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.
Welcome to the TD Gaming Podcast! This week we discussed:
Twittercraft
Hi, Well done on the podcast, I was sitting at my desk here (accross the pond from the US) and stumbled on your website. I like the idea that you have a girl who is a ‘proper gamer’ on the team.
I particuarly enjoyed the Atari article as I brought the Alone in the dark 360 game and feel completely scorched by my purchase (and now i know why I couldn’t find a review before I forked over 40 quid!).
Would like to see some more game reviews and opinions but you are doing a great job. Keep it up!.
Aly
London
Ouch, sorry to hear you purchased it without a review, honestly, I had thought the game was supposed to be great (considering Atari let go of so many franchises and kept that one).
Apparently they failed in execution 😐
Thanks for the comments and for taking the time to listen to the podcast! As a guy that recently visited London, I can tell you I cannot imagine spending 40 quid on anything as that’s 80 USD 🙂