This week is shortened due to Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but there’s still some fun to be had, especially when the Gaming History is about The Legend of Zelda cartoon series.
The news:
The Question of the Week: “When do you start your holiday shopping?”
We received a new franchise in 2007 called Assassin’s Creed, it was way hyped and released with mixed success, you either love it or you were bored to tears. We loved it, but many were bored to tears. Many assume Ubisoft learned a lot from their first release and will fix some of the repetition from the initial game with Assassin’s Creed 2 if one were to be created.
Ubisoft was asked by gamespot if they’d release a date or confirm the 2010 release of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Ubisoft had a very simple answer: “we’re not answering that question” and “what we just can say is that we are working hard on the product.”
They won’t promise a date for Asassin’s Creed 2 but this at least gives us an indication that they’re working on a game to follow up the initial release. There are plenty of creative concepts that can be done even better in a second game release including branching out the quests to make them a bit less tedious and repeating. The graphics were stunning, the moves were fluid and the battles were a dance of blades.
We’re waiting. Bring it on Ubisoft.
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.
The Nintendo Switch is looming on us all, and more rumors from trusted sources are popping up. We also reminisce about music from the Jet Grind Radio games and talk about the timing of Titanfall 2 sucked.
This week’s news includes:
Let us know if you’re going to buy a Nintendo Switch.
A great nostalgic episode, I do enjoy gaming flashbacks, keep them coming.
@Nintendo Game boy emulation: I do hope this means they will port more of their games to other platforms. I do remember the Bleem! Emulator for Sony games but that ended up getting sued for it. As for Nintendo I can only hope this will lead to more access of their games legally.
While we are on the subject of Nintendo I was thinking we could really have explored more of the Greco-roman games, not just Kid Icarus but also Battle of Olympus another side scrolling game from NES days. They seem afraid to try to push new IP’s and just stick with their tried and true ones. Which I think tends to make them feel stale. When Paul was discussing the end of the Zelda Cartoon and how Link and Zelda had to team up to find her father, I thought ‘Well that would have been a fine game right there!’
@EA: I guess they can’t be all that bad if they really are equal treatment. They HAVE had a long history of games with LGBT relationship options. I remember in Sims 2 there were apparently hidden stats you had to use an external program to see. One of these stats was a persons attractions tendencies, a score both for male and female, which ever ranked higher the character tended toward. I just thought it was neat that they went to this extent to make a character unique and even a little beyond your control.
@Sony Settles: I do remember those ads and I was tempted by them. Boy would I have been PISSED to find I would have to buy the game TWICE. I thought the whole point was that any game bought on the main PS3 could be transferred and played on the vita.
QotW: I started my shopping in November, but not on black friday or cyber monday.
First I want to apologize for not commenting much, but I tend to be too shy to comment much (and I didn’t get your podcast because I have been with my family doing a vacation-type thing for a few weeks). I feel like your commentaries on this, though have garnered my responses.
About Nintendo:I feel like they are trying to make a bit of a fuss over something that was not a very big fuss in the first place.
About EA: I have a number of friends that work for EA here in Orlando (mostly they worked on Tiger Woods games back in the day and now work with Madden games). I love that ya’ll commented on this and brought it to light to your followers. I really like that they truly care about their employees. I think you missed the nail when you say that you think Bioware was inclusive before EA was invloved.
On Sony Settling: Those ads were quite frustrating to understand as a consumer and, luckily, I was not willing to buy their pitch. Deutsch was quite poorly represented before they even posted those twitter comments. Barring them from repeating the exact point – I feel – doesn’t exactly prevent them from doing the same thing again: something I feel like they may do in order to make more money. You really do nail it when you say they only “got caught.”
On a side note: I think Jonah is incredibly insightful in general.