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.
@PS3 Hacking Begins in Earnest, and Sony “Looking Into” It:
Well, Sony is in a lose – lose situation: they change the key, and existing apps become worthless, or leave it, and existing apps can be pirated at will.
As for the complexity of the hack, well, it’s enough to build ONE image for a given game, and that will be multiplied like hell.
Jonah is right however. With the right key, there will be no way to distinguish between pirated and legit games, not by using the key that is.
One way that could be done, would be to do some sort of a CRC/hash on the Blue-Ray disk, then send it over PSN to Sony HQ, and compare it with the CRC of the original one; I expect differences: because of the way the key will be ‘injected’ in the hacked executables, they will have a different CRC than the original, despite being injected with the same root key.
Still, what was left from the image of “console = DRM box” is slowly vanishing. Good news for PC users, since producers will ditch the console exclusive deal and start making stuff for the PC as well.
@Mac App Store Cracked:
Ha ha ha :)) this is incredible … 2011 starts to look like the year of the hackers.
One reason why Steam it is hard to crack is because it keeps full records of what you bought/received as a gift on their servers. So they always know if you really own the software or not.
@Kinect hacks:
Derrick has a point there, hacks or no hacks, MSFT wins. And yes, MSFT is good at building frameworks/APIs. And again, yes, official support of Kinect on PC will end up in huge sales of the device, and maybe, a shitload of games for it.
@Interplay Calls Bethesda’s Legal Claims Absurd:
What can I say … these are the pains of selling IPs …
@Lord of the Rings Online Triples Profit:
Well, profit = intake – costs. Since they’re tripling the profits, it means that (1) they have a profit and that (2) they’re now making more money.
That sounds like a good decision for me.
@Question of the week:
Hmm … the only console I had was a NES clone. Compared to the other clones, it had the Sega style D-pad, with the C button doubling the A one. The layout of the D-pad I find it to be very nice, and that’s the feature of choice. Another feature was on another NES clone: it’s D-pads had earphone jacks …
@PS3 Hacking Begins in Earnest, and Sony “Looking Into” It:
Well, Sony is in a lose – lose situation: they change the key, and existing apps become worthless, or leave it, and existing apps can be pirated at will.
As for the complexity of the hack, well, it’s enough to build ONE image for a given game, and that will be multiplied like hell.
Jonah is right however. With the right key, there will be no way to distinguish between pirated and legit games, not by using the key that is.
One way that could be done, would be to do some sort of a CRC/hash on the Blue-Ray disk, then send it over PSN to Sony HQ, and compare it with the CRC of the original one; I expect differences: because of the way the key will be ‘injected’ in the hacked executables, they will have a different CRC than the original, despite being injected with the same root key.
Still, what was left from the image of “console = DRM box” is slowly vanishing. Good news for PC users, since producers will ditch the console exclusive deal and start making stuff for the PC as well.
@Mac App Store Cracked:
Ha ha ha :)) this is incredible … 2011 starts to look like the year of the hackers.
One reason why Steam it is hard to crack is because it keeps full records of what you bought/received as a gift on their servers. So they always know if you really own the software or not.
@Kinect hacks:
Derrick has a point there, hacks or no hacks, MSFT wins. And yes, MSFT is good at building frameworks/APIs. And again, yes, official support of Kinect on PC will end up in huge sales of the device, and maybe, a shitload of games for it.
@Interplay Calls Bethesda’s Legal Claims Absurd:
What can I say … these are the pains of selling IPs …
@Lord of the Rings Online Triples Profit:
Well, profit = intake – costs. Since they’re tripling the profits, it means that (1) they have a profit and that (2) they’re now making more money.
That sounds like a good decision for me.
@Question of the week:
Hmm … the only console I had was a NES clone. Compared to the other clones, it had the Sega style D-pad, with the C button doubling the A one. The layout of the D-pad I find it to be very nice, and that’s the feature of choice. Another feature was on another NES clone: it’s D-pads had earphone jacks …
First of all, I thought you would be interested in this link from Destructoid :
http://tinyurl.com/4n7wmmz
And http://aol.it/hLvgJx from Joystiq.
As a 1st gen PS3 owner, I am personally wishing that the court order throws that gimp in prison for releasing the codes. Yes Sony made an error, but putting it out there to allow others to crack the hardware is superlame. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that if you bought the hardware, it is yours to ruin the warranty by taking it apart (for the old style mods chips), but hacking into the main program is on a different level. This is one thing that won’t go away, and no doubt will get worse. GRRRRRRR.
As for the features, I have found some of the PS3’s extra features quite useful. I like being able to use the Blu-Ray player, but would quite happily have coped with a DVD player if they left in old hardware. Another feature I like from PS3 is the TV functionality. In UK you get 3 on-demand catch up services from main terrestrial channels (One of which you can also get on the Wii), and X360 having one for the satellite channels. We don’t have Netflix over here, but we now have Lovefilm, which is the closest we will get.
As for features that are pointless, I felt that the CD-player in the Sega Saturn / PS1 were useless. Why would you use your tv, and another bit of hardware, just to listen to something you could hear in better quality on your stereo?
@ 3DS – I found that I couldn’t play on my DS Lite for more than a couple of hours without feeling nauseous and cross-eyed, but I would expect to not need to plug it back in again straight afterwards.
First of all, I thought you would be interested in this link from Destructoid :
http://tinyurl.com/4n7wmmz
And http://aol.it/hLvgJx from Joystiq.
As a 1st gen PS3 owner, I am personally wishing that the court order throws that gimp in prison for releasing the codes. Yes Sony made an error, but putting it out there to allow others to crack the hardware is superlame. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that if you bought the hardware, it is yours to ruin the warranty by taking it apart (for the old style mods chips), but hacking into the main program is on a different level. This is one thing that won’t go away, and no doubt will get worse. GRRRRRRR.
As for the features, I have found some of the PS3’s extra features quite useful. I like being able to use the Blu-Ray player, but would quite happily have coped with a DVD player if they left in old hardware. Another feature I like from PS3 is the TV functionality. In UK you get 3 on-demand catch up services from main terrestrial channels (One of which you can also get on the Wii), and X360 having one for the satellite channels. We don’t have Netflix over here, but we now have Lovefilm, which is the closest we will get.
As for features that are pointless, I felt that the CD-player in the Sega Saturn / PS1 were useless. Why would you use your tv, and another bit of hardware, just to listen to something you could hear in better quality on your stereo?
@ 3DS – I found that I couldn’t play on my DS Lite for more than a couple of hours without feeling nauseous and cross-eyed, but I would expect to not need to plug it back in again straight afterwards.