Computer Chronicles Episodes Highlight Classic Games

Thanks to Waxy.org for its weblog entry highlighting some of the classic gaming-related episodes of the Computer Chronicles TV show, all freely downloadable courtesy of the Internet Archive. Waxy.org particularly highlights the Computer Games episode from January 1985, where "The authors of Sargon and Millionaire demo them on the original Mac, and talks to Pitfall creator David Crane about Ghostbusters and David Lebling discusses Zork and other text-based adventure games. The short piece on the fledgling Lucasarts (then named Lucasfilm) is great, which had just released its first two games a few months before, the groundbreaking Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer" Also noted is a Software Piracy episode from 1985 including "a spirited debate between an Activision exec against a developer of a cracking utility", and another gaming episode from 1984 including "Electronic Arts' Bill Budge showing off the classic Pinball Construction Set."

Comments

Ballblazer and Fractalus

[AtariAmarok]

Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus (or Ballblaster and Behind Jagglines) were excellent in their design and playability.

The "scariest videogame moment" for me to this day is what happens when a guy you are trying to rescue in "Jagglines" turns out to be a monster and smashes the windshield of the spaceships.

A sequel to "Ballblazer" came out during the 1990s, but I never heard if it was any good. Any word on this one?

Drive the Hedge Trimmer

[AtariAmarok]

Almost forgot about this one: David Crane's "Ghostbusters", as mentioned in the item.

Anyone else play this one? It usually worked OK, but was plagued with occasional Commodore 64 sprite glitches. The 'Buster's ambulance would sometimes appear as a graphic mess that looked like a picket fence in front of a flowering hedge....going down the road. The Hedge Trimmer, we called it. When when it moved from side to side, it did not erase itself.

back in the day

[kurosawdust]

While we're reminiscing about the Computer Chronicles show, anyone remember the short-lived feature where you could download shareware programs via your TV card and some utility that converted encoded TV signals into data? about 1/4th of the screen would be this static (the "data" that you could grab with your TV card) and the rest of the screen was some guy describing all the shareware that the three people who actually had a TV card, bought that conversion software, were watching the program at that particular moment, and interested enough in the shareware to launch it were downloading. Talk about niche.

I'm not crazy, I swear. This was really a segment on a computer show (I'm not *positive* it was Computer Chronicles, but that sounds right).

He Slimed Me!

[GreenHell]

I remember that game, either it or Space Taxi was the first time I had ever heard synthesized speech on a computer. However, I never had the aforementioned problem.

Then again, it's been so long since I played it that I may have just forgotten.

Millionaire

[Visigothe]

I found the "Millionaire" segment to be rather amusing. They took data from the [then current] stock markets. If you look closely, you can see where the Dow was around that time in 1985 [well below 1000].. contrast to what it is now.

Also, is that not the worst combo toupee/comb-over on the planet?

Pinball Construction Set

[digitalgiblet]

Man, I loved that game. My brother and I played the crap out of it on the C-64.

Another game I loved was Wargame Construction Set. The great thing about it was that the graphics were so primitive any schmuck could make a "mod". You didn't need to have a friggin' clue about 3D modeling... You just picked a little sprite and adjusted properties.

You could probably replicate the game in a few weeks in Java, but I doubt anyone today would accept the graphics... :-(