+cvga Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 I was looking at some of my boxes and noticed that Space Jockey (and Towering Inferno for that matter) says "NEW Improved Video Graphics". What exactly does that mean? Was there a graphically inferior version at some point in time? Sorry that the picture is upsidedown. I wish there was an easy way to rotate it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariperson23 Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 I think it means their games have better graphics than their competitors (Atari, Imagic, Coleco) which wasn't really true but was good advertising. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rom Collector Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 "New and improved" was a commonly used sales term in the 1970's and 1980's. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toiletunes Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 Off topic, but imagine going to a music store and spending $22.95 for Space Jockey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torr Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 How about "New and improved GAMEPLAY"??? I see, occasionally, very POSITIVE reviews of Space Jockey,.. And all I can think is,.. Really? This game IS the epitome of hollow gameplay that almost killed video games and helped put it in the genre of being a 'fad'. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cvga Posted September 16, 2020 Author Share Posted September 16, 2020 10 hours ago, Rom Collector said: "New and improved" was a commonly used sales term in the 1970's and 1980's. True but it seems like you would need something to improve 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rom Collector Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 1 hour ago, cvga said: True but it seems like you would need something to improve "New and improved" would have been a better description for something like Pitfall II. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 For me New and Improved could have been used on almost every Activision game and certainly on Defender 2/Stargate. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Climber Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 On 9/16/2020 at 9:01 AM, toiletunes said: Off topic, but imagine going to a music store and spending $22.95 for Space Jockey I remember Atari games costing more than that, then one day they were all like $5 lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special Teams Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 1 hour ago, Crazy Climber said: I remember Atari games costing more than that, then one day they were all like $5 lol I managed Musicland stores back in the day and we ended up just giving them away one Halloween to the mall trick-or-treaters! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cvga Posted September 18, 2020 Author Share Posted September 18, 2020 5 hours ago, Special Teams said: I managed Musicland stores back in the day and we ended up just giving them away one Halloween to the mall trick-or-treaters! Holy cow, that would have been an awesome treat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cvga Posted September 18, 2020 Author Share Posted September 18, 2020 On 9/16/2020 at 9:49 AM, Rom Collector said: "New and improved" was a commonly used sales term in the 1970's and 1980's. I think it's still commonly used. Noticed this on my "meal" tonight (trying to lose weight I've gained thanks to Covid). It was rather bland, like Space Jockey. Hate to think about the unimproved version. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rom Collector Posted September 18, 2020 Share Posted September 18, 2020 Even back then it was taken as fluff, and not taken very seriously. I think we're getting off topic, so I'll just say, caveat emptor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Climber Posted September 18, 2020 Share Posted September 18, 2020 (edited) On 9/16/2020 at 11:23 AM, Torr said: How about "New and improved GAMEPLAY"??? I see, occasionally, very POSITIVE reviews of Space Jockey,.. And all I can think is,.. Really? This game IS the epitome of hollow gameplay that almost killed video games and helped put it in the genre of being a 'fad'. The story behind it is pretty interesting though, makes you appreciate it a little more.... By 1978, consumer electronics were evolving from handheld electronics to Atari’s 2600 machine. While Atari had started out as the sole manufacturer of games for its console, Activision opened that December and developed games for personal computers and the 2600—a tacit admission to developers everywhere that anyone could write games for Atari hardware. Kitchen went to his bosses at Wickstead Design Associates and made his case. “Look, electronic toys are being hurt in the marketplace by video games,” he said. They stared blankly. Video games? Kitchen pressed on: “Everybody’s jumping on this Atari thing. We should look into it.” Kitchen asked around and received little feedback. Atari couldn’t stop Activision and other studios from making games for its device, but it didn’t have to help. There was no software development kit, no prototype console designed to write and test code. Activision’s founders only knew how to make games for the 2600 because they’d worked with it while at the company. By that time, Kitchen had flipped his schedule, working at WDA full-time and taking engineering classes at night. He wasn’t making much money, pulling in $11,000 a year, but he enjoyed waking up every morning to solve new problems. Developing games for the 2600 was his latest and greatest challenge. Kitchen scraped together $1200 for an Apple II—the most expensive of 1977’s “holy trinity” of personal computers, including the Commodore PET and Radio Shack TRS-80—and dissected his new machine to learn its ins and outs. It ran on a 6502 8-bit processor, which he picked up on quickly having worked with microprocessors on electronic toys. Once he wrote code, he knew he’d have to find a way to put it on an Atari 2600 cartridge. His solution was a custom-made board with a chip he’d soldered on to play Atari ROMs. Testing code required him to run a ribbon cable from the chip on his board to the teeth in the 2600’s cartridge slot. Enlarge / Some vintage techie posing with an Apple II computer.(Credit: Ted Thai/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images) Six months later, he’d completely reverse-engineered the 2600 using his jerry-rigged setup and written a game, Space Jockey. The program weighed in at two kilobytes, four times the size of Mark Lesser’s 511-byte handheld games, and was much more complex. A shooter, Space Jockey scrolled the screen to the right as the player shot down enemy ships. Kitchen took his creation to his bosses at WDA. He had daydreamed about Atari and Activision getting into a bidding war over Space Jockey, one of the first Atari games written outside either studio’s walled garden. Instead, Donald Yu, one of his bosses, published it through US Games, a separate entity they’d founded to publish electronic toys. Yu licensed Space Jockey to his company and prepared to put it on the market. Before, when Atari had employed the only engineers capable of writing software for its console, games had appeared at a steady drip. The advent of Activision and engineers such as Kitchen increased the drip to a steady flow. Consumers, thirsty for new titles, lapped them up, but Garry Kitchen wouldn’t see a penny from any sales of Space Jockey when it released. His bosses, as the game’s publisher, would reap any rewards. “You know,” he said to Yu and the others, “I should be making more money than $11,000.” Bankshot and Space Jockey had become two of WDA’s biggest products. “We don’t think you’re worth that much,” they replied... Basically Kitchen...figured out (with no help at all) how to reverse engineer an atari and make a game (that sold over 1 million copies) for a base pay of $11,000 a year. Give the guy a break, it's not THAT bad of a game all things considered... Edited September 18, 2020 by Crazy Climber added text 7 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torr Posted September 18, 2020 Share Posted September 18, 2020 35 minutes ago, Crazy Climber said: Give the guy a break, it's not THAT bad of a game all things considered... That IS an awesome back story! And it makes sense because I compare this game to old LCD/LED games where it's just a steady stream of the same gameplay, but better because it actually has frames of animation!!! But not much better! ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted September 18, 2020 Share Posted September 18, 2020 On 9/17/2020 at 12:01 AM, toiletunes said: Off topic, but imagine going to a music store and spending $22.95 for Space Jockey About $90 in today's $$$ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted September 18, 2020 Share Posted September 18, 2020 At least it was the game that the famous Air Raid was based on. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted September 19, 2020 Share Posted September 19, 2020 Well, I bought into the hype. But only for $9.99. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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