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 Lund Report: September 2011 NPD:
No surprise in terms of MSFT domination: they made sure they had a platform easy to develop software for => biggest game library => biggest sales numbers.
@Catwoman requires online pass to play in Arkham City
One thing needs to be remembered: people can still (and should!) vote with their wallets.
The only way this is a bait and switch is if they advertise Catwoman and not mention the extra costs.
@Battlefield 3 is ‘mission accomplished’:
I guess this is bound to happen, as games become more and more complex. Testing time should be extended accordingly, but that would add delays to shipping dates.
@EA defends cop killing in Battlefield 3
Link changed to:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/battlefield-3-PC-gaming-FPS-cop-killing-ESRB,13667.html
I all these kinds of controversies, people forget that players control an imaginary character, pointing an imaginary gun and shooting at other imaginary characters.
For f|_|cks sake, we used to “shoot” each other with toy guns since we were kids, half of us being the cops, half being the robbers (thank you, Jordan). And us kids were pretty real, no anti-alias or hardware tessellation required :P.
@Legit Forza 4 users banned for “pirated” copies:
I always love when a DRM scheme turns to crap: legit customers get the bad user experience, while pirates get the clean one. When will they learn …
@Xbox Live Accounts scammed for FIFA DLC
Oh boy … he should also talk with his kids. As for phishing, well, what can I say, keep your eyes peeled.
Jonah, excellent point in terms of phishing at the user support level, and hinting that some companies do bad support. Thumbs up, I never thought of that.
@QOTW:
Oh … I don’t do that. Sorry. I always try to find out something about the game.
@Catwoman requires online pass to play in Arkham City:
Personally I don’t care about this because I only ever buy new games. I also don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing because it will pull people away from buying into the used games “scam” which these stores are making lots of free profit from and give more money to the developers to keep making quality content.
@Battlefield 3 is ‘mission accomplished’:
I worry about this because I think there will be a lot of problems on release which will never get fixed. Have you read that Battlefield review copies will not be sent early due to the Day 1 patch? I hope this isn’t as catastrophic as I think it is.
@QOTW:
The first and only game I ever bought a game I knew nothing about was Need For Speed Prostreet, back when I was about 11 years old and the only gaming experience I had was about 2 hours in Need for Speed Underground 2. I sigh whenever I think back to that day and I remember that I would’ve bought a crappy movie license game if it hadn’t been for my small familiarization with Need For Speed.
The issue with Catwoman is less that she’s DLC but that her DLC status makes her irrelevant to the main story. She was advertised as though she’d be a major player, the artwork makes it look like a Batman-Catwoman adventure, and to find her relegated to this side story with Poison ivy while Talia al Ghul is cast as a would-be love interest is where the real Bait and Switch charges are coming from. It’s not the $10, it’s simply not the story we were sold. They sold us one thing and delivered another, that’s a bait and switch.
xbox live accounts scammed! That’s kind of scary. First play station and now that. How do we know if our money and privacy are secured when playing online? And the statement Mivrosoft issued is just even more concerning. The least they can do is look into what happened instead of just denying it.