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.
After four years of development, 
@GameStop developing console and PC game streaming
This is quite funny, since I remember Derrick and Jennifer talking about GameStop as the iconic brick-and-mortar type of shop, not willing to buckle up on the pressure put by digital distribution channels.
The big problem I see is the fact that now there are quite a lot of digital distribution channels: Steam, Origin, Desura, not to mention the console based ones. It got crowded, and getting a slice of the pie is (now) very difficult.
Now, in terms of streaming, the only competition is OnLive. They will need to do something differently, however, if they want to become top dog. I’m curious as to what will that be.
@Is the Xbox 720 chip set
Well, the technology is already there. Call it Sandy bridge or ‘fusion’, CPU+GPU+memory controller are here to stay.
The hardware technology was already tested (well, Intel had some issues with Sandy bridge …) and deemed suitable for marketing.
SoC means ‘System on a Chip’, meaning everything (CPU, RAM, ports etc) is on the same chip.
Jordan, I see the 720 as just a hardware upgrade of the 360. It will be (just like 360) still based on PC-like hardware, so I say the 360 games will be perfectly compatible with the 720. This means the 720 already has a good library.
The way I see it, Microsoft decided to steamroll the competition.
@industry is failing female gamers
I say put your money where your mouth is. Instead of complaining about the fact that the market represented by female gamers is not being properly exploited, I say take the opportunity and make a game that will bring you the moneyz 😛
My sister also loved UT. She also played Quake 3 and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, but her arena of choice remained UT. Another game she liked a lot was the first Unreal game.
Back to the UT/Quake3/MOHAA, she also played them in multi player.
@QOTW
I take pretty much the same approach as Jordan. I don’t look at bullet points.
But, be it FPS or RTS, I want a nice, plausible story.