“Controversy Creates Cash”

- Eric Bischoff

—

So there’s a new game out called Modern Warfare 2. You may have heard about it.

It sold 4.7  million copies on the first day of release in the UK & US with a total sales revenue of $310 million. After five days it had made $550 million (over half a BILLION dollars!).

These figures make it not only a massive success financially but also the biggest entertainment launch in history, surpassing previous leader GTA IV, also a video game.

This is huge.

Again, this game, from a financial point of view, is more successful in it’s first week of release than any other entertainment related event in history (including movies). Funnily enough, both GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2 share three things in common:

• an 18 certificate,
• huge amounts of violence (with the option to kill/attack innocents) and, as a result;
• media controversy.

If you’re developer and want to create a game that would fly off the shelves then those three bullet points would be the first things on your ‘must have’ list. It seems in today’s market having those three things is the VIP pass into the exclusive  ‘2 Million+ Sales Club’.

In addition to the money, it’s also been met with critical acclaim for the most part and has it’s own TV ad campaign featuring many explosions, brick hard men performing feats of soldiering that are barely believable in their cinematic beauty and oh so shiny modern weapons to go a shootin’ Johnny Foreigner to bits with.

The original Call Of Duty games were based largely around well-known battles and locations from World War 2 and featured missions from many different fronts; occupied France (D-Day landings), Russia, Germany, Japan and Africa.

When, in 2007, Infinity Ward decided to bring their hugely successful franchise out of the 1940’s into the modern era it had gamers eagerly anticipating the result. That result was ‘Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’ and, apart from being one of the best-selling games of the year, it was universally praised by critics, handed one award after another and went down in gaming history as a classic.

To guarantee another cash bonanza, Modern Warfare 2 picks up where that cash cow left off (figuratively, not literally) and happily the ‘4′ has been dropped from the ‘Call Of Duty’ preface, lest it confuse gamers into thinking it’s a war-themed maths game rather than what it actually is (a game where you snipe people in the face for fun then collect their nipples as trophies to use as helmet decorations on your fat decadent western head).

It seems like these games are designed to inspire a specific ambivalence in the player. Namely; “War is hell” and “War is AWESOME!”

For every harrowing beach landing or nuclear disaster you witness there’s high adventure, rescue missions, killing evil types and performing stunts to counteract it. You can almost hear the game whispering in your ear:

“You know you could’ve joined the SAS if you wanted, but they’re a load of pansies and you’d be too hard for them handle”.

So, instead of ’serving your country proudly’ by eliminating anyone with vaguely dissimilar ways of life at the behest of a clueless government more concerned about who’s going to win the X Factor, you do the very same thing in the comfort of your own home, albeit vicariously with control pad (or keyboard & mouse) in hand.

Now, as this thing I’m writing is quite long and discusses the violence in modern games I think I should reveal on which side of the fence I stand.

Put simply; I’m pro-gaming and, more specifically, I’m pro-violence in games.

I love and play most of the games that contain obscene violence & controversy and have hugely enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto franchise and Manhunt (to name but two games that have attracted the media’s attention). I also love and play most of the games that have been huge hits and family friendly such as the (never-ending) Super Mario franchise, Tetris and the Guitar Hero.

I view games as I think they are intended to be viewed – escapist fun and not to be taken seriously.

To date I have killed and tortured many hundreds of people in Manhunt, I’ve murdered countless more cops and innocents in Grand Theft Auto for no other reason than wanton destruction and mayhem. In fact, killing as many police, blowing up as many police cars and downing as many police helicopters as possible before being taken down by armed response units, the military and tanks is a great way to spend your afternoon in Liberty City.

And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Sadly for the media and the so-called ‘concerned parents’ of the world who look to place the blame for anything they don’t like as far away from their own doorstep as possible, when I’ve become bored of the violence and mayhem I haven’t decided to see if it’s just as much fun to go out & kill cops for fun in the real world. Nor have I used it as inspiration to go out & commit armed robbery, hijack people’s cars, join a drug cartel or run people over just for fun.

No, I’ve quit the game and gone about my day without giving the chaos I wreaked in-game a second thought. Hmm… Just like almost 100% of everyone else who’s ever played a game then.

Like many other people born in the 70’s I’ve pretty much grown up playing video games. I got my first taste at the age of 7 when my parents bought me a Mattel Vectrex console for Christmas 1985.

**DIGRESSION!!!**

Well, when I say my parents bought it me, I obviously believed at the time that Santa delivered it by ‘24 hour Guaranteed Overnight Sleigh’ direct from the North Pole and if Santa himself is delivering video games for Christmas they must be morally ok. Santa wouldn’t be a part of anything that was bad, would he?

Are we likely to see Santa on the front cover of HEAT magazine with a caption underneath saying: Santa’s True Story: “My drug & mulled wine hell”? Nope. He’s got one hell of a stressful job though but unlike Kerry Katona he can handle a bit of pressure without taking most of Columbia’s GDP up the left nostril.

Not likely to see him in an Iceland advert either. Even though that would actually be the most appropriate food advert for Santa to do.

Anyway, back to the heady days of 1985’s Christmas when I got my first taste of video games…

/DIGRESSION

Much playing of ‘Mine Storm’ & ‘Clean Sweep’ (rip offs of arcade classics ‘Asteroids’ & ‘Pac Man’ respectively) laid the ground work for the next 30 years. Since then I’ve been mostly a Nintendo-based gamer, having owned a NES, Gameboy, SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii at various times, in addition to the original Playstation, PS2 and more recently the X-box 360. I also spent inordinate amounts of time in arcades as a youth and still do now when I can.

I love the smell of them, and the sounds. One thing sorely missing nowadays is the distinctive sound of a Space Invaders machine being played in the background, or the Wonderboy music playing as someone goes for the high score. Arcades depress me a little these days with how much they’ve changed.

**DIGRESSION!!!**

When I were a lad the balance of fruit machines and video games was roughly around 50/50 in the 80’s & 90’s. In the last 10 years though it’s shifted to more like 90/10 in favour of fruit machines.

Good news for gamblers, bad news for gamers.

It’s due in no small part to the home video gaming market rapidly growing & outclassing the arcade hardware which means less gamers inserting coins and made fruit machines far more profitable per square foot of space.

/DIGRESSION

These days my gaming is done mostly on PC; a ridiculously flexible platform and, in my opinion, the best way to experience games. The console control pad method just doesn’t work as well in a lot of games as the keyboard & mouse combo offered by the PC. That said, there are some games that are absolutely suited to consoles. The aforementioned Guitar Hero being a great example, but there are many, many more.

Furthermore, almost every single one of the games I grew up playing, either in the arcades at rainy seaside resorts or in the comfort of my own teenage, messy, purple and yellow walled bedroom, are available to play on the PC through a wide variety of emulators. For free.

But anyway, once again, I digress…

I’ve not played Modern Warfare 2 yet (but I will, just as soon as Batman Arkham Asylum releases the stranglehold on my gaming time) but there’s a  level where your character (an undercover CIA agent in Russia) teams up with a couple of Russian Terrorist types who are tooled up with machine guns and flak jackets.

After being instructed not to speak any Russian (so Russia believes the attack to be perpetrated by the Americans) the head honcho terrorist (Vladimir Makarov) instructs you and the others to open fire on an airport full of innocent civilians. The article discussing the mission is here and is the main inspiration for the writing of this whole thing.

Now, committing acts of terrorism against unarmed civilians in a public place (while certainly topical) reeks of bad taste and opportunistic exploitation, especially with recent history and current world politics being how they are.

I can see this one from the point of view of both sides though.

Before any amount of outrage or alleged ‘copycat’ attempts can be laid at it’s door, Modern Warfare 2 is just a game. Remember that.

Just. A. Game.

Yes, the content is morally wrong but still, it’s just a game.

But, the content and the actions taken by characters (yours included) is morally wrong. You, by clicking your mouse or joypad decided to murder an innocent civilian for no reason and in so doing did something that is, by definition, ‘wrong’ (albeit ‘wrong’ within a completely fake arena of reality).

The game represents as realistically as possible the scenario you are in and the decisions you make. And, at the end of it all it is YOU making the decision to kill indescriminently.

Ok, your character on-screen is actually doing the killing, but it’s at your command, entirely under your control.

Again,  it’s just a game.

It’s no more ‘real’ than a dream, is it?

To be continued… Part 2 – up soon!

The Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition took place over the weekend on Saturday, October 24th. The event has been held annually since 2003 and features exhibitors showing off their collections of classic gaming memorabilia.

For starters there are a number of arcade machines that are all set to free play for anyone to enjoy while they are there. They ranged from vector graphics machines, such as Space Wars to Frogger and Joust. Only one machine was not playable, the Star Wars arcade game, and that was due to some interference from the Dark Side according to the Out of Order sign.

My daughter, Katy attended the event with me and we spent about half an hour playing Space Wars. For anyone that doesn’t know, this was an arcade machine created by Larry Rosenthal, a graduate of MIT and featured two player space combat. One player controlled a ship that looked like the wedge ship from Asteroids and the other controlled a ship resembling the Starship Enterprise. These ships were controlled with five buttons, one to move left, one to move right, a thrust button, a button to fire your ships gun and a hyperspace button that would teleport you to a random spot on the screen. The object of the game was to destroy your opponent the most in a time limit. Each credit would get you a minute and a half of time. There were a number of gameplay options that could be selected at the beginning of the game. You had the ability to change the speed of the game, the amount of gravity or a combination of those two and the different options varied widely from each other. The only objects on the screen besides the player’s ships were an asteroid that would randomly move around the battlefield and a star in the center that would destroy any ship that touched it. This was also were the gravity was centered and would pull player towards. The game play was super simple, but extremely addicting. Space Wars was available for purchase, but I did not have the $1000 that the owner was asking.

There were a number of vendors present as well, many who had playable systems from the late 70’s and early 80’s all the way up to the early years of this century. One man, Joe Hamilton, had a history of Nintendo that featured nearly every console the company has released, including the Virtual Boy. It was the first time I had a chance to see what that system was all about and I have to say that after playing it for about fifteen minutes I didn’t want to play any more. Mainly because it was so uncomfortable leaning forward to put my head in the giant binocular display that the Virtual Boy had. The owner of the system said that if he plays it for any extended period of time he lays back on the couch and just rests the system over his eyes, which didn’t seem too comfortable to me either. I was also able, at that booth, to get my hands on a Famicom for the first time and aside from being essentially the exact same thing as the NES I didn’t like the controller, only because the wire sticks out of the side and my hand was pushing against it the entire time.

It seemed that the most popular display at the show was the history of fighting games that had somewhere around 100 different fighting game titles all on display. Greg Little, the man behind the collection said these were only his one on one fighting games and he didn’t not include his extensive of multi player fighting games. Even though, I’m not a fan of the fighting game genre, outside of some casual Street Fighter action, the collection was impressive and it really showed off just how fighting games have evolved throughout the years.

I also had the chance to get my hands on some time with the Vectrex. The first game I played was Minestorm, which is essentially an Asteroids clone. You controlled a ship that you could move around the screen and you were tasked with shooting mines that were floating through space. The game featured controls that I liked a bit more than Asteroids. The ship did not float around the screen after a booster thrust and, while not being as “realistic” as Asteroids I liked better because I had more control over what I was doing. The Vectrex featured a screen that displayed simple black and white graphics, but to get around that game designers would include color sheets that you would place over the screen to give the game the appearance of color graphics. The game I played that showed that off to its fullest effect was a Space Invaders style game. The screen featured three different areas of color and as the invaders would pass over them they would change color. It gave a very impressive illusion of a game with color graphics and it really did enhance the game over the simple black and white the Vectrex could produce.

I also learned a lot about the thriving Atari 2600 community from Brad Prillwitz. He was there showing off his collection of new and homebrew applications for the Atari 2600. I mentioned, on the podcast, a game called Chunkout 2600 that is a new puzzle game that was just released for the system. The screen was filled with a number of colored blocks and you have to remove them from the screen. You can remove any group of two or more colored blocks that are the same color and the object was to clear them all from the screen. The game featured four different difficulty levels that you would select by adjusting the switches on the back of the system and the higher difficulty levels were very challenging. It was a lot of fun and if I had the system and the $30 for a new Atari game I would have bought a copy right then. He told me that new games are coming out for the system all the time and the community of 2600 developers is quite large. I thought the system had died long ago and was simply a jewel for collectors. Apparently I was wrong.

The event brought in just over 500 people and it was quite interesting to see the number of dads that were out with their younger children showing them what gaming was like when we were younger. I know my daughter enjoyed it and said she was already ready to go back again next year. She was introduced to a lot of gaming’s past that she found very entertaining and I had the chance to try out some systems I had only heard about. The game play for many of those older systems was simple, yet completely addicting even today. It would have been very easy to spend thousands of dollars in there adding to my gaming collections, but for the sake of my marriage I had to restrain myself.

It was a great event and I encourage anyone in the area to attend next year’s event. You’d be pleasantly surprised.

One of the overlooked reasons for the “Great Game Crash” back in 1983 or so was the fact that you didn’t have three consoles competing with each other – you had several (up to 7 at one point if I recall correctly and that’s not counting all of the different PC systems which were essentailly high-end game consoles with keyboards). One of those consoles that was part of the fray was called the Vectrex which was released in 1982. The Vectrex had a short ‘official’ life span and was overlooked by many but it’s one of the most interesting game systems of the early 80’s as it came with it’s own vector monitor, thus providing a pretty close to arcade experience at home, although the screensize was smaller than most arcade vector tubes and it was monochrome where at the time a lot of new vector titles had several colors to choose from. The Vectrex is also notable as it featured the first game to be ported over to arcades after showing up on the console first (Cosmic Chasm).

With that history out of the way, here is an cool look at a project over at Vectrexmuseum.com where they created an arcade cabinet to house the console so it would all feel a little more like it’s an arcade machine. While the cabinet is fairly small – about hald the size of a Donkey Kong cabinet – it looks pretty sleek and they are even selling four more cabinets for any Vectrex collectors out there who might want to get their hands on one without having to figure out all of the dimensions and cutting that would need to be done otherwise.

For more details, here is the link @ Vectexmuseum.com

[Discuss on the Forums]

Well, I have never been a Zelda fan, but I know damned well that a lot of you folks are.

Here is the original Zelda commercial,

Enjoy

Multi-Games Carte avec 32 jeux Vectrex

Achat du Week End..Une carte Multi Jeux Vectrex

JEUX :

ARMOR ATTACK
BERZERK
BLITZ
STAR CASTLE
COSMIC CHASM
HEADS UP
HYPERCHASE
FORTRES OF NARZOD
POLAR RESCUE
RIP OFF
SCRAMBLE
SOLAR QUEST
SPACE WARS
SPIKE
CLEAN SWEEP
WEB WARS
ART MASTER
BADLAM
VADERS
MELODY MASTER
MINESTORM II
NARROW ESCAPE
NEBULA COMMANDER
POLE POSITION
MR BOSTON
ROCKAROIDS REMIX
SPIN BALL
STAR HAWK
STAR TREK
TOUR DE FRANCE
PATRIOTS

I was something of a video-game nerd growing up.  We had Pong, the original home video game, and I also had the first Atari home gaming system. 

Pong was elegant in its simplicity.  You hit a “ball” (a little white square) with your “rackets” (white vertical lines on the far left and right of the screen).  The ball bounced back and forth, sometimes ricocheting off the walls of the “court” (the top and bottom of the screen).  I can still remember the thrilling sounds of the action — little “beeps” and “bee-doops” every time the ball was struck or bounced off the wall.   

The Atari system was a quantuum leap forward.  Their big selling point was that they offered home versions of the most popular arcade games — Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, etc.  This was very cool, even though the home games never came close to matching the graphics of the original arcade games.   The big breakthrough game on the Atari system was Pitfall, in which you were an Indiana Jones-esque character running through the jungle, jumping over boulders, and swinging on vines over crocodile-infested waters all in an attempt to gather treasure.  The graphics were remarkably sophisticated at the time and I played it for hours on end.  I especially remember the sound the game made when you would swing on a vine — an electronic variation of Tarzan’s famous yell.  

I took my two kids to visit my parents earlier this week and — since they never, ever throw anything away — there in my old room was my old Vectrex video game system.  The Vectrex system was self-contained — you didn’t need to hook it to a television.  Many of the games were knock-offs of popular arcade games, including Minestorm, a total Asteroids rip-off that  came pre-loaded on the machine.  We cranked up the Vectrex and I wondered what my kids would make of it since there is probably more computing power in a doorbell today than there was in the entire Vectrex system in 1982, when it was first released. 

They loved it.

There is something very elemental — and timeless, I suppose — about Asteroids.  Your space ship is in the middle of the screen.  Asteroids fly through space and your job is to shoot them before they crash into you.  Trouble is that when you shoot an asteroid, it splits into two smaller asteroids and so on and so on until your tiny little ship is surrounded by a shitload of little asteroids, which are just as deadly as the big ones.  Oh, and every once in a while, an enemy space ship comes out of nowhere and tries to kill you, too.  If you happen to make it through one asteroid field, your reward is an uglier asteroid field, where the action is even more frenetic.

My three-year-old son grasped the basics of the game in about two minutes — and played it for about two hours.  The only concept he seemed to struggle with was ”hyperspace” — the ability to get out of a jam by hitting a button that instantly teleports you to a different, and presumably safer, part of the screen.

How great would it be to have a hyperspace button in real life?  The boss comes looking for you, the annoying neighbor sees you getting out of your car, the kids think it’s time that you wake up from your nap on the couch. 

Blip… You’re gone.

Fortress of Narzod is a classic arcade game from a bizarro universe, where it’s a huge hit with countless clones and knockoffs. Through an intricate series of misadventures by a legendary Seminole mystic in the 9th century, an extra-dimensional rift was created. The only end results of this (which a human psyche can comprehend) are twofold; 1) the Seminole mystic went insane and ate his own arms off, and 2) Fortress of Narzod was quietly released in our dimension, albeit only in the United States.

Assuming you’ve played a video game before, Narzod’s gameplay will be instantly familiar, but it’s concept is as unique as anything out there. If Gyruss is Galaga after having the screen rolled into a cylinder, Narzod is Centipede after having it’s screen mangled by a 10.0 earthquake. Okay, that analogy wasn’t so good, so maybe I should explain. Most of the game takes place on zig-zaggy polygonal corridors, with a fortress in the distance (see the above picture). This allows for some unique gameplay situations, such as enemies hiding behind the portions of the tunnel that are blocked by walls, but the real twist is the fact that bullets (your own and those of enemies) can ricochet off the walls. So rather than lining yourself up with your target directly in front of you, it’s usually safer to try to nab him with a ricochet, since a straight shot will often bounce off the distant fortress and come straight at you. That’s right, you can shoot yourself in this game, possibly a historical first for the game industry.

Like most of the arcade classics of Dimention Ô, Narzod starts out frantic and doesn’t relent. Before you know it, enemy bullets are splitting into two and you’ll be twiddling the tiny Vectrex joystick with the frantic precision of a masturbating chipmunk. You’ll quickly learn to fear the murderous eagles, which shoot small, speedy bullets directly at you. If you can overcome your jitters, these aquiline foes can serve a strategic purpose, since they serve as temporary shields if you shoot them out of the sky in an advantageous location. Apparently Narzod himself isn’t the type to get his hands dirty, but you do get to clash with his toughest minion; the Mystic Hurler. These battles tend to be anticlimactic, since the Hurler doesn’t have much fight in him, but at least it breaks up the action a bit, and it’s pretty novel having a boss fight in the first place.

Overall, Fortress of Narzod is one of the best games available for the venerable Vectrex. It’s addictive, unique, frantic and fun. When the lead starts flying, the hardware visibly shudders and churns, but in never slows, never chops, never gives in. If this is the sort of thing people in other dimensions are playing, we should fear them.

Mein Nachbar resp. Schwager resp. Kumpel hat sich ein Liebhaberstück gekauft. So nennt man das ja, glaube ich, wenn man langsam alt wird und bei Versteigerungen tendenziell zuviel für Dinge bezahlt, die man in seiner Kindheit haben wollte, aber nicht bekam bzw. nicht haben wollte, weil sie damals schon von gestern waren, aber eben noch nicht so sehr von gestern, dass man sie wieder haben will. Ein typisches Beispiel dafür ist die Spielekonsole Vectrex, die – wie mir erklärt wurde – nicht sonderlich erfolgreich war, weil zu teuer. Zu teuer war sie aber deshalb, weil sie den Monitor gleich mitbrachte und zwar nicht irgendeinen x-beliebigen Pixel-Monitor, sondern einen Vektor-Monitor, oder so. Also ist es eine Konsole, die mit Vektorgrafik funktioniert. Sie wurde dann auch “Vectrex” genannt. Und zwar schon 1982. Es gibt also Konsolen, die sind fast genauso alt wie ich. Das “x” am Ende des Namens sollte wohl zum Ausdruck bringen, auf welcher Marktposition die Vetrex-Produzenten am liebsten die Pixelgrafikprodukte anderer Hersteller gesehen hätten, am Ende. Das war 1982 noch so, da war alles noch offen. Nun gut, mir wurde das Gerät gestern abend vorgeführt und es bereitete Spaß. Vor allem, weil es brummte und fiepte und piepte und knattertte etc. pp. Hier ein paar Bilder (leider etwas pixelig, meine Kamera funktioniert nämlich im Gegenteil zum Vectrex mit Pixeln, zudem verfügt sie nur über einige wenige Millionen davon, dafür sieht sie aber geil aus, so wie… you know!):

Hey folks!

I know that this took way too long, but the premier episode of the Yesterdaze Arcade  Podcast is up.

A rough piece, I hope you find it entertaining, none the less. Audio levels bounce up and down a bit, but it’s assembled. I am hoping that the next episode is a little more polished!

In this first episode I introduce myself and give a brief history of my introduction to video gaming, throw a spotlight on the Vectrex gaming console, Myles from Nowhere gives a look back to 1984 an a bit more!

Please give it a listen at the following links:

  (a little better experience, including embedded art)

RSS feed. Useful for many who would like to subscribe to the Podcast using something other than iTunes. Hey, it should even work on your Sony PSP’s RSS reader (if you have a Sony PSP)

(Right click and choose “save link as”) Just the plain ol’ mp3 of the Podcast for you to download and listen to on anything you want… within reason: I doubt “wanting to play it on a toaster will make that happen.

While writing this, I was listening to “Timing X” by DEVO

The premier episode of the Yesterdazearcade podcast is just about complete! I was going to post it last night but decided that I need to flesh it out and edit it a bit more. I want to add a review or opinion piece…
But until then, if you want to hear what I have so far, you can listen to the rough draft at http://drop.io/yesterdazepodcast/ or if you want the rss feed try this
It is mostly a rambling piece that is pretty boring, but It’s the first one. I am going to organize the following episodes into more cohesive segments. Heck, I might actually write some stuff instead of just making it up as I go along like I did in this episode. There is a really good humorous personal look back at being a young teen in the 1984 by my friend Myles. I hope you like it, as I did. I could relate to it all since I lived it too! Well, like I wrote already, it should be done very soon, but go ahead and listen to the rough cut and let me know how terrible it is!

While writing this, I was listening to “No Reason” by Pepper

I’ve touched on this in my NES posts but here is a further explanation of why and how the video game market crashed and burnt in 83/84.

CONFUSION

By the early 1980s there were simply too many options available to the consumer, with too little information and too little to distinguish the machines.  Here is a list of all of the machines that were on store shelves at the time:

Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Intellivision
Colecovision
Vectrex
Fairchild Channel F
Magnavox Odyssey2
Arcadia

NO LICENSING (QUALITY CONTROL)

None of these machines had patented parts or hardware which meant that anyone could develop and publish their own games for these systems.  The Atari 2600 was especially popular with bootleg publishers and received a large amount of pornographic games likes Custer’s Revenge, in which a naked and bebonered Custer makes his way across a field of raining arrows in order to rape a squaw tied to a cactus.  Don’t get too excited, it’s still the Atari 2600 we’re talking about.  Even the official, licensed games had quality control issues, as has been mentioned about a million times concerning the Atari 2600 releases of Pac-Man and E.T.

BRAND-NAME CONFUSION

This issue was expressed in two ways: hardware and software.  First, the 2600 and Intellivision systems were licensed out to companies like Radio Shack and Sears to rebrand and sell under their own names.  So if you went to Kay Bee (or whatever) you saw an Intellivision on the shelf but at Sears it was the Super Video Arcade and at Radio Shack it was the Tandyvision.  Just imagine how confused parents must have been when trying to shop for games for their kids’ systems.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that the Big 3 manufacturers/publishers of the time – Atari, Mattel and Coleco – published games FOR EACH OTHER’S SYSTEMS (without permission, of course).  So Atari published Pac-Man for Intellivision, Coleco published Donkey Kong for Atari and so on.  The Coleco-published games for Atari 2600 are noted for being particularly bad, possibly in an attempt to make the system look bad.

So, no one knew what system to buy.  No one knew what games their system supported.  And if you did buy a game there was a good chance it was an unlicensed piece of crap.

And now a screenshot of Custer’s Revenge:

kicknz

I forgot that I Had these pictures up on Picasa’s web site. It’s basically a tour through my basement from about a year and a half ago from the time of this posting.

You’ll see a lot of my systems that I have out, though there are a lot more in boxes under my stairs that I have to pull out some day. Also, the TV shown was sold a while ago to make way for a plasma, and a PS3 has been added to the mix, along with various other toys and old systems.

Click Here to go to the slideshow/album

While writing this, I was listening to “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You” by Alan Parsons Project

Those who know me, know that I collect video game systems – especially vintage video game systems. Well, this weekend I found the system that for me is the Holy Grail of video game systems: The Vectrex.

“What the heck is a Vectrex?” is the kind of response that I get from most people when I mention this system. For a more detailed look at the Vectrex, go to the Vectrex Wikipedia entry. I’ll give you a brief description. Vectrex was a home video game system released late 1982 by General Consumer Electric (GCE), in time for the Christmas buying season. The Vectrex stood apart from other game systems in many ways, none the least of which was the fact that it sported it’s own monitor!

Looking a little like an original (or classic) Apple Macintosh if it had been specifically designed for Darth Vader, this amazing machine had a black and white vector monitor housed in a monolith-like black vertical case. The Vectrex used a vector monitor, because it displayed vector graphics: line based graphics. If you ever seen the classic arcade games Asteroids, Battlezone, Star Wars or Tempest then you know what I mean. At the time, this was the best way to get sharp, detailed graphics on a screen. Vector graphics cannot properly be displayed on a standard television screen. Another benefit of the built in screen is not needing to hog the television: back in 1982, a lot more households only had one television! It also had a more sophisticated sound processor allowing it to reproduce better sound effects and music. Heck, the game Spike even had voice! This is something that was so very rare at the time (1982 was a long time ago), that most systems simply couldn’t do it. The Mattel Intellivision needed a separate expansion device to reproduce sound – Vectrex did it from the start.

So, to make a long story just a little less long, I got the Vectrex and three games for about $150 Canadian (at the moment about $149.80 U.S.). I probably could have paid less online somewhere, but shipping would have been stupidly high… So I am very happy!

Below is a little video of my Vectrex!