even in spite of the brand new Wii sitting in the next room! So, we didn't merely "like" Bally Pin, we heartily enjoyed it. I'd name it something like "game of the decade" but that might imply that I liked it more than Superman which I also like a lot, but for different reasons. Unlike many of the games we've played, Bally Pin is something the whole family wants to play again. I just asked if anyone wants to play this afternoon and my son, daughter and wife each said "yes" with enthusiasm! So, there we have it. The 1970s are over, in the sense that after 1979 no more years have the words "nineteen" and "seventy" in their pronunciation. Thus ends the first phase of Chronogamer. I hope to start the next phase, 1980-1984, soon. I'll post a list of everything I think I need to be playing in 1980 when I'm ready to get started in the next phase. Thanks for everyone's kind words of encouragement during this exercise in drooling self-delusion. With the exception of parenting and marriage, Chronogaming--researching, acquiring, playing and writing about these games--has probably represented the most focused attention I've ever given a single project in my entire life. I can't think of anything I've ever started that's lasted more than two continuous years while still "getting done"! This doesn't say much for me as a project manager, I guess, but it certainly says, um, something. I won't be updating this blog for a little while, but feel free to drop by www.chronogaming.com as I try to convert this blog into a less siteware dependent format. (ie, should a site stop providing blogspace, I'll still have a place to put all of this.) Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to see people at CGE. 12700 EDIT: added "to me again" when I say Bally Pin makes pinball interesting. I did think Eight Ball was interesting for all the reasons I like Bally Pin, just not as interesting as videogames were to me back in 1979 (when I wanted an Atari soooo badly, but didn't have one yet). Playing Bally Pin has made me re-understand Pinball's appeal.

Black Jack/Acey Deucey/Poker (Bally Professional Arcade, 1979) Death and Taxes. And Blackjack. With the exception of the Magnavox Odyssey, Black Jack has appeared on every cart-based, home videogame system released in the United States thus far (up to 1979). It is surpassed in its occurances only by versions of Baseball which also appeared on the Magnavox Odyssey while a version of Black Jack did not. I'm probably covering old ground here, but when confronted with so many different Black Jacks I have to wonder: Why is Black Jack such a game which companies think they have to produce, when a deck of cards will do just fine? Why do they think consumers will be willing to spend $20 on a game cart? The only thing I can come up with is that, it's Black Jack on your television!! ... which must be reason enough. Since the Black Jack carts for most systems are readily available in the second-hand markets of the future, it seems safe to say that they sell fairly well. However, it's hard to recreate any anticipation for Black Jack videogames in my modern brain, though I'm doing my best to think as though I'm "living in the moment." Black Jack allows up to 4 players. Las Vegas rules apply with a few exceptions. For instance, spliting a pair can't occur in games with more than two players due to limited screen real estate. Unlike games for many of the other systems, which have used two, three and even four decks of cards, Bally Black Jack only uses one deck which it shuffles whenever it needs to but always before a hand. That's something I never seem to remember to do when I'm dealing Black Jack; guess I'll never deal Vegas. Betting in Black Jack, as well as the other two games, is handled by the knob and the joystick. Keeping the stick straight lets you rotate the knob through the numbers in the 10s column of your bet. Pushing the stick forward gives you the 100s column. Pulling the stick back lets you pick a number in the 1000s column. It's a clever use of the Bally's unique controller and I'm glad they chose it over their keyboard. Black Jack is Black Jack. Nothing more, nothing less. The presentation is nice, in fact, the cards are probably the nicest we've seen so far, even nudging the APF MP1000 out of the top spot for Black Jack graphics. However, it's still Black Jack and only worth a few yawns unless you're a big fan. In my opinion, Acey-Deucy is much more interesting than Black Jack, but only with three or four players. Initially, I was expecting a completely different game, but I'm glad I was wrong. It isn't the Backgammon variation I had expected, as is the Acey-Deucey on the Channel F's Backgammon cart, instead, this is a variation of the card game known as "In Between". Each player gets a pair of cards and has to bet against the pot for their next card to fall between the cards in their hand. In the screenshot above, you can see that Player2 is screwed, Player1 has a slim chance and Player3 should bet as high as he can. Of course, he can only bet against what is in the pot already ($10 of which was his ante), so the most he can win would be a "net" of $20. The players ante up $10 each every hand, so the pot increases steadily even if nobody bets. Having a "good pair" doesn't mean you're going to win big cash unless there's already big cash in the pot. For it to get "interesting" players need to bet a little bit each round, even on pairs that are less likely to win. As the pot grows, the pressure is felt to take larger risks and try to win the pot before one of the other players does. The pot sort of adds an "arc" to game play. You're not just concerned with an individual hand, you're concerned with how large the pot is growing and how well your opponents are doing. It is kind of like Poker, just less complex and without bluffing. Speaking of Poker, this cart also has Poker for two to four players (no computer player, just a computer dealer). "Five card draw, all see-um" would be how I'd describe this Poker variation. A player sets the bet at a certain level and the other player can "see" it or "raise" it, by setting their bets at the appropriate amounts. There are three rounds of betting, which is quite sufficient as everyone is able to see each other's cards. The winner of the hand collects all of the bets from the other players but there's no explicit "pot" in the middle of the playfield like there was in Acey-Deucey. The betting does have some psychology to it, but there's no bluffing, per se. One may attempt to goad another player into folding by simply pointing out their visible-to-all hand sucks and that it is unlikely to improve. To fold, one just simply decides not to raise their bet to the amount the others have raised theirs. The screenshot above is an example of a player who has folded and turned her cards over. Nice card backs, eh? The game uses an interesting mechanism to allow players to exchange their cards, and is shown in the movie, linked below. Bally Poker Draw Movie (4 MB) See the upwards scrolling card moving left to right? When that card moving through the yellow center is over or under a card which a player would like to exchange, they pull their trigger and that card is replaced. I thought it was a neat method to allow simultaneous drawing. Over all, Bally's Black Jack / Acey Deucey / Poker is a nice package. Any offering that supports up to four players gets points in my book. There's nothing about which I would choose to complain, other than the obvious, and that's the fact that a deck of cards would be cheaper and can be configured to play an even larger selection of games. The last game of the 1970s will be Bally Pin. 12450

Star Battle (Bally Pro Arcade, 1979) Two years ago, back in 1977, a little movie called Star Wars was released. People who made videogames noticed this and immediately began coming up with videogame scenarios from it. One of the first games inspired by Star Wars for a home videogame console is Star Battle for the Bally Professional Arcade. I don't know if I'm just tired or if my second week of being caffeine-free is just lowering my IQ even further, but I'm at a loss to adequately describe this game. So, I've made a little quicktime movie of it . . . Here. (ugh another dead link. this is entirely my fault.) The movie should give you the basic idea of the playfield's simulated 3-d effect, but, because I only have two hands and one of them was holding the camera, I'm afraid it doesn't show you any of the actual game play. You're essentially playing in a simplified representation of the Death Star's equatorial "trench" from the last action sequence of Star Wars. There's no exhaust port in this version, however, and the entire game is about the dogfight between you and the other fighter. Both fighters bear a distinct, non-coincidental resemblance to ships from the movie. One is obviously the silhouette of a Tie Fighter and the other is the simplified rear view of an X-wing. The movement mechanic is a little confusing. The controller allows a player to steer their craft horizontally, and lets them accelerate/decelerate when the knob is pushed forwards or pulled backwards, respectively. By slowing down, a player positions their craft at the bottom of the screen and "closer" (bigger) to the viewpoint of the game's camera. By speeding up, the craft moves to the top of the screen and "farther away" (smaller) from player's perspective. The object of the game is for a player to move their craft to a position, either behind or ahead of the opponent so that they can shoot them down. The challenge is that when the opponent speeds up, it not only pushes his craft to the higher, "ahead" position, it also puts the other player's craft in the lower, "behind" position, whether they want it there or not. (assume "vice versa") In other words, when you choose to slow down or speed up, you're doing so relative to your opponent's speed, as you both jockey for a good shot while continuously traveling down the trench all the time with the effective illusion of traveling at a high speed. Now, when I say "effective illusion" I mean, "most effective to date". I can't think of anything that we've played so far that has been as successful in achieving the feeling of forward motion. Night Driver in the arcades did a pretty good job of it, and Datsun 280Zzzap, also on the Bally Pro Arcade, managed to achieve the effect somewhat, but Star Battle does it the best so far, in my opinion. The shots the players fire follow the orientation of the trench, giving the appearance of going into or coming out of a location further down the trench rather than merely traversing the screen straight up/down or left/right. When combined with the scaling of the craft as they move ahead or fall behind, it makes for a nice, quick-feeling, two-player, pseudo 3-d game. There's also a single player version, so you can practice the pretend killing of your imperial/rebel scum friend when they're not there. The tactics aren't very deep, and mostly involve trying to quickly aim and fire while trying to feint your position intention. Despite their lack of depth, playing these tactics well can lead to some pretty satisfying kills, especially when your opponent does exactly what you expected them to do. There's only time for a quick "Ha!" before they reappear on the screen and start gunning for you again, but it can be a satisfying "Ha!" Like many games on the Bally, the players get to customize what constitutes a winning score -- anything from 1 to 99. We usually played to 10. It's not a big deal, but being able to set the length of the game is a very nice touch that I don't think the 2600 or the Odyssey^2 offers. As always, the Bally's sound doesn't disappoint. Each player has a distinct sound for their shots, the explosion of a ship is a good rumble (at least on my TV) and there's a special deflection sound on the rare instance of shots colliding and canceling each other out. Overall, I give the game a . There's not much to it, but the presentation is well done and Star Battle is the only game to date that offers you the chance to pilot an X-wing or a Tie-fighter. Oh, and by the way, during our play session for this entry, we went back and played the built-in game, Checkmate, a few times. It just never gets old for us! Only two games left in the 197xs! Next we'll do Black Jack / Acey Deucy / Poker. 11,810