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.
Quake Live Getting Subscription Option
If I were a subscriber, I’d leap at the chance to be a Human Hunter, but … no. Just… no. Every time I get the urge to play World of Warcraft, I realize I’d be grinding again, trying to find parties, deal with 10 year olds, etc. and I’m instantly cured of the desire to play.
Previous expansions didn’t get me back into the game (and if anything, made the default game feel less worthwhile to me), so… no. This won’t win me over. (But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never stayed with any one MMO long enough to run out of unfamiliar content, so the whole MMO expansion issue is a moot one for me personally.)
On an unrelated note, I believe it was called “fog of war,” not “cloud of war.”* (At least where Warcraft II was concerned. Also, disabling didn’t show you where the people were, it just stopped indicating [via shading or lack thereof] how far you could actively “see” at any given moment. [Unless you’re referring to the cheat that revealed the entire map. Which you couldn’t use during multiplayer anyway.])
(* – Though it should be noted that Warcraft III had a quest called “Cloud of War”, which is probably why it’s referred to as such in World of Warcraft, even though I don’t recall there being such an effect in the MMO. [This clarification add after some brief Googling…])
In Regards to the Question of the Week
I have a few friends that play WOW, but the question for me is: Is this enough to make you buy WOW?. Yeah =/ I missed the boat on that one. The Reason wasn’t that I dislike the game at all, I think blizzard is a awesome game developer, I just got caught up in another MMORPG which took a couple of years to get out of the addiction. The game was indeed runescape (pretty bad ay). Why I choose cutting wood and Crit for 41 instead for 4100 I don’t know. I guess the main factor was RS and WOW is a very time consuming game and I didn’t want to Start such a massive game from scratch so late. I’m a little hesitated to start another MMORPG cuz I don’t know if I have the time anymore and forever evolving game are hard to beat or be satisfied with your character. But then again is WOW better than playing Final fantasy/fall out for 100’s of hours by your self?
So my question to you is: Is WOW a experience that I should experience? and what are your Pros and Cons about the game? In the mean time I’ll will hold my decision and paly fire fight ={)
The difference between 100 hours of Fallout 3 vs. 100 hours of WoW is that you’ve got a very impressive character after 100 hours of Fallout 3. (WoW, not so much. Unless you’re a veteran of the game [in which case, include THOSE hours], or are helped out by someone else with a ton of hours logged.])