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These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay. The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

Blah, forget that, install a true Star Trek classic: EGATrek. Plot? PLOT? We don't need no stinkin' plot! The Klingons are invading, and it's your job to blow 'em up, in spectacular 16-color 640x350 EGA graphics. THAT'S your Plot. (Just make sure that you get the one with the real names, and not the stupid "Mongols/Vandals" version. This page has a link.)

Blah, forget that, install a true Star Trek classic: EGATrek. Plot? PLOT? We don't need no stinkin' plot! The Klingons are invading, and it's your job to blow 'em up, in spectacular 16-color 640x350 EGA graphics. THAT'S your Plot. (Just make sure that you get the one with the real names, and not the stupid "Mongols/Vandals" version. This page has a link.)

I'm 40 and have had consoles since the Odyssey, probably before you were born. :P

Unlike yours, my reply had some reason to it: the submitter is 44 and mentioned arthritis. The games I suggested are quite involved, give a lot of game play for the $ and don't require extensive hammering of the controller thus saving his hands. You could probably suggest some fighting games for him but his hands would be crippled in a few weeks.

Two words, dude: Guardian. Legend. It's the best NES game that very few people have ever heard of.

For the future, look to the past!

Anyone know of a tcp/ip multiplayer updated version

I think the PC Atari Emulator has the Kaillera client which allows you to play on internet any console based game (whose emulator supports it of course..).

Again incorrect, and more quoting from fansites rather than accurate sources.

In that case, fix your own damn fansite: "However, even with this initial success, the console did not fair well."

You're spreading disinformation, Mr. Site Director.

The Magnavox Odyssey sold about 375,000 units in its US release alone,

Neither Mr. Baer or PongStory have upped their esitmates from 350,000 units. If you have new information, you might want to share with them so that they're not spreading disinformation from their "fan sites".

That's hardly a "failure", and in fact is considered high sales for a pioneering product.

A pioneering product? Yes. A market success? I see no visible signs of that. 350,000 units is not too bad, but it's not great either. If you want to say that it was a success for a pinoeering product then that's a different thing all together. That doesn't make either of us "wrong", it means we have different perspectives. A perspective you apparently shared at one point, according to your "fan site".

And that is simply not true about not finding stores wanting to carry it because of the Odyssey (which was *only* carried in Magnavox stores and sellers), that's more heresy. They were initially looking for someone to sell the design to and none of the established arcade game companies wanted to enter the consumer market. So they went to the toy show that year in hopes of finding a toy company to OEM through and had no luck (once again, because it was considered a fad).

So which is it? Did the companies want to carry the product or not? Was their decision impacted by the sale of the Odyssey or not? Tune in next week for absolutely no conclusion at all!

Actual historians actually refer to Atari as I stated - creating the video arcade indistry and jumpstarting the home console industry.

Indeed. They had such a profound effect on the market that you could almost say they created the home console industry. :-/

He was one of several who "ran the company", which initially was a small engineering firm (with a partner) and by the time of the 2600 had a full executive board and middle management that approved and dissaproved projects.

So what you're saying is, founders should shoulder all the blame when something goes wrong, but receive none of the credit when things go right? Remember, I was responding to attempts to pin responsibility for the 5200, ET, and the Jaguar on him. He could not have been responsible for those failures, because he was not at the company. However, the 2600 did happen under his watch, making him partly responsible for it. I did not give him complete credit for the 2600, nor does he deserve it. But apparently, you wish to put those words in my mouth.

It is *completely* relevant because of those details, which you self admittedly "left out". The show your "less detailed" claim to be irrelevant.

No, it is not relevant. Again, I gave a two paragraph summary of events that described Bushnell's reign. I'm sorry if not everyone wants to write a book on the subject so that they can ensure that every little detail is communicated.

please call it what it is: 8-bit *personal computer* hardware

The common name for the collection of 8-Bit computers from Atari are collectively known as the "Atari 8-bits". Complaining about that is disingenuous. You know exactly what's being discussed, as does anyone else who knows what the 5200 and 8-Bit computer lines were.

You said specifically one of the reasons he quit because they wanted to release computers and he didn't want to.

Actually, I never said that he did

that game scared the shit out of me and my brothers and sister. My younger brother would start to cry if we sang the theme that was played when you met the monsters, oh the memories... anyone else play this?

See here for a review: http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/projfire.shtml

another scary and more recent one is System Shock II (haven't played the first one), at some point I even quit playing that game because it was to stressful....

And? Electrical contacts get dirty, what's your point?

I can't wait until Jack Thompson sues the makers of the game Burgertime for making american kids obese.

*cough* you yourself are 15-30 years too late saying only seven years, C0R1D4N. See http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Virtual_community/p lato_history.article or
http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/com putergaminghistory/index5-3.shtml

Before that, they whined about Exidy's Death Race (1975), and Chiller.

And at home, in 1982, there was Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600 console.

And from its very invention up until the 70s, people had to go to court to prove that pinball was a game of skill, not a game of chance, and that pinball machines were therefore not illegal gambling machines.

For everything fun, there's gonna be some idiot with a (D) or an (R) beside his or her name telling you not to do it. Fuck 'em all.

No, not entirely. It's the PC gaming business that they say is suffering, not PC gaming. There are plenty of games that are free from the onset that are fun. http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
http://asteroids3d.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lynn
http://toppler.sourceforge.net/
http://blockattack.sourceforge.net/
http://source.bungie.org/
http://www.secretmaryo.org/
http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
http://www.classicgaming.com/worminator/
http://www.nexuiz.com/
http://www.armagetronad.net/
http://www.meatfighter.com/
http://www.bzflag.org/
http://wesnoth.org/
http://cubeengine.com/

...type 'idpac' (for peperony and chease) to open the cave with the BFG hidden in it.

I thought this was very common knowledge by now, especially on Slashdot. For crying out loud, a link to About.com? For more detailed information about the differences between the U.S. and Japanese versions of all the Mario games, check out The Mushroom Kingdom.

shhhhh....

Ok, you're right about Zelda (but Zelda 2, I don't know...)

And I included Megamania (Atari 2600) and that D&D game (Aquarius (Emulator)) just for the record.

Ultima was fucked up (at least Exodus was) -- all of that crazy "you wouldn't be able to see it in real life so we'll black out the screen" stuff.

Ok, Wolf3d was awesome, so was Doom and Descent. Sim City was fun, and.. oh, fine, there are a huge number of awesome games that I left out. Hit up Abandongames.com and download your favorites.

[troll]
My all time favorite game though was Kings Quest III (which was much better than whatever your favorite game was!)
[/troll]

You can still get a perfectly good 'Pong' machine, and that's all the entertainment anyone needs.

http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/pong/

The original NES retailed for $199.00 or $249.00 in 1985, depending on which bundle you purchased. http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/nes/ Adjusted for inflation, this equals about $371.00 or $464.00 in 2006 dollars respectively. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl Based on eBay resales, the price of the 360 probably could have been set marginally higher and the units would have still sold out. It doesn't seem to matter now though.

Sounds like that probably was Oregon Trail.

B

At the time, I thought: Brilliant; if the game has bugs, no problem, it's just a "feature".

But now I think that actually, exploring the official, authorized, documented limits of a game or other toy to see where it acts in ways that the designer did not intend (...or at least, will not officially admit to intending ...) can be as important a part of its play value as what you are "supposed to do" with it. For example, in AoE, making armies do stupid little dithering dances or carving forests into naughty words may be the same sort of unauthorized fun as dressing GI Joe in Barbie clothes or testing whether Bert or Earnie can fly the farthest.

I think you need a PSp, not to be confused with the PSP.

Unfortunately only one was made, and you have to contend with a disc spinning in midair, but aside from that it looks sweet.

And here I thought there were only three of these guys. Ooooh wrong thing.

Robotic mules designed to assist people? Cool, we can colonize planet Irata now!

An Atari 2600 stick. No base... just a stick you tilted in space. It used Mercury switches. Mercury is a liquid, so it sloshed. You didn't want to make any sudden movements with this thing. Since Mercury is a brain damaging element, you didn't want to have one of these suckers break open and spill its contents. Having a Hazmat team come to your home because of a broken game controller would be embarrassing.

http://www.classicgaming.com/gamingmuseum/le_stik. jpg

I actually had the Epyx joystick for my Amiga. It worked pretty damn well. Makes me wonder why it took so long for console makers to put buttons on the bottom of their controllers.

You can find a picture of it here. Also a few other gems that should have probably made the list if they weren't more than painful memories in a few peoples minds.

With all this programming power, and graphics and sound all sorted out, what's needed is a game that makes full use of the processing power needed for AI.
I present to the next-gen game genre:- The Too-many-things-on-the-screen-requiring-calculatio n genre

TMTOTSRC games for short

So what we need are next-gen versions of

http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/

and an updated version of...

http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/crossroads/

I'm partial to the original, personally.

I had a feeling you'd say that. I haven't really heard anything good about the second revision, other than the detachable controllers. Most players don't seem to think there's any real point to that feature anyway.

I've heard that the controller connections aren't very good, too.

I've heard that the keypads on the controllers are also problematic. It sounds like they tend to be very harsh on your fingers.

That intellicart thing looks ("looked," I guess) pretty cool, though. It'd be hard to replicate the original disc controller on a PC.

The controller pinouts are on this page, so you can always hack yourself up an interface. I'm not quite sure why you'd bother, though. Just use the Intellicart to move the software to your Intellivision. Much easier than trying to develop the perfect emulation environment. :-)

The Intellicart may be currently out of stock, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't be that hard to get one on EBay.

*chuckle* Oh well, I'll have to keep an eye out and see if I bump into something similar. I'm starting to womder, though. Maybe someone repackaged it in the Odyssey^2 box? I could easily see it happening that someone got a new Odyssey^2, didn't have the box for the old one, so packed it in the new box to sell it. The Odyssey^2 box looks like this, while the original Odyssey box looked like this.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. :-)

Let's just hope there isn't a Custer's Revenge minigame hidden in there

Wozniak was the technical brains, and Jobs ripped him off badly and cruelly: when Woz found out about it, he was said to have cried.

Of the various tech-billionaire celebrities, I think only Larry Ellison is lower than Steve Jobs.

I've always loved handhelds. Due to the whole idea that a handheld system is designed both for quick sessions (on a bus, for instance) and long playing periods (such as on a plane or in a hotel room), I think handhelds force developers to adhere to what I consider the ideals of video gaming: both instant playability and depth that inspires replay.

Obviously, puzzle games are the perfect match for this. I don't quite agree with some of 1up's puzzle game highlights. Tetris and Klax are true classics, but I'm not convinced that Meteos and Lumines are of the same calibre. Meteos times every game mode except for one, tilting it far in favour of quick sessions. It just isn't that enjoyable for a long period. Lumines falls victim to the exact opposite - the time attack modes aren't much fun but the normal mode is very addictive. The only problem with normal mode is that a typical single session often lasts more than half an hour!

Puzzle games aside, some of their choices and omissions are quite odd.

Donkey Kong on Game Boy is an expanded version of the arcade original, with 100 puzzle-heavy levels. It turns a classic arcade game into an even better home game. I think it's one of the finest games ever made. Mario vs Donkey Kong is a pseudo-sequel to the Game Boy one, but it doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. It's decent but far from being a true classic.

Final Fantasy Adventure, also on Game Boy, is Seiken Densetsu 1 renamed to cash in on the Final Fantasy name. Seiken Densetsu was also renamed for the western market, to Secret of Mana. Yes, Secret of Mana is a sequel to this Game Boy game. And this Game Boy game is the best action/rpg the system has to offer - edging out even The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (which is also a fantastic game and a must-own). Too bad the GBA remake, Sword of Mana, was awful.

Besides Klax, the Atari Lynx had quite a few other arcade ports. Roadblasters is a lot of fun. Robotron 2084 isn't perfect (due to the Lynx lacking a way to duplicate the original dual-joystick control system) but is still decent. S.T.U.N. Runner looks fantastic on the handheld and is the best home port of the game we ever received, even if it does use sprite scaling instead of polygons. Speaking of sprite scaling, Blue Lightning is an Afterburner clone with better graphics than any of the pre-32X home ports of Afterburner. The gameplay measures up, too. Chip's Challenge, another original design for the system (though it was ported to plenty of other systems eventually) is a very fun action/puzzle game like The Adventures of Lolo. It also has a geeky love story plot that I'm sure most Slashdotters will appreciate :)

The Game Gear was perhaps the most lacking of all mainstream handhelds (ignoring utter shit like the Gamate and Watara Supervision), but even it had some very good games. Crystal Warriors and Shining Force II: The Sword of Hajya are an excellent pair of strategy-RPGs with amazing depth for 8-bit handheld games. Bubble Bobble had a great port on GG (not

Let's go back to the beginning. Let's look at these strategy games, as if they were new. How would we approach it now? Let's pretend that there never was a mouse, and all we had were consoles. How would we bring this about?

Like Herzog Zwei, maybe? Oh, for the times when game journalists had a memory that went back before the current generation of consoles...

Rob

"Shouldn't they pick a new game, you know, one that has been published in the current millenium."

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I know several people that are happier with WarCraft II (and StarCraft) than they were with WarCraft III and its hero system.

Besides, the beautiful thing about StarCraft is that you don't need a $500 card from nVidia to play it. In today's terms, its system requirements are only marginally greater than the requirements to play Scorched Earth

Yeah, I recall Mario with a similar suit, except it could go underwater!

I'm not sure if that Rea guy is troll, flamebait, or just an idiot. Ikaruga, "nothing special"? It is just the best shooter ever! If you don't believe me, believe Maddox!

Seriously, especially for those of us who remember stuff like M.U.L.E. (more info), even the first Civilization wasn't "back in the day".

Damn mods wouldn't know great video games if one sliced them in the ass... ;^)

Ah, yes, who can forget these amazing NES accessories:

http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/nes/nes.jpg

If you're a girl, I'd marry you. If you're a guy...I'd marry you.

It's sad I haven't seen much more than such recollections of these games. Judging from the quality of the selections, I gotta see this Crystalis you speak of. Looks promising.

...in heroine attire.

Oregeon Trail. Man, I loved that game. I was just meditating not long ago the long lost feeling of sitting in the school library trying to get me and my family safely across the river. This prompted me to download the game: http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/otrail.shtml Of course you'll need an old apple emulator. One I found that works great for this particular game: http://www.tomcharlesworth.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Gamecube: Metroid Prime Freezing: http://www.classicgaming.com/mdb/mp/glitches.htm#f reezing

You've never had your GameCube freeze?

• Metroid Prime
• Majora's Mask
• GameCube hardware

This reminds me of the Doki Doki Panic/smb2 incident. Super Mario 2 was originally a Fuji Television promotion starring an arabian family called Doki Doki Panic. The people at Nintendo USA thought the Japanese version of SMB2 was too difficult, so they changed the Arabian characters in Doki Doki Panic to Mario and his friends. It's a really interesting story. Check out more here.

a DS port of the Mc Donald's Treasuer Land Adventure game?

No, Elvin is right. So, stay a while...