Favorite magazine/type-in game

[playermissile]

For the podcast, I'm realizing I'm glossing over many of the type-in games. There are many reasons for this: most are short and/or poorly described, written in BASIC, and don't have screenshots (my pet peeve!). It's also still early: I'm currently reading August 1982 magazines, and there have been only 6 ANALOGs & 3 Antics, and while Compute!, Softside, and Computers & Video Games have had many more issues, nothing has struck me as super great yet.

 

I fully admit I tend to gloss over BASIC programs in the magazines, so I'm likely to miss more good BASIC games than good assembly games. Some of my favorites are the ANALOG games like Bacterion and Planetary Defense that are in the future in the podcast timeline.

 

What are some of your favorites that I should be looking out for?

Edited November 1, 2020 by playermissile
formatting

[Justin Payne]

Compute!'s Goblin (issue 038). I recently fixed a bug in it where it would place more than one "goblin" in a location where you couldn't get to them before dying and I changed the graphics a bit to make it look better. Oh, and I changed the left and right keys to A & D. I posted it in the forum about a month ago if you want to play my version.
I typed in a TON of games back in the day so I'm sure I can find more to mention.

UPDATE: Analog's Livewire comes to mind. 

Edited November 1, 2020 by Justin Payne

[drpeter]

'Wild Strawberries' in C&VG.  A BASIC type-in platformer, was amusing and strangely addictive.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-wild-strawberries_16753.html

 

Never appreciated until decades later that the title was lifted from an Ingmar Bergman film ?

Edited November 1, 2020 by drpeter

[devwebcl]

Antic, JD Casten games.

 

[drpeter]

Dog Star Adventure, a basic BASIC type-in text-based 2-word parser adventure in the tradition of Scott Adams and riffing on 'Star Wars'

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Star_Adventure

 

Originally written for the TRS-80 Mk1, required slight tweaking from the published listing in C&VG to run in Atari BASIC.

 

https://archive.org/details/cvg-magazine-008/page/n57/mode/2up

 

Originally published in 1981 it was probably the among the first ever published text adventure listings in BASIC.

[vitoco]

I liked Bopotron (A.N.A.L.O.G. #24, Nov 1984) very much, because in the same magazine it was also published a construction set (another type-in program) to create and add custom levels. I designed some of them...

 

[lbaeza]

ANALOG's Firebug

[gilsaluki]

4 hours ago, devwebcl said:

Antic, JD Casten games.

 

I made a disk with all of JD Casten's games.  JD was an amazing Basic programmer.  His life didn't turn out all that great.  

[Blues76]

31 minutes ago, gilsaluki said:

I made a disk with all of JD Casten's games.  JD was an amazing Basic programmer.  His life didn't turn out all that great.  

A great interview I found: https://www.computingpioneers.com/index.php/JD_Casten

 

I’m not sure all his story but I would say that he is a brave person. 

[+Stephen]

41 minutes ago, Blues76 said:

A great interview I found: https://www.computingpioneers.com/index.php/JD_Casten

 

I’m not sure all his story but I would say that he is a brave person. 

Wow - that is sad, scary, and fascinating all at the same time.  I really hope at some point we can learn enough about these ailments to cure them, or at least provide some measure of relief for those who suffer.  Mental illness still unfortunately has a stigma attached to it, while things like arthritis and degenerative joint disorder (just for example) do not.

[+davidcalgary29]

I wish there was a way we could send him some love (in a non-creepy manner, of course). One of the biggest trills of my young life was finally getting Risky Rescue to run after days of typing in (and re-typing) all of those horrible special characters.

 

In any case, as much as I'd love to claim that my favourite type-in game was a Casten game, I spent more time playing Omniventure (and, specifically, Dinoventure), from the November 1984 Antic, than any other game that year and into summer of 1985. I used to come home from lunch, turn on the 800, and play the game for a half-hour or so. And then played more after school.

 

I'd like to thank Jerry A. LeMaitre for that game, too.

[Blues76]

10 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Wow - that is sad, scary, and fascinating all at the same time.  I really hope at some point we can learn enough about these ailments to cure them, or at least provide some measure of relief for those who suffer.  Mental illness still unfortunately has a stigma attached to it, while things like arthritis and degenerative joint disorder (just for example) do not.

They do carry a stigma but they should not. I don't have anything like he has but I have OCD and attention deficit disorder. In my case, the former I can use it to my advantage but it can always be my biggest weakness.

 

One day, mental health will not carry the stigmas that are still around by some people. He seems like a very nice person!

[NRV]

5 hours ago, vitoco said:

I liked Bopotron (A.N.A.L.O.G. #24, Nov 1984) very much, because in the same magazine it was also published a construction set (another type-in program) to create and add custom levels. I designed some of them...

 

You made me remember that I typed that one, almost finished it, but lost it to the Atari Basic's lock up bug (could not save it ?).

Never tried again x)

 

Probably the ones I played most:

- Zurk: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-zurk_5952.html?version=5952

- Kooky's Quest: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-kooky-s-quest_2834.html?version=2834

- Avalanche: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-avalanche_442.html?version=442

- Spy Plane: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-spy-plane_4952.html?version=4952

 

Maybe Avalanche could interest you.. is a QBert clone in machine language, from Analog.

 

[playermissile]

9 hours ago, drpeter said:

'Wild Strawberries' in C&VG.  A BASIC type-in platformer, was amusing and strangely addictive.

Coming up in issue 12, Oct 1982, so I'll keep a lookout!

[playermissile]

9 hours ago, drpeter said:

Dog Star Adventure, a basic BASIC type-in text-based 2-word parser adventure in the tradition of Scott Adams and riffing on 'Star Wars'

[...]

Originally published in 1981 it was probably the among the first ever published text adventure listings in BASIC.

That would have been in my episode 23. I think because it was for TRS-80 BASIC, I just totally skipped it.

[playermissile]

1 hour ago, NRV said:

Maybe Avalanche could interest you.. is a QBert clone in machine language, from Analog.

I remember seeing Avalanche but never typed it in. I probably had the pirated Parker Bros version and wasn't going to type in all the hex. But I'll definitely include it when I get to 1984 and your other suggestions when I hit them in Antic.

[+davidcalgary29]

36 minutes ago, playermissile said:

That would have been in my episode 23. I think because it was for TRS-80 BASIC, I just totally skipped it.

If you're doing type-in text adventures, I'd like to put in a vote for Advent X-5, which was a short -- but fun -- Casten text adventure. I remember that one of the items to collect was "Ostrich McNuggets".

[TGB1718]

15 hours ago, drpeter said:

'Wild Strawberries' in C&VG.  A BASIC type-in platformer, was amusing and strangely addictive.

How weird, I remember that one

 

[+davidcalgary29]

I can't believe that I forgot to include Basic Burger. How could I forget that?! I played the hell out of that one.

[playermissile]

10 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

If you're doing type-in text adventures, I'd like to put in a vote for Advent X-5, which was a short -- but fun -- Casten text adventure. I remember that one of the items to collect was "Ostrich McNuggets".

I probably won't do an in-depth review of any text adventures, but I will at least try to summarize them if they give enough of a description in the article.