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 Wii joke: he’s asking for a gift 🙂
– Regarding 3D in platformers, having a 3rd dimension can actually add to the game:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/bailter-ray
That’s on Unreal Tournament 3!
– announcing earlier = hype = marketing
– regarding Android, Derrick, you’re spot on.
– Sony is launching SOS … I feel there’s a word missing there.
I’m now on March 2009. Yes, I am going back through your episodes.
– the Wii joke: he’s asking for a gift 🙂
– Regarding 3D in platformers, having a 3rd dimension can actually add to the game:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/bailter-ray
That’s on Unreal Tournament 3!
– announcing earlier = hype = marketing
– regarding Android, Derrick, you’re spot on.
– Sony is launching SOS … I feel there’s a word missing there.
I’m now on March 2009. Yes, I am going back through your episodes.
First off, massive congratulations to Don and his wife!
On to the Question of The Week:
There have been one or two games that I have played through because I felt I needed to. The first was Wolfenstein 3D. I enjoyed playing it for short periods of time, but I could not really comfortably play through the entire thing; so it took sheer will power to play all the way to the end.
The second was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; I’d played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion beforehand, and felt obliged to play it’s predecessor through as well, but it did not have quite the same charm that Oblivion had. Not to mention being a damn sight uglier.
Now a question for you guys:
I know that you have a WoW Clan, but have you ever thought of starting up a FPS clan of some form? Seems like a logical progression to me.
Anyway, congratulations again to Don. Cheers, and peace.
eni_
P.S: I’m not sure about this… But did Jen refer to me as a ‘She’? Because… That’s not right 🙂
First off, massive congratulations to Don and his wife!
On to the Question of The Week:
There have been one or two games that I have played through because I felt I needed to. The first was Wolfenstein 3D. I enjoyed playing it for short periods of time, but I could not really comfortably play through the entire thing; so it took sheer will power to play all the way to the end.
The second was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind; I’d played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion beforehand, and felt obliged to play it’s predecessor through as well, but it did not have quite the same charm that Oblivion had. Not to mention being a damn sight uglier.
Now a question for you guys:
I know that you have a WoW Clan, but have you ever thought of starting up a FPS clan of some form? Seems like a logical progression to me.
Anyway, congratulations again to Don. Cheers, and peace.
eni_
P.S: I’m not sure about this… But did Jen refer to me as a ‘She’? Because… That’s not right 🙂
all right guys ill tell you a sad final fantasy story. i got once addicted to a game called final fantasy 12. The game takes a good 40 hrs to complete but me and a friend got competitive and attempt to over clock the game by getting maximum lvl, completing all sides and killing all the Marks in bounty hunter. ( these things take (100’s of hours). sound pretty sad yet well listen to this. I got up to vsing the last official Mark, the ultimate side boss of the game (100* harder then the final boss) the Mark is called Yiazmat he is a giant Dragon who is lvl 70 and has ….. 50,000,000 health which is a lot when the next highest I think is 3,000,000 and when you hit a max of 9,999 damage. Once he is under 30% health he goes mental converting to lvl 140. I ended up defeating this beast after 12-14hrs solid fighting Game play. So there you have it, a game I loved and played and never want to play again.
Cheers
Btw congratz Don
all right guys ill tell you a sad final fantasy story. i got once addicted to a game called final fantasy 12. The game takes a good 40 hrs to complete but me and a friend got competitive and attempt to over clock the game by getting maximum lvl, completing all sides and killing all the Marks in bounty hunter. ( these things take (100’s of hours). sound pretty sad yet well listen to this. I got up to vsing the last official Mark, the ultimate side boss of the game (100* harder then the final boss) the Mark is called Yiazmat he is a giant Dragon who is lvl 70 and has ….. 50,000,000 health which is a lot when the next highest I think is 3,000,000 and when you hit a max of 9,999 damage. Once he is under 30% health he goes mental converting to lvl 140. I ended up defeating this beast after 12-14hrs solid fighting Game play. So there you have it, a game I loved and played and never want to play again.
Cheers
Btw congratz Don