Jolt Country

bruce wrote:You know, if you know which 80s cartoon characters have their own 2600 games, you have no excuse for not coming with us to the Classic Gaming Expo.

I bought my husband a mint in box 2600 system for his birthday two years ago. He still says it's the best present he ever got. Which doesn't say much for my subsequent gifts.

itgirl wrote: I bought my husband a mint in box 2600 system for his birthday two years ago. He still says it's the best present he ever got.

Four- or six-switcher ?

Bruce

Does one open a thing like that and use it, or does it stay <strike>clutter</strike> 'mint' as a decorative advantage?

Bah. Gimme an emulator any day.

I recently built a PC for someone who didn't know anything about MAME. I decided to load it up since they had kids, it'd give 'em something to play other than just Solitaire.

Turns out a friend of theirs had just been showing off his new $3,000 (!!!!!!!!!!) Galaga arcade game, and just earlier that day, the guy had ordered a tabletop Galaga ($1,400!!!!) and a Pac-Man game. He decided to try to cancel as soon as he saw MAME.

We do have a "real' 2600, that was my wife's (I went straight to the Atari 400), but you have to fuck around with the goddamned RF switch box, and you're usually left with a fuzzy screen. I would be more inclined to use one of those little 2600-in-a-controller things that you can buy for $15 or so, that have 10+ games in 'em, and presumably have a more modern way of hooking them up to the TV.

I'm about to buy a Vectrex. Almost purely for decoration, but I'd know it would get played with lots too. That and a Space War! cart that'll stay in it forever will sit pride-of-place on the bookshelf of my new flat. I think it's important to have a copy of the first video game ever, complete in it's 100%-vector original format, ready-to-play.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote: We do have a "real' 2600, that was my wife's (I went straight to the Atari 400), but you have to fuck around with the goddamned RF switch box, and you're usually left with a fuzzy screen. I would be more inclined to use one of those little 2600-in-a-controller things that you can buy for $15 or so, that have 10+ games in 'em, and presumably have a more modern way of hooking them up to the TV.

Except that they aren't really 2600s and the game emulation isn't quite right and the controllers pretty much suck.

Better to mod the 2600 for component or S-Video output.

Bruce

bruce wrote:Except that they aren't really 2600s and the game emulation isn't quite right and the controllers pretty much suck.

Better to mod the 2600 for component or S-Video output.

Here is a review I did of the Atari 10-in-1 for Caltrops.

This has apparently been out for a while, but Christmas is coming, and I presume a few of you are receiving gifts from your loved ones.

The 10-in-1 is a piece of hardware that looks like a standard Atari 2600 joystick. Contained within are 10 games -- Adventure, Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Gravitar, Real Sports Volleyball, Pong, Yar's Revenge, Circus Atari and Missile Command. That lineup has been carefully selected to maximize the number of games that play for shit on a standard 2600 controller. Pong, Breakout and Circus Atari all used the paddle. Missile Command and Centipede were originally trackball games, although they were redesigned to use the stick for their 2600 versions. I don't remember what Gravitar used because the game is fundamentally unplayable in any version and rather creepy: though we never see the player character inside the spaceship, having evolved in that universe's sick gravity, our avatar must be a short, squat, MODOK-like creature and I don't want to "be" that guy.

The 10-in-1 has a fundamental design flaw, in so much as the reset button is on the side of the stick's base that invariably rests on one's stomach. Therefore the fatter you are, the more likely you are to reset the thing by brushing up against the reset button when you are lounging about on your couch. This ultimately results in you flinging the 10-in-1 against the wall, which, being a slight form of physical exertion, is actually good for you, jumbo, so perhaps this is a design flaw like a fox.

The games pretty much suck. Gravitar is unplayable in any form, so I can't hold the 2600 version up as a crappy port. Centipede and Missile Command are entertaining, and Yar's Revenge is probably the best of the bunch, unless you've never played Adventure. As I understand it Adventure is one of the top 100 games according to Gamespot, so we got lucky there. Circus Atari is the easiest one to win, but only if your definition of "winning" is getting five of those clowns to splatter upon the ground without popping a single balloon. Mine is, so I was happy to have a game contained in the collection that I was quite good at. (No instructions are included for any of the games, so this interpretation of Circus Atari's gameplay would seem to be valid as any other.) Real Sports Volleyball must have been the first Real Sports game, because the two volleyball players are controlled with the Joystick, and move in perfect synchronicity, which is disturbing and no fun. Breakout and Pong are difficult only until you master using the stick like a paddle.

It's fun for a bit, but the lineup could have been a lot better and a adding a few games that were better suited for the joystick would have been a better decision. Finally, limiting the thing to ten games and not allowing for an easy way to dump your own ROMs onto the thing severely limits its appeal as a geek toy, a trend which I understand the iPod started. Your aunt or someone might grab this for you because she knows you like video games and trenchcoats and you already have a nice trenchcoat. There is little reason to grab it yourself anytime soon.

There are a couple other products that Jakks Pacific has released: one is full of Activision games, and the other contains five Namco titles (Pac Man, Dig Dug, Galaxian and then Rally-X, and frigging Bosconian. I saw an Intellivision one at the CGE, but I couldn't find a purchase link for it anywhere, for whatever that's worth. The Activision one does include Pitfall and River Raid, so picking that up will instantly get you about 66% of all the decent 2600 games, so that might be the better way to go.


the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

Gravitar is a great game. It's one of those games where "I SUX AT IT" inevitable translates into "it's quite unplayable in any form, nyuk."

GRAVITAR.

Enjoy it!

asdoisadhoaisdh wrote:Gravitar is a great game. It's one of those games where "I SUX AT IT" inevitable translates into "it's quite unplayable in any form, nyuk."

GRAVITAR.

Enjoy it!

Gravitar is completely unplayable on the 2600. It's mostly an unplayable quarter-grabber in the arcade. Either way, it's unfun, uninspired and rightfully forgotten alongside all the other truly great games that came out during its timeframe.

But oooooh!! They simulated GRAVITY. Give me a fucking break. It's just as clever as simulating the release of one's bowels in an adventure game. Nobody does it because it's a stupid waste of time. The populace in Gravitar can travel from STAR TO STAR ("interstellar travel," I believe it's called) but not stop themselves from horribly crashing planetside over and over again. They could make it thousands of light years in the blink of an eye, but not develop automatic thruster controls for their stupid little spaceships. There's stupid bits to every old arcade game. It's just that most of them don't make their own brand of ridiculousness the focal point of their miserable game.

An ENTIRE game of gravity effects? NEGATIVE!!!

The Intellivision controller does NOT include the following games:

Utopia
Tron Deadly Discs
The frog game where you jumped from lily pad to lily pad and ate flies

Therefore, it is useless.

So, back on topic...

Why do vitamins turn one's urine bright greenish-yellow?

Inquiring minds...

itgirl wrote:So, back on topic...
Why do vitamins turn one's urine bright greenish-yellow?
Inquiring minds...

That's Vitamin B.

And now I'm contemplating your urine, as well as your laying the tile floor. Thanks. Thanks a <i>lot</i>.

Bruce

P.S. Dinner tomorrow?

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Gravitar is completely unplayable on the 2600. It's mostly an unplayable quarter-grabber in the arcade. Either way, it's unfun, uninspired and rightfully forgotten alongside all the other truly great games that came out during its timeframe.

God are you an idiot. No wonder nobody comes on here anymore. And I do mean COMES.

Assuming you have some point here other than "OMFG UNREALISTIC!!!", as if Moon Patrol is a thoughtful, exacting simulation of satellite exploration, you have utterly failed to make it.

Gravitar is the sequel, in spirit if not in name, to Lunar Lander, one of the most revolutionary games ever to grace not only the arcades, but EVERY COMPUTER EVER MADE, including the Texas Instruments calculators of the mid-70's.

Is Gravitar better than Lunar Lander? Here's a big: YES. Was Gravitar as revolutionary as Lunar Lander? Here's a big: NO FORKING WAY. Was Gravitar a godsend to 'Lander junkies who'd tired of landing their dude on the "5X" landing spot fifty-three million times in a row? Here's a giant, pulsing, throbbing: YES. Has any game of its type ever been done better? NO. Did it translate well on MAME? YES. Do you need the little thruster lever to make a reasonable facsimile of the game? NO. Did you almost certainly suck at this game, therefore never getting to the point where you could understand how cool it was? YES. Did you ever clear the first board of planets? NO.

Are you a fucking idiot who has systematically destroyed his own BBS with his own lack of attention and idiotic, indefensible, ridiculous, caustic, embarrassing points of view?? YES.

God.

oafpsdfhoisdhf wrote:God are you an idiot. No wonder nobody comes on here anymore. And I do mean COMES.

Oh I'll take care of that, no sweat. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to take my own sweet, sweet time and spend this post ultimately coming on your fucking face.

Assuming you have some point here other than "OMFG UNREALISTIC!!!", as if Moon Patrol is a thoughtful, exacting simulation of satellite exploration, you have utterly failed to make it.

We don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

My point is that Gravitar took something which video games gloss over and decided to run with it. That's what all of this is going to come down to. Gravitar is the arcade equivalent of your RPG character getting hungry or having to take a piss. It's the arcade equivalent of you running out of bullets for your default weapon in a FPS. It's -- essentially -- the arcade experience you can't get elsewhere that shows how much fun it is when your protagonist in an anime dating sim runs out of splurting Japanese semen.

Gravitar is the sequel, in spirit if not in name, to Lunar Lander, one of the most revolutionary games ever to grace not only the arcades, but EVERY COMPUTER EVER MADE, including the Texas Instruments calculators of the mid-70's.

I'll take my jeans off. Don't you worry. I'll be very gentle.

This is apparently what passed for innovation in 1982. Ripping off some other game that could be played on an abacus. Swoon!

... Christ, man, a fucking CALCULATOR? I don't know what I was thinking. Gravitar, I'm sure, is gonna be described as a great game, and then you're going to go state that the Atari 2600 version of looking at log tables kicked a lot of ass and ought to be in the next 10-in-1 as well.

Is Gravitar better than Lunar Lander? Here's a big: YES. Was Gravitar as revolutionary as Lunar Lander? Here's a big: NO FORKING WAY.

Just lay back. It'll be fine. You look so beautiful when you look up at me.

Let's get something straight. Lunar Lander barely qualifies as a "game." It's something that mathematics nerds did because they had no artistic flair and couldn't draw anything more complicated than a triangle on the screen. It's spreadsheet gaming if you want to call it that.

I hold no special regard for the best game of that genre than I would any of the other ones. Rez, for instance. Rez is probably the best rail shooter of all time. To HELL with Rez, though. It's still a fucking rail shooter.

Ditto this Lunar Lander shit.

Was Gravitar a godsend to 'Lander junkies who'd tired of landing their dude on the "5X" landing spot fifty-three million times in a row? Here's a giant, pulsing, throbbing: YES.

Why don't I just wiggle these off, too? Heh. God, let me brush away these strands of hair on your face.... yeah....

That doesn't make Gravitar a decent game! If anything, it damns it even more because some bitch over at Atari made not only a shitty, wholly ridiculous game, but one that was cribbed from somebody else! What are you supporting this game on? Its fucking legacy?

Has any game of its type ever been done better? NO.

Just let me pop it in your mouth for a second... just for a second...

That's because everyone realized they couldn't make any money in the "shitty space sim unfair quarter gobbler genre" at the arcade. Atari shipped 5,400 units of Gravitar. Back in 1982, you could put feces in a CRT so long as there was a joystick used to manipulate it you could get 6,000 units moved. Nobody wanted Gravitar. NOBODY. Except for, apparently, about five thousand pencil necks who lost their TI calculators with way too much money on their hands and needed to get their "arse game fix."

Did it translate well on MAME? YES.

You can take more than just the tip, can't you? That's it, yeah. Open up.

Of course it did. Gravitar's anti-controls lend themselves to MAME, what with the average keyboard having like 101 keys. That's almost enough to cover all the individual buttons the arcade version of Gravitar presented.

Do you need the little thruster lever to make a reasonable facsimile of the game? NO.

Just say when you want me to slow down.... just enunciate the words and everything, heh, no really, I will be very gentle and wouldn't dream about anything you aren't ready for.


It's a game about not dumping your ship on some terrain. Every other -- better! -- game solved this by having a joystick or something skulk about the cabinet. Not Gravitar! If it wasn't in a terrible game you can write in about thirty lines of BASIC it's not worth having!

Did you almost certainly suck at this game, therefore never getting to the point where you could understand how cool it was? YES.

You have pretty eyes. You look great like this.

I never thought I sucked at it. Because I hated it so much, the winning conditions were me depositing my little bitch space dude and his preposterously-engineered spaceship into the sun over and over again. Turning him back into his component atoms was what I considered a "victory." Doing it without engaging a pirate in one of those laughable "combat boards" was an victory with extra-winning.

Did you ever clear the first board of planets? NO.

I think I'm going to blast it right on your fucking face, you miserable, whimpering little funcunt.

I've done it on the 2600, only I didn't know that they were supposed to be planets. They were all blocky. And block-like. I thought I was evicting little roaches out of cardboard boxes on a solar level, like some kind of interstellar slum lord when I played it on the 10-in-1 a year ago.

But it apparently works on all manner of systems, according to your bullshit toad logic, so the 2600 ought to display the thing just fine and capture its magic "gameplay." In fact, I did some research and it looks like Gravitar got ported to a LOT of systems. Here are the platforms where it also works:

o The original Intellivision

o The Magnavox Odyssey

o A tricked-out Bushnell PONG board

o A black-and-white dial television with crayons replacing those overlay thingies that were so big in the late 70s

o The nine rocks resting on the platform of horseshit you used to hurl at a keyboard and bang out this inane ape blather, you cock-dripping fucking cave monkey

Are you a fucking idiot who has systematically destroyed his own BBS with his own lack of attention and idiotic, indefensible, ridiculous, caustic, embarrassing points of view?? YES.

TAKE IT RIGHT IN THE FUCKING EYES BITCH I HOPE IT FUCKING STINGS THAT'S IT RIGHT DOWN YOUR FILTHY FUCKING CORNEAS

This is how this thing is going to go. I'm going to go turn on the 10-in-1, put Gravitar on, shove the 10-in-1's stick up my rectum and then photograph and e-mail the results to you. You're going to practice your frowny faces when TechTV picks this up after a few more posts in this thread and makes me famous for treating you like...

... Well, there's no other way to put it, like my 10-in-1 playing Gravitar, butt-chud style.

Hi, Mom!

Look here:

http://sassette.com/Smurfs_ColecoVision ... Castle.htm

There is no fucking comparison between the lame-ass Atari and the righteous ColecoVision. I'd buy a Coleco 10-in-1 in a heartbeat.

First off, 2600 emulation is perfect. I mean, geez - you think that we have perfect emulation of literally thousands of arcade systems, but programmers are still stumped by the 2600?

Secondly, the 2600 was, IMHO, hardly a great game system. Historically significant - hell yes. But at the same time, you could buy an Atari computer and play Star Raiders. And let me tell you, back in 1978 or whenever it was that I got my Atari 400, Star Raiders was just about the greatest game ever. Remember "Electronic Gaming" magazine? Yeah, yeah, I know you think the publisher was a tool, but bear with me. They did a monthly "top ten" of reader's favorite games. As in, voted on by the readers, not some arbitrary pick. Star Raiders topped that fucking list for literally years. It was that damned good.

Sure, a few years later, the VCS was renamed the 2600 and the 5200 was released (basically a computer in a game box - sort of the X-Box of its day) and it got a port of Star Raiders (which the wife has, complete with the special controller), but c'mon now - you know it's a pale imitation.

Whoo! Tangent. Back on track now.

Wait - one more tangent. I saw a t-shirt for sale the other day that said "KNOW YOUR ROOTS" with a picture of an NES controller. M-fer, my roots are a square, black joystick with a red button, not a fucking flat white gamepad. I still blame Nintendo for killing off the proper joystick for console players everywhere. I always used a proper microswitch joystick for the NES and it served me very well.

OK, back on track. Of course the ColecoVision outpowers the 2600. So does the Intellivision (though only real wankers ever had one.) Hell, even the Odyssey2 and our friend KC Munchkin could put up a prettier picture. Really, I have to think that it's pretty much nostalgia that keeps the 2600 in people's minds - let's face it, most of the games are pretty bad.

I suggest, for anyone who does feel that their life is incomplete with out it, to buy a 64meg USB memory drive ($10 after rebate at Office Smax this week), load up your favorite emulator (or put on several, so it'll run on Windows, Macs, unix, etc) and all the ROMs, and there you go. Every 2600 game ever, on a little blob smaller than your thumb, ready to play on any laptop or desktop computer you encounter. Probably enough free space to load up every Coleco and Intellivision game, too. Knock yourself out.

Re: Gravitar. I never really paid any attention to it, but was all set to make some Lunar Lander references, and I was beaten to the punch. Damn! Anyways, the "gravity" is only a reversal of the "friction" that slows your ship down in Asteroids and the ilk (bonus points for mentioning Omega Race.) It's not like it was revolutionary coding or anything.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:I still blame Nintendo for killing off the proper joystick for console players everywhere. I always used a proper microswitch joystick for the NES and it served me very well.

Nah, this is where it's at:

Watch out, you'll be blamed for ruining the message board by including an inline image. Maybe you should have done that in ASCII.

Were we talking about the *2600* version of Gravitar?

No. No, we were not. ("We" defined as "me" and "the insipid moron who, for lack of a better term, 'runs' this BBS, and immediately classifies any game he doesn't know the SECRET GET 1,000,000 POINTS RIGHT AWAY trick to as a steaming load of weasel vomit.)

Can we drop the gay?