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.
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Hi guys.
As always: thanks for the episode, it was fun to listen to it 🙂
Regarding your topics in this episode:
I am very hyped for the new Atari console, but i can´t describe why. Maybe because the Atari 2600 was my first console as a kid, and i am a little bit nostalgic? The new one looks good, but as Jonah mentioned: the console will rise or fall with the games and they did not show anything right now (or i did not see anything).
I never played Ys as a kid, because as far as i know, the are not available in german, and as a kid, i was not able to understand english 🙂 The bumping mechanic seems a little bit awkward, but on the other hand it´s something different to everything else 🙂 I saw some videos about the newer versions of Ys (PS4 releases). Did one of you play them/one of them and can tell me, if one of them is worth playing?
I play Fortnite on PC sometimes with my friends. I did not bought the game, so i only can play the battle royal part and this is fun to me, if i play it with friends. I also played it on my mobile … for 2 minutes … its unplayable in my opinion … as expected 🙂 But if you want to play a round on PC with Discord or TeamSpeak to coordinate, let me know. My ingame Name is the same as here : Jackosis.
I have one question to all 3 of you: are you thinking about streaming some gaming of you or do YouTube Videos? Some kind of Let´s Plays or sth like that? I think it´s more work, so i don´t know if you would have the time for that 🙂
And for the OffTopic: right now i am into the a very old series: SpinCity with Michael J Fox (in germany its called Chaos City … don´t ask me why) and i started watching The Walking Dead.
I wish you a great week and a happy easter weekend and hope to get a new episode very soon 🙂
greetings from germany,
Ralf