Episode 181 - The Video Game Episode

[Arthur Ratnik]

[Fanboyimus Prime]

About the Atari Pacman game....that wasn't anything but a rough draft version of the game. It was not supposed to be put out like that but they wanted to cash in on Pacman fever.

Oh and the ET game was literally made in two weeks. Man it shows doesn't it?

[Hair-Metal Hero]

I'm loving this show, nostalgia is kicking in hardcore.

[NewFun#6]

[NewFun#6]

The game I was thinking of at the very end of the episode when I said I just thought of another, but we'd spend another hour talking about it so I didn't say it was "The Sims". I've been thinking of games and systems for days since recording this. We never did spend any time on the Intellivsion and I really wanted to. We'll definitely be revisiting this topic.

[NewFun#6]

Chris, are you absolutely sure your dad didn't have a game like this in his store? --



I woulda bet money on it that he did.

[NewFun#6]

King and Balloon

[NewFun#6]

http://retro.ign.com/articles/848/848707p1.html

[Hair-Metal Hero]

For those in the Northeast US, this is where you want to go for that old school arcade feel:
http://www.funspotnh.com/

it is the largest arcade in the world, and has the most extensive collection of vintage games anywhere. Its pretty much the base for all of the competitions for retro gaming in the world. It is the Arcade featured in The King of Kong, and it is amazing.

[Arthur Ratnik]

[ljacone]

Regarding what we did before video games: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/3/9/

[ljacone]

Just listened to the first segment. I was a little too young for the arcades back then, but we did have a Colecovision with the Atari 2600 adapter piece on the front, and I remember playing the heck out of it. But I do have a few arcade memories growing up. Mainly they were from the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World.

One of my fondest memories of that arcade was my father playing the rotating, sit-down version of the classic Sega game Thunder Blade, and he got the high score! No mean feat for my father who was never much of a gamer. Mostly I remember playing lots and lots of Dig Dug, which has always been a favorite of mine, plus pinball. I don't remember if it was the Contemporary or the smaller arcade at the Polynesian, but one of them had Haunted House, one of the greatest pinball machines of all time. Even as my brother and I got older we'd still hit the various arcades. We would stay at Old Key West (which had a very small game room) but we'd walk over to what used to be Dixie Landings and hit their arcade for a few hours while my parents shopped or whatnot. I remember playing with my brother and 4 other kids on the big two-screen Konami X-Men game! I of course was Nightcrawler, my brother was Wolverine.

Just this weekend my wife, son, and I ended up at Chuck E Cheese for a while so the little guy could ride the kiddie rides or throw the balls around the skee-ball. But I got the chance to drop some quarters on and OH MY GOD what a flashback. Felt like a kid again, dudes.

Sweet episode so far. More thoughts later.

[ljacone]

My favorite 2600 games were almost all Activision games: Pitfall, Chopper Command, Sky Jinks, and Boxing. My brother was a huge fan of River Raid, which was a pretty badass game as well. Chopper Command I always dug, and it wasn't until years later that I learned it was the Activision version of Defender! We'd also play Ice Hockey a lot too. I remember a few times we'd play Ice Hockey and then we'd go play slide hockey too, haha.

Activision was formed by a group of programmers from Atari who wanted to actually receive credit for the games they produced and programmed. When Atari balked, they walked and formed their own company. That's why if you read the manual for an Activision game they will always have tips and tricks from the programmer himself, and they always gave credit to the programmer. I have Activision Anthology for my GBA and it's one of the best games in the library as far as I am concerned. Just awesome having all those games in one set. Plus if you get the correct high scores you can unlock the patches and stuff! But just having the ability to sit down and play a quick game of Chopper Command or something real quick is awesome. Plus it also had all of the cool games I never had as a kid, such as Stampede and Pressure Cooker.

Non-Activision games which I liked include Atlantis (which you guys talked about), Missile Command (a real classic), and Combat! Combat was an amazing game because of all of the different options: tanks, jets, or bi-planes, plus the various options for straight shots, guided shots, bouncing shots, invisible tanks, etc etc etc.

Like I said we had the Colecovision with the 2600 attachment. We only had 3 Colecovision games, but all three of them were great: Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and Turbo. Turbo came with the steering wheel and gas pedal and it was a big deal to play because I'd have to get my Dad to hook it up for me. I remember playing that one with my brother where J would steer and I would press the gas pedal. Cripes those are old memories.

More to come...

[ljacone]

We never had an NES or SNES -- we were a Sega household.

Started off with a Sega Master System -- with the Sega-Scope 3-D set as well, which was pretty awesome. The SMS was, and remains to me, far superior to the NES in terms of technical merits. The NES had the much better 3rd party support and 3rd party games, but the homegrown Sega games were for the most part fantastic on the SMS. Some of the classics for that system were Rampage (which my brother and I played the heck out of), Zillion 2, Shinobi, Action Fighter, Double Dragon (another classic 2 player game... LIGHT YEARS better than the NES adaption), Golvellius (which was akin to Sega's version of Legend of Zelda), Rastan (best barbarian game ever), Space Harrier, Thunder Blade, After Burner... the list goes on and on!

And that's not even considering the sports games my brother and I would play: Great Baseball, Great Football, Great Hockey, and OH MY GOD PRO WRESTLING! With the Iron Soldiers, Orient Express, Great Maskmen, and Crush Brothers. We played the LIVING HELL out of that game. All of those games were badass... even as far back as the 8-bit era the sports games were Sega's bread and butter.

I am going to hold on comment on the Genesis right now until I have some more time... the Genesis is the greatest home system of all time as far as I am concerned.

[ljacone]

By the way, the Sega consoles and their main competitors:

Sega Master System -- Nintendo Entertainment System

Sega Genesis -- Nintendo Super NES

Sega Saturn -- Sony Playstation -- Nintendo N64

Sega Dreamcast -- Sony Playstation 2 -- Nintendo Gamecube -- Microsoft X-Box.

A lot of people forget about they Saturn, but it was Sega's 32-bit system while the Dreamcast was the 64-bit.

[NewFun#6]

[Joe Anthrax]

[Joe Anthrax]

After listening, I had a few things to comment on (other than how awesome it was to have all those childhood arcade and video game memories brought back).

Pac-Man for the 2600 may have been the biggest letdown in video game history, but Atari did make up for it with the 2600 version of Ms Pac Man, which was about as close to the actual arcade version on the 2600.

You both mentioned Rogue Squadron and its sequels for the various platforms (mostly the N64 though), but you seemed to have not liked the LucasArts X-Wing series. During my college and post-college years, my friends used to get together and have LAN parties where we would play X-Wing vs. T.I.E. and one group would be Imperials and the other Rebels and there would be missions on attacking Star Destroyers or Alliance Frigates. And all the ships from the Original Trilogy were represented (A-Wings, B-Wings, X-Wings, Y-Wings, T.I.E. Fighters, Bombers, Destroyers, Advanced T.I.E.s, you name it). Each ship had its own strengths and weaknesses (B-Wings had ion cannons and could take more damage, A-Wings were wicked fast but had poor shielding), so having a balanced team and knowing what each ship could do was a must.There was even a mission where you could take any of the Alliance fighters and see how they would fare in a Death Star trench run. A later version, X-Wing: Alliance, even gave you the opportunity to pilot the Millenium Falcon!!!

I can see your dislike of subscription games like World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online. I am guilty of being a WoWhead and shelling out $14 a month to play a zombie wizard, but it allows me to interact with friends that I wouldn't get to interact with in real life. I see it as the evolution of the weekend get-togethers to play Dungeons and Dragons, only over the internet with fewer rolls of random dice. Star Trek Online interested me, but the ship combat looked too much like the old Starfleet Command games, and the crew combat looked horrible. Maybe they have changed things around since the launch, but I wasn't interested. And I also lucked out on beta testing DC Universe Online. It was relatively fun, but it felt like a game made for the PS3. It seemed to be more of a button masher, and the roles of tank, DPS (damage per second), and healer didn't seem well defined for group play. However, I heard they got Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin, and Mark Hamill to reprise their voice roles for the final version of the game.

As for the iPhone/iPod as a gaming console, all I have to say is this...I currently have Dragon's Lair, the Don Bluth animated LaserDisc game from the arcades as a playable game on my iPhone. The FULL GAME. Space Ace is also available. Yes, playing them tears through your battery, but I can play the game I wasted hundreds of quarters on in the arcades with the same picture quality (if not better) in the palm of my hand. How freaking awesome is that?!?

Joe -- I really enjoyed listening to this episode, and appreciate you two staying up late to record and edit it -- Anthrax

[Drunk_Oogler]

Awesome episode. Content, editing, sound fx & intro are another example of why you guys have the best podcast on the internet by far that i have heard, and I listen to a TON of podcasts.

Castlevania 1 & 3 were the source of many a broken controller back then. That god damn clock tower level....

"NHL Hockey, fucking kick ass'.

[Hair-Metal Hero]

My dad was an early adopter of electronic gaming, my sisters had pong(they are much older than I), and there was never a time where I didn't have games in front of me. Some of my best times with my dad as a youngin were playing Intellivision for long stretches of time(namely the Dungeons and Dragons games). Here's my rundown of what systems I had:

Intellivision(1 and 2, with the voice module!)DnD, Atlantis, zaxxon, donkey Kong, shit I think we had every Intellivision game produced.
Commodore 64(Bruce Lee and Wizards of Wor were the shit!)
That Texas Instruments computer(SHIT!)
NES(Mega Man!)
Genesis(had the sega CD and the 32X)Amazing Spider-man was my thing.
Then got a SWEEEEET gaming PC(Dark Forces, Doom 2, Loom, all the Lucas arts games man.)
Then I got a job-
DREAMCAST was fucking AMAZING! Sonic adventure, Soulcalibur, Virtua Tennis-possibly one of the best games ever!)
PS2-Blah, bought it for GTA 3.
Gamecube-
XBOX
WII
XBOX 360-Probably the finest console overall-I love it.
Damn, ive spent so much money on this crap the past 16 years, and I've loved every second of it.