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.
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS: No surprises there. It’s kind of a given that they make new versions of their handhelds after it has been proven very profitable for them.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III: All this makes me wonder is, how much higher would the number of sales be if there hadn’t been all this stupid DRM on the game? Don’t know why they feel the need to punish their customers. It seems that only Valve knows that the way to being a loved company is by being loyal to its customers.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show: After I’ve seen what can be done with the “Meet” shorts, I can say that I’m interested to see what they come up with.
@QOTW: Nope, not really. Apart from making sure I have proper lighting and heating/cooling, I don’t do anything special.
Jonah, no rush on Mission Impossible. I can come up with other weird NES games 🙂
@Nintendo announces XL version of Nintendo 3DS
I’m curious if this has to do with the pixel size as well. When the console was announced (display size and resolution) I crunched some numbers to find out the view distance to fully use that resolution. It came up as about 8 inches. That’s too close.
A bigger screen would also mean a bigger view distance.
@Dev claims Microsoft killed XBLA version of Stranger’s Wrath
This is so odd. What’s it to MSFT if the game gets distributed or not on XBLA? Normally a publisher would not care that much as long as some quality standards are met.
I mean it’s not like they’re worried about shelf space, we’re talking about a digital distribution channel.
@New users must now pass “review process” to unlock full Diablo III
*clears throat* Ahem!
Bwa ha ha ha ha 😀 😀 😀
And I thought that online DRM was the worst thing that could happen to a single player game. Boy, was I wrong!
And if this doesn’t ramp up piracy, then I don’t know what will.
@Valve and Cartoon Network collaboration hints at Team Fortress 2 show
Dunno … they’ll have to move outside of the game in order to make it happen.
We’ll see.
@steel battalion poor reviews:
well to be fair the problem doesn’t seem to be its complexity its that as per usual with kinect it just doesn’t interpret your commands correctly 75% of the time.
and hey ubisoft press conference had more than watchdogs ….rayman legends looks amazing. =p
What is this place? Why am I writing this? Who are you people? Must…save…Skyrim. VAMPIRES ARE EVERYWHERE!!! THE DAWNGUA OK I am back in the real world now.
@3DS XL
Enjoy not having any games to play in greater resolution. Good point made by Paul: it’s not the size that matter’s. It’s the way you use it.I bought a DSi because it was a massive improvement over the original DS in terms of hardware and software. 3DS XL is just a bigger brick with bigger screens. A premium brick is still a brick.
@Oddworld: Strangers Wraith
I loved the game. It was a very interesting twist on a first person shooter. An adventure FPS with an interesting story and fun gameplay. As far as I remember, EA killed it by not advertising it. When it came out there was not a single mention of the game in media. And you had FIFA 2006 adverts posted on every bus, wall and toilet roll in London. Thanks a lot, EA.
@Diablo 3:
Que Blizzard: “No you can’t play the game offline. No, you can’t play it online either. Just give us your money, sit down and shutup. We made the game. We decide who deserves to play it and you clearly don’t unless we perform a full criminal record check and ensure that your credit card is American Express Mega Gold Platinum X”
To follow up a point made last week, just out of quriosity, if you have an opportunity to customize your game(i.e. create a character or change his name) do you personalize them and give them your name (or nickname) and your likeness? Or do you leave default settings? I tend to try and represent myself as much as I can in an MMO or Skyrim, but usually leave default settings in games where they are definitive of the series. All of my Zelda characters are called Link and my main Mass Effect character is the front cover Shepherd as he is on every media advert on the planet.