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Fave game from the 70s


Spector

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Let's face it - a lot of the really early games stunk so bad. In fact some of them couldn't even qualify as games at all. Do you have any from the seventies that you consider to be one of your favourites even today, despite all the great 2600 releases in the 80s? Which of these embryonic releases from the "me" decade still hold up?

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Well, using the 1979 catalog as my guide, I'd have to say my favorites among what was available pre-1980 are:

 

Hmmm...

 

Man, those are some slim pickin's!

 

Uhhh...

 

There are plenty among those first 32 that are OK... especially some of the brainless 2-player ones like Slot Racers or Outlaw. But man, looking at that catalog really puts it into perspective. These 32 games were the ONLY choices for the 2600 back in 1979. I think I probably would've just said "no thanks" to the whole lot of them!

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I like alot of the games from the 70's including bowling, brain games, air sea battle, human cannonball, skydiver,breakout, canyon bomber, minature golf, surround, combat, and video olympics. I still enjoy all of these games and I don't think I really disliked any of the other games that I didn't mention. I just remember playing those games alot back in the late 70's and early 80's.

 

-mike

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Those games aren't too bad at all. I know my family bought Breakout and Video Chess when we got our 2600 and my parents played those two more than I did. I played the heck out of Combat and we later got Indy 500 which became my favorite back in the early days BSI (before Space Invaders :) )

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I think the fist real video game was Space War, the VCS version was probably a port of it, its pretty bad but in perspective it was pretty good.

At any rate, Combat was soooo adictive, we used to play that for days, days on end without eating or going to the washroom.

 

Now its pretty much the same, only its Unreal Tournament instead... :)

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But man, looking at that catalog really puts it into perspective. These 32 games were the ONLY choices for the 2600 back in 1979. I think I probably would've just said "no thanks" to the whole lot of them!

 

Back then, we didn't know any better. We thought simple games like Pong was a lot of fun. The ones I enjoyed (and still do) were:

Breakout

Football

Hangman

 

Those games were better than what NBC,ABC,CBS had to offer (yes, only *3* channels!).

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So Scott Anderson is into King Crimson then! I knew I'd seen that picture of the sun before somewhere - Lark's Tongues In Aspic, isn't it?

 

Back on topic, if you didn't have anyone to play with, the Atari was a no-no. Most of these 70's games can only be fun in 2-player mode. The one player mode of Air Sea Battle in particular was a waste of time. Nice colour in the background though.

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BTW, it was four channels. (Actually, where I lived it was five, because we got two PBS stations.)

 

PBS is a channel? I don't ever watch it.

 

But yeah I used to watch Doctor Who and 3-2-1 Contact back in the 70's. There were some other "independent" channels too which showed reruns. Those channels eventually joined FOX, WB, UPN. I guess the era of independent channels is dead.

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If you have ever watched ONCE UPON ATARI they talk extensively about the early days of programming for the VCS as it was called then. The parts in the 2600 is 1974 technology. And the machine was not meant to be more than a "glorified pong" machine. And as they discovered more "tricks" the games got better.

 

My favorite early game would have to be

 

Outlaw

Indy 500

and to a lesser extent Combat (not as good of two player than Outlaw)

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This is tough to determine. One has to put things in perspective. We are so jaded by the games of today, that an aapreciation for these first titles is lost. With that in mind, I had alot of fun with these titles:

 

Combat

Slot Racers (1)

Air-Sea Battle

Breakout

Basketball (2)

Football (3)

Gunslinger

 

 

(1) I remember playing slot racers so intensely very late one night (actually until a couple of hours before school started) that I had the screen image burned into my eyes up until 2nd period of school the following day.

 

(2) We used to draw the basketball court lines on the screen with a magic marker (the key, centerlines, etc...). That was alot of fun.

 

(3) Broke several joyticks playing this one.

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I always like Adventure and Combat...

 

Are you sure Adventure actually came out before 1980?

 

I know the picture label cartridge says copyright 1978 (so does Super Breakout, which according to this was released in January 1982), but the first game catalog from 1980 is the first one to include Adventure, and it says "coming soon"...

 

http://www.atariage.com/catalog_page.html?...&currentPage=25

 

Also, the text label cartridge of Adventure says copyright 1980:

 

c_Adventure_Text_front.jpg

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