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April 4th, 2008
11:17 am - "Once you have given up the ghost. . ."
 That's my old userpic, right there. When I first started journaling, I used three covers from Atari 7800 games--Xenophobe, Dig Dug, and Kareteka. This was back in 2002. I kept those until 2004, when I photographed the cover to Tropic of Capricorn, touched it up, shrank it, and pasted it down on another 7800 box scan. Hoopity fucking doo! I was exceedingly proud of myself, at the time. I deleted the other three userpics.
"So what's the point of the game?" someone asked. "You gotta fuck some chick?"
That really irritated me.
As I put that little graphic together, the game I was imagining was a little different. Basically, you play Henry Miller. You've got a suit and tie on, a little fedora. Gray. Your character sprite is gray. And he's wearing roller skates, too. In the main stage of the game, you rollerskate through various rooms of the Cosmodemonic Telephraph Company's headquarters in New York City. You skate around collecting spare change and abandoned bottles of bathtub gin. You need to avoid colliding with desks, secretaries and intoxicated homeless men of all ages, colors and creeds. Also, your boss is on your case, so need to avoid him. Hitting a chair, for instance, will slow you down--maybe even enough to allow your supervisor to lay his hands on you and drag you back to your desk. Provided you manage to waste enough of your workday, you get to go on to a bonus stage. The bonus stage takes place outside the Cosmodemonic building. It involves drinking all of the contraband liquor and then pitching the empties through the windows of assorted banks, federal buildings, and police stations. Should you get more work than skating, done, you're forced to go back home, to your wife and kid.
I still think that's the best game I've never played.
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February 26th, 2006
02:02 am - Zhongshan Middle School North Wall, Sidewalk Side
When I was fifteen, fourteen maybe, I rented this game called Fantasm Soldier Valis. It was the first in a series of of side-scrolling adventure games. The series' story was conveyed through these cut-scenes that would pop up between levels. It managed to snag a very devoted following.
The plot concerned a young girl named Yuko Ahso, who is able to travel between our world and some great beyond. Read as a psychological profile of a bored Japanese schoolgirl, the series could very well be the equivalent of The Tale of Genji for the Sega Genesis. The starting point of any such investigation would be that Yuko prefers risking her life for the survival of another world rather than face the day-to-day existence of a Japanese schoolgirl, what with all its showers, locker-room lesbianism, consensual molestation with the faculty, and showers.
( Great stuff. )
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February 22nd, 2006
12:23 am - No One Gives A Shit About Gaming In Taiwan and There's a Perfectly Good Reason For That
The lines to get into the Taipei Stationery Show were incredibly long, and at first Cindy and I had the impression that we'd be standing outside of the Game Show for forty minutes. . . not unlike our trip to the 2005 Taipei Brassiere Show. However, this was not the case. We were able to get our tickets and walk through the front gate faster than I could screw the cap back on my half pint of Jim Beam and fumble it back into my pocket.
( Which is to say, inside of five minutes. )
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October 28th, 2005
02:27 am - Top Ten Atari Games
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aum Put out a request for ten all-time favorites on the Ataris 2600 and 7800. I've been thinking more than usual about my childhood, lately, and I'm all too happy to oblige.
For the record, I got my Atari 2600 Christmas Day, 1982. I got my Atari 7800 a month or so after Christmas, in 1988. I played the Atari 7800 religiously until Christmas of 1989, when I got a Sega Genesis. The Genesis was sold in 1993 and I went without a video game system until 2002, when I got a GameBoy Advance. That, and the GameBoy Advance SP I picked up in Taiwan, I traded in early this year for DS. I've never regretted owning any of the above units, I'd have had it no other way.
( In no particular order, here they are: )
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February 23rd, 2005
11:47 pm - Pat Metheny on the Atari 7800
One game that I always wanted to play for the 7800 was called Ballblazer. It was from Lucasfilm Games. The game was pretty much a head to head, 3D take on Pong and Soccer. The game always seemed really interesting, even though I disliked sport games. But, as it happened, there was always some shitty arcade port there (such as Xenophobe or Crossbow), distracting me from software created especially for the 7800. And that's a pity, because the games that were designed from the ground up for that system (and there weren't many) were really top notch.
Although Ballblazer was designed for the 5200 and Atari 800, originally, these releases were delayed so the 7800 release could be finished and put out on the shelves. This was supposed to be the 7800's prestiege release.
The guys who did this went on to things like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken.
Anyhow, years after the 7800 was handed over to Roger of Roger's Game Exchange, I started reading up on my old games on-line and read quite a bit stuff on Ballblazer. Everyone loves this game and everyone raves about the music.
Now the 7800 only had the soundchip of an Atari 2600. So what I got in 1988 sounded like what I had in 1982. The guys who made the 7800, for some idiotic reason, left out a decent soundboard in favor of making the 7800 compatible with the 2600. The system designers felt it safe to leave the sound and music totally up to the programmers. The programmers were to load sound on to each cartridge by themselves. You can probably how imagine how expensive and time-consuming this turned out to be.
Supposedly, Lucasfilm was the only software developer to ever do this.
What I heard about the music for Ballblazer boiled down to this: The gameplay actually influenced the sound and tempo of the song. The song itself was based around a Pat Metheny riff. Depending on what you were doing play, you'd get crazy hi-hat rhythms and rim-shots along with a twisting bassline and crazy riffs off the main bassline riff in the upper registers. The music never repeated itself. It was spontaneously composed as you played. At least the leads were. If you were really good, I guess you really got the game rocking.
I found this concept rather intriguing. I've read that they are now doing something similar for some game on the XBox. I'd always wanted to hear what this all sounded like. Wanted to know what my 7800 could really do in capable hands.
Tonight I found out, thanks to a post on AtariAge.
First, here is are a few pages from a press kit Lucasfilm cooked up.
Second, here's a whole page on Ballblazer by the original programmers (or one of them). This has a promotional video put together by Lucasfilm back in the day. The voice-overs--the obnoxious voice-overs--kind of get in the way of the music, but you can hear it, and it is in play, so you can watch it.
Finally, here's an article from the Wikipedia on algorithmic compositions. Unfortunately, all of the audio links seem to be dead and the content is being piped through Search Spaniel.
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December 8th, 2004
11:08 pm - More Edutainment from Taiwan
Renegade Traffic Law Enforcement Bribe Taker!
Well, you can't bust whores and harass shabbily dressed indigenous Taiwanese. You can't handcuff drunks and leave them in the backseat of your squad car with the windows rolled tight in August. In fact, by today's standards, this game has very little going for it.
Save for the fun you'll have learning about Taiwan's new traffic laws, that is. That's right, the Ministry of Department Transportations has finally undertaken the Sisyphean task of remedying some lagging areas of traffic law. They haven't changed much since 1908 and some say they're a bit outmoded. Traffic law corpus isn't like the Constitution, after all, you can't just change it whenever you feel like it in order to serve your own ends without informing the public.
So, as part of The Ministry's new campaign to make Taiwan's roads safer, Renegade Traffic Law Enforcement Bribe Taker pushes flash gaming to utmost limits so you can get it straight when it comes to road safety. Learn the maximum capacity for your Hyundai Scooter (three!). Learn not to weave in and out of lanes and stay out of the bus lane! Learn to yield the right of way to pedestrians when making a turn!
All from the point of view of the Renegade Traffic Law Enforcement Bribe Taker! That's right, catch some chick jay walking and move the baton over her head. Click the mouse button, and crack her flat, peasant skull. See a bus hauling ass through a red light? Clobber that fucker in front of his wife and kids! Catch some college boy barreling down the sidewalk on his moped? Ring the bell, school's back in, motherfucker! Knock his sorry ass off his bike in a clothesline maneuver then break his wrists after taking his money!
Teach the plebeians to properly operate motor vehicles through the the use of brute force!
Bonus features include smacking the living shit out of a Beetle Nut Girl for added speed, a bass heavy soundtrack that'll rattle the cubes in your glass, and a chance to win cash prizes!
Now that's edutainment!
Even more edutainment from Taiwan!
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November 26th, 2004
01:32 am - Isn't it cool how the U.S. has worked it's way up to subliminal propaganda?
So, you all might be aware that--politically speaking--Taiwan is fucked headfirst to the ankles in elephant pussy. You knew that right? I'm not your primary news source, right? Well, okay, it's true. Someday, I'll write a none-too-brief survey of the political situation here and then immediately disappear. I'll use lots of expletives in that post. Trust me.
You have to wonder who the good guys are. The DPP, which is the party that's got the president in the office, is pushing really hard to win a majority in the legislative body. They need to do this so they can--heh, heh--pass a weapons budget bill that'll let them buy a shitload of firepow er and force China to invest still-yet-more time and resources into their military, which is still equipped with muskets and bayonets and instead of having a U.S.O, they have what's loosely translated as a Northern Province Farm Girl Rape Circus.
So, in order to win enough votes to buy all these wonderful U.S. made weapons, they're "reaching out" to the younger voters, out there. All of these younger voters who are male have probably been through the military. Even if they're gay or crippled or really smart. But not if their father happens to be rich. Most of these younger voters who are female have been taught that things like voting are too complicated and time-consuming to be worth any trouble and stay at their parents hourse, smoking pot in the mornings and banging foreign teachers in the afternoon before hitting up Dad for 400 NT for a breeze through the Night Market.
So, yeah here're the fruits of their labor. Now, the site itself is mostly in Mandarin. What you want is the link labelled FLASH GAME. Put those speaker levels up. Hell, yeah.
The first game is called--woquinoncoin's not translating here, this is from the press--"Arms Procurement Can Ensure Safety." It's a CABAL-style shooter in which you start out killing Gongfay China soldiers with a slingshot and then work your way up to killing Gongfay China soldiers with a tank. You work your way up by collecting money.
The next game is called "The Pan-Green Camp's Legislative Majority Wins Happiness." Here, you play a Tae-Kwon-Do fighter who beats the shit out blue party rivals.
Knock yourselves out.
More Excitement This Way!
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October 31st, 2004
12:48 am
So I was home on my lunch break the other day. If I'm lucky, after I eat, I have an hour and a half to kill. Sometimes, I take a little nap. But I have found that, more often than not, I'm more energize by doing something constructive. So I'll play guitar, I cook some thing up on The Gimp, or write. Well, I didn't have much time on my hands and so I just hopped online and had a look at a few of the sites I follow. One such site is Atariage.
When that came up on my monitor, I was shocked to see there was a contest to design your own 7800 game. That brought back some memories. Since the sixth grade, I've wanted to make a video game. I would draw up outlines for levels, design characters, invent rules and play mechanics. I think I continued doing this until my junior or senior year in high school. I especially enjoyed drawing backgrounds to playing fields. The funnest thing to do was design a building (I liked RPG's) and do a floorplan and then sketch out each room in detail. Character design was cool, too.
To this day, I still entertain the occasional fantasy of making some kind of video game. Lately, it's been an endeavor to stage a comeback of the two dimensional side-scroller.
Thing is, these flights began in the sixth grade, back when I was playing on the old 7800. So, yeah, this contest announcement struck a chord with me. There was actually a moment where I thought I might be able to enter it and actually submit something.
And then I took a look at the raw code for Desert Falcon someone had posted somewhere.
You'd have to be crazy to be able to read that shit.
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November 10th, 2003
12:40 pm - Just in Time for the Holidays
From www.jgames.com.
Abortion Machinist: Christmas Edition
Gameboy Advance
12:23:03 (Japan)
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April 18th, 2003
07:05 pm - Legend of Zelda Beat in 2-Hours
From ClassicGaming.com
Even though the gaming hobby has advanced onward to first-person-shooters and sensational role-playing landscapes, gaming accomplishments on old-fashioned titles can still make an ardent player sit up and take notice.
One such achievement has been recently verified: the eternally popular 1991 SNES game, "Legend of Zelda:A Link to the Past," has been finished in under 2-hours for the first time in the title's history.
With a new record time of 1:57.15 scored on April 9, 2003, Michael Damiani, of Texas, beat the previous world record 2:07.10, achieved by Mark Waterfield of Ontario, Canada, on July 28th, 1999. "Anybody in electronic gaming old enough to remember this game should be impressed with this accomplishment," says Walter Day , Chief Scorekeeper at Twin Galaxies, the industry statistician. "What's of special interest," notes Day, "is that Zelda experts believed for years that a sub-2-hour game was not possible."
Former record holder Mark Waterfield could not be reached for comment; he was found dead, with his wrists slit open, in his parents' bathtub approximately three hours after Twin Galaxies posed the news.
Twin Galaxies' Chief Referee, Robert Mruczek, has prepared a full report which, in part, reads:
"Michael Damiani is now offically a part of Video Game Nerd-dom. The price he paid was great--going without satisfaction in other areas of his life such a intellectual fulfillment, redeeming relationships with other human beings, physical health, and an emotional investment in reality. In light of this sacrifice, however, he has earned the respect of the original *Link to the Past* programming crew. Everyone having anything to do with the production of that game raised their eyebrows and took notice upon hearing of Damiani's estimable feat. This fact is especially noteworthy because, in light of all the diggity-dank, bomb-ass Vancouver buddage and E-cupped-sumata-action all of the money they've earned has given them, it is exceedingly rare that they should be distracted from the dizzying, Hedonistic stupor their success has paid for. Way to go, asshole."
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March 27th, 2003
04:16 am - Dig Dug
Thought the big box behind the tree was the ProSystem. It was a typewriter. The system came in around January.
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03:47 am - Karateka
Mom gave me this for Christmas. I opened it up beneath the Christas tree and was sure I'd gotten a 7800. That didn't happen, though. Not one store in Michigan had the console in stock by the time the holidays rolled around.
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01:25 am - The Last 7800 Game I Ever Bought
The last Atari 7800 game I ever bought was called Xenophobe. It was a port from an old Bally-Midway coin-op of the same name. THAT game was sweet. I played it once at The Roladium when I was in fifth grade. One of the best video gaming experiences of my life.
The 7800 version was advertised in the Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalogue in the autumn of my sophmore year in junior high school. That would be October of 1989. Sears Roebuck was one of the few places you could get 7800 games, on account of local stores having the good sense not to stock them.
I worked my ass off to save up the $27.95 plus postage and handling. Raking leaves. Cleaning the garage. Bringing in docks off the lake for some of the laziest, cheapest fucks on Cedar Shores. The damn thing cost over thirty dollars, and they wouldn't even ship it to your own home. You had to drive all the way out to Summit Place to pick it up. That's one reason that catalogue is gone, gone, gone.
OH, MAN, but the Saturday my Mom drove me out there to pick it up. . . That day, I'll never forget. She went shopping like every week. Stuff for Mom, stuff for Andrea, me, Dad, whatever. Those were good times. I hate to say it, but the mall had a strange appeal to me back then. It must've been some kind of compensation for the lack of ANYTHING within walking distance of my house. There was an elementary school, a cemetary, a bar, and a liquor store. We got up early and headed out to Waterford. She bought me lunch, harped on my B- in Mr. Black's Meterology class, told me I was doing good in Schmidlin's Composition class. . . I think parent-teacher conferences was the Thursday night before. Seventh grade was pretty hard on me. I thought everyone hated me, back then. Years later, I realize the opposite was in fact true.
So anyway, we get to the mall and she's telling me to keep busy for two hours and she'll meet me back in front of Babbages (where I'd be for at least a half an hour watching game previews on the two screens at the front of the store). And then, before we split up. She asks how much my video game's gonna cost and then slips me like forty bucks.
I nearly shat where I stood. I bolted to Sears. At this point in my life, I rarely held more than twenty bucks in my own hand at any given point. Not much has changed. At that point, I had over sixty. I remember standing in front of the window behind this black couple. I had my claim ticket that I got in the mail the day before and it was getting soaked with sweat. They were getting a VCR, and the husband, who was about fifty, looked like he was about to have a stroke. Not one of those life-threatening, deabilitating strokes, but one of those "Oh shit, I'm spending money and I love it" strokes American's are known to have.
Going home, I even got her to stop at Truman's comics, so I could pick up some shitty X-Men reissues. Man, I was in the shit that day. One of my first consumer frenzies as I recall.
This was a very grey day. Overcast. I remember the ride home very clearly. I was deep in the throes of video game lust. Most of you know what I'm talking about. It only occurs in the exact situation I'm describing: Parent driving you home, you've got the shrink wrap off, you're looking at the manual, memorizing the play controls. . . Wondering what the animation is gonna look like, wondering how the music is gonna sound, you imagine yourself staying up until three in the morning just rocking the little bitch and loving every minute of it.
The worst was the last five minutes. Like maybe you hit a stoplight and you just wanna throw the car door open and book it home cause you know you can beat the old lady to the front door what with her driving five miles under the limit out of consideration for someone else's roaming pet.
And then you get home and have to piss.
But then you're there in front of the television screen and waiting for the static to come up solid, so you don't miss a nanosecond of the game after you hit "power." And by the time the Atari logo screen is up, your throat is clenched so tight, your brain is so deprived of oxygen, that you think the next thing on the screen is gonna hit you like heaven busting wide open.
Xenophobe's title screen was a graphic of the box. The alien leering at the girl, the girl poised to chuck a grenade down his throat. Yeah!
I hit the right button and, immediately, I saw the front of a spaceship. . . little pixels, stars, moved passed. Huh, I thought. Weird. Why haven't they let me select my character yet?
Suddenly, the view changes and you're in the spaceship. Okay, sweet, I'm thinking. . . the next thought was: Why'd the music stop? And then: Gosh, the guy doesn't have any hair. Wait, his arms never move. Where are the little robots that throw weapons out at you?
Things went from bad to worse. By the time I cleared the last base of aliens, forty five minutes later, and began again at the very first space station I was pissed. Pissed. One day Seth came over and we played it together. That was the game's saving grace--two player simultaneous. That was fun for an hour. Although, come to think of it, that last half hour we kept ourselves entertained by ridiculing everything about the damn game. . . especially the goddawful sound effects, ran off a 2600 sound chip.
Xenophobe's title screen was the best part of the game.
So, yeah, that 32K piece of silicon shit came out of the same Sears Roebuck catalogue which featured the Sega Genesis on its premiere Christmas.
I played the hell out of Altered Beast from December 25th to January 20-something'th. I sold my Atari 7800 and all of the games, including Xenophobe, for $11.00 to Roger's Game Exchange at the Dixieland Flee Market when I was sixteen.
That dumb bastard. That dumb, dumb bastard.
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March 24th, 2003
07:30 pm - Attn: Retro gamers
The wait is over. The whole retrogaming thing is officially dead. The proof?
Atari7800.com .
Yes, relive the classic frustration of sloppy play control with such Borderbound Apple IIe hits as Karateka and Ace of Aces. Relive the classic disappointment with inferior sound quality culled from the technological scrap heap of 1978 with five tone mono audio loops and analog bodily functions. Relive the classic pulling-the-cartridge-from-the-console-and-spitting-on-the-chip-before-throwing-it-at-the-wall-shitfit when you complete Tower Toppler only to start over at the first stage at an increased difficulty setting. Relive the classic thrill of no less than a dozen animated sprites per screen coming at you at a dazzling four colors each. Relive the classic pain in the lower back as you continually bend forward to hit the "pause" button conveniently located to the right of the "power" button on the console.
Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to relive the classic jealousy of hearing your friends talk about such mysterious yet enticing titles such as "Super Mario Brothers" and "The Legend of Zelda," and the classic curiosity about just what the hell a "password" is.
Yes, it's all there. If the prospect of reliving those classic moments isn't enough to get you worked up into a retrogaming spending frenzy, check out their sales pitch. 1986 Technology at 2003 prices! Yow! You used to be able to pick up Choplifter! for 14.99 at Meijers. . . Now you get to pay ten buck more!
What's more, if you order their gold package, you not only get a real Atari 7800 prosystem, AND rf converter AND ac adaptor, BUT ALSO, a demo version of the Atari coin-op classic PIT FIGHTER!
Not interested in the Atari 7800 prosystem? You've got problems, bud. Maybe checking out some behind-the-scenes info on what constituted "business as usual" at the old Atari HQ will change your mind:
"The drug abuse at Atari was more rampant than most realize or care to admit. During the early days of Atari, a few of the higher-up staff members had affairs with some rather serious drugs including cocaine, hard acid, and Quaaludes. Apple founder Steve Jobs (who was an employee at Atari at the time and responsible for Breakout) was late to work on many an occasion tended to show up to work (allegedly) high on acid. Later in the lifespan of Atari, it is believed that one particular member of the Tramiel clan would hold short meetings with a high-end drug supplier in his office and consume lines of cocaine within that same privacy. This issue was kept quite quiet within the family while the gentleman attended a rehab facility in Los Angeles sometime during the early 1990's. Many believe that the relationship between Atari and drug usage stopped with the flirtation of marijuana and free-spirited atmosphere of the Atari creative team in the late 1970's. This unfortunately is not the case."
Now I know why that last, crucial puzzle piece in Impossible Mission never turned up. It was impossible for that guy running the beta test to operate the Prosystem contoller and a two-foot pyrex with a glass side at the same time.
I just wish I'd been into drugs back when I was thirteen. My 7800 would've no doubt been much more enjoyable. Or at least tolerable. Hell, a good tab of Yellow Sunshine and the opening Atari Logo screen would've kept me happy for at least six hours.
"Ray Kassar, CEO of Atari during the Warner years (best known for his political downfall in which he was involved in an insider trading scandal, selling off all of his Atari stock just hours before Atari announced quarterly losses in the millions, and was subsequently ousted in September 1983 with James Morgan taking his place.) was well known by contemporaries to be a flamboyant homosexual outside of the workplace. While his lifestyle was of no real interest within the confines of Atari's offices, he was known to make grand flamboyant entrances and was chauffeured to Atari's Sunnyvale facility on a daily basis via a stretch limousine which picked him up from his estate in San Francisco."
[I'll refrain from saying anything on this point.]
"While Atari (under Bushnell) and Warner Communications were still flirting around with the possibility of the sale of Atari to Warner, Nolan's policy had been to make Atari as presentable as possible to Warner during their visits to the Atari facility in California. Part of this policy had been to "hide" the main Atari staff, who at that time were basically hippies complete with beards, sandals, and a joint behind their ear, who were all working for a company that was run more like a hippie commune, than a corporation. This obviously would have been detrimental to the sale of Atari had Warner seen the true goings-on at Atari in the early days. However, on one occasion, Nolan received a surprise phone call from one of the Warner executives who happened to be near by on an unrelated outing with some other Warner people from Manhattan, who wanted to stop by the Atari facility to take a look around to get a glimpse of the new technology and the production facility. Nolan panicked, as all of the assembly line workers were dressed down and rather unpresentable by Warner standards, and also happened to be freely smoking marijuana on the job. With only minutes to "clean up," the Atari employees put out their marijuana cigarettes and managed to crawl into incomplete coin-op cabinets, essentially hiding out for forty-five minutes while the Warner clan browsed around the Atari facility. According to one ex-Atari employee who was witness to this 'Those Warner guys didn't suspect a thing. Nolan was like a big kid pulling one over on his parents.'"
These guys could swap stories with the fellows at AOL, no doubt. . .
Ah, but let's hear something from the brass, shall we?
"'The truth is, the SuperSystem is a piece of *%$# ...and we all know it!' stated a frustrated Ray Kassar, Atari President under Warner, to an Atari engineering employee outside of the Atari world headquarters in 1982. It was the beginning of the end for the Atari everyone had known and loved for so long. Nolan Bushnell's dream was about to begin a slow and painful death which is still looming over us to this day, and at that point in time, Atari was dramatically losing enthusiasm with their latest system, the Atari 5200 SuperSystem. It was time for a change. Atari had to pull out all the stops to try to save not just the company, but the industry as a whole. This was the beginning of what was arguably one of the most innovative periods in Atari's history. This was the birth of the Atari 7800 ProSystem."
The birth, as we all know, was more like an abortion. A grizzly, back alley, coat hanger and gin abortion.
Still not convinced? Here, we all know that numbers don't lie. . . Give these digits the once over. . .
CPU : 6502C
RAM : 4K
ROM : 4K BIOS ROM
CPU SPEED : 1.79 Mhz
GRAPHICS SPEED : 7.16 MHz
STORAGE: 32K Cartridge ROM
BANKSWITCHING : No
SOUND : TIA Custom Sound
RESOLUTION : 320 X 200
COLORS : 256
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