My first Atari Force
comic book was probably yours as well. It came with the Atari 2600
version of Defender and began part one of a two part prelude to what
the Atari Force’s actual mission and adventures would become. Now,
opening a new video game box has a special appeal all it own. It’s
something of a ritual for me. Tearing off the plastic shrink wrap, and
gingerly trying to open the top flap without creasing it, I examine the
contents inside, from the cartridge to the manual, unconsciously
gathering a whiff of the packaging plant air trapped inside the box
until I allowed that rarified gas to mix with the rest of the air.
After pulling out the cartridge to examine the art, I would pull out
the manual and read it cover to cover, providing that immediate access
to a console was unavailable. So it was an extra special treat to open
Defender and find not only a manual, but a comic book story packaged
along with the game as well. 
Another
impact that Atari Force had on the comic book industry is the little
known credit for birthing the concept of the graphic novel. The very
first graphic novel that D.C. Comics ever published was a direct result
of the third original Atari Force comic, and it was appropriately named
Star Raiders. The third Atari Force comic touched upon the concept of
the game and explored it enough to keep the overall story flowing. The
Star Raiders graphic novel mixed what the Atari Force issue had laid
out with more of the Star Raiders game itself, and weaved the
combination into a fascinating story with some of the richest art ever
dedicated to an Atari project at the time. Now, I have to be honest and
say that the story itself didn’t hold up to the expectations I had of
it by the time I finally got to read it, which was long after it had
been published. Much like the second Atari Force series, the action
focuses around a few key human beings, and the actions of a number of
odd looking and indescribable aliens. The result is something less than
spectacular, but the attempt to take a game like Star Raiders, and turn
it in to it’s own little universe was astounding. It seems as though
the story could have been a launching point for an ongoing series, had
they chosen to continue with it, but ultimately they never did. It
should also be pointed out that D.C. Comics’ second ever published
graphic novel was based on yet another Atari game, Warlords. However,
this title was even less successful at holding the game’s concept
together, and the story left your caring very little for the fate of
the story’s protagonist troll.
Which
leaves us with the Swordquest series. If ever there was a story in my
life that I would really like to hear the ending to before I die, this
would be it. Because, as we all know, the fourth Swordquest game was
never published, and as a result, the fourth Swordquest comic book that
was to accompany it was never drawn. So the story died with the
original management of Atari. Ironically, the gold sword that was to be
the ultimate prize of the Swordquest contest was made, and it is
rumored to be hanging above the Tramiel’s mantle place. If only the
fourth comic was with it as well, it could have been scanned by now so
my torture would end, but alas it is not meant to be.
And finally, before I go, I would be remiss if I forgot to point out that, like the near complete scans of the Atari Age magazine, Atariage.com also has full scans of all 10 published comic books that came with cartridges at http://www.atariage.com/comics/index.html which saves you the need to hunt them down on eBay in order to read any of them. However, if you would like to read the second Atari Force series, it is not uncommon to find someone selling the entire series, all 21 issues, for around $10 or $20, depending on their condition. So enjoy reading them, and I have a million dollar check ready to go to anyone who can produce that fourth Swordquest book for me.
| The Many Faces of . . . Battlezone |
| by Alan Hewston & Andrew "Tonks" Tonkin |
This month we have another 25th anniversary tribute form the 1980
arcade classic Battlezone. This was the first true first person shooter
with free movement. It was quite realistic being maneuverable while
having that first person view, and all the more when you were hit as
your display makes it appear that even the arcade screen has cracked.
You have the only tank(s) left in the control of mankind since all
others have been set on autopilot and are out to destroy mankind. You
alone must destroy these tanks, super tanks, missiles and flying
saucers. You can only fire one artillery shell at a time, waiting until
it hits another object or reaches its maximum range. Your tank is
controlled using 2, two-directional joysticks, one with a fire button.
Each stick can be placed in 3 (“up”, “neutral”, or “down”) positions,
thus leading to 3x3 = 9 combinations of movement. Resting, rotating (CW
or CCW), forward, reverse, and then the 4 combinations of turning and
moving simultaneously. The controls took some time getting used to but
are realistic of a tank. The high speed rendering of the B&W vector
graphics were enhanced by adding green & red color overlays to the
arcade cabinet. The entire battlefield appeared green and the remainder
in red for the text messages, score and full 360 degree field of view
radar. The arcade instructions tell you to: “Use the radar. Keep
moving. Don’t sit and spin in place or you will be hit. Use the cubes
and pyramids as shields. Listen for the enemy’s tank shots“. The least
realistic limitation is that your turret does not spin. So you can only
fire in the direction that you face. Thus there is no rotating your
turret to fire one direction, while driving in another. Fortunately
this applied to you’re your tank and all enemies as well. The
battlefield terrain was completely flat with the scattering of pyramids
and cubes to represent obstacles. The battlefield was endless and you
could never reach the scrolling mountainous background. The highlight
of the background was the active volcano (added at the last second).
The original title was “Future Tank” and then “Moon Tank” before the
more generic name “Battlezone” was settled upon. The game plays the
1812 Overture during a high score.
“Don’t Attack Dirt”
Just the opposite from last month’s Missile Command motto, “Don’t
Defend Dirt”, I‘ve made up my own saying here as you had better not be
firing at the dirt (ie nothing). You only get one shot at a time, and
as the manual warns - the Saucers are distractions – they are no
threat. Hitting the Saucer involves too much luck/timing. Sure your
target indicator lights up, but odds are your shot will pass right
underneath the saucer and only hit dirt. And let’s not forget that you
need to pay immediate attention to any incoming missiles (or fighters)
as their weaving L/R (or U/D) path will already cause some of your
shots to hit dirt. So “Don’t Attack Dirt”.
Arcade: 1980 Atari Ed Rotberg et al. with Morgan Hoff - project lead; Ed Rotberg - lead programmer; Jed Margolin - electrical engineer; Roger Hector - vector modeling; Owen Rubin - active volcano code.
All home versions by Atari/Atarisoft unless noted
Arcade Sequel: Not quite a sequel, but a more advanced version for the US Army used as a training simulator for the Bradley fighting vehicle. At least one prototype cabinet was known to exist with much the same look as Battlezone, but with a few more buttons. The added capabilities were: friendly units, variety of ordnance, realistic trajectories, two additional magnification levels, controller system with a thumb, finger and palm switches.
Home Version Similarities: Except those in <> all home versions have: a demo; pause <2600>; a choice of skill variations <5200, C64>; arcade enemies and scoring <2600 has fighters with their own missiles>; the battlefield is flat with only pyramids & cubes as obstacles; the horizon can never be reached, but scrolls nicely in the background as you rotate; a volcano is active <AP2> in the background; a single <2600> color, green, is used for all elements and enemies in the battlefield, all done using polygon/vector style graphics <2600>; a second color <2600> is used for everything else – that is the 360 degree view radar, the score, high score, number of tanks remaining and all text <2600> messages (enemy in range, enemy to the Left/Right/Rear, blocked); your current field of view and the enemy position and distance can be easily determined from your radar; your targeting site/crosshairs change appearance <2600 changes color> to indicate when the enemy is in the line of fire; an enemy may not be visible on the screen but is there; if you do not move, the enemy fire will always hit you <AP2, 5200>; enemy tanks and missiles <2600 fighters> will not go away until destroyed; the saucer however, will come and go and taunt you; you’ll hear an audio alert when an enemy appears, which is just after the last piece of debris falls from the previously exploded enemy, or when your new tank begins; you can hear and then see (if in front of you) their shots being fired and of course if they hit your tank; if hit, your tank display/windshield will crack, and you will have lost that tank forever; the enemy tanks make no sound after their arrival, but the saucers make a continuous high pitched sound when they are in range; the missiles make a sound as they weave back and forth, with a low groan that drowns out most of the sound; the enemy’s sound louder on a few versions, and appear bigger as they get closer; your tank has a low revving sound when stationary and more noise when turning or driving <AP2, 2600>; if you hit an obstacle or a tank, you’ll hear a noise <2600 no obstacles> to indicate this and see the text message “blocked” <2600>; your shots ring out when fired but only make an exploding sound if they hit the enemy; a visual debris shower from the enemy (quite a treat) will take place; there is no sound if you miss and unfortunately no sound to indicate when you can fire again; a bonus tank(s) can be earned on some game variations, but an audio cue is only heard on the Atari 8 bit. There is no stop in the action, no rounds, or waves. Once the battle begins, there’s no end to the enemy – they just keep on coming. Besides the occasional distraction of a saucer, there is always one and only one enemy present to contend with – save for the wonderfully enhanced 2600 which has 2!.
Disqualified: Sinclair
Spectrum (N/A)
Disqualified only because I do not have this system or an assistant to
help review it. Some notes combined from the Dec 1984 “Sinclair User”
& “Crash” magazines. The game is Atari approved, yet it is no
better than the tank games already released on the Speccy. Why did they
bother releasing it so late? It has a demo mode all the enemies and a
good number of obstacles and looks like the arcade – with the two color
schemes. Joystick or keyboard controls for caterpillar track movement.
Scrolling horizon, but an unanimated volcano. The next enemy shows up
quickly, no waiting around. Smooth graphics but not fast, and some
cracking up of the graphics from time to time. An on-target missile
sometimes misses. Nice gradual increase in difficulty, but only 1
starting difficulty to select. In all likelihood, it could have
contended for a medal here – seems to be similar to the C64.
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Disqualified: Atari 5200
prototype (38)
My first reaction was disappointment that this didn’t get released, but
the multi-cart prototype version seems to be just shy of being
completed. Gameplay is all there and very good (7), missing the full
details of the radar, and also having somewhat poor physics. That is,
you appear lined up to hit each other but can fire volleys back and
forth just missing for no apparent reason. The Addictiveness is fun to
play (7), scoring the highest of all versions I played. The pause is
the <pause>. But in all versions with a pause I only awarded +.5
points as no game lasts very long that you’d need one. Go figure, the
exception is the 2600 which has no pause, but you can play for a while
longer and could use one. There is no choice of starting level (ie not
finished) and the already mentioned firing and missing is frustrating.
The Graphics are crisp (8) with probably the smoothest, fastest and
overall best vector rendering. The background is in detailed hi-res
graphics, but there’s no volcano. The screen cracking effect is unique.
The Sound on every version is pretty good (7). A few things are
missing, but the enemy shots can be heard hitting obstacles – unique
here. Title music I think is the “Flight of the Valkyries”. Controls
score a (9), are a little off – possibly as it was not completed. The
Masterplay Interface craps out at times and starts playing analog like.
The standard 5200 stick is not too bad, but the Wico seems to be your
best bet.
Have Nots: Apple ][ (35)
My first reaction was since no version will have much audio, the Apple
has less of its usual disadvantage. This came somewhat true as the
Sound is respectable (6) with pretty much all effects but nothing
sounds very good. Missing are any driving & moving sounds, but the
saucers and missiles effects are different enough to keep you content.
A nice little musical intro “1812 Overture” Gameplay is fairly good (7)
with all the enemies in place, a functional radar . . . the basic
arcade game in tact. A big drawback in the logic or AI is that if you
remain fixed, the enemy shots don’t always hit you as they should –
more pitiful than the 5200. The saucer’s are really hard to hit.
Addictiveness is decent (6) but the worst of the lot. The game speed is
so darn slow there’s no sense of fluidity, no feel for the action. The
terrible collision detection (shots missing) keeps the game boring for
a while as you’re just not on the edge of your chair – it’s not life
and death. Then, once you do get going, the dreaded missiles are
extremely hard to defeat. The pause is
Bronze Medal: Vic 20 & C64 (39)
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Commodore Vic 20: My first reaction was that staff writer Andrew Tonkin has again come to my aid (as I don’t have this uncommon cart) to give this game a proper detailed review. Gameplay is impressive (8) with pretty much everything in place, but the Saucers are really hard to hit, making them much less of a distraction. Addictiveness is fun to play (7), with a pause using the <space bar>, but overall a tough game to play. Only 3 lives and you won’t get much chance to play a long game. 5 skill choices give you a little chance to play a faster paced game, but alas, the most common means of dying by a skilled player is getting blocked while retreating. It would appear this excessive blocking is not quite as bad as on the C64, and all other things being equal, I scored this port a little higher. The game is pretty fair about resetting the enemy after you lose a tank. The Graphics are cool (7) and the screen shot looks great and appears to match the C64. I’ve assumed that the details, smoothness and speed are just a bit worse than the C64. There are also not nearly as many obstacles. The Sound is very good (7) but some effects are less pleasant than other ports. The enemy’s shots are hard to hear from all the engine noise, but nothing detracts from the rest of the game. Controls are perfect (10). The cart is uncommon, but probably more scarce than its $15 value suggests.
Commodore 64: My first reaction was there are no options and too many obstacles. The Gameplay is of good quality (8) matching the same score and remarks as the Vic. Addictiveness is decent (6) with the <space bar> as the pause. There’s no choice of starting level/difficulty, which is unusual, but fortunately, the game starts off fairly easily. The C64, Vic 20, and 2600 have less randomness (most of the time the next enemy appears in range, not aiming at you, but usually right in your view). A glitch in having too many obstacles and/or the relative size of your tank and the obstacles really cripples this version. 80% the time you die due to hitting obstacles while retreating to avoid shots. Graphics are sharp (8) with good details, smoothness and speed, and to me, the easiest version to determine which vector enemy is which. Sound is very good (7), not missing a thing, but add in the saucers and missile effects get louder when the enemy gets closer. Controls are perfect (10). Available on Cart and disk. Disk version appears identical, but may have a white (not black) screen border.
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Silver Medal: Atari XE/8 bit
(40)
My first reaction was there may have been a version released by
Andromeda S/W, but I came up empty in my search. It may have been one
in the same as this one came out so late – 1987 - thus there was time
to correct previous version’s flaws. But that was not the case. The
Gameplay is impressive (8) with everything in place, unfortunately the
saucers are not only rare to see, but then even harder still to hit.
Addictiveness is fun to play (7) with a pause
Gold Medal: Atari 2600 (41)
My first reaction was this version fails to be arcade-looking but its
use of multi-color is wonderful. This is one of the best examples of
how one could disqualify a version (as this system is not capable of
copying the arcade vector graphics) or let its unique approach go
un-penalized. I chose the latter here, and am glad as it wins the Gold
medal for being so much more playable. The Gameplay is outstanding (9),
throwing out the arcade ad allowing 2 enemies attacking, plus the
saucer to distract you. This adds so much more complexity and allows
for actual strategy in how to attack or retreat. Attack which one
first? With only one enemy, the only choice is if you wish to be greedy
and go after the saucer or not. Otherwise, react to the tanks and blow
them away. Another huge difference which is part good and bad is that
there are NO obstacles. The obstacles are the only thing that keeps the
battlefield from being barren, so this is surely lacking here. But then
you never have that lame (random) problem of backing into the
obstacles. Never fear, this works well with 2 enemies as you only back
up long enough to dodge one shot and get back on the offensive, least
that 2nd tank gets you from behind. I guess the silly randomness and
stupidity of getting blocked all the time is why I never enjoyed
Battlezone much, until the 2600 version found me. The Addictiveness is
exciting (7) – on the edge of your chair as the battle really moves
along fast here. As mentioned before, there is no pause, but this is
the version you’ll want to play the most and play the longest and thus
a pause would come in handy. There’s 3 skill settings and nothing seems
unfair or like you were cheated. There’s even the thrill of dodging the
shots that can come out of the fighters (where the fighters replaced
the missiles). The Graphics make the biggest impact to the game and the
color is quite enjoyable (8). The details are less and the motion is a
bit choppy, but you never feel cheated or get confused. The color tells
you which enemy is which right away which helps keep the game moving,
fun and adds that strategy greatly. The text readouts are gone, but did
you really need that anyway since your radar works as it should? The
background and collage of colors is great, especially the animation of
the tank’s tracks. The explosions are not as cool, but are done faster,
more realistically anyhow, and the screen cracking effect is replaced
by a computer monitorGoing haywire – excellent! The crosshairs are
replaced by a single bar, but this works fine and is effective. Sound
is very good (7) – yes, there’s and echo in here. There’s no driving
noises, but the action is so fast, that you won’t miss it. There’s a
nice musical intro. Controls are perfect (10).
Note that the Artwork for Saucers in the manual look just like 1980’s Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon fighters. The cart is not too hard to find and one of the best 2600 arcade ports ever.
For the next generation:
Why didn’t any version include the obstacles in the radar – at least
that would reduce the luck factor. Taking a break between playing a set
of rounds composed of 12 to 15 enemies would be neat. Keep adding one
more enemy every time one is eliminated, and then add one more for
every 30 seconds you go without hitting to add more realism. Finally,
driving one direction and shooting the other would be the ultimate
enhancement, providing of course, that you could find a way to control
this and there were already more than one enemy at a time anyhow.
Come back next month, but I am still unsure. My time looks limited, so I may do a simple review like the Many Faces of Venture – oh Boy! all 3 of them on the 2600, CV & INTV. Contact Alan Hewston at: Hewston95@NOSPAMstratos.net or visit the Many Faces of site: http://my.stratos.net/~hewston95/RT/ManyFacesHome.htm.
| The Titles of Tengen - Tetris |
| by David Lundin, Jr. |
It's hard to think of a more popular puzzle game than Tetris. Originally created in the former Soviet Union by Alexey Pazhitnov it spread like wildfire throughout the world of computing and made its way into the arcade in 1988 thanks to Atari Games. Gameplay is deceptively simple as all uber popular games are: arrange falling blocks in a well so that they create horizontal rows, once created they disappear, if the well fills up to the top it's game over. Naturally Tengen would create an NES version of this arcade superhit but due to a mishandling of copyrights things would get dirty fast and Nintendo would have its own version of Tetris shortly there after. Since the Tengen version is based upon the arcade version and the Nintendo version is based upon the original computer version, I'll leave the comparison between the arcade original and Tengen port.
Right off the bat you get a variety of gameplay options. Single player lets you play in the left column while your stats are tracked on the right side. Two player lets you square off with a human opponent, player one on the left and player two on the right. Cooperative is a special mode that uses a single well and lets both players use that same play field and work together - it's an interesting play mode that stands out in the Tengen release. Versus Computer is the standard two player mode except the computer plays the right hand side, which is really no challenge since the computer opponent just slowly plays the game at a snails pace. With Computer lets you play the cooperative mode with a CPU assistant but again the computer drops its pieces so slow it can turn into an exercise in frustration. Screwing around with the AI is fun for a few minutes though.
As with most Tengen ports the graphics are faithfully recreated as accurately as possible on the NES hardware. In the arcade the divider between the two wells is dressed up to look Russian, somewhat like St. Basil's cathedral with the domed tops. The Tengen port replaces this with a simple column in the center with "T E T R I S" spelled down the middle. Once you complete a level in the arcade the door on your side atop the center column opens up and a little dancer pops out as your bonus points are totaled. This is carried over to the Tengen version except each one of the doors behind "T E T R I S" opens to reveal a dancer. The more diverse mix of line eliminations the player created (single, double, triple, tetris) the more dancers that come out and dance around during intermission. The animation during the intermission sequence is actually better in the Tengen port as the dancers do back flips, spin around, and perform traditionally Russian looking dances. The only real difference graphically is that the individual blocks change to the current level's color once they drop to the bottom instead of retaining their original colors as in the arcade.
Surprisingly all the background music is there and is dead on. In the arcade the background music changed between levels but the Tengen port lets you select which audio track you want looping in the background at the start. Personally "Bradinsky" is my favorite and is far better than any of the background music that Nintendo put in any of their versions, in my opinion it has always been the definitive Tetris theme. Play control is smooth and accurate, just as responsive as in the arcade original. The arcade version is still more difficult in that block acceleration picks up a lot quicker and different levels present different challenges such as starting with blocks already in the well or having blocks randomly appear atop the stack. These extra mid-game challenges are not present in the Tengen port.
There are a few things to keep in mind when comparing the arcade and Tengen versions against the Nintendo release. First and foremost is that the Nintendo release was not meant to be a port of the arcade version, in fact Nintendo and Tengen were locked in legal battles at the time. There's a huge backstory about the creation and rights leasing of Tetris but it falls outside the spectrum of a comparison review and could fill an entire volume on its own. Second is the Nintendo releases were based upon porting over the original computer version and the Tengen release was designed to port over the Atari Games arcade version.
To be fair, the first console release of Tetris was in Japan on the Famicom (what was repackaged as the NES in the rest of the world) and was fairly close to one of the earlier PC releases. However the controls on the original Japanese Famicom version are what ultimately makes it a pain to play. Down on the directional pad rotates the currently falling block and the B button drops it - straight to the bottom, there's no gradual acceleration to the bottom, you hit B and it's at the bottom of the well. This takes away a lot of strategy of sliding tetrads into place since it's an agonizing and frustrating wait for them to get down to the level of the stack so you can position them. Another difference is you have "lives" in the Famicom version, when you top out your score is totaled and a life subtracted, then you begin again from the start of the level.
There is no two player option in the Nintendo version which single handily makes it far inferior to the Tengen port. It seems a lot of people view Tetris as a loner game or a game to simply waste time playing - killing an hour or so in your cubicle when you should be getting work done. Granted, Tetris was originally a single player computer game - but once the versus mode in the arcade and Tengen home version was created, it made the game competitive beyond the high score and that to me is what gives it longevity. Tetris in the arcade was always very much a social experience, playing head to head for points. What you did on your side didn't effect the other player (that wouldn't come into play until more recent ports) but it was always impressive to slam down row after row of blocks in quick succession while the other player and any onlookers notice who is playing better. Blame it on growing up at the end of Silicon Valley arcade culture I guess.
Quite a few gamers and retrogamers ended up only knowing of the Nintendo NES port of the game since most of the copies of the Tengen port had to be pulled from store shelves after it was revealed that Tengen did not own the rights to publish Tetris. Most NES collectors will come across a Tengen copy of Tetris every now and then however they're fairly hard to come by but not impossible to find. Everyone that enjoys Tetris owes it to themselves to check out the Tengen port of the arcade original, it's a totally different game than the Nintendo version the world was force fed and still holds up remarkably well to this day and cements Tengen as part of video game history.
"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi
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The TI-99/4A Arcade: Arcade Clones II |
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| by Bryan Roppolo | ||
Last month I focused on some of the arcade clones avaliable for the TI-99/4A, those being Hopper, Carwars, and TI Invaders. Well, this month is going to follow in the footsteps of March's issue and will focus on Parsec, Alpiner, and Munchman which all are clones of arcades (Parsec is the exception, while not really a clone many people consider it to be inspired by Scramble). Before beginning, I must say that there are some very good titles being reviewed this month, so be sure to not just read the reviews but also pick up these games at your local thrift/flea market (or even eBay). These are all very common titles and should be easy enough for anyone to get their hands on and enjoy. Now off the to reviews...
Parsec (1982 TI) - Inspired
by "Scramble" (1981 Konami)
Hands down this
is the cartridge that everyone thinks about when it comes to TI-99/4A
gaming. Not only did it become TI's flagship game, but also it
continues to be the most popular TI game cartridge out there (at least
according to the number of hits the TI-99/4A Videogame House gets for
Parsec every month!), and it dosen't take a genuis to figure out why.
With all of the fatures Parsec has to offer, in addition to the great
gameplay, this cartridge is a must for anyone with or even without a
TI-99/4A. If you are to play only one game on the TI system, this would
be the one.
Alpiner (1982 TI) - -
Clone of "Crazy Climber" (1980 Taito)
This game is a
clone of the Crazy Climber arcade which many people seem to love.
Interestingly though, I've seen many comments from people that really
enjoy Alpiner and those that really hate it, and personally I never
could figure out why there was such a wide array of opinions for this
game (compared to most others). In my opinion, Alpiner is pretty
interesting since avoiding all of the mountain hazards can prove to be
quite a challenge and also trying to steal those little "balls" from
the various mountain animals is always a fun little side quest. The
idea of Alpiner is similar to Crazy Climber in that you have to scale
to the top of the mountain (in Crazy Climber's case it was a building)
while avoiding all types of hazards along the way. At first the game
may come off as too easy, but as you play your way to the 6th level
(the tallest mountain) there will be a noticable increase in the level
of difficulty. Therefore, don't write it off too soon.
Munchman (1982 TI) - Clone
of "Pac-Man" (1980 Namco)
Now I'm sure that
everyone can tell this game is a clone of Pac-Man, the game that every
system back in the early 80s seemed to have a variation of. But,
luckily for all of you video game players out there Munchman is not a
complete rip-off of Pac-Man as some other clones are. The one important
twist Munchman changes from the original arcade is the fact that chains
are layed down across the maze rather than gobbling up dots. This
variation makes Munchman stand out somewhat from some others, and
actually adds a little bit to the challenge of the game.
For more reviews, graphics, and information on TI-99/4A video game cartridges stop by the TI-99/4A Videogame House at <http://www.videogamehouse.net/>. This site is run by a staff of TI-99/4A enthusiasts, including Bryan Roppolo himself and has been responsible for finding unreleased TI-99/4A video game cartridges such as Lobster Bay.
| NEW VIC 20 GAMES | ||
| by Tonks | ||
It would easily be 20 years since I have seen a new Vic 20 game being sold in a Computer shop. I got my first Vic 20 in 1983. The very next year the Vic was discontinued and new games dried up completely. The last new game I ever saw sitting on a store shelf was during a post Christmas clearance sale at the very beginning of 1985. Game listings in magazines lasted about another year. And that was it - the end of the line for new Vic 20 games.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that a software label was planning on selling at least 2 brand new Vic 20 games. I’m not talking about simple PD style games. I’m talking about proper commercial games released on tape with full professional packaging. You might think I’ve been dreaming or that I am pulling your leg (an Aussie slang term for playing a trick on you). Well I am telling you the honest truth.
Cronosoft is a game publisher from the UK who specialises in releasing brand new games for retro consoles and computers. They have already released games for the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum to rave reviews. Now it is the Vic 20’s turn.
Not a lot of information is available, and little more than a couple of screen shots have been released by Cronosoft themselves. But taking the quality of Cronosoft’s previous games into consideration, all Vic 20 fans can set their hopes high.
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The first game being released is called “Astro Nell“. It is a platform game with some very similar elements to the classic Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy games. Graphics are colourful and reasonably detailed. The finished game is claimed to have 20 levels and will run on an unexpanded Vic.
The second game is called “Lunar Blitz”. There is even less information available about this game than “Astro Nell”. From the screen shots available it seems to be based on the classic blitz games where you must bomb and flatten the city while your bomber flies over the city gradually flying lower and lower. “Lunar Blitz” will require 8k expansion.
For further Vic 20 development, these first two games will need to sell reasonably well so Cronosoft will know there is a viable market for new Vic 20 games. So come on Vic 20 fans, log onto cronosoft.co.uk and make an order when the games are finished and ready for release. In the mean time I will hopefully find out more and report in these pages as information comes to hand.
| The Thrill of Defeat: The First Home Computers |
| by Mark Sabbatini |
Sure it’s annoying Windows computers require endless bug fixes and Macs are pricey fashion statements lacking software. But imagine a machine requiring days of assembly, made more frustrating by missing and surplus parts.
The early era of home computers beginning in the mid 1970s may be the most nostalgic, since users were rare and forced to be far more hands-on with their hardware than subsequent generations. The ads alone probably scared off most people: instead of fruity futuristic plastics and alien-embellished towers, pictures of circuit boards and phrases like “firmware in PROMS” were the industry’s idea of catchy marketing.
With many of these machines you didn’t bring home a box. You brought home the board and surrounded it with your own. In some cases (no pun intended) this resulted in some of the most charming desktop setups ever (see the wood Apple I case built by one user).
Hobbyists purchasing the Altair 8800, Sol-20 and original Apple I almost certainly didn’t have games near the top of their list of planned activities. The Altair didn’t even have a screen, just a panel of LED lights that responded to a series of switches flipped on the front panel. When a lunar lander game was written for it, decisions were entered step-by-step and printer gave a clipped technical narrative of the ship’s progress.
By this standard, video game consoles of the era offering titles like Pong, Breakout and Skeet Shoot were recreational accomplishments of Homeric proportions.
Those able to get past the hump of typing get-acquainted-with-your-machine lines like “0 : A9 b 0 b AA <RET>” eventually discovered entertainment of greater depth, if not flash, was possible. Many titles were adoptions of mainframe text games such as “Hammurabi” and “Hunt The Wumpus,” detailed in January’s RTM. An excellent source of these is the “Creative Computing” series of BASIC game books found at www.atariarchives.org, which feature instructions, program listings and sample games. On a more advanced level were text adventures requiring weeks to solve, strategy titles that didn’t need graphics for an interesting one- or two-player challenge, and even arcade games that (sometimes) did an ingenious job of making ordinary letters act like invaders from space.
Now the confession: I never got a chance to play games on the original machines, nor have I had much luck configuring emulators to do a thorough modern-day evaluation. Some criticize emulators as lacking the real experience, but much of what I’ve gone through the past few weeks is a little too authentic: typing in long listings of BASIC and machine language code, only to have nothing happen when trying to run it. This was common in the old days since a single typo was usually enough to cause a malfunction or crash, but emulators also have the additional irritation of sometimes inexact machine replication and spotty file-saving systems. So my ability to offer reviews and information about playing games for these systems is limited.
Luckily, there are devout users of just about everything electronic, with a number of publications and Web sites helping provide the listings below (giving credit where due in all cases, I hope - if someone feels I missed them, let me know). Links and resources for playing some of the titles are also provided. Most are for the Sol-20 because it proved to have the largest and easiest to access library of software and documents. Also, to my untrained eye the titles appear to be the best available among the machines featured here.
ALTAIR 8800
This 1975
machine is considered the first successful microcomputer, selling
thousands of machines (the builder hoped to sell 200) before quickly
being bypassed by better machines the following year.
Lunar Lander
“You had a certain amount of fuel and you could instruct the computer
to do rocket burns to brake the descent,” noted John McVeigh, technical
editor of Popular Electronics in ‘70s, in a January 2005 interview.
“The teletypewriter would print out a profile of the trajectory.
However, the teletypewriter was so noisy that some of the other
Ziff-Davis staffers (we shared an office suite with Stereo Review)
started complaining about the noise, so Leslie had to keep his door
closed when the thing was running.”
APPLE I
Stop me if you’ve
heard this pitch: Spend a few hundred bucks for a remarkably small base
machine, plug in a keyboard and display, and enjoy a “hassle free” and
“extremely powerful” computer.
Little Tower
This text
adventure is one of the few games I was able to review hands-on. It’s
an average title by the standards of the day - admittedly low - with
about an equal number of pluses and minuses canceling each other out.
The storyline is unremarkable, although many programmers seem to have
varied little from the explore the forest/castle/cave concept during
the past three decades. Probably the best feature of Little Tower is
the built-in instructions and command list, since too many adventures
forced gamers to play “guess what the programmer is thinking” by
solving problems with unlikely commands like “BRAID FRONDS.” The worst
is a frequent sin of text adventure games - the sudden, illogical and
unavoidable death for innocent acts such as moving to a location for
the first time. Death ought to be result of player neglect - Zork, for
example, warns players they’ll get eaten in they stay in a dark
location, giving them a turn or two to escape their predicament. Also,
the game unglamorously dumps the user out of the program if they die,
with no option to restart.
KIM-1
Mentioned in passing because, like the Apple I, this was the initial offering from a company who soon afterward produced a consumer market hit. Commodore acquired the machine from MOS Technology and began selling it in 1976, a year before introducing the truly all-in-one PET, which many consider the world’s first “real” home computer (an in-depth review of its games will be in a future issue). The KIM-1 was a hobbyist machine with its six-LED display and hexadecimal keypad, but had one feature associated with Commodore’s more famous machines: a low price tag - in this case $245. The computer featured 1K of RAM, a 1 Mhz 6502 processor, a cassette interface and came assembled. There were games for it such as “Lunar Lander” and “Chess,” but I know nothing about them. The KIM-1 can be simulated through the MESS emulator (www.mess.org) and a listing of the chess program, for any soul brave enough to attempt entering it, is at www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/uchess.txt.
SOL-20
As is often
the case with technology, the best comes last.
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ATC
An air traffic controller simulator that Paul Schaper at
www.thebattles.net describes as “the best game I ever found for the
Sol.” I can’t comment specifically on this version, but it appears to
be similar to versions for a number of other computers where players
issue simple commands to have planes land, take off and hover without
colliding. Difficulty levels on many versions controlled the number of
planes, weather conditions and, in some cases, how quickly real-time
action progressed.
Chase
Imagine the classic arcade game Berserk as a step-by-step strategy
game, minus the ability to shoot them. Instead you move through the
room trying to lure robots into electric walls while avoiding them and
other obstacles. It was published in a newsletter for CP/M, a
business-oriented operating system that was dominant until DOS and
Windows came along.
Chess
Another description from Schaper: “A middle of the road chess program
at the time. Good for their first effort. It outperformed all the other
chess programs I had for the Sol (I never got any of the CP/M ones) but
Zargon ran circles around PTs chess.” Zargon, eventually available on
virtually every major platform, would for years be the standard by
which all other personal computer chess games were matched.
Galaxy
A puzzle game from the newsletter Processor Tech Access. The
description: “You try to ‘shoot stars’ (flip bits) to change the
starting pattern to the goal pattern.” Sounds like a Rubik’s Cube or
the game of Life with a cannon.
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Piranha
A sort-of original game resembling BASIC programs I typed in and played
throughout the 1980s - simple, mindless and fun. Piranhas that look
remarkably like asterisks move around the screen - sometimes at random,
sometimes not - and the player simply tries to avoid them.
Raiders
This is supposedly a good Space Invaders clone using letters instead of
graphics, although one of the more interesting historical aspects is
the acclaim given programmer Steve Maguire (“the source code is worth
looking at - beautiful”). Considerations such as programming techniques
and efficiency were at least as important to many users as
entertainment value.
Targ
Billed as the program that made the Sol famous. Players shoot
spaceships created from ASCII characters - hardly an original concept -
bit it’s also possible to get sound effects by placing an AM radio near
the display (an audio sample can be heard at
www.thebattles.net/sol20/targ_am.mp3). It’s essentially random
low-pitched static, but works well for space and tank games. Similar
techniques would be used to generate sound on “silent” computers such
as the Sinclair ZX-81.
Target
A CP/M game with the following user group description: “Your player is
in a fixed location on the left side of the screen and you attempt to
shoot a bouncing object on the right side of the screen. It is quite
inane.”
A few others I know about only through the screenshots here are Pac-Man, race car and Star Wars adaptations.
Next month the real meat of this series begins (and gets back to more familiar territory for me) with a month-by-month look at individual machines. It begins with those introduced about the same time as the Apple II in 1977 and, while some enjoyed a decent run of success, they ultimately got left in the dust by their fruity foe.
| Game Over |
That's going to do it for this month. Hopefully next issue we'll have more cool columns, rad reviews, and other stuff. Again I apologize for the short issue, but after all sometimes less is more. See ya!
- Adam King, Chief Editor
Copyright © 2005 Adam King & Alan Hewston. All related copyrights and trademarks are acknowledged.