One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.
This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.
The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.
A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.
Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)
Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)
All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.
@To the Moon
Paul, you’re right about the story vs. gameplay. But a game with all gameplay and no story becomes slightly boring. People are goal driven, and the storyline provide these goals.
And yes, “Go bring me 50 rat tails” is a goal, but it is far less interesting than the ones provided by a good story.
@People don’t want PS Vita
He’s true, I don’t want the PS Vita 😀
Jordan, thing is, people do like to carry only one item in their pockets. True, a good game library goes a long way (see XBox) but there is a line where the extra games will indeed trump the discomfort of carrying an extra item.
Thing is, I don’t think Vita will go beyond that line.
@video games for London riots:
Lol! I play STALKER and a bunch of other violent games, but you don’t see me looting. Keep ignoring the 600 lb gorilla in the living room and blame it all on the games …
A friend of mine from UK kept telling me for years that the hands of the police kept being tied behind their backs with laws considering the human rights of delinquents. He for once was not surprised of what happened: when you know you won’t get punished, guess what happens.
@Epic may ban people who spoil Gears of War 3 online:
Actually, this serves Epic well. (1) They’re basically punish people for advertising the game, and this is dumb, and (2), Epic, choose your testers better. If you have a crappy PR, you get crappy people working for you. Do your homework. Have them sign NDAs.
@Intel hiring sci-fi writers to drive technology:
Jonah, you’re making a mistake. It’s not about where to go with the tech, but rather to discover what desires the people of the future will have.
In order to have a product that sells, you need to find out what will the next generations want in terms of using technology. For that you don’t need tech people, you need sociologists.
@QOTW: one problem here is that I rarely dream. The other one is that I don’t bother remembering my dreams, unless they are truly remarkable.
Paul: You asked for it, here it is; hate mail.
You mispronounced my name. My name is not Mark. How dare you sir. I hate you.
Jordan: The story you are thinking of regarding the “accidental” flushing of a GBA was actually from the cover story on the handheld by Electronic Gaming Monthly. They purposefully flushed the unit and it started working again three days later.
QOTW: I’ll be trite here and mention Guitar Hero. It’s true though, I did dream of the colors flying down the fretboard at me during the night.
My QotW answer is not a great deal away from Matt’s. It is THE classic game.
Tetris.
I invested so many hours in that game trying to get the stupid large rocket animation that all I could see when I closed my eyelids was tetrinos falling. Now I know where they got the idea for The Matrix code animations.