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Post by anayo on Jan 14, 2018 18:26:44 GMT -5
I am too young to have actually played Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, and Vectrex when they were new. While there were plenty of “hand me down” 80’s toys, technology, and pop culture around in the early 90’s, leaving me with a sense of nostalgia 5 years later than what it should be, this only takes my sense of familiarity back to around 1985 at the latest. From what I understand Atari was at its epoch in 1982. So, I had to learn about these by reading about them.
Atari Anniversary Edition Redux for the Playstation was my main introduction to Atari arcades. I think I found it at blockbuster in the early 2000’s. Even though a dual shock controller is the worst way to play knob and trackball games, I put up with it. I watched all the interviews included on the disc and read all the included literature, including a novel about Atari’s history which I read in its entirety on a blurry CRT screen. The games really endeared themselves to me. My favorites were probably Battlezone and Missile Command. I still really like them, so much so that I keep buying Atari compilations for different platforms (Nintendo DS, my laptop, etc.)
As for console games from that era, I have a harder time warming up to those, and it’s not for want of trying. In 2010 I conducted an experiment on myself where I tried to play nothing but Atari Flashback 2 for a month. If memory serves my favorites were Millipede, Missile Command, and Battlezone. It was useful to gain a sense of perspective on what console gaming was like then, but I couldn’t see the use in playing watered down versions of these arcades. I’d compare it to playing the Super Nintendo version of Doom today. Other than the novelty of watching a Super Nintendo bite off more than it can chew, I see no reason to play anything except the MS-DOS version.
For another thing, I felt as though Nintendo was the point when games changed from abstract shapes to recognizable characters. There’s a certain anthropomorphism at work when colored dots look like a mustached guy in overalls instead of just a monochromatic shape. I think that wakes something up in peoples’ imaginations and draws in people who may not have otherwise paid attention. The evolution from single screen games to side scrollers contributes to this sentiment. I adore Burger Time and Dig Dug, but I can also appreciate why Super Mario Bros. seemed like such a dramatic leap ahead of these.
The exception to my unenthusiastic view of pre-NES game consoles would have to be the Vectrex. I bought mine in 2016, and it’s a surreal piece of technology. I probably like it so much because Atari and Colecovision are just more primitive ancestors of bitmap graphics, but the evolutionary line of vector graphics just died out completely, so from my perspective it’s a completely unique relic. It can’t quite be experienced by watching a video of it, you more or less need to be physically sitting in front of one. On top of that, it’s trying really hard to imitate an arcade, sort of like those battery powered Coleco tabletop LCD arcades, which I adore.
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Post by dunpeal2064 on Jan 15, 2018 4:57:38 GMT -5
I have to admit, this era of gaming is one that has very little appeal to me. I do have a soft-spot for it, and realize the irony in me saying "These games are just too old", when I hear the same thing all the time when trying to get friends into retro games.
However, even though the appeal isn't there, I still make regular efforts to find something I love about this era. I do have an Atari 2600, and have found a small handful of games that I enjoy enough to warrant having physical carts for:
Yar's Revenge River Raid Berzerk Space Invaders Mrs Pac Man
Its a small group of games, but I always tend to enjoy these when the mood strikes.
The Vectrex was also, for me, a stand out for this era, and a console I still enjoy playing. I had one for a while, but ended up selling it. I think it offers a more interesting look back for me personally, as its more of an entire experience than just booting up an older game.
Funny story, my wife and I just went to a EDM dance party thing with fog and fake snow and half naked chicks everywhere, and in the corner on one of the bars, they had a Vectrex with w multicart set up! So weird. my drunk ass played that thing while dancing to some crazy elecro stuff though.
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Post by anayo on Jan 15, 2018 10:50:52 GMT -5
Dunpeal2064,
Berzerk is the only Atari 2600 cart I own. Something about that game really interests me. Although I have an original Atari 2600 to play it, it lacks an AC adapter or any coaxial adapter, so I can't get it working on a TV from the past two decades. I've played it on MAME and Vectrex, though. Sadly the Vectrex version is pretty neutered. You can play it forever and ever and the challenge level never really ramps up.
How on earth did a Vectrex find its way to an EDM party? Is the owner of that joint a retro gamer? That is such a bizarre story.
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Post by Ex on Jan 15, 2018 11:30:39 GMT -5
I may be a bit older than you guys (I'm about to turn 39), meaning I had an Atari 2600 myself in the 80s. Even as a kid though, I wasn't enthralled by the 2600. There were games I enjoyed on it, mostly the two player competitive stuff. I thought Adventure and Swordquest were cool (still need to beat those now that I think of it), so there were some non-arcade games to consider. Our member "BoneSnapDeez" has already forgotten more about Atari then I will ever know though, so he's the one to really enlighten us. My thing was this; when I had an Atari 2600, it just didn't compete with the PC games I had too. Combat or Pitfall wasn't going to beat out Dungeon Master or Leisure Suit Larry for my tastes.
That said, I think some gamers might be surprised at how complex computer games already were in the late 1970s. There were massive text adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork. There were meaty RPGs such as Beneath Apple Manor, Moria, and Akalabeth to name just a few. My point is that a lot of gamers tend to think that before the late 80s, video games were always very simple things such as most Atari 2600 games were. But in the world of PC gaming, even in the 70s, the complexity of game design had already greatly exceeded what a home console could offer. It took many years before the two platforms reached a mutual parity. But don't take this as me being a PC elitist, I've always loved console games just as much.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2018 11:47:07 GMT -5
The Atari 2600 was the only video game system in the house until I got the NES for my 5th birthday and even then I didn't completely drop the thing because you could still find games sitting around in toy stores for like a dollar and NES games were expensive. I used to love pouring over the manuals to give the games context and messing around with the different game settings. It felt more "technical" than the NES if that makes any sense since it wasn't just a matter of popping in the game and playing, you could fiddle with the switches to customize your experience most of the time.
I have a strong affinity for the golden age of arcade games. The pick-up and play titles that are all about good risk/reward game design. A well designed simple arcade game is worth a lot to me because I can pretty much be happy playing it once in a while for the rest of my life while other games come and go. Second generation consoles exemplify this type of gameplay so they interest me quite a bit and of course I have nostalgic attachment to the 2600.
If I had to pick my favorite machine of the era though it would probably be the ColecoVision. It was in the wrong place at the wrong time but man, it's kind of the Cadillac of arcade-at-home experiences for its era.
The Early Famicom line-up doesn't get much attention from modern gamers either. The Famicom was very much a second gen feeling system at the start before it grew into its own thing post Super Mario Bros.
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Post by Ex on Jan 20, 2018 12:36:05 GMT -5
If I had to pick my favorite machine of the era though it would probably be the ColecoVision. That's a platform I have basically zero experience with. Would you care to recommend your favorite exclusives for the system? I may check them out sometime this year. Thanks.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jan 20, 2018 16:29:13 GMT -5
Yeah this stuff is my jam.
Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Vectrex, Intellivision, and ColecoVision are the essential consoles of this era. Though there is some interesting stuff also available on the Odyssey, Odyssey 2, and Channel F. And old computers, handhelds, and arcade cabs, of course.
ColecoVision is an interesting system. With a 1982 release date it's closer to black label NES than it is to Atari. Note that Sega's SG-1000 is very similar to the ColecoVision hardware-wise. It's technically third gen, with the same release date as the Famicom, though it never evolved beyond its initial "arcade style" game library and Sega quickly superseded the SG-1000 with the Mark III/SMS.
Honestly, I never found any of this stuff be THAT different compared to what's on the NES. Sure, it's more primitive, but we're looking at the same basic genres and even a bunch of the same arcade ports. Not looking back earlier than the third gen is detrimental to anyone's retro gaming experience, in my opinion.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jan 21, 2018 12:43:57 GMT -5
Gunstar mentioned early Famicom. Historically, I think this is an interesting topic few know about. The Fami launched two years prior to the North American NES. While most know of the primitive "black label" games we got in the States, there were TONS of similar games developed in 1983-85 that stayed in Japan. Simplistic arcade style high-score chasers. No saves, no passwords. Lots of ports and early titles by Namco, Hudson, Jaleco, Taito, Konami, Enix, Sunsoft, Irem, Seta, and others. The Famicom hardware was designed to play games of this nature. When games became more sophisticated it was due to additional chips that were added to the carts themselves - just open your copies of Popeye and Dragon Warrior IV to see the difference. In the U.S. we had over-sized plastic cart shells with dead air, but in Japan carts were smaller. As games became more advanced certain carts had to be enlarged to accompany the advanced chips. My favorite example of this is Just Breed - which actually has a shell that resembles an NES game and can even be opened with a 6mm gamebit.
That said, Nintendo's initial idea was to release the more intricate titles as floppy disks, hence the 1986 Disk System launch and floppy (original) versions of Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid, and so on. Soon after the Disk System hit the scene, it became cheaper to produce carts and the save battery became popularized, so the disks soon became obsolete after their 1986-87 heyday, and many of these games were "ported" to the cart format. Check out the 1988-89 Disk System exclusive scene for some truly bizarre oddities.
Back to the second gen, I highly recommend exploration of the Atari 2600 library, as it's sort of analogous to the Famicom scene in Japan. Tons of oddities, insanely cheap games, and so on. You've got your first part classics, the Activision powerhouse, other quality third-party developers (20th Century Fox, Imagic, M Network, Data Age, etc.), assloads of arcade ports (Capcom, Konami, Midway, Sega, Nintendo, SNK, and more), weird licensed games, loltastic kusoge (there were literally games published by Johnson & Johnson, Quaker Oats, and Purina), and so much more. Just a straight up fun system to play and investigate.
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Post by anayo on Jan 21, 2018 12:56:18 GMT -5
That said, Nintendo's initial idea was to release the more intricate titles as floppy disks, hence the 1986 Disk System launch and floppy (original) versions of Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid, and so on. Soon after the Disk System hit the scene, it became cheaper to produce carts and the save battery became popularized, so the disks soon became obsolete after their 1986-87 heyday, and many of these games were "ported" to the cart format. Check out the 1988-89 Disk System exclusive scene for some truly bizarre oddities. I remember watching a YouTube documentary about this. Apparently floppy discs were cheaper than ROM carts of the same data capacity, so most big Famicom games came out on floppy disc first (Zelda and Metroid namely). Later ROM carts got more advanced, so all those floppy games were just released as cartridges in the West. I wonder if we can draw any corollary between that, the Playstation Portable's UMD, and teeny tiny flash memory chips (which made the UMD seem like a silly idea to me by the late 2000's).
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Post by Ex on Jan 21, 2018 13:54:00 GMT -5
Soon after the Disk System hit the scene, it became cheaper to produce carts and the save battery became popularized, so the disks soon became obsolete after their 1986-87 heyday I thought I read somewhere another reason Nintendo went with cartridges, was because floppy disk copying was becoming more rampant?
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