This week is full of rumors.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
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.
This week’s episode looks at the progenitor of all walking simulator games, Dear Esther, in this week’s Gaming Flashback. They also discuss the upcoming Game Pass games for May as well as voice masking on the Playstation 3 and Xbox. In addition, Scott discusses Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, the spinoff of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
The 265th podcast will be a little delayed, as it will be recorded on Wednesday, the day the podcast is usually released.
There will be one this week, though, so keep your eye on the iTunes RSS feed.
Loved the talk about sharing achievements across consoles and PCs!
Great show. Always fun to hang out with the guys. I’m psyched to finally check out Spider-Man.
Hi guys.
You know it: thanks for the episode 🙂
I did not played so much the last weeks, little bit God of War and some Magic Arena… that’s all.
Can’t write so much this time, cause I don’t know all the games you talked about.
I don’t care a lot about achievements except in WOW.
Alle hear launcher you talked about: it really is annoying! I have this one installed, which combines all of them … GOG … at least it’s better than having 5 or 6 of them 🙂 It’s not perfect, but it is the right way!
I am still waiting for some Metroidvania games to come out. Maybe there will be more if I will watch, what they showed at the indie booth at GamesCom … but until now I have not seen anything from the GamesCom.
That’s alle for this time!
Please stay as you are and stay healthy!
Greetings from Germany!
Ralf