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.
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed:
“I didn’t ask for this” – Deus Ex guy (sue me, i forgot the guy’s name)
“But i’ll take it… gladly” – Me
@QOTW:
I have a list…
Cthulhu Saves the world (epic fun awesome RPG)
Terraria (bought for 2.50)
Space Pirates and Zombies (2.50 as well – all hail Ganben)
I could go on, but these are the high awesomeness ones!
Have not yet listened to the podcast, but I thank you very much for the games. Made my crappy day a lot better =D.
Jordan, glad to hear about the job.
@Star Citizen hits $4.5M stretch goal
Jonah, good point on stretch goals. If I ever ever come up with a project that requires funding, and if I put it on Kickstarter, it’ll have all the requirements mentioned, no stretch goals.
@Black Ops 2 1.03 patch doesn’t fix server issues
Ah, EA’s way of pushing Origin … just kidding!
Still, gotta hand it to them the way they do their testing :P. You can test for server outages, bad network conditions, you can test that.
What can I say, COD lost me at Modern Warfare 2. It became just waay too action movie like. Now, Medal Of Honor, that’s a modern warfare game that I liked!
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed
Meh … i liked Mortal Kombat, but that’s pretty much it on games turned into movies.
@QOTW:
Ib. Free game, no microtransactions. It went waaay above my expectations, becoming a point of reference for “story and characters beat graphics”.
Black Ops 2 is Activision, not Electronic Arts.
@Deus Ex: Human Revolution film director tabbed: Seriously, how many video game movies have been announced and then they run into problems? Just wait until you actually have finished something, and just announce it with a trailer because I’m getting sick of this. Halo, Uncharted, God of War, Castlevania, World of Warcraft, Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock and Gears of War are just a few of the many that will probably never see the light of day.
@Epic Mickey 2: Seeing as the sequel got pretty much the same reviews as the 1st one which I loved, I will probably end up playing this. Would be pretty excited to play it if I hadn’t like 6 new games which I would like to play.
Epic Mickey 2 is getting worse reviews, actually.
@Kickstarting the Party
As fun as Kickstarter sounds, I stay away from it. I am very conservative about how my games are made and frown upon the Rise of Communism in gaming. I still think that Kickstarter is just a passing fad and will eventually wither away.
@Patchy Black Ops
Haven’t played multiplayer. Although I own the Xbox 360 version so I should be safe. People expect Xbox games to run well on-line because we pay the Gold Tax and are entitled on it. Maybe PS3 should have had a payed subscription. It’s on-line is a mess compared to Xbox 360. It’s not just Black Ops that runs bad.
@Deus Ex
At least it wasn’t Uwe Boll…
@Taking the Mickey
Jonah’s right. Epic Mickey 2 is taking a critical beating. It doesn’t matter how many endings you have if your AI partner puts all effort ensuring that you never make it to the end.
@QOTW
GunZ Online. I played it back in 2006 before it went freemium. Back then there weren’t that many free on-line games. Especially action games that weren’t MMORPGs. That made GunZ stand out and I sunk a good few life-times into that game. Occasionally I come back there but the smell of nostalgia is not enough to keep me interested for long. Better games to play these days.