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Backgammon (Intellivision, 1980) Sadly, I've been dreading having to play this game. Like most games I dread playing (sports, for instance) it's a great hinderance to moving forward with chronogaming. So, tonight, I had a spare hour or so (family goes to bed before I do on most nights) and decided to get over this little hump in my chronology. Boy do I feel stupid for having put it off. This is a well designed version of backgammon. The play field, like the play field for Roulette, is very easy to read. The keypad and disc is used to play. The dice rolls, use the disc to select a piece and choose the number on the keypad available from your on-screen die roll to move. When done, press "enter", and the game continues. Press "clear" to start the turn over. Press "8" to reset, if it just looks hopeless. It's a really simple and clean interface. My only complaint, is that when selecting pieces with the disc, you can only move around the selectable pieces clockwise (unless my disc is just busted). This is slightly annoying if you overshoot the piece you wish to select, otherwise, very easy to figure out what to do, even without an overlay or manual. Seems whenever I have to play a backgammon video game, I have to relearn how to play the game itself. Took me half of the first game to figure out what the hell was going on, and then three more games to get the hang of it again. I finally won the fifth game, and I will say it was a simple, satisfying pleasure to do so -- somewhere between skipping a rock all the way across the surface of a pond and getting a channel tuned in perfectly just before a TV show starts (from back when that sort of thing was an appreciated art). If you like backgammon, you should dig this version of it, which, as far as I know, is the last version of Backgammon to come out for a home videogame console... (someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, please, I'm pulling it out of my head and haven't actually looked that up.) Backgammon is one of those games that has been around a very long time, and Supercat once pointed out something about the game that made me appreciate it more. It's all about being able to see the probability of getting the right dice rolls to position your pieces to lower the chances of your opponent to be able to advance. Okay, he didn't say it that way, he was explaining something about the doubling cube, but it lead me to that insight. I'm still not any good at playing it, but I no longer dismiss it. Jeez, I don't even have my "left to play on Intellivision in 1980" list around... which means the next entry will be a surprise! (32934)

NBA Basketball (Intellivision, 1980) Wow, I've started and stopped writing this entry about five times. I'm just not sure what to say about this game. Like the era in which this game was born, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to compare it to the Atari Basketball title that proceeded it. As George Plimpton might've said, NBA basketball is clearly more sophisticated and lifelike than its Atari counterpart. There are three players on each team, instead of one, and you can pass the ball to your artificially intelligent team members. You can block shots, and you can choose to shoot either with a set shot or a jump shot. At first glance, when comparing the feature set of Intellivision's B-ball offering to Atari's, you'd think that Intellivision's game is the superior. In fact, I'm not going to argue that NBA Basketball isn't the superior version. However, I will say it was a lot easier to sit down and start having fun with Atari Basketball than it was with this title. Like all Intellivision sports titles, the manual is terrific, (and if you want to win, read that booklet! ) There are four speeds, "play ground", "high school", "college" and "pro". While the learning curve isn't what I would call "steep", it's still a little curvy so we started out in "play ground" mode to get our heads in the game. "Play ground" mode is pretty damn slow. So slow, in fact, that we started referring to the defending teams player as "zombies" because they put their arms up and sort of shamble around moaning "braaaiiinnss". Actually, we were the ones moaning as we made our way through an entire game on this setting. It felt long enough that by the time we finished the first game on "play ground", we were totally spent and had to go play Fallout 3 for a little while to get our second wind. During the second session (and what I had to promise to my son would be our last session) we cranked it up to "Pro". "Pro" is the speed at which one says "that's more like it!". However, like Hockey, if we hadn't put ourselves through the painful lessons of the "play ground" speeds we would have had a tougher time jumping in as pros. As an aside: Something I've noticed, which I should have noticed before, is that designers of sports videogames in this era made a conscious choice to have players run out to their positions on the field. This strictly theatrical decision creates an illusion very reminiscent of its real-life counter part. Players don't just appear in place ready for tip-off, they have to run there, while the crowd roars. While completely besides the point, it should be noted that the crowd in NBA Basketball roars with the exact same roar as used in every other Intellivision sports title that has a crowd thus far. Because team members have been added to this incarnation of basketball, passing is now implemented. For passing purposes, the control pad is a model of a basketball court. When your player has the ball, you can pass the ball to a spot on the court by pressing the corresponding location on your keypad's court. Your on-screen player throws the ball to the spot on the court you've chosen, not to another player. It's up to one of the other players on your team to anticipate the throw and get there when the ball does. Fortunately they are controlled by the computer, so often this works. When it doesn't, the other team will either intercept the pass or your ball will soar out of bounds. True to the presentation of basketball, if it goes out of bounds, the ball must then be thrown in by the opposing team to bring it back into play. Other offensive features are jump shot and set shot. The basic rule is, the closer you are to the net the better chance your shot will go in. There's even a nice diagram in the manual with the percentage zones. You have a much better chance of making a shot with a set shot, but it's also more likely to be blocked by a player on the other team. Any shot that makes it to the net, but not through it, will rebound with a resounding "boing" and the ball goes to the team that catches it. As for stealing: we weren't able to steal the ball from each other, but the artificial team members seamed to be able to steal it from us. Maybe we just sucked, but there it is. Oh, and we weren't able to foul each other, either, it just isn't a feature. Since they were able to put penalties in NHL Hockey, I'd been looking forward to fouls in NBA Basketball, but you can't have everything, right? (Where would you keep it?) The short story of how we feel about this game: It's a well done simulation of basketball and it's very interesting, but for pure fun we still prefer to play Atari's Basketball. This isn't exactly fair or objective, I'm sure if we were true sports game fans, we'd have loved this title for all the aspects of the real game it models. While we respected it, we just don't laugh as often while playing it as we do when playing Atari's version. Next we'll look at US Ski Team Skiing on the Intellivision. 28705

Sea Battle (Intellivision, 1980) Sea Battle is a console title that does much more than one would expect a console title to be able to do in 1980. Each player has a harbor and a limited number of naval units. The object of the game is to get your troop transport ship into your enemy's harbor by negotiating your fleets through the archipelago between the two harbors. Like Space Battle (Intellivision, 1980) this game has a strategy phase and a combat phase. The strategy phase is played out on an overview map of the island region. Each player builds up to four fleets at a time, each comprised of up to three ships--from a total of 13, and sends them on their way towards the enemy harbor. The game takes full advantage of the Intellivision controller's keypad. Instead of creating your fleets using an on-screen, easy-to-see-by-your-enemy interface, you create fleets by hitting the keypad icons of the ships you want in that particular fleet before deploying it into your harbor. When you or your enemy deploys a fleet, all that either of you can tell about if from the strategy phase view is how many ships are in it. When the fleet starts to move, your enemy may be given a slight clue as to the fleet's composition because a fleet may only move as fast as its slowest ship. Safety tip: it's up to you to remember what you put in each fleet. You do NOT want to think you're going into a combat with a submarine and a destroyer and not finding out until you get there that you deployed a mine sweeper and a troop transport! To help you with this, each of your fleets is a different color. It does help. Some. Controlling the ships in the strategy phase is interesting because you can only control one fleet at a time. Basically, you send a fleet sailing in a particular direction, and cycle around to each fleet providing course correction as needed. You don't have to worry about smashing into an island in this phase because your captains know to stop before hitting a landmass. There's an Exxon Valdez joke here somewhere, but I'll leave it up to the reader. Ship captains cannot avoid what they cannot see, and they cannot see mines. You can use a mine layer unit to put little floating magnets of death in spots which you know your enemy must pass through. However, sharp-eyed admirals may notice if a fleet seems to moving slower than normal through a narrow straight. This is the invitation for him to send sweepers in to clear things up before proceeding. When two opposing ships get close, all movement stops and the players get to make an interesting choice. If neither player decides to fight the enemy fleet, movement resumes and the fleets go on their merry way. If either player decides to engage, then combat phase is entered. Combat phase zooms the camera into the fight, kind of like Google Earth can zoom in on your old high school (hey, they made the parking lot bigger!). In this view, you and your enemy can see what each is up against, as each ship type has a unique icon. In combat mode, ship types have actual "stats" beyond just speed! The actual stats are in the manual, not on the screen, but you can look them up if you want (don't expect your enemy to wait while you do.) Weapon power, armor rating, momentum, firing ranges and damage all play a role in these combats. Most importantly in the combat phase a ship has a targeting reticule. Hold down the "aim" button and you can move the targeting "X" out from the ship you currently control. Try to move your ship into position (which moves the "X" too) so it can fire at another ship. So, you prepare to fire by aiming your "X" directly north, for example. Move your ship so the "X" moves over the enemy ship, or where you think the ship will be, and fire. You can't fire while holding down the aim button, so it's aim, move, fire when in range, rinse, lather, repeat. This is hard to do while your enemy is doing the same thing to you, but I imagine people using real ships in real navies feel the same way. Some ships sink after one hit, others can take a few, it depends on the weapons of the hitter and the resilience of that which is hit. Oh, and don't let one of your ships ram a landmass. In combat phase, landmasses ram back! Different ships have different ammo. The submarine or PT boat sends torpedos. Battleships and others fire salvos. Salvos require better aim, as salvos can pass over a ship and miss. Torpedoes aren't as finicky, they'll hit ship on the way to their "X" spot but as shot from the PT boats, their range is very short. Conversely, when shot from the submarine, torpedo range is very long--but you only get one sub. Like the strategy phase, you can only control one unit at a time, so while you're bravely maneuvering your speedy little PT boat into range, your enemy can be using the longer ranged guns on his battleship to take out your sitting duck of an aircraft carrier. Can't take the heat? Retreat! If you hit the retreat button you have to out-dance your opponent's ammo for another 15 seconds before returning to the strategy phase view again. Of course, if your enemy has a relatively fast fleet of ships, they can always catch up and re-engage. Overall, this game is brilliant. It is the type of game that would become more enjoyable the better you and your opponent get at it and the better you know each other's style of play. It's kind of like chess, except on an ocean, in real time and each piece is actually a fleet made up of smaller sub-pieces constructed of floating steel that can propel tons of metal several miles through the air to sink each other. EDIT: Since writing this originally, my son and I have gotten to play again. I was able to win a game quickly by sending all of my ships at once (leaving behind a mine layer) and overwhelming my son's defenses on our first game. However, my son is a quick learner. He found he did better with a single ship strategy. He mined his harbor entrance points and sent out one ship at a time to attack my incoming fleets. He was usually able to do a lot of damage to each of the ships in my fleet while only losing one ship himself. This was especially effective if he found my mine sweepers. He would take the sweeper out first (as it was never the ship with which I was primarily defending) and damage the other ships before I could kill his lone attacker. My survivors would continue on, only to sink to a watery grave when we hit his mine fields. He enjoyed it a little more during our second session of play, probably because he understood it better and winning did nothing but improve his enthusiasm. Next Entry: NBA Basketball. 27958

NHL Hockey (Intellivision, 1980) Okay, I'm really behind in this blog thing. According to Wired, the blog is dead and now everyone is all a-Twitter. Personally, I can't imagine myself being limited to a certain number of characters, but I can certainly understand how a reader might want to limit themselves to such. I mean, there's a lot to read out there. Anyway, the latest game in the chronology was NHL Hockey for the Intellivision. Say anything you want about the controllers for this system and I'll probably agree with you. Not because I think you're necessarily right, but because I'm really lazy and don't feel like arguing. My general peeve comes with the fact that when using the controllers on the Intellly II, which is what I have, it that it is hard to know when I've actually depressed one of the side buttons. That's a really difficult drawback to work around in a not-as-slowly-paced sports title like hockey. That being said, once again, I think it's amazing how much information the makers of NHL Hockey manage to put in the manual and how many features they manage to implement in the actual game. For instance, what would a hockey game be without penalties? Knocking the crap out of your opponent and hoping to get away with it in hockey is as legitimate a tactic as pretending to get tripped by an opponent and hoping they get a card for it in soccer. NHL Hockey implements a penalty system by allowing you to swing your stick at any opponent. If they have the puck, that's alright--the ref's okay with that, but you can also swing your stick at an opponent who does not have the puck. This will knock his legs out from under him and you have a two out of three chance of getting away with it. If you don't get away with it, one of your players goes to the penalty box for an amount of "simulated" time. If you do get away with it, then hey, getting to knock someone on their butt is its own reward. I think that it is interesting to note that playfield vs. atmosphere space in games is changing. By playfield, I mean the actual space in which your action and game takes place. By atmosphere space, I mean the part of the game that is largely decorative and unaffected directly by anything you do as a player. Hockey, for instance, mostly takes place on the ice; you don't throw the puck in the air, so there isn't the need for air space like a basketball game might need. So, if you look at a screenshot of NHL Hockey... what? No, I don't have one, go find your own, sheesh... the ice only takes up the bottom half of the screen while the the top half contains scoring elements. Keeping score and track of penalty time is an important part of the game, yes, but half of it? I guess it's the price of this 3D-look for games (pioneered by Basketball for the Atari VCS) that make you feel like you're in the stands rather than in the eyes of a bird nailed to the ceiling directly over the ice. Something I don't know if I mentioned about most Intellivision games we've seen, is that there always seems to be at least four speeds to every game. If you turn the game on and activate the disk, for the most part, you get the fast version of whatever game you're playing. If you press "1" on the keypad you get the slowest version of the game; "2" and "3" get you faster versions. Hockey also implements this feature. The irony of this type of system for we modern gamers is that the slowest speed might be easy enough to play, but, invariably it is fairly dull. The faster speeds are much more interesting to play but require some time to master and the controllers are so awkward to use that "more interesting" doesn't help. The goalies in this game were very difficult to get a puck past. First, my son and I played against each other and neither of us could score against the other. Then I played against his un-manned controller and I still couldn't score against the brick wall of a goalie. It took the combined might of my team, with one member in the penalty box, and his team to actually get the puck past my own goalie. The trick was to knock the goalie down and shoot him while he was down. I think we managed to do it by having one of my players hang on to the puck while my son knocked the goalie down. While the goalie sat on the ice, counting his teeth, I let my son steal the puck and shoot at the vacant goal. This was not easy to do. I don't even think we were playing on one of the faster modes. Eventually our game devolved into trying to get away with beating up each other's players and goalies. Can we blame this on the game or on our own appetites for violence? If we blame our appetites, must we not also blame society? I continue to have a really hard time slogging through the sports titles for the Intellivision. I'm just not into them. I also recently discovered that I should have started the year off with Space Invaders for the Atari VCS, because that was released sometime in January of 1980. See, that would've been a kick ass start to 1980, I mean, that would've given me some momentum. Oh well, it's not like this is a science. Here's to more chronogaming in 2009, for 1980. Next entry: I don't even know! Basketball? Didn't I already do that? Did I take my meds today? Damn I feel old.

Word Fun (Intellivision, 1980) Hey, did anyone else notice the complete revamping of intellivisiongames.com? They've had the same site up for years and its always looked circa 1999-2001 design style, but now they've got something that looks like it's database driven. Well, good for them. I actually have a Word Fun cart, purchased in Tulsa, Oklahoma for $5 in 2006. It wasn't until I plugged it into my Intellivision II in August of 2008 that I found this sucker doesn't work with Intellivision II. For my purposes, I was suddenly happy I had purchased Intellivision Lives! for the Playstation 2. This marks the first Chronogaming title that I had to resort to playing on modern hardware! Word Fun is one of two education titles that used the Electric Company name. If you remember The Electric Company, you'll remember that it was the quirky, off-the-wall, directed-at-a-slightly-older-audience, half-sibling of Sesame Street. It only ran new episodes from 1971 to 1977 and thereafter was in reruns until going off the air in 1985. (according to Wikipedia) So, in an odd way, Word Fun and its companion cart, Math Fun were like the very, very last episodes of The Electric Company, and done entirely without Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman or Rita ("Heeey yoooou guyyyyys!") Moreno. Word Fun epitomizes a tradition of education games on home console systems: instead of having one, really good game that's fun and educational, it has multiple games that are educational. Word Fun is: Crosswords, Word Hunt and Word Rockets. Crosswords is an electronic Scrabble. Each player is given a rack of letters from which they assemble words. The object is to earn the most number of points while taking turns putting words in a grid so that they intersect with the words already placed. If you've played Scrabble or ever filled in a crossword puzzle you know what I'm talking about. The interesting feature of this is that you can't end your turn until your opponent approves the word! This encourages kids to come up with fake words and bullshit their opponent into believing they're legitimate. This is a valuable skill and I approve of it being cultivated. However, Crosswords is one of those games I like better in the real world as Scrabble. Also, Scrabble has those word trays that are handy to use as iPod Touch stands. Word Hunt puts each player in control of a monkey that they each send out to capture letters. A player uses the letters to build up to three words in a time-limited round. There's also the option of sabotage. A player lacking in ruth (ruthless) can send his monkey out to simply deprive the enemy of much needed letters. "Ha ha ha! You wish to spell the word 'fish'? Try doing it with out this 'h', you fool, as I deprive you of it to spell 'hate'!" There is even the option of tossing a letter away if you aren't going to use it yourself, but still wish to deprive your bitter, word-building, jungle rival! The longer your words, the better your score and, like the game Crosswords your opponent has final say on what constitutes a legitimate word. ("Hayt" is a real word, it's the name of Duncan Idaho's ghola in Dune Messiah! What do you mean you've never read it? You're already 10 years old!) Aside: Word Hunt seems to have the uncanny ability to actively anticipate and attempt to prevent the players from spelling naughty words. No matter how hard we tried we were unable to find the necessary letters to spell something offensive. This was disappointing and we don't know if it was a feature in the game or a failure of ourselves. Word Rockets was fun in a "this reminds me of playing Space Invaders in the arcade only without the sheilds, aliens or cannon" way. A word with a missing letter in it sails across the screen and you must fire at it with one of the letters available from your arsenal to complete it. F*g can become fog, or fig! This is about as much fun as it sounds but it is the only single player game on the cart, so it was the only one I was able to play without having to pay my son in gil. (yes, now he accepts imaginary, online currency as payment for playing old games with me.) Anyway, it added some much needed videogame action to the cart, and was probably what the average four or five years old of the era would've enjoyed most. Next time, we play NHL Hockey, continuing my slow but inevitable grind through the well documented sports titles of Intellivision's debut year. 25092

Space Battle (Intellivision, 1980) This is a neat game, and I've never played anything like it (up till 1980). Okay, you've got this base at the center of your little universe from the perspective of your Radar screen. You defend it with three squadrons of three fighters each. Surrounding your base is the utter void of space through which your enemies approach. There's always five groups of these enemies...I don't know why, something to do with how they evolved...coming from the outer boundaries of your radar's scanning range and from any two-dimensional, XY-axis-type of direction. Each alien squadron seems to have from 8 to 14 or so craft in them. So, real quickly, you've got to figure out which squad will reach your station first, which ones are more important to take out first, how many of your squadrons do you commit to attacking what's coming in and what do you leave behind to defend the base? Well, since you've only got three squadrons and they are virtually identical in composition, the general procedure is to send two out (any two of the three) and leave one to hang out at the base. So you send out the two lucky ones, we'll call them White and Blue, because that's their color, unless you send out Gold instead. In this case we'll just let Gold stay behind and perhaps be anhiliated by the hordes that White and Blue can't stop. Moving on, let's say you send Blue out to attack an isolated alien squadron coming in fast and you send White to a clump of three squadrons leaving one lone alien squadron to continue in unintercepted. Let me tell you what happens when one of your squadrons meet up with the little white alien dots. If your Blue squadron hits a swarm of alien ships you'll be able to enter battle with them. This involves a change of screen-ery as your radar screen is replaced by a starfield and a targetting reticle. You move the reticle around to shoot the alien "saucer" ships. Your shots take time to get to the ships (there's a slight 3d perspective, a little like parts of Atari's Star Ship title) so when you shoot at the boogers you have to shoot where you think they will be by the time your shots get there. I think it's called "leading" your target, except that's a silly term because they're not exactly "following" your targetting reticle, right? As if to prove my point about our silly semantic habits, the saucers will often make a sudden looping maneuver just before the shot you just fired gets to them. I think this is called "evasive action", a term the etymology of which I am ignorant, so I can't bitch about it. Regardless, it's easy to miss. The trick is to not only "lead" the targets, but to also try to shoot where you think they might be if they were to suddenly loop. So, this activity ranges from easy to super hard depending on the skill rating you've chosen to play at (ranging from beginning to super advanced) and involves some interesting quirks. One Quirk is that when you destroy an alien ship, it explodes with triradial symmetry, the debris from this pretty explosion can take out other ships, which, in their time of passing, also spawn flaming wreckage that can destroy other ships who have their own debris sprays. This can create a nice little chain of events from your perspective, though you can imagine the pilots of those ships saying "crap, triradial symmetry sucks!" as they perish in space-flames. They fight back, too, (Quirk Two) shooting two white dots, which are harmless, that get bigger and turn red, which are deadly--though there's only ever one pair of dots you have to worry about at a time. These two dots seem easy to avoid but get embrassingly good at predicting where your reticle will be on the tougher settings. If these macro-pixels hit your targetting reticle, you've lost a fighter. Lose all three fighters and you've lost your squadron. What's left of the enemy continues towards your mother ship with a happy little skip in their step. In these battles, you have to destroy a certain number of ships, all of them, to be exact, but stay your hand, Killer, you may want to rethink that. While your Blue is in battle and you're moving around your reticle and making the ships explode into weird geometric terms, your other squadron, the White, may have reached their objective and are getting their probability-controlled buttocks handed to them. This is off-screen Real-Time action (Quirk--what are we up to? Three?)! The rest of the universe doesn't pause while you fight, (at least not on the harder skill settings), the aliens get closer to your mother ship and squadrons that meet in battle will fight whether you're there to control them or not. An off-screen battle will take out one of your pilots for every three of theirs. Sometimes, you have to let this happen, so maybe send your less-likely-to-be-attended squadron to one of the smaller swarms of aliens. If you wish, you can jump out of your Blue battle, knowing your three remaining pilots can, most likely, mop up the remaining aliens, so you can go to assist White with their problems. It's your choice and it's really cool, because it means there's more happening here than just freakish hand-eye coordination. You've got to keep the bigger picture in mind at all times. Anyway, if you're in battle and one of the alien swarms reaches your mother ship, you'll hear klaxons which will increase in their klaxoning until Galact-, er, your "mother ship" is destroyed. At this point, you'll realize, when you're dumped to the Radar screen and it's flashing red, that you're sucking vacuum and it's game over. Why the hell doesn't the Mother Ship have any guns on her? Stupid engineers. If you take out all of the aliens, then it's All Clear and you've won. Good luck seeing this moment on the Super Advanced setting. This is a smart game and on the harder settings you have to think smart to play it. For the record, I can reach the All Clear on the Advanced setting most of the time, but the Super Advanced says to me "Here's your Turtle Wax, thanks for playing, Loser!" and then spits on my vaccuum damaged corpse. Don't be fooled into thinking Space Battle is just about shooting ships. Next entry we'll do Golf or some other sporty, mundane, real-world reflection title. 22947

Tennis (Intellivsion, 1980) I know I said we were going to do Space Battle but with this being "Wimbledon Weekend" I figured this would be the best chance I'd have of getting my wife to play Intellivision's Tennis with me. She actually consented to join me for about 10 minutes! However, I think that because of the fact that she'd just seen one of the greatest, and longest tennis matches of all-time (Federer vs. Nadal) she just couldn't feel the thrill of our little pixel-fest. First off, a couple of things I've been noticing about the Intellivision's manuals for the first year of its release. ONE: every manual so far wants to remind you that these games are FOR COLOR TV VIEWING ONLY but that colors on your set may vary slightly from colors described in their little booklet...and TWO: The manuals are uniformly excellent. They acheive this by clearly explaining everything that's in the game. Notice that I said "everything that's in the game" and not "everything needed to play the game". These aren't documents to just get you up and running, these epistles could serve as design documents because their descriptions of a game's features are so detailed. It might be too much information for those who just want to start playing (*cough*VCS owners*cough*), but for those of us who like knowing what we're doing rather than risk getting frustrated with a game, they're great. Unfortunately for you, I really feel like talking about the manual first. The front cover reads like ad copy, and it probably served as such. On most of the Intellivision manuals I've seen so far (if not all) there's also an all-cap bold statement: HOW TO WIN. which basically says if you want to win, read the fine manual. Once inside the booklet there's a brief description of the object of the game (yes, even for well known games like Tennis) before going over the equipment setup; from checking the hook-ups for the Intellivision MASTER COMPONENT to inserting the Tennis overlays into the controllers. Getting into the game itself, the manual takes two pages to outline the actual rules for a "real world" game of Tennis. It explains the scoring system (for which I blame the French), the serving procedure and the boundaries. It even explains something called a "let" which is when the ball hits the net during a serve. My wife has watched Wimbledon for the last 18 years I've known her and I've never heard that term even once...probably because I usually have my headphones on and I'm at the computer, but that's another story. Anyway, the manual then gets into explaining the controller layout for another page before launching into a detailed explanation of gameplay execution. Pages 5 to 21 are all about what happens in the game and how the players control it. This is followed by an explanation for every sound effect, another review of the game rules, tips for winning and a Tennis glossary. If you've never played or seen a game of real world tennis in your life, you could read the Intellivision's manual for its Tennis cartridge and you'd be able to walk yourself through a complete game of tennis in the real world without sounding clueless. I'm not saying you wouldn't look completely clueless; learning what your body is supposed to do is different from knowing the specialized semiotic domain of a subject, of course. Across the board, from what I've seen, Intellivision presents the same quality manual for Tennis, Horse Racing, NFL Football, Auto Racing, Poker & Blackjack, Armor Battle and Major League Baseball. I speculate that the good Blue Sky Rangers knew they were writing for first-time videogame system owners, i.e. anyone that hadn't gone out and gotten an Atari yet, and they didn't want anyone to get frustrated for lack of clear instructions. About the actual game: it's two-player only! No single player version on this cart. Playing alone using both controllers is right out of the question and don't think I didn't try. So this is another game for which I had to recruit the long-suffering members of my family. As mentioned above, my wife (43) joined me for about 10 minutes, as did my daughter (6) for about three minutes and my son (10) for about 20. As interesting and well done as I thought the game was, they just couldn't share my enthusiasm. At the title screen, you have an opportunity to choose the speed of the game by pressing 1, 2, or 3 on the controller. 3 is Beginner, 2 is "Club", 1 is "Pro". Default (if you just hit the disc without pressing a number) is "Wimbledon". For the record, starting off with Beginner was painfully slow, while Wimbledon was just a tad too fast. We stuck with Pro and had a comfortable time learning, though not comfortable enough for anyone to stick around very long. Maybe I just smell...? The screen presents a sideways view of the court, Red player on the left, Blue player on the right. (Red vs. Blue again!) Red serves first. Red's player serves by selecting a serving area using their controller keypad (Inner, Center or Outer). This sets the server up in the proper position and gives them the ball (which appears in their hands). They hit one of their swing buttons to toss the ball in the air and a swing button again to hit it. The game gives you two options for your swing. Hard and Soft. The soft swing gives you a greater chance of hitting the ball so that it stays within the boundaries of the court, but at the same time this gives your opponent a gentle lob that's easy to return. The hard swing nails the ball, but if you don't time it correctly you'll fault by serving the ball out-of-bounds, or by missing the ball on your swing (whiff!). If your opponent sends you a lob and you return it with a hard swing, it gives you an opportunity for a SMASH. A SMASH has a nice satisfying feeling to it and causes the creepy, vaguely-minimized human faces in the crowd to cheer, but visually retain their stoic impassivity. For some reason, the faces in the crowd remind me of the 60's British TV series, "The Prisoner". Dark, deep eye sockets on every member of the cloned audience follow the ball's every move. I get chills just thinking about it. Now for the Intellivision...Nightmare Tennis! The game provides a shadow for the ball to allow you to track it more easily which, I would venture to guess, makes this a 3D game in the same way Atari's Basketball was. The shadow is a good indicator of where the ball is going to go as the ballistic path of the actual ball can be confusing given the lack of apparent screen-depth. (Does that make sense?) Anyway, the manual says to watch the shadow, so that's what I do. In addition to using a Hard or Soft swing, how you time your swing and where in your swing the racket actually hits the ball will determine towards what side of the court the ball will go when you return it. We didn't get good enough to actually do anything with this information, but it's good to know it's there for when we reach a "higher level" of play. In real tennis, the winner of a full match is determined by the first to win three out of five sets. The winner of a set is the player who wins at least six games first and win two games more than their opponent. The winner of a game is determined by the first to score at least four points and have at least two points more than their opponent. Intellivision's Tennis follows these scoring procedures and a full match can take a little while to play. I don't know how long this actually does take because both my son and my wife were anxious to do something else after the first set. I suppose if you wanted to simulate today's record setting 12-to-15-games-long sets in Wimbledon Gentlemen's Finals 2008, you could, but I wouldn't recommend it unless there's a big check and a heavy looking plate involved. Two things about controlling your Tennis player: First thing, the disc: You use the 16-point directional disc to move your player around the court. This is actually not unpleasant because your on-screen persona ALWAYS faces the net. Moving them with the disc just pushes them around the court and isn't at all frustrating. Either the designers used the disc better in this game than the others we've played or our thumbs are getting used to it. Second thing, the side buttons: What is frustrating is the buttons on the sides of these Intellivision II controllers, there just isn't any feedback or play in them to give you a clear indication of when you're actually activating it. It's not a deal-breaker but I look forward to being used to them...someday. Next entry I'll do Space Battle, which is for one OR two player, unless I decide to do something else. (22730)

Horse Racing (Intellivision, 1980) For any of you that read this blog whenever I actually post something, you might be painfully aware that I neither enjoy gambling nor sports. I usually bitch and moan about most Blackjack carts I have to play and while I do my best to muster up enthusiasm for the sports titles, I'm sure it's obvious that my heart usually isn't in them. In fact, beyond an appreciation for graphics and/or feature set, I can barely tolerate sports and gambling titles. Also, with my limited appreciation for "board to video" ports of games, (i.e. Checkers, Backgammon) I'm sure you can grok why I might have a difficult time getting through 1980 on the Intellivision. Now, take the cart Horse Racing. You'd think, given that I'm not into sports and I'm not into gambling, that this title is sure to get an instant "meh" from me. Well, maybe you wouldn't think that, but if you did you'd be wrong. First off, Horse Racing is for one to six players. That's SIX. Now, the math folk among you may be asking yourselves, "Did he say 'SIX'? How in the square-root-of-effing-two could there be SIX players with only TWO controllers?" Well, let's go over the concepts first. When you turn on your Intellivision console with Horse Racing in the slot, you're really giving the computer the go-ahead to synthesize eight healthy horses. Each horse has its own secret, built-in set of intrinsics governing its speed, stamina and ability to run on certain surfaces. You have $750 and ten races to try to observe and figure out just what these horses can do. If you run out of cash in the process, your game is over. (Beatings with a pillowcase full of oranges is optional, though not recommended.) Each horse, by the way, is named a color: Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet and White. For each race, four horses race on one of three different surfaces (Dry, Turf or Muddy) for eight different distances (three to ten furlongs). The instruction manual (another excellently written Intellivision manual, btw) suggests keeping track of the length and conditions for each race, the entries and the results -- including the winning time. So, every race, via the results, you're given a handfull of clues about how each horse performs. The better you get to know the horses, the more confident you may bet on them. This can result in wads and wads of well-earned imaginary cash. For instance, in the very first race, I watched Blue, Violet, Green and Orange race for three furlongs on Turf. The finish was V-O-G (Violet, Orange, Green) with Blue trailing. So, what does one glean from this? Well, over a short distance and on turf, we'll tentatively conclude that Violet can beat Orange, Green and Blue. This isn't really a lot to work with, but each race gives you the opportunity for making and/or supporting a hypothesis and this allows you to refine your betting. The second race put Orange, Green, Red and Violet against each other on eight furlongs of turf. I thought "Pfft, I know Violet should at least beat Orange and Green" so I bet on Violet, figuring my only worry would be Red. WRONG! Apparently, while Violet is faster than Orange over three furlongs on turf, Orange has more Stamina and can beat Blue in eight furlongs! The placing was Orange, Violet, Red and Green. Well, at least I can be pretty certain that Green is slower than both of them... So, using the characteristics of each race and the results, you start to put together composite sketch of each horse. It's very interesting and fun. When you get enough "horse sense" you can start placing Exacta bets. An Exacta bet is when you try to predict the placement of the two horses to come in first and second. Exactas pay 15 to 1, which is a good deal more than what you can get for merely picking what may have become an obvious winner. You might ask, "Well what fun is that? After a days at the races, you'll know how to rank the horses!" Well, that's where the beauty of randomly generated qualities comes in. After your day at the races, it's off to the metaphorical glue factory for the whole stable of them. Each time you start a set of races there's a new set of horses; same colors, different abilities. So, how can six people play? Well, each of you gets an account, numbered from one to six. Before each race, you pass around the controllers and everyone gets a chance to look at the offered race and to place their bets. You can let everybody just watch the races or two players at a time may choose to jockey a horse. For every race, the two horses that start closest to the guard rail (towards the top of the screen) are jockeyed by the computer. This means that the computer decides at what position on the track each unjockeyed horse runs, when to coax the horse to run faster and when to apply the whip to inspire a final, potentially crippling, burst of speed. The bottom two horses are optionally controlled by one player each. When I played by myself, I simply let the computer jockey all four ("hands-off" playing). With a group of people, it is possible for any two players to jockey one of the two, non-computer jockeyed horses. A jockey gets to coax and whip the horse as well as decide its positioning -- closer to the guard rail (towards the top) means it's traveling a smaller circle around the track and likely to wear out less quickly than if it were traveling on the outer track. However, there are drawbacks to people having the ability to jockey. If someone jockeys a horse that they haven't bet on to win, then it's too easy for the unethical jockey to apply the whip early, steer the horsey to the outside of the track and poor little Sunny Muffins hasn't got a chance of winning. In a nutshell, the controls allow "fixing". During my second time through by myself, if there were jockeyable horses that I hadn't bet on to win, I'd run those mounts into the dirt. This would allow the horse I bet on to have a better chance of winning. Aside from the potential of burning in Cheater's Hell, this has a practical downside. Say that you've been forcing Pink to lose for three races and then suddenly she shows up against horses you've also forced to lose. How, then, do you bet? By tampering with a horse, you lose the chance to gather information. So, while the chance to jockey is there, it's an extra variable I'd rather do without though I certainly understand the need for its inclusion. Most people would want to actually play videogames, not just watch them. That being said, Horse Racing, however, is indeed fun even if you're just watching the races to observe the equine behavior. If I can ever get six people together to play, I'll let you know how it goes. In a continuing attempt to procrastinate the other sports titles, I think we'll try Space Battle next entry. 22652

NFL Football (Intellivision, 1980) NFL Football is one of those games that doesn't register on my radar longer than it would take to say, "Hey, those guys look they're really running--oh look, Space Invaders on the Atari!" I'm just not into sports, so if I sound less than enthusiastic about a well done sports title, remember, it's not the fault of the title. We played this months ago and it's taken me this long to get around to writing about it not because it's a bad game, it's just that I don't have anything intelligent to say about it. Neat features of the game: 1. Scrolling football field. If I'm not mistaken we saw this feature first on the Bally Professional Arcade. Your TV is a window into a segment of the field, rather than the whole field itself. Like Auto Racing the scrolling feature lends the effect of feeling like you're part of a larger world and actually moving around in it rather than confined to a tiny rectangular world that just happens to be the same size as your TV screen. 2. Cheering fans. Like Baseball, you've got a "crowd-track". You've also got other sound effects that add to the playing of the game including a ref whistle and a gunshot to signal the end of a quarter. 3. Three time-outs per player. If you know how to strategically use a time-out, then you can do it in this game. 4. Everything you'd expect in a game that said "football" on it. Passing, kicking, punting, safeties, touchbacks. They did a good job with this, the only thing missing is announcers. 5. Excellent manual. The manual is a little over 20 pages long and that doesn't include the playbook for each player. 6. Big playbook combinations. There are nine formations to choose from for each side (Offensive or Defensive), that just sets up where your players start. If you're offense, then you pick from two receivers and from nine passing zones. This is the sort of thing that blows my little non-football playing mind. ONE Drawback: The CONTROLLER. Yep, that's pretty much the trouble. Sure a keyboard controller with an analog disc looks great on paper, but try using it actively and the pain begins. Getting the controller to accept our plays is Madden-ing (heh, I made a pun) geting the players to run where we want is frustrating and painfull. Maybe we just need better controllers. (We're playing on an Intellivision II so I'm sure you can feel our pain.) Overall, I'd say the design and content of this game is enough to keep it on anyone (American) football fan's fond memory list if they are the type to miss football in the off season. If you like watching football with your dad and friends then this game is probably a good substitute during the long spring/summer months without NFL action. For people who like videogames, but are not fans of sports you will appreciate the manual and the feature set but, then again, you're probably too busy enjoying your VCS to care. Next entry: Hmm, it's been so dang long since I looked at my list, I've got no clue what I'm playing next! 22235

Major League Baseball (Intellivision, 1980) Major League Baseball is the game I saw being played at every Sears I walked into when the Intellivision was being introduced. I'm not a fan of baseball, but to me this game will always represent the tantalizing first glimpse of the Intellivision's exciting potential. In fact, prior to acquiring an Intellivision for chronogaming, Baseball was the only game for the Intellivision I'd ever played on the original hardware. Upon further reflection I find myself a little annoyed at the one and only friend of mine who actually had an Intellivision but never invited me over to play it. (Though he did demonstrate his AD&D cartridge to me the one time I was there so I guess I should be grateful for that.) The screen layout, predictably, looks like a baseball field. At the start of the game all nine players on the home team come out onto the field from their dugout (left side for home, right side for visitor) and take their positions. The opponent's batter takes its place at the home plate. Using the disc, the player whose team is in the field can have the pitcher pitch a ball with different levels of speed and curve but with no "telekinetic" control over the ball while it is in flight. A batter can hit either a foul or a home run and the fielding team doesn't do much about it. Anything other than a foul or a home run, however, is treated as a grounder and that's when it gets fun. The Intellivision keypad is used to great effect here as each position on the field is represented on the overlay. If the ball gets hit into left field you activate the left outfielder by pressing the player on your keypad and then you move them to the ball using Disc controller. When they've gotten the ball, you press the field position to which they should throw the ball and try to tag the running player out. In fact, you can even commit an error. If you decide to throw the ball to first base but in the middle of the throw decide to activate the second baseman, you'll deactivate the first baseman and the ball will land on the ground. This allows the runner to take advantage of your mistake and stretch the hit out into a double or triple. This mechanic adds a flexibility to the gameplay lacking in the other baseball titles we've seen. For instance, some previous games have determined how far the runner gets (single, double or triple) depending on where the ball is hit. In fact, unless my memory is rotten (and it could be) I don't think any other game offers the freedom of throwing the ball to whatever position the player feels like nor do any allow the runner's player to make any decisions going around the bases, which I'll get to next. On the running side of the game, the player at bat has complete freedom over the lead runner and can have them run in either direction (towards the next base or back to the most recent one touched) whenever they feel it's to their advantage. When the pitcher is getting ready to pitch, it's possible for the runner to take a nice lead towards the next base in an attempt to steal. To counter this, the pitcher can throw to the baseman to try to tag the runner out. In addition to base stealing this play mechanic allows for a form of emergent gameplay which I think baseball players call "monkey in the middle". Specifically, this is when a runner gets caught stealing a base and the basemen throw the ball back and forth to trap the oscillating runner between them. It isn't behavior that's "programmed" into the game, but because of the simple gameplay mechanics and the design choice of leaving it up to the players the situation can emerge just like it does in a meatspace game of baseball. I might be wrong, but the sound effects sound either like digitized samples or very masterful programming of the sound chip. The first time I heard the "YER OUT!" I thought it sounded like an umpire growling the actual words. The cheers and whistles of the crowd also sound pretty good. I wonder if any game has the crowd cheer louder for the home team? It would make sense, wouldn't it, I mean it stands to reason there will be more fans of the home team in the stands...but I digress. The one drawback to this cart is that it is only for two players with no solo play option but this can be a plus as it encourages people to play videogames together. The bright side of this meant I had to recruit my son (now 10, he's been chronogaming with me since he was seven) to play Baseball with me. This sort of situation is always a treat for me but depends on the game whether or not it's a treat for him. He picked it up quickly enough but was lamenting that we had to play for Nine. Whole. Innings...actually it was only eight and a half. After it was over he was very happy to get back to playing Oblivion. I did get a big kick out of seeing him seemingly embrace the stealing bases tactic, though towards the end I think he was doing it to end the game faster. I should mention something about Major League Baseball being an Intellivision game which utilizes the practice of licensing trademarks from professional sport leagues. We'll see it again for every early Intellivision sports title I can think of, including Backgammon. Does anyone know if this strategy paid off for the system? It does nothing for me personally, but does anyone out there in, um, chronoblogosphere remember how they felt about licensed sports titles on the INTV back in the day? Was it more exciting to play Major League Baseball than it would have been to merely play Baseball? Next time we'll play Football, though I should call it NFL Football to get you NFL fans out there excited. 19937

Armor Battle (Intellvision, 1980) Don't get me wrong, I really love Atari's Combat; it will always hold a special place in my heart. However, Armor Battle immediately strikes me as being a "next generation" tank game: two tanks for each player, obstacles, variable terrain (road, water, woods, grass, buildings), mine laying capabilities, 240 different terrain maps, tanks that take multiple hits...jeez, the feature list goes on and on, doesn't it? Each player has two tanks under their command, but may only control one at a time and must switch between them at the right moments. While you're controlling one tank, the other is a sleeping husk. Fortunately, the battlefield is littered with obstacles and terrain that will slow a tank down as well as limit the range of its shells. One move my son performed was to hide one tank behind some buildings (which shielded it from my fire) and immediately switch to his other tank to take advantage of my pursuing tank's exposed rear while his first tank was protected. Another fun tactic available is the laying of an invisible mine. You can lead your enemy on a merry chase through a narrow pass while dropping a mine behind you. You only get one mine per round but it only takes one mine to rip through the soft underbelly of these tanks. When your tank is destroyed, either by a mine or by shots, its hulking wreck is left as an obstacle on the battlefield. Very cool. By the way, that mine is also invisible to you, so don't forget where you left it, or you may find it in the worst way. The game automatically ends when one of the players has lost 50 tanks, so we're talking a minimum of 25 rounds if you do it that way. If you establish a limit to the number of rounds beforehand then the winner is the one with the most tanks left after the pre-determined limit. One thing I appreciate about the game is the attempt to present the tanks in a pseudo-isometric perspective. Despite appreciating the effort, I think they look a little like the tanks I used to draw in grade school, only pixelated. I prefer the more pixelated but overhead view of the Atari Combat tanks, but this is a preference and not a comment on the artistic merits of either. I feel the only drawback to Armor Battle would be the Intellivision controllers. Intellithumb took my son out before we could rack up too much time playing. Yes, he needs to learn not to press so hard, but I do my best not to over press and I still find my thumb getting sore after a little while. Another problem was that his controller would spontaneously switch tanks at inappropriate moments. Obviously, there's something wrong with my particular controllers and this isn't a problem with the game in itself. I'm using an INTV II so if I ever have the opportunity to switch out the controllers, I'll take it. The only additional feature I would like to have seen in Armor Battle would be a limited ammo supply and maybe a reload station. Granted, the nature of the game is such that you want to make every shot count regardless of supply as a missed shot is a missed opportunity to hurt your enemy. Yet knowing you only have a few shots left can be pretty exciting and in my opinion would've added to the gameplay in this case. We saw limited ammo on Odyssey^2's tank game, and I really liked it there. Its absence in this tank battle is noticeable, but I feel I'm just being greedy. I can see how Intellivision could be a strong threat to Atari's dominance in the minds of those who want deeper gameplay. I've only chronogamed three titles from the INTV library so far and I can already see that there's a "depth trend". Atari VCS games take a simple idea and provide as many variations on that idea as they can fit on a cart, (see Combat, Street Racer, Surround, Sky Diver, Canyon Bomber, etc). Intellivision games seem to take a simple idea (card games, racing, tank fights) and flesh it out with nuanced bells and whistles. I'm not saying this makes a given game necessarily "better" than a version on the Atari, just "deeper" and hinting at a potential for more immersive gameplay. Next cart will be Major League Baseball. 19670

Las Vegas Blackjack & Poker (Intellivision, 1980) Note Bene: There will be a YouTube video supplementing portions of this entry so check again later for the link or just check out my YouTube page at: Chronogamer's YouTube Page where it will eventually appear. Intellivision was test-marketed in California in 1979 and sold to the rest of the United States in 1980. Rather than going by the copyright date given on the title screen of Blackjack (1978) to determine the appropriate chronological order of this game, I decided to go with the earliest year I would have been able to play it, which would have been 1980, had I been fortunate enough to own an Intellivision at the time. See this isn't a nostalgic thing for me, it's a "do it now because I didn't then." Oh, just a quick economic factoid. Intellivision's initial retail price was $300 (okay, it was actually $299, but I try not to think in those types of prices). $300 in 1980 US dollars is $803.29 in 2006 dollars. This means that the same food, clothing and shelter you could buy in 1980 for $300 would cost $803.29 in 2006. In the past 28 years while the cost of a new home videogame console has gone up a bit, the cost of other things has gone up even more, making the opportunity cost of a new console actually less than it was in 1980. I think I need to bring that up to my wife the next time I get a hankering for an Xbox 360. So, another Blackjack? When Mattel said, "Hey, let's put Blackjack in the box with the system!" what were they thinking? There were already at least three other carts that played blackjack in circulation (two for the VCS and one for the Odyssey^2 not to mention a few others); what did Mattel think they could do better than what other systems had already done with a game involving little more than testing to see if a one sum is closer to 21 than another? Well, there's a major component to this game that sets it apart from all Blackjacks/Pokers before it: your computer controlled dealer has a human face! Never before have we stared at a home videogame and had a computer generated face staring back at us. Taking a census of facial features we can count two each of eyes, ears and eyebrows as well as one each of a nose and mouth - it's even got a moustache and goatee. If I had to pick someone, I'd say it looks a lot like Bruce Campbell, but maybe that's just me. Quick aside: can we talk about the tie for a second? Is that a bolo tie? How often does one see the official neckwear of Arizona (since 1971) and, later, New Mexico (since 1987), in a videogame? Feel free to actually answer that question if you know. If that isn't a bolo tie than what exactly should it be called? Thanks in advance. Okay, back to the entry. In addition to having a face (and the tie), the dealer actually deals the cards to each player, sending the cards spinning down the playfield to rest in the appropriate spots rather then them simply "popping" in when they are dealt. You can see this in action whenever I get my video up to YouTube. All that would be cool enough, but instead of being satisfied with providing a face and the animation of cards being dealt, this cart goes one step further by giving the dealer a simple approximation of human emotions. Most of the time, the dealer wears the "poker"-face one would expect from a professional card dealer. However, under certain circumstances, this dealer's composure will crack a bit, making him seem all the more human but not in that creepy Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within kind of way. His Blackjack behavior is quite simple. If you go bust he'll smile cheesily about it. If he goes bust, he'll give you the angry face. His poker behavior is more complex. For five card draw poker he'll only give the smile when he's confident in his hand and raising the stakes. For the five and seven card stud poker he'll still smile when raising the stakes, but when you've got a hand that looks good and are not betting, he'll get really frustrated because all he can do is call your non-bet. In addition to all the cool graphical touches and emoting by the dealer, there are four card games to play: Blackjack, 5-card stud, 7-card stud and 5-card draw. The mechanic for viewing the cards in the poker games is simple, just ask your co-player to look away and press the directional disc to reveal your cards. You may choose a new game at the end of a hand, play the same game or you can let the dealer choose what to play. You carry your wallet balance from hand to hand regardless of what you choose to play. If you go bankrupt, then your controller becomes inoperative and it's game over while your playing partner gets to continue until they go bankrupt. Overall if you want to play Blackjack and/or Poker on a TV this cart is a good way to do it. If you don't already own an Atari or an Odyssey^2, Las Vegas Blackjack & Poker this is (meaning: "was") a fair argument for getting an Intellivision (Moms & Dads in 1980 understood Blackjack and Poker, just like Moms & Dads understand Wii Bowling today). It's not as addictive as say, the Poker Solitaire game on the Casino cart for the VCS, but it can still be pretty addictive . . . and I don't normally like videogames based on card games. Next Entry will be Auto Racing for the Intellivision. 18461