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Tele-Games Electronic Games Motocross Sports Center IV (Atari, 1977) I kinda "get it" now but back in the late 70s I had no clue what was going on between Atari and Sears. It seemed like Atari stuff in other department stores was labeled "Atari" but Sears was a parallel universe where every Atari item was called something else. Combat was called Tank Plus; Air-Sea Battle was called Target Fun. The Atari Video Computer System was called the Sears Video Arcade, etc. Suspicions of conspiracy often played in my mind. Did Atari know that Sears was blocking Atari products from its shelves and replacing them with rebranded copies? Were these watered down versions or were they just as good as the "real" thing? The world may never know! (Look, I know we know, okay? I just didn't understand then.) One such rebranded (or prebranded) property is the Atari Stunt Cycle sold in Sears as Tele-Games Electronic Games Motocross Sports Center IV. This unit boasts several unique features that sets it apart from other consoles that come fully loaded with several variations on a PONG. Most notably the console resembles the throttle controls of a motorbike. The right-hand throttle is used to accelerate the on-screen motorbike to take it through a series of tasks, depending on the game. The left-hand handle is simply a handle that has a nice rubbery texture to it. The sound effect which accompianies the acceleration of the motorbike shows promise... Motocross Sound Demo on YouTube (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. ) The occasional beeping sound in the middle of my revving is the Motor Bike sprite sliding on its head. The downside to the cool pontential of this sound is that during game play it became an annoying "vreeeeeeem". I'm not saying this is unrealistic, motor bikes make the same sound and some may argue that it's just as annoying. I'm saying it isn't very pleasant to overhear from the next room. Motocross Sound Demo II during gameplay on YouTube (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. ) (by the way, 2:49 isn't a bad time for a five year old.) All of the sound comes directly from the console itself, so forget about practicing late into the wee hours, your family will not be pleased. To accelerate, there's a gear shifting scheme acheived by turning the throttle towards you quickly and then releasing it slightly (Trin's video demonstrates this). This technique of accelerating is related to the way that real motorcycles shift through the geers. When it's time to shift a real motorcycle, one releases the throttle, squeezes the clutch and uses their left foot to "toe" down or up to the next gear. Instead of releasing the throttle in Motocross, the player quickly turns it towards them and then forward again. This is exactly the wrong way to shift gears on a motorcycle because one should never rev an engine while the clutch is engaged ("rev it to the red!!") so, if you learned all your motorcycling skills from Tele-Games Motocross, you're going to have to unlearn them when you get on a real bike. The games in Motocross are pretty simple. The playfield consists of three levels, all of which are connected by a screen wrap-around effect. As the motor bike drives off the right side of the top level it reappears on the left side of the middle level and this is consistent when it drives off the right of the middle level (it shows up on the left side of the bottom level). Each game involves moving through those three levels with various goals. The first game, and most simple, is called Drag Race and the challenge is to get the motor bike through the course as quickly as possible by accelerating it quickly but without over revving it and sliding on your head. (Always dress for the ride AND the slide!) In addition to the "head slide" state there's also a "wheelie" state. If you accelerate just enough, you'll do a wheelie (in case I'm spelling it wrong, a wheelie is when your front wheel is off the ground and you're bike is continuing to move forward.) Motocross uses the wheelie state for a game called Motocross where the player must pull a wheelie over a barrer by accelerating the throttle as they approach it. There also Stunt Cycle. This is the most fun on here. If you were alive and watching TV during the 70's you will probably remember the Happy Days episode where Fonzie does the motorcycle jump and slides into the fried chicken stand. Well, this is similar. You start out with eight buses sandwiched between ramps and every time you successfully jump the lot they add another bus. This game is challenging and fun at first but then it gets hard and finally merely frustrating. If you're not going fast enough when your bike reaches the buses, you will not have enough forward momentum to sail over them. If you are going too fast, you may make the jump but not the landing. Yay! Another opportunity for a head slide! Okay, I blew most of my attempts to get decent gameplay footage, but here's a nice shot of the head slide. Stunt Cycle Head Slide (Sadly, this video is no longer on YouTube. ) You should be informed that there are Expert and Novice variations of each of the Cycle games. The Expert level involves much more sensitivity in the control making it more difficult to not over-accelerate into a head slide. I should also mention that there is a "Sports" in the title of this console because there are also 16 PONG variants you may enjoy by plugging in the paddle controllers. The games support between two and four players and include such Pong hits as Pong, Hockey, Street Hockey and Street Tennis. I'm officially "for" anything that involves up to four players, but I would doubt anyone will ever purchase Tele-Games Motocross blah blah blah so that they can play more Pong. On the other hand, if one doesn't already have a Pong dedicated machine, this is a nice way to get one bundled with a pretty cool Motocross game. With the exception of Atari/Sears PONG and the Coleco Tel-Star Arcade, that wraps it up for the 70s! If I should acquire either of those units in the future I'll insert them into the 80s but now, it's onward and forward! Next entry we'll jump back to 1980 and start playing the Mattel Intellivision (also known as the Sears Super Video Arcade ... oh no! Sears must've gotten to Mattel, too!) 17133

Basic Math Okay, don't talk to me about basic math, see? It ain't a game, see? It ain't fun, see? It's math, man! It's not even "fun" math, like differential equations and shit. It's plussin' and minusin' and multiplyin' and dividin'. Phooey! Blackjack Oh, please, dear god, why? Why is it always Blackjack? While the graphics for the Fairchild version of Blackjack are slightly more ambitious (remember the rounded, green dealer's table graphic?), Atari's Blackjack is superior in many ways. The sound is better and it allows for up to three players, who can come and go during the game as they please without disrupting the other player's games. It has a difficulty option which determines if the dealer shuffles after evey hand (difficulty "A") or if it shuffles when 34 or more cards have been dealt (difficulty "B"). The other difficulty switch lets you choose between Casino rules and Private rules. Private rules is what I noticed was missing from the RCA and Fairchild Blackjacks. One rule in particular was the rule I kept looking for: if you take a hit four times without "busting", you win the hand. It's Atari's version that lets you have that, which is why I remembered it, because it was Atari's version that I actually played as a kid. You "break the bank" at "1000". Atari's edition of Blackjack also neglects to use the dollar sign to denote currency. The advantage of this is that you can pretend that you are gambling with gold pieces, kitty cats or radioactive rods -- whatever your avarice requires! It also allows them to sell it in other countries without having to make up versions of the same game with different currency symbols. This is a "competant" version of Blackjack. However, once again, I'd like to point out: IT'S JUST BLACKJACK! Why'd they even bother? Did they do a focus group in Vegas? Do they really think that the type of people who enjoy gambling would enjoy doing it with pretend money? Hell, it's not even money, it's just "points" that you can call "money" (or dubloons, or yen, whatever.) In keeping with my new "house" rules (established after the RCA Blackjack): After I lost one round of Blackjack, (and lost 200, um, pesos), before I could play again, I had to pawn an old multi-colored glass desk lamp which belonged to my wife since high school for $20. (It said "tiffany" on it. Wasn't she an early 90s pop star?). I did it just to get that "I'm-a-pathetic-gamblin'-kind-of-guy" feeling. It made me feel "dirty" which was actually pretty cool. My wife sure will be surprised, because she was going to get it "re-stored" anyway so I re-stored it for her. See? If it's in a Pawn Shop, it's in a store again. That's what it means, right? Re-Stored! Haw-haw-haw! HAAAW-haw-haw! Haaaaw-haaaw-HAAAAAW! Next Entry: Star Ship. (It's odd to see the word "starship" it written as two words, but then again, people still rip apart the words "video" and "game" to talk about videogames.) <- PREV | NEXT ->

1977 in the Retroview Mirror Okay, for a combination of lack of funds and lack of any sense of timing with eBay there were some home videogames that I missed in 1977. The only ones I vaguely care about are: Stunt Cycle (a.k.a. Motocross) Video Pinball (a.k.a. Pinball Breakaway) Ultra PONG Doubles (a.k.a. PONG Sports IV) EDIT: I completely forgot about Coleco Combat and Telstar Arcade. I still want to try those, too. END EDIT I'm sure I'll be playing the "as good as or better" equivalent on the Atari soon enough, but that's not really the point of this exercise which is for me to appreciate the improvement of home videogaming slowly over time. So, there ya go. Really, my focus is on programmable systems, so I'm not mourning the miss too much. The other main point of the exercise is to have fun exploring. So, to the fun. We have a Good year in videogaming in 1977, perhaps, the best yet. Let's compare 1977 to 1976. First here's a picture of all home videogames for programmable systems available to excited videogamers in 1976. Next, here are all the home videogames for programmable system available to excited videogamers during 1977. All, except for RCA's Bingo, that is. (godammit) Here are the "Big Three" systems of the year 1977 and/or their offspring. You'd think I'd have these things memorized by now, but with so many lists around it is easy to be lazy. RCA Studio II Bowling / Freeway / Patterns / Doodles / Math (These were the built-ins) Space War (TV Arcade I) (EDIT: a smile? I don't remember liking this one...) Fun with Numbers (TV Arcade II) Tennis / Squash (TV Arcade III) Baseball (TV Arcade IV) ? Speedway / Tag (TV Arcade Series) ? Gunfighter / Moonship Battle (TV Arcade Series) Blackjack (TV Casino Series) Biorhythm (TV Mystic Series) ? TV School House I ? Math Fun (a.k.a. TV School House II) Fairchild Video Entertainment System Left the system out of this picture because it already came out in 1976. #4 Spitfire #5 Space War ? #6 Math Quiz I ? #7 Math Quiz II #8 Magic Number (NIM, Mindreader) #9 Drag Race #10 Maze (Cat & Mouse, Blindman's Bluff, Jailbreak, Trailblazer) #11 Backgammon / Acey-Ducey #12 Baseball #13 Robot War / Torpedo Alley #14 Sonar Search Atari Video Computer System No, it's not a six switch, so I lose points for accuracy there and the fact that some of the carts are picture labels. (They certainly were not available with those labels in 1977.) Let's not dwell on that, shall we? !!! Combat (a.k.a. Tank Plus) ! Indy 500 (a.k.a. Race) Video Olympics (a.k.a. Pong Sports) (Yay! Four Players!) !! Surround (a.k.a. Chase) ! Air-Sea Battle (a.k.a. Target Fun) ? Basic Math (a.k.a. Fun With Numbers) ? Blackjack Star Ship (a.k.a. Outer Space) Street Racer (a.k.a. Speedway II) (Yay! Four Players!) With the exception of Basic Math and Blackjack all of these games get smileys in my book. Even Star Ship which, by myself, wouldn't normally get more than a neutral, gets a smiley because the two-player modes were pretty fun (for a little while). "Just a smiley" no longer seems to cut it, now that we're entering a new age of videogames. I added "excitement marks" for some of my favorites where a smiley didn't convey how much more we enjoyed certain games over their other lesser smiley brethren. Certainly, when one end of the spectrum is the stuff on the RCA Studio II and the other end is on the Atari VCS, I need more of a range than angry, sad, neutral, happy and happy plus plus. I want to do it without going all numbery on you, though. Okay, 1978 starts in the next entry unless I take a tangent between years as I sometimes do. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Street Racer (a.k.a. Speedway II) This is another type of game that I remember playing in the arcades. Steering wheel, gas pedal, green monochrome screen. It was fun in the arcade and I remember the rush I got weaving past the other cars with my foot pressed on the pedal as hard a possible. Thankfully, this hasn't translated into how I drive as an adult. I think it's interesting that Sears called it Speedway II. They were probably naming it after a dedicated console which had PONG and race car games that they had distributed in 1976. Street Racer is another good example of an Atari cart where they decided to not just put the game from the arcade on the cart, but to fill it with variants of said game for different numbers of players and for different skill levels. There's "Street Racer", where, with a paddle, you swerve a car back and forth to avoid the cars you are passing. There are 1, 2, 3 and 4 player variants for this and for all five of the "steering" variants on this cart. It's so cool to have a game that four people can play, now I just have to convince my wife to join us. There's a skiing game called "Slalom". (a word which I'll always remember as having heard first on an episode of the Flintstones.) In Slalom, instead of dodging cars you have to steer your skier through gates. The sound effects have a slight "sprayed snow" quality to them in this one. "Dodgem" looks like a home port of a 1973 Atari arcade game originally called Space Race. (There was also a Bally/Midway version called Asteroid) From the description at klov.com it sounds like this is a big improvement over the arcade version. The idea is the same, each side of the screen has a player controlling the speed of a spacecraft. The home version adds the ability to steer. You move up the screen and avoid the asteroid coming down it. When you reach the top of the screen, your score increments and you start again at the bottom. If you hit the asteroid, you start again at the bottom and your score stays the same. "Jet Shooter" has you shooting enemy aircraft as they come towards you. It's funny, but I think it would've also been fun to shoot at the cars I was passing in Street Racer, but maybe that's just me. There's also a game called "Number Cruncher" where you run over numbers to add to your score, but you've got to run over their centers or it counts as a crash. This one's different because you're actually trying to run over something as opposed to avoiding it. You also happen to be riding a motorcycle, just for that "Easy Rider" feeling. Finally, there's "Scoop Ball" which adds another twist to the steer and avoid theme: you have to catch some things (balls) and you have to avoid others (um, the "non-balls"). When' you've caught the "balls" (which are actually "plus" signs) you have to deposit them in a "Computer Scooper". If you crash before depositing your captured balls you lose them and the points you would have received for putting them in the Computer Scooper. The best part about these games is the fact that I can play them with my son and soon with my wife and little girl, all four of us at the same time. They're extremely simple, but fun with the right company. That's the last of the 1977 games. I'll give a run down of 1977 in the next entry. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Surround (a.k.a. Chase) After Combat, Surround was one of the original nine carts that I remember playing most fondly as a 12-13 year old. I remember getting the game cheaply (about $10) at JC Penny's on 69th street in Upper Darby, PA. (Most likely, just before, or maybe even during, the "crash", but here in 1977 we don't know anything about that, do we?) The game variant that my friends and I seemed to laugh the most during was the one where you can turn off your "trail" and go faster and faster up down or across a wrap-around-screen. Eventually, one of us would veer off and try to leave a trail across the others path, hoping they'd be too zoned out to notice. There are many arcade versions of the Surround game-type, some of which had options for up to four players. Atari's Surround was for two players at the most, but also included a one-player version for practicing. For those of you who don't know. In Surround, each player starts off with a square in the middle part of the screen. When gameplay starts, the square moves forward, leaving behind it a square to mark its passage. You can't stop your square from making another square behind it so you keep moving in any direction where a new square has not been drawn. Eventually the screen is very full of "trail" from you and your opponent's square. You have to outlast your opponent by not slamming into a trail and trapping them so that they do. "Surround"-ing them with your trail is a good strategy as it leaves them with an area from which they cannot escape while they continue to leave a space-filling trail. My son and I have been having a ball with this, and this is one of those games I will choose to keep for nostalgia reasons as well as for fun. Oh, I almost forgot to list the next entry. Next Entry: Air-Sea Battle. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Video Olympics EDIT: I wanted to mention that I'm actually PLAYING these games, as I go, now. I play most of a week's worth of blogging in one weekend. Yesterday, my son and I actually sat down and went through this cartridge. (We liked Volleyball and Basketball the best, by the way.) This is in contrast to before, where I had played most of the games back in June and writing about them based on notes I had taken back then. END EDIT Okay, this is PONG to the nth degree. This Atari VCS cartridge offers PONG closure like no one would ever expect. After you play the games on this cartridge you need never worry about what you might've missed in the PONG genre. First, there's PONG. It's just like you remember, except there's also Robot PONG which is one-player. Then there's Super PONG, Soccer and Foozpong. But wait . . . there's more . . . Hockey, QuadraPONG (the Ultimate Pong), Handball, Volleyball and Basketball.(I am surprised they never went for the obvious joke variants: Hong PONG, King PONG, Son of PONG, etc . . .) All of these games support four player variants, which is really cool if you've two paddle sets and four able-handed gamers willing to play Pong for the amount of time it takes to go through the 26 different four-player games.The manual explains some of the gameplay twists in the manual. There's Speed which allows a player to add speed to the return ball by pressing the red button as the ball makes contact with the paddle. There's Whammy™ which puts sharper angles on your ball return, just hit that button when the ball hits your paddle. CATCH™ which allows the ball to stick to the paddle while you hold in the button. This allows you to take aim with your return ball. If you don't move slowly while you have it, it will escape. And finally, Jump™, which lets you move your paddle from one position to another very quickly, usually a different level (i.e. near the top of the Volleyball net as opposed to the bottom of the net.) Each of these is pretty cool as long as you haven't played PONG in about a month and for no longer than 15 minutes. On their own, each of these games can be fun, especially with four players -- because then, you're enjoying the other players as much as you're enjoying the game. However, there is a strict biological limit that gets reached at a certain point. You see, there's only so much PONG any human being can take. This is known as their PONG Tolerance™. PONG Tolerance™ varies with each individual but you'll find greater PONG Tolerance in an individual that's played less videogames. My Wife™, who doesn't do videogames, has a greater tolerance for PONG than my Son™ has and certainly more than I do. I play a lot of games, so my PONG Tolerance™ is relatively low compared to most human beings. However, I'm also a bit of a Masochist™. So, because my PONG Tolerance is low, I'm more likely to push on, relishing my Discomfort™ and Boredom™. Hmm™, I'm back to one game a day. I'll do Surround next entry. <- PREV | NEXT ->

First, last entry's business. According to an extremely scientific poll conducted in DP's forums, aprroximately 2 out of 7 people have not played Combat. (20 havn't, 49 have) There are significantly more people who haven't played Combat than I suspected. As such, they shall all be punished. Horribly. Since reaching them individually will be difficult to me, I shall punish them by continuing to send Hurricanes to Florida over the next five years. (Hmm, a game for the Atari 2600 called Hurricane. Quick, someone start homebrewing it!) Indy 500 (Atari VCS, 1977) Okay, on to the business of 1977. First an entertaining photograph: (not sure how to post these inline... just look at the bottom of the entry.) That's me on the left. That's my little brother holding the evidence. A photo of a new mint in box Indy 500 game for the Atari VCS with Driving Controllers! Sadly, that was roughly 23 years ago (and counting) and neither the box, manual, cartridge or controllers remained in my posession. In fact, it was all probably thrown out due to a lack of distinction between "trash" and "treasure" on someone's part. I do have a copy of the cart, a 2600 and the driving controllers and have been privileged enough to play it again today. Firstly, the Atari VCS becomes the first system to sell special controllers for its console by including them with Indy 500. Secondly, they brought home the spirit of many arcade racing games, none of which I can name at the moment. Wait, this is silly, I'm connected to the internet at this very second, I'll go and find out at least two of them . . . Okay, Indy 500's closest living relative at the time of its birth would've been "Indy 4" and "Sprint 4". Look them up yourselves. Indy 500 has three different game types, with each having a 1 and 2 player variation or at the very least two track variations. The steering controller is like a paddle, except it doesn't have a "spin limit". You can just keep spining it around in one direction. The button gives your car gas and the steering controller orients your car. The longer you hold down the button the faster your car gets (to a limit of course). Moving the difficulty switch to "A" allows your car to travel at High Speed and makes it more difficult to control due to the speed. The racing games have four different tracks: Grand Prix, Devil's Elbow, Ice Sprint and Ice Rally. The ice tracks seem to make road's friction negligible and this makes steering around either of the ice coated tracks a good deal more challenging. The one-player version of each racing game is a time-trial that gives you a minute to lap the track as many times as you can. Another game variant is Crash and Score. A white square appears and the players have to race their cars to it as fast as possible. It takes some quick reflexes, but only if you're playing against someone who also has quick reflexes. There are two playing fields for this game. The one-player version just counts how many times you can crash into the white square in a minute, similar to the racing time trials. Tag is fun in the same way that Tag on the RCA Studio II wasn't at all. Who hasn't wanted to play "Car Tag" in real life? If it wasn't for roads, other cars, pedestrians, traffic laws and risk of spine shattering injuries, I'm sure each of us would be out there playing it at least one weekend a month. If your car is not blinking, you're "it" and you have to go run over your buddy's blinking car. Then he becomes "it" and has to run over you. The whole "run you over" metaphor goes a long way with kids, too. ("Mommy, I ran Daddy over! Hahahah!"). There is no one-player version of this game, because, well, you can't play tag with yourself unless you have an extraordinarily short memory. There are sound effects for the motors, collisions and for scoring. They work just fine. In fact, they're great sound effects and their contributions to this title would be appreciated by anyone who'd ever played a home videogame before 1977 immensely. All-in-all what makes this game work is the control. Just like when you play Pong, it's very easy to get into it because you feel you have precise control over your in-game avatar. It does everything you tell it to do, even if you tell it to turn too quickly and crash into a wall. You can't blame it on the controller, it's your steering that's the trouble. Speaking of Pong: Next Entry: What if we had Olympics for Pong? <- PREV | NEXT ->

Videocart #14: Sonar Search This is a "port" of the real world game "Battleship". You have a blank blue playing field. You move a targeting reticle over the deep blue sea and sound a "ping" at a strategically chosen location. The length of the ensuing sound gives you a clue to how close an enemy ship is. Your opponent does the same on the same blue field, but he only detects your ships. There's no "cheating" by listening to what your opponent hears because their pings are bouncing off of a different group of ships. When you finally hit one, the field is marked and, like in Battleship, you have to start hitting around that strike to see which way the ship runs before you sink it. When you do sink it, its silhouette appears on the water like a grave marker. In the one-player version, you are given a random amount of ammunition (between 68 and 94 shots) to find and sink the five enemy ships. It's okay, but not very exciting. The graphics are really, really simple. Sparse, even, but they work well enough since the game itself is so simple. The coolest thing about the game is the "ping" idea. Instead of just getting a simple "miss" you're given a range indication. It makes the game more "thinky" than "lucky". We played this for a good 45 minutes, no lie. We did enjoy it. While this cart gets points for having a one-player version of the game, this one-player version just isn't as fun as the two-player version. I think it is because with one-player it's just you picking off the enemy. With two players, your enemy is also picking off your ships. It just has more of a thrill/competitive factor. Fairchild VES 1977 That's it for 1977. The games numbered directly after #14 are copywritten with dates beyond 1977. So, what didn't we hate? Sonar Search Baseball Torpedo Alley/Robot War Maze Drag Race Magic Numbers (Mind Reader and Nim) Space War Spitfire. Nothing made us terribly sad or annoyed. I don't know if it is because of the quality of the games by themselves or because the closest comparison is to the RCA Studio II stuff. Yeah, Fairchild might do really well with this system, I'm looking forward to see what comes out for it in 1978. (*chortles* I'm pretending that I don't already know what happens to it. Shh! Don't spoil the surprise.) We now approach October of 1977, not that anything exciting happens in that month. No, sir. Nothing to see here. Move along. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Videocart #12 - Baseball Two player only, this one. I'm not complaining, I mean, in real life you need at least three, plus equipment. The age of videogames has at least cut it down to two. We like this one a lot better than we liked our attempt to play Odyssey Baseball(1972) or RCA Studio II Baseball(1977). This "port" doesn't deal with player stats, batting zones or runner tokens. At this point in time, I think that's not a Bad Thing. It's in color and the sound isn't anemic . . . well, I should say isn't as anemic as RCA Studio II's Baseball. The "at bat" player, obviously, controls the batter. The "fielder" player controls the pitching and the fielding. As the pitcher, it is fun to fake out your enemy with a sudden slow ball, or even bean him just because he looks at you funny. Having different pitches and having them represented visually, at least as far as speed goes, is a big plus for this version. Incredibly, we managed to play an entire game of Baseball! At the end of it both my son and I could say we had a good time. We especialy enjoyed beaning the batter, because at their heart, all sports are about doing whatever it takes. Videocart #13 - Robot Wars and Torpedo Alley Two games on one cart! Robot Wars and Torpedo Alley. Robot Wars was interesting for a minute. The robot on the box cover looks a lot like an R2-D2 droid from the new and great Star Wars movie of 1977. Maybe, there's an influence there, but it stops at the box. The playfield consists of you (an upside down Y) a few squares and a few robots. The robots chase you and you try to "trick" them into running into the squares (force fields) so they are destroyed. If you don't, then they run into you, and, eventually, you're toast and the level is theirs. Their artificial "intelligence" seems to consist entirely of the instruction "move towards the player", hence, it is very easy to lure them into the force fields. Just stand behind one of the blue squares and a robot will throw itself into it for your amusement. Each time one of the robots touches you, one of the force fields disappears. When you're out of fields, there's nothing you can do to kill the robots, so you lose the point for the level. All in all it was a fun game for about a minute, then you start to realize: it doesn't change. It doesn't get any deeper. The enemies don't change tactics. There isn't anything to "figure out" other than you can move faster than they do because you can move diagonally and they can't. The levels don't change, though the squares and robots do change their starting locations. Pretty much every point is the same as the previous point. There's no reason to ever play this game again after you've played it once. Torpedo Alley is a shooting game. Each player shoots from a cannon capable of left to right motion. You're trying to take out ships that move across the ocean above you. The fun is when two players play at the same time. One player can try to take out ships that the other player might be shooting for. The closer, faster ships are only worth one point and the ships at the top of the screen which move the slowest are worth five points. There are obstacles across the middle of the screen to make it more difficult to hit the higher scoring targets. Not great and not awful. I think all these games suffer most from the fact that, back in the year 2005, we've got other games to play. If it were 1977, a rainy day and I had never seen a home video game before, I think I would've enjoyed spending an hour or so playing Torpedo Alley or Baseball with my brother or my Dad. EDIT: Requested Screenshots of Torpedo Alley! Okay, next entry, the last of the 1977 Fairchild VES games -- Videocart #14: Sonar Search. <- PREV | NEXT ->

#10 - Maze This was fun, but would have been more fun with the directions. We weren't quite sure how to set up the mazes we wanted to play. Of course, now I know where the instructions can be found, but not having them made our selections a little random. This is a maze cartridge that generates lots and lots of random mazes. Apparently this cart is "special" as it is one of the few carts with an extra chip in it (a 2102 SRAM, if you're curious) to help it handle all the work it does. (The other cart is hangman). The maze variations are interesting: Regular Maze, Jailbreak, Blind-man's Bluff and Trailblazer. Regular maze is pretty straight forward. Two mice in a maze first one out wins. (Presumably, cheese.) -Cat and Mouse- NOTE: This is the second game entitled Cat and Mouse on a Home Console system. Can anyone name the system on which this game has also appeared? Hmm? We really had a good time with "Regular Maze" Cat and Mouse. Cat and Mouse involves you and the other player controlling the "mice" in the maze while a fast "cat" square hunts you down. It's pretty exciting when you're cornered and the cat is closing in. Sometimes you'll escape because the Cat may take a different branch before heading down yours, but other times you'll know it it's just a matter of time until it gets you. My seven year-old and I had a pretty good time playing this variation. Another Cat and Mouse variation is called Paranoia. A mouse can't leave the maze until the other mouse gets eaten. Kinda sick, but we liked this one, too. -Blindman's Bluff- This maze variant blanks out the whole maze and you have to "feel" your way through it. This gets old quickly because your trails aren't permanent. EDIT: What I forgot to say is that you can draw a trail behind you to help you find your way, but as you back track you erase your trail. It just wasn't a lot of fun moving around a blank maze "blindly". -Jailbreak- Jailbreak was more fun than Blindman's Bluff, but less so than Cat and Mouse. The entire maze is a grid. You get through the maze by pushing your way through "weak" spots in the grid. Trailblazer is similar to Blindman's Bluff, but instead of a blank maze, it's a completely "full" maze and you have to figure out where the trail is. One of the interesting things about the game design is you can leave a trail for your opponent to follow so that it either helps them or hurts them. Our exploration of this title, however, didn't inspire us enough to fully explore the subtleties of this feature and I leave it as an exercise for the reader. Actually, when you think about it, Blindman's Bluff, Jailbreak and Trailblazer are really all the same game. You're trying to get through a maze which has its paths completely obscured... Hmm. Yeah, well moving on . . . We stayed on this cartridge for about 30 minutes and didn't go away hating it. We'll probably never put it in again, regardless. #11 - Backgammon This Videocart actually taught me how to play Backgammon. Something I hadn't managed to do for myself in 37 years of life. My son managed to pick up the rules, but lost interest pretty durn quickly. He's just not interested if there's not a shread of Narrative to make a game less abstract. I guess I could have made something up about pieces representing prisoners and they can only move so far, yada, yada, yada. Yeah. I doubt he'd have bought it, too. I had no problem with the implementation of this game. The rules were there and they were enforced by the computer. The graphcis were ugly, but that's really not worth quibbling over during the "baby steps" of this era. The problem that I do have with the cart is that it only supports two players (As opposed to a single player variant against the AI). Wouldn't it be easier to just play with a regular Backgammon set? I can understand why it might have been difficult to program an AI, especially one to support different levels of difficulty, but if you're going to make a videogame a "port" of a boardgame commonly found in the real world (or at least it was, back in the 70's, just flip over your checkerboard.) at least give someone a reason to prefer it to the boardgame other than it being on TV. That's it for now. Next entry: Baseball, I think. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Drag Race! I liked this, but it took my son a little time to get the hang of it. In fact, he never did, and he can kick my butt in Super Smash Bros. Melee back to the 21st century. The unique Fairchild VES joystick becomes your gear shift. Up and left is gear 1, down and left gear 2, up and right gear 3, down and right gear 4. You twist it to rev the engine. There's a representation of a tachometer on the screen, on the screenshots it's a blue or red line between the green dots. You rev the engine, put it in gear and shift when the tachometer gets close to over-reving. Try to do it quickly and without blowing the engine. Your Motorized Capital "I" travels as quickly across the screen as it can, warping back to the left side as it leaves the right. The manual says the record time to beat is 7.7 seconds. Yes, the graphics suck. "Two sideways capital I's crawling across the screen" as I recall someone once saying. Yes, the sound is annoying, too. But as a dragster simulation and for a Fairchild VES game, it really isn't so bad. Here are some screenshots. The little rainbow in the center is the starting lights. They disappear from right to left and when the last green square is gone you GO! The word "blown", in this context, is being used to indicate something you don't want to happen. This means you've over-rev'd your engine, now it's broken. All the other dragster drivers laugh at you. You spend the next weekend rebuilding your engine, drinking Grape soda and listenin' to country music on a cheap, AM-only radio. I'd wager this is actually more enjoyable than it sounds. I was using the emulator for these shots, so my racing results are a little laid back. I did better on the real hardware, honest. The game offers four levels of skill, and gives them appropriate names: 1 for a family sedan. 2 for a modified sedan. 3 for a funny car. 4 for a dragster. Family Sedan is for practice. Nobody really talks about their "Sedan" scores, you know? If you're going to talk about your drag times then you'd better be talkin' Funny Car or, preferably, Dragster times. I'm just sayin'. Bottom line: Compared to all the other games we've played up until now, this is definitely the most recent. It won't stand the test of time, but for right now, in 1977, it will do. Next Entry -- Videocart #10: Maze / Cat & Mouse. <- PREV | NEXT ->

One of the problems I thought I would face when starting this project would be an inability to concentrate on and get past the games at hand, given that there are a lot of great modern games that I'm still hankering to play and complete. I do have days where I just want to sit down and play a Gamecube, Xbox or PS2 game and I enjoy them. But there are other days, like today, where I will stare at my shelves of Current Gen and just yearn to go churn through the chronology. However, I'm in a kind of limbo as far as moving forward in the chronology. I don't want to start playing the "new" games from 1978 before I've "laid to rest" the games about which I've yet to make an entry. So, I don't feel like I can really move into 1978, until I've finished writing about 1977. It's this kind of compulsive arrest that has kept me from accomplishing pretty much anything to which I've set my mind during this lifetime! Onward I must chug, if only to later move onward. Looking at the notes I wrote for Videocart #5: Space War, I'm left with feelings of ambiguity about how I felt about it. "Space War didn't suck so much. Same as Desert Fox in space but with no aiming. Benjamin and I played about 10 minutes." And that's all I had to say about it? So I had to find my cart, hook up the VES and check it out again. You know what? It is like Desert Fox in space, only there's no rotating your ship to aim. Videocart #5: Space War Two ships, two space docks and space debris. A war in space! Each ship has an energy store which depletes each time the ship fires, collides with space debris or the enemy ship, or when it is hit by enemy fire. The space dock replenishes that energy. Run out of energy and your ship explodes for which your enemy gains a point. You also only get 20 shots before you can fire no more. Which is a nice touch and seems to be taken from the original Spacewar! design. The movement is simple, nothing like the original Spacewar! Up, down, right or left on the joystick takes you in the corresponding direction on the screen. You can only fire horizontally in either direction, which is useful if you end up on the other side of the enemy. This Space War is a lot like the RCA Studio II's Moonship Battle, except for the fact that, it is in color, has space docks for replenishing energy, has better shaped ships, has space debris and doesn't suck like the RCA Studio II game did. Hmm, I guess it isn't really that much like it. This isn't a great head-to-head battle game, but it holds a scent of the potential for what home videogames may offer someday in the "pretend to kill your friends and loved ones" genre. The energy depletion model is nice, like hit points in D&D. You may be bleeding, but you're "not . . . dead . . . yet!" It shows that there may be possibilities for "dramatic comebacks" in future games. You knowhatamsayin? "If I can just make it to my starbase, I might be able to win...crap." You just don't see that same kind of drama in "bang, Gotcha. You're dead." gameplay.Anyway, it seems we had fun with it for about 10 minutes when we did the game back in June. Regretfully, I wasn't able to get my son to join me for a "nostalgic" replay. (In fact, it's hard to get him to join in for anything "old" since one of the RCA Studio II replays.) Green just flying casually, minding own business. Green runs into a mine! Green gets shot by Blue! Damn. I guess it's not that easy being Green! next entry: Videocart #6: Um. . . don't remember what that will be. Oh wait, now I do. yuck. both carts numbered 6 and 7 are Math Quiz carts. (Math Quiz I and II, respectively.) Look, why don't I just do them right now? It won't take me a whole entry to bitch about them. Every programmable videogame console maker thought they had to include a math game to try to convince the general population that videogames could be used as a force for good, or at the very least, for math. I'm not going to treat these two as "games" because they're "edutainment" and they barely qualify for the "tainment" part. So, next entry we'll talk about Videocart #8: Magic Numbers, which had a pleasant (for me) surprise in it. <- PREV | NEXT ->

I want to define this act in an official-sounding-like way, in case it "catches on". chro·no·game - v. to play a set of videogames in as close to the order of their release as the player can discern, using the resources available to them. chro·no·gam·er - n. the nutjob who chronogames. A set of videogames can be any set as one would like to define it. It could be the same game across multiple platforms. It could be all the games in a franchise. It could be all the games in one's collection. It could be all the games for one system. It could be all the games from one year, although one would need some precise release dates for that one. The reasons why anyone would do this may be varied, but the one I use is the interest to see the evolution of games over time through the process of experiencing them in the order of release. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have access to the games before it was time to play them, but one must plan, and subsequently shop, ahead. Basically, it's an informal process. I guess in the gaming spectrum, there could be "casual chronogamers" and "hardcore chronogamers". I'm pretty casual about it, but someday there may be the "hardcore" who will bring with them to the hobby their own collection of pros and cons. I'd like to talk for a moment about taking this whole Chronogaming thing "too far". It is not wise to shun the sight of anything that exists after the point at which you currently stand in your chronology, especially while driving. It's generally considered rude to put your hands over your ears and sing "LA LA LA" while other people talk about such perspective anachronisms as the Xbox 360, or the Nintendo Revolution (EDIT: Yes, this was written before we were calling it "Wii"). When you're not Chronogaming, live in the "now" with other people who may have trouble accepting that you regularly travel through time to play a game when all the other games after it didn't exist. I think it is perfectly acceptable to have a gaming room in which only exists the games and equipment appropriate to your current chronology. Hell, you can even dress as they might've back in the days during which you're pretending to exist. It's inappropriate, however, to ask visitors to remove "out-of-chronology" clothing, especially shirts and push-up bras. And finally, don't be a freak about it. I mean I have a life outside of Chronogaming! Jeez, what kind of a gamer would I be if I neglected things like the Current Gen? Or lusting after the Next Gen? There's more to life than just Chronogaming! There's PC gaming, Retrogaming, LAN-gaming, MMO-gaming, Flash games, mobile games . . . life is too short to become so focused on something that you miss out on everything else. Remember to socialize, too, by visiting a forum every now and then. If you're shy, you can always blog. I would hate to see a chronogamer become so focused on their obsession that they would miss out on the important things in life, like System Launches, pre-order swank, or playing E-rated games with their children. Really, nothing would make me sadder than to see Chronogaming become something that ruined gamers' lives by blinding them to videogame opportunities that are outside of their current chronology. So, please, Chronogame-on! But do it responsibly. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Okay, since it's a "TV School House" sequel, one might expect the same sort of standardized testing format. One might, but one would be wrong. This is actually a Math test game, you can compete against yourself or another player. The drill is the same as the Math game built into the system. A problem is shown, you get points for answering it correctly, the quicker you answer, the more points you get. Up to 10 points can be awarded per problem if the answer is input within the first 1.5 seconds after the problem is posed. Response time, difficulty level and type of math problem (the basic four, see manual page scan, or a combination of them) may all be selected. This is better than the built-in math game. The problems can have answers which are greater than 9 and they certainly have more variety. The one problem that can't be solved is the fact that this really isn't a "game". It could be considered a "competition" if you're playing against another player, but not a game. Rather than do a full summary of the RCA Studio II in the next entry, as I normally would, I've decided that in the spirit of the system, I'll just do a ugly little half-assed summary right here. We had more fun with Space War than any other cartridge, but that wasn't much. Patterns, built-in to the system, was a little fun in a 2D no-color lava-lamp kind of way. Moonship Battle/Gunfighter, Tag, Freeway and Tennis/Squash were all painful due to the built-in, non-detachable keypad controllers. Baseball was technically the most, um, complex game in the library. It kept track of innings, scores, balls and strikes. It was a little fun, but it was too long. Bowling didn't suck as badly as some of the others. I'm just sayin'. Fun with Numbers. I've nothing more to say about this "arcade" cart. The TV School Houses are not games, so, screw them. Blackjack is just too mundane to give a flying fig about. And that's all I feel like bringing myself to think about. Bonus Feature - The "lost" game: Bingo!!! No, I don't have it. But I'll tell you everything I know. According to a post on usenet dated April 17th, 2000, a person named Dan was driving home from Phillyclassic and rediscovered the RCA Studio II game, Bingo.http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.v...54253f28d02636f So, there you are. That's all the information on the internet which I've found about this game, other than what it says in the (since republished) DP Guide which is: "TV Casino Series. Includes 20 bingo cards & 150 marker chips. comes in a larger box than the normally miniscule RCA game boxes." I'm assuming the box is blue-themed, because it's from the TV Casino Series, and that the box is the size of the TV School House I box, just because that's what I'd guess. Your mileage may vary. I'd love to understand the mechanics of gameplay and how the RCA Studio II handles this game, but alas, the email address in the usenet post is defunct. If anyone has Bingo and wants to share some of that information, the world would be grateful, at least the dozen or so people in this world that reads this blog. A picture of the box? A scan of the manual? A dump of the ROM? Screenshots? A little essay talking about what the game is like to play? Anyway, that's all for the RCA Studio II. At best, it was disappointing, at worst, it was frustrating to the point of generating small fits of impotent rage. Next entry I'll start again on the carts for the Fairchild VES that carry the copyright date of 1977. We'll start with Videocart #4. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Speedway: race your squares around the track. When you hit the wall or the other square you stop dead and have to slowly accelerate again. It has one good thing going for it, as far as interface design, and that is that you don't need to hold down a particular key for the square, er, car to keep moving in a particular direction. It continues to accelerate in the direction of whatever key was last pressed. This helps alleviate much of the interface discomfort that I've complained about in some of the other games. Speedway only supports two players (no one-player variant). It's pretty frustrating to test out by one's lonesome but I was unable to induce my son to join me on this one. I said that it was a racing game and he said "Daddy, those don't look anything like cars." He -is- right, they really don't look anything like cars. The only thing I can come up with as an excuse for why they don't look like cars is that the machine couldn't handle "turning" a car shaped object to face four different directions. Tag: There isn't a more primitive videogame on a programmable system. Anywhere. Ever. Okay, maybe there is, I just haven't seen it yet. Now, let's move on... Tag is two shapes -- one square and one square missing two corners -- on an otherwise blank screen. One of the squares has a dot on it, indicating that the other square needs to chase it. After 10 seconds (or after the chased square gets tagged) the other square gets the dot and that square becomes the hunted. Very unfulfilling, to say the least. Okay, two available carts left: TV School House and Math Fun: TV Schoolhouse II. For those of you playing along at home, we are skipping over Bingo because it is soooo, gorram rare, if it had even been released in the first place. (Some think it was just a demo and never actually published). <- PREV | NEXT ->

Jane: "I think my legs have fallen asleep." Dick: "At least you have legs." How could they get this one wrong? The ball looks like it's moving across the screen in skips and jumps from coordinate to coordinate rather than doing that smooth trajectoring that I've come to expect in "Pong"-like games. Even the paddles move in jerky motions -- which probably has something to do with the fact that you control them with the keypads. At first I thought that maybe it's the first Pong-like game to be displayed in a system with "resolution"? But then I realized, no, the Fairchild VES had blocky resolution and their paddles and balls moved smoothly enough. I have no idea, I just know that this would be the absolute last Pong-clone I would want to play if I wanted to play a game of Pong. The last. Okay, next entry we'll take a look at . . . well, crap, this just isn't enough to write for an entry. What else can I talk about? Okay, here's a theory, proposed to me at vgXpo, by a guy named Andy, regarding the RCA Studio II. I'm not quoting him directly, so don't bug him about it if I butcher what he suggested. He said that maybe the RCA Studio II had keypads directly on it and undetachable because the designers thought that couples would be playing videogames together. I don't think this is a bad analysis. Think about all the ads from the mid '70s related to videogames that seemed to promote them as a path to recreational intercourse? There's a website that has a bunch of arcade flyers and if you peruse that site you can find ads that either display direct male/female contact ("Gotcha") or at the very least showing a male playing a game with a female looking on, very closely. (um, I forget the name of it, Gran Track 10?) I also recall seeing couples in ads for the Fairchild VES and featured on the box of National Semicondutor's dedicated console, "The Adversary". While the Studio II doesn't have any male/female thing happening on its console box (other than a Mom, Dad and Child, which does imply a the parents had sex at least once), six out of the ten game boxes I have for the Studio II display a couple (always the same couple) sitting together and staring at their TV with a Studio II hooked up to it. While no obvious touching is going on, clearly the message is supposed to be "videogames may be experienced with members of the opposite sex". This is a nice theory, but I'm sure we all know how it's worked out. (Damn, I'm really abusing parenthetical commentary with this system. I hope it doesn't become a habit.) Whew, well that was a little too much thinking for one entry. Next time, I'll complain about Gunfighter/Moonship Battle. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Again, will this early videogame couple ever actually TOUCH the console? Or each other? Number games have been around almost as long as numbers have been around. All you need to play is your brain, a writing tool and something to write on. Fingers are optional, though removal of them as a form of "showing off" is not recommended. Looking at a machine that can do things with numbers it isn't a big leap to saying "let's make it play 'number games'". I can forgive anyone trying to think of things to do with the RCA Studio II for coming up with that. What I can't understand is how they (or marketing) make the counter-intuitive leap to the category of "TV Arcade"? ARCADE??? Had they even been to an arcade in 1977!? Did they not see what was happening with videogames? Couldn't they notice that "arcade" videogames incorporated, oh, I dunno, some visual representation of MOTION?!? "Fun with Numbers" contains three, rather static games: Guess the Number - One Player, Guess the Number - Two Player and Reverse. Guess the Number is a "Mastermind" wanna-be. You pretend to need to guess a three digit number in a certain amount of turns using clues provided after each guess. The number of turns you have left appears on the left side of the screen. You start with "020" turns and this decrements after each guess. You input your guess, (a three digit number), which appears on the right-center of the screen. Clues from the "computer" appear on the lower right of the screen, but only for a short time after you enter the last digit of your guess. The "clues" the computer gives you: 000 -- "None of the digits are correct." 001 -- "one digit is correct but is not in the proper position." 002 -- "one digit is correct and is in the proper position, or two digits are correct, but both are in the wrong position." 003 -- "any feasible combination of the above clues (except 000)." 004 and 005 are the same as 003. 006 -- "YOU GUESSED IT!" (caps theirs) Apparently you get one point for guessing the right number in the wrong position and two points for guessing a right number in the right position. So, 003 could be one correct number in the right position and one correct number in the wrong position, OR three digits correct but none of them in the right position. I can't figure out what "005" would mean. Obviously with a 005 you've got at least/most three correct numbers, but which are in the correct positions? If two are in the correct position then certainly the third number has to be in the correct position, shouldn't it? How could two be positioned correctly and the third one not be? I'm sure I could figure it out, as there were instances where I was given 005 as a clue and eventually solved the number. Unfortunately, I lost interest in the game after about 3 and a half minutes so I'm powerless as to even muster enough strength to hit the "clear" button. The second game is the same as the above game, except it's two players and each player gets to pick the number their opponent has to guess. I guess that's kind of cool. Each player takes a turn with a guess and the one to guess their opponent's number first . . . "wins"! I still have to say that I have very little patience with a game that merely "ports" a game from the real world without making it either a little more interesting or a little more convenient. "Reverse is an interesting, stimulating puzzle-game for one person, although others can join in by offering advice to the player." (from the manual) Reverse displays the numbers one through nine across the screen in random order. Your challenge is to put them in ascending order by reversing sets of them. Pressing "2" on the keypad will reverse the leftmost two numbers, "3" will reverse the leftmost three numbers, "4" will reverse the leftmost four numbers, and so on, up to "9". You get 30 turns to do so. I must admit, this is a little fun for a geek like me, but only for about 5 minutes. I like the idea of the game Reverse. I even think that playing it with an "electronic aid" makes the game a bit more convenient than having to write out each reversal transaction. So, yeah, I'm giving it some points for that, as a simple math game made more convenient with the magic of electronics. As a member of a product line for a system on the cutting edge of a new form of entertainment, it just doesn't cut it. $15 to $20 in 1977 money just wasn't worth it for this. I don't doubt that people thought the same thing in 1977. Next Entry, we see the one recurring game that every system has to have: Baseball! <- PREV | NEXT ->

Dick and Jane (above, on the box cover) still can't bring themselves to touch this infernal contraption. They continue to sit there, unmoving, staring in disbelief at the atrocities that were committed in the name of Consumer Electronics. This is no worse a game of Blackjack then that found on the Fairchild VES, except for the part where the black and white graphics make you appreciate the fact that the real world is polychromatic. An interesting thing about this Blackjack, in the context of the "era", is that this version uses TWO 52-card decks and reshuffles them when there are 21 cards or less left in the dealer's deck. The Fairchild VES version only uses ONE 52-card deck and reshuffles if there are 16 cards or less. I have no idea how this variation affects the playing of the game or the calculating of the odds, but occasionally I like to take you behind the scenes, just to see you smile! This game is "winnable" if you break the bank at 999 (dollars? francs? mesetas? who cares? it's pretend!). What makes this game far less exciting, than say, playing Blackjack on a Louisiana "river"-boat, is that, if you lose the game, (ie, run out of your "money"), you need only "reset" the game to play again. *sigh* Without any true risk, a gambling game just doesn't appeal to me. I decided to remedy that by increasing the risk!From now on, whenever I go "BUST" in a gambling videogame . . . BEFORE I restart the game with a fresh supply of money . . . I have to pawn something. Preferably an object which a close friend or family member holds dear. It doesn't have to be anything worth more than, say, $20, because the risk isn't the "money" so much as it is the "reaction" of the close friend or family member when they can't find their "precious" collectible. Moments like that are priceless. For everything else . . . well, you know the rest. Next entry we have "Fun" with numbers. This is, apparently, a usage of the word "fun" of which I am previously unaware. (Apologies to the estate of the late DNA for the butchering of his well-penned line.) <- PREV | NEXT ->

When you play games on the RCA Studio II, you have to change your whole perspective on life. You have to remember that you're lucky to even live in a world where such a thing as videogames exist. Then, you must remember that you are one of the few citizens of this planet who can spend money on videogames without having to worry about eating. Being so fortunate, how can you not greet each day, at the very least, with a faint smile? You know that if you choose to do so today, and if you manage your time well, you may play a videogame. Surely, even if it is a mediocre videogame, you should remember how lucky you are to have the opportunity play it. Count yourself twice lucky if you get to play even a mediocre videogame with a loved one. If you have a good attitude and an overwhelming awareness of just how sweet your life is you may be prepared to experience the RCA Studio II System. However, even with a "count your blessings" perspective, it is exceedingly difficult to enjoy games on this system without starting to damn the misuse of planetary resources. You will find yourself mourning the trees used to make the RCA Studio II game boxes. You will shake your fist at the squandering of petroleum and silicates used to create the plastic casings and the electronic circuitry. You will curse the fact that there are actually chemicals being used in your brain to store the memory of playing these "entertainment products"... in fact, these brain chemicals could have been better spent reminding you to move your bowels. And with that happy thought... on to the games: All of these games rate Ungood. If I describe one as "Fun", I mean it is "more fun" than getting hit in the face with an entire train. There are five built in "games" on the RCA Studio II. You get to them by pressing a combination of keys on one of the keypads rather than putting in a cartridge. The first one we tried was Doodle. Doodle was slightly interesting, but not a game. You can create very simple blocky drawings with Doodle. After you've finished your artwork, press a button and then watch in fascination as the RCA Studio II manipulates your art into an color inverted form. RCA Studio II creates a negative of your "art" by scanning row by row and turning "on" any pixels that are "off", and vice versa. It's slightly hypnotic, but given the low resolution, less fun than an Etch-a-sketch and a good deal more expensive. The next is called Patterns. Patterns is slighty more interesting than Doodle. It uses the same control method as Doodle except now you just draw a tiny visual "motif" and let the mighty COSMAC chip elaborate upon it, over and over again. If you've ever found fractal patterns interesting you might find these patterns interesting in a "complexity from simplicity" kind of way. However, before "playing" you should bear in mind that they are nothing like fractal patterns and a lot less interesting. Bowling was "fun enough" (remember the train?) for one game. The ball oscillates vertically on the left side of the screen. At any point in time that you choose, you send the ball down the alley with a command to "go straight", "hook up" or "hook down". Wherever the ball collides with the "pins" determines how many pins fall down. The math in this machine can't handle sending back bowling scores one frame into the past. So if you get a strike, instead of adding your next two balls to that frame, it simply gives you a 20. A spare is 15. A perfect game is 200. I rolled a 154 and feel no compulsion to push myself beyond that feat. Initially, Freeway was "fun" according to my son. How could any game with cars in it not be "fun"? He soon changed his mind when he realized how simple it was. You control a car on a narrow road. You approach a computer controlled car from behind and try to avoid it as you pass. Again and again. The gameplay is neither fast nor furious. The computer car is so easy to predict that it that you could tell someone else when to hit certain keys while you went into the next room to get a snack. What is interesting, from an interface design perspective at least, are the controls. It is a single player game but the player uses both keypads: keypad B (#4 and #6) controls steering and keypad A controls the speed (#2 for increase, #8 for normal and #0 for decrease). Someone make it stop. EDIT: That paragraph really didn't end right. I had some kind of a brain-fart while editing and never cleaned it up. There was really no transition from describing the interface to describing the pain. That's because the pain is overwhelming, I guess. Addition was a nice little math drill for my 7 year old. The game puts up three digits, you have to add them and press the number on the keyboard before your opponent does, or before time runs out in the case of playing solo. You score points, up to 11 for each problem, based on how long it took you to add the three numbers. Since there are only ten keys on each players keypad, the numbers will always sum to less than ten. I'm completely exhausted by this, you have no idea how draining these games are. Next entry, we'll go over Space War. <- PREV | NEXT ->

Hello I stumbled upon what I believe to be CX-10 joystick. Could anyone give me a description with details and history on the joystick. I know it's less sensitive with better build materials (rubber stick for example) and that try account for (I heard) only 5% of all the joysticks ever made. Any info? SIDENOTE: Anyone have a H6R adapter. I want to complete my set and that adapters all I'm missing.

Was it 1983/1984 severe or was it just a burnout?

I wanted to add my question into the correct post/forum, so hopefully I've done that, if not, I apologize. I’m looking to learn more about this Atari 2600 that was given to me. Atari 2600 Property of Atari Inc. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Manufactured: 1977 Manufactured by: TRW Electronic Components Company In Taiwan Model: CX-2600 Box: Copyright Atari, Inc. 1978 Light or Heavy Sixer: Not sure? I have a question (or maybe questions) about my Atari 2600 (CX-2600) that was given to me several weeks ago. A friend of mine passed away in 2007 (age 38) due to a chronic disease that he had all his life, and I've kept in contact with his Mom for the past 6 years. She learned (from my e-mail signature) that I liked Atari. She asked if I wanted her son's (Charley) Atari 2600, because it had been sitting in the closet for 25+ years. I said yes. She sent the Atari 2600 with the original box (Copyright Atari, Inc. 1978), but the motherboard inside reads copyright logo © 1977. She said they got it for Charley the first Christmas that the Atari came out, so why would the box read 1978? I opened the console and took it apart to clean the inside. I was shocked to see that it was spotless. The inside cover of the Atari console was a bit dusty, but other than that, it looks and works great. The switch board and main motherboard both read © 1977 (pictured), but 3 out of 4 chips (4th has no date on it) read 8108, 8120, and 8121, which I thought that meant the year (1981) and the 8th, 20th, and 21st weeks of that year. I noticed the piece of paper taped to the top of the EMI shield cover reads the letter Z (it could be 2), and also the date (in red) July 13th 1981. From what I've gathered from the enclosed photos (with detail), my friend received his Atari 2600 in 1978 (made in 1977), but... had it worked on in July of 1981. Something must have happened to where they had to replace 3 out of the 4 chips inside the console. They didn't have to replace anything (chips) on the switch board, just the main motherboard. I could be incorrect about my assumption(s). None of the boards have been replaced. Does this all mean they had it repaired in 1981? Why does the box read 1978 when it was built in 1977, unless it was built in late 1977? Is this Atari 2600 a Heavy Sixer? It looks more like a light sixer. I noted which chips were replaced. I apologize for the flashlight, but I wanted to note the dates perfectly. Again, I apologize for so many pictures, but I've read on here that people want pictures if someone is having a problem or question. Thank you for your help.

See: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/269668-bombs-away-vcs-2600/ - for the game...