Before I even start, I’ll say it’s okay if you don’t agree with this post- that’s what the comments section is for. If people have enough opinions, I might even look into the titles for a follow up post. The following are my opinions on the best, worst, and other awards I deemed appropriate for this 2008 Atari 2600 retrospective!! *cheers, applause* I could spend much more time coming up with other categories and remembering other titles, but here is a start on some of the good, the bad, and the obnoxious. If there are some obvious omissions, like Adventure, it doesn’t mean they weren’t considered. It means I’m leaving fodder for future posts -and- Adventure was already given air time last post.

• Best in Ground Based Cannon
• Best in Horror
• Best in Racing
• Best in Multiplayer
• Best in Simple Fun
• Best Ported From the Arcade
• Most Mindless Fun
• Best Innovation & Atmosphere
• Most Obnoxious Sounds
• Worst Gameplay
• Biggest Bomb

Best in Ground Based Cannon

Winner: Space Cavern

I know what you’re thinking. How do I dare pick something other than Space Invaders? Well, I dare because the first doesn’t always mean the best. Space Cavern sports both baddies from the sky who shoot at you and dudes from the side who try to flank you as your attention is turned to the sky. You also have nothing to hide under. I remember this being my dad’s favorite game growing up, and last time he saw my Atari 2600 out, sure enough he asked if I still had it.

Best in Horror

Winner: Haunted House

I’m not going to say that Haunted House is scary, but I will say that it has helped pave the way in psychological thriller/horror games that came after. Like in classics such as Clocktower for the SNES, you are a normal (though pixelated) person just trying to escape the extraordinary with your life in tact. This is also, like Clocktower, a game that changes the placement of things every time you play! You move through dark rooms with only a limited glow about your person to avoid all sorts of creepy baddies. Hopefully you can find the key to open all the locked doors. While the graphics may make you laugh, the soundtrack has some creepy sound effects.

Best in Racing

Winner: Enduro

I know many of you might think Pole Position was as good as it got, but Enduro was the top of the line. The controls are tight and the graphics believable. The thing that really puts this game above the others is the day, night, and weather changes that made Enduro exciting, and dare I say, a bit realistic even. At night you can only see headlights clearly and in the snow the handling of your car changes. The sound helps with the excitement and nothing feels better than passing the other cars. As a matter of fact, that is the goal- not to beat the timer, but to pass a certain number of cars each ‘day’.

Best in Multiplayer

Winner: Warlords

If you were to come over my house right now with a friend or two and say you wanted to play a video game, I just might plop this on. Yes, it is THAT good. You use paddles and play with up to four people (you can have others be controlled by the A1 which is surprisingly good). The object is to simply smack each other’s ‘base’ with a ‘ball’. You can intercept the ‘ball’ with your paddle controlled ‘person’ and either catch and throw it or smack it away. You must first chip away at the ’shield’ around the base to get the chance at winning. The fun of this game reminds me of Bomber Man a bit in it’s style and combination between luck ans strategy.

Best in Simple Fun

Winner: KABOOM!

If you know me in real life, you might know that I have occasion to sport a KABOOM! t-shirt. And why not? This game is just as much fun you’re going to find on an Atari 2600. The premise is uber simple: a robber is dropping bombs and you have to catch them as the fall to the bottom of the screen in- you guessed it- tubs of water. It’s sort of the opposite of your ground based cannon- a ground based catcher. There is plenty of animation and pretty colors. Unlike most Atari 2600 games, the graphics are even surprisingly easy to comprehend and appropriate. The game starts off easy, but soon your rocking your spinny paddle.

Best Ported from the Arcade

Winner: Dig Dug

How many Atari 2600 games were simply arcade games reprogrammed for the home? As PacMan shows us, this didn’t always lead to good things as often they became shoddy shadows of their former selves. Though the graphics took a hit when coming over, Dig Dug remains the same addictive game you remember spending your quarters on. The controls and gameplay remain intact as you tunnel your way through dirt and pump your enemies full of air (”blow them away!” Har!). The only thing you might notice is some lag time when too many enemies are on the screen. Other than that, this game remains intact and very enjoyable.

Most Mindless Fun

Winner: Barnstorming

Sure, there’s a point to this game, but who cares! You get to fly an indestructible plane around to your heart’s content crashing into barns and poor hapless ducks(?) that emit a funny noise and shoot forward when hit. You can even pile up a bunch of ducks in front of you for maximum hitting and squaking! Fan-tastic!

Best Innovation & Atmosphere

Winner: Mountain King

This was the one Atari 2600 game that actually successfully drew me in. The setting a creepy mountain landscape where you begin by collecting piles of dots (coins?) that make a noise when you pick them up. You are armed with a flashlight and ability to jump and climb ladders. The jumping is challenging, but unique as you point diagonally up, and then down when you want to angle back downward. Once you collect enough piles, they stop making noises and you hear a creepy tune. The tune actually gets louder as you get closer, and quieter as you get further away, to the bouncing, invisible, flicker-dot. You navigate up, down, and side to side (which loops) to try to get close enough to see the flicker out of the corner of your eye. The music gets loud ominous and you approach closer and flash your flashlight on it as it bounces side to side to get away. You pick it up. Now you must go to the throne which is near the bottom middle and get the crown. The skull will let you past now that you have the flicker-dot. Once the crown is on your head, the tune Mountain King begins and the bats start a-coming. You are on a time limit to get to the top of the mountain and those bats can take your crown away. There are also other things you can find with your flashlight and if you find yourself at the bottom of the screen, a different type of enemy may mow you down. I don’t think any other Atari 2600 game ever got my blood going like this one, or was as fun to watch. There is a lot of atmosphere and urgency that will bring you back again and again.

Most Obnoxious Sounds

Winner: Yar’s Revenge

This is the only game I remember jumping up to turn down the volume on before one of my parents got pissed. That’s how bad that alarm-like noises are. Overall, I know a lot of people love this game, but I never cared for it anyways, and the noises further prevented my attempts at trying to like and bond with this game.

Worst Gameplay

Winner: Raiders of the Lost Ark

I know there might be a few people out there who enjoyed this atrocity. To do so, one must have turned down the music, liked the inability to move randomly, had a second set of hands to control their inventory on the second controller, and been able to decipher the more horrible than normal graphics and figure out what the heck to do! Or… they just called a 900 number or peeked at the back of the manual. If you need to cheat just to figure out what is going on, I don’t think it’s a worthwhile play. While there might be some other more forgettable games out there with worse gameplay, this one was very widespread and disappointed a lot of people.

Biggest Bomb

Winner: ET

It seems like no one can talk about Atari 2600 without mentioning the landfill full of ET cartridges. It’s still the easiest game to find and purchase in its original form. Why? Just play for a few minutes and you’ll see. Unless you read the manual, nothing makes sense, and even if you do, the game is hard for the wrong reasons and has not much to do with ET. If you like falling down a pit a lot and having a hard time getting out, you might like this game. I have to point out the irony of all the ET games that ended up in a cemented landfill and the fact that ET falls down a pit so often in this game.

So I hope you enjoyed my memories of Atari 2600 in it’s glory. I did. I have a sudden urge to organize a Warlords game. Why not, I’ve done it for Gauntlet II and Dr. Mario after all. Feel free to post your own feelings on your favorites and least favorites. With the technology of emulation, you can try these titles, but I’m afraid the lack of paddle & joystick can be sad.

This post is brought to you by Adventure for the Atari 2600. Don’t get eaten by the… seahorse? Ostrich? I think the main character would be the best Con outfit ever. The Adventure square, the original fantasy game hero…

There have been a lot of whispers as of late about there finally being a new edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and how people feel about what has been announced (or just rumored). There are plenty of things that are making me gape and cringe, one of them being the attempt of Wizards of the Coast to try and make AD&D a pen, paper, dice, and laptop game.

It sounds cool to have an online community to access resources and have discussions. It seems WoC is planning for this to be a place to either print out all of your materials or just plain play. Your mouse is your dry erase marker and avatars are your miniatures.

How do we feel about this? There is no need to look at each other or interact… just look online!

This is what I see happening…

“You encounter a roving band of rogues. Wait a minute while a print it out. Or better yet, log in and we can all see the map over the internet!”

“Cool. It’s like a LAN party. Can we play Doom?”

“If we’re just going to play on the internet, why did we drive to your house?”

“For the cheetos and mountain dew, duh!”

“I have those at my house. Why did I drive if I didn’t need to? I could be playing naked. I want to cast magic missile… naked!”

“Dude, that’s creepy. But I see your point. I could be home, playing World of Warcraft and this game at the same time.”

“Why don’t we just all play World of Warcraft instead?”

“Good idea.”

“Naked?”

“Uh, no. Not a good idea. But, what you do in your own house is your business.”

Scary stuff, huh? It sounds like a lot of the things WoC is removing, changing, or adding are an attempt to lure the MMORPG crowd into the AD&D fold.

Any thoughts on this?

This post is brought to you by Blaster Master for the NES. When your pet frog jumps down a hole, you follow like Alice in Wonderland. The only difference, besides the frog, is that Alice didn’t get a tank at the bottom of the hole. :)

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, or know me personally, you know that I am single and pretty stubborn about staying that way in recent times. Regardless, this doesn’t make me completely removed or foreign to the dramatics that forever follow on the heels of lovers, loves, more than friends, and even WTFs.

When that thing clenches your heart and you are pulled into what seems like an endlessly complicated swirl of events, you have to gain perspective. The only way to do that is spread your broken hearted cheer, because the subject (you) is always too close to the situation.


People who may be pretty bad at their own interpersonal relationships have surprising perspective when you go to them with the timeless situations that have transcended time and culture. I propose that the phrase ‘love is blind’ doesn’t just mean you don’t pick who you fall for, it also means that it blinds you to what is actually happening around you. You just don’t know what you can do to avoid as much heart ache and embarrassment as possible.

To anyone who is in this situation currently and hasn’t found that poor friend’s ear to snag I offer the following bits of perspective in no particular order…

1. You can’t logically argue your way into continuing a relationship with someone. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t tried. Even if you can stave off the inevitable for a bit longer, let’s consider that it took a lot for your other half to come to you with a proposal of breaking things off. I’ve known people to continue relationships they want out of for weeks, months, even years without letting the other half know about it. They may or may not have thought about it with your perspective, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever bond that kept you together can’t be repaired with Elmer’s glue. If they’ve considered it enough to say “We need to have a talk.” then it’s not worth trying to argue. They’ve found enough reasons, even if they won’t share those reasons, and even if they’re stupid. The issue is not yours and the battle is not yours to fight. Short of mind control, you can’t change how a person feels. You can’t argue a person out of the way they feel. If they are going to change their mind and come back, they have to do it on their own.

2. Only good things is a fairy tale. It’s not always this bad is a sign to get out. We’re talking about the L word, so I’m going to have to use some cliches. It has to rain sometimes, and when it rains, it pours. Every person has their rough spots. Every pairing doubly so. A better litmus test is how you deal with those moments when they come, and yes, how often they come. People resist change, including cutting off something that is no longer mostly a good thing. If you’re defending to your friends, “She/He/It’s not always this bad.” then it’s a sure sign you’re who I’m talking about. On the flip side, you can’t run at the first sign of bad weather. Rough spots can bring people closer as well, like all of this rain we’ve had this week has made things begin to bloom. (Okay, now I’m making myself gag.)

3. It’s never you. If you’re being broke up with, of course it isn’t you. The other person has identified reasons, be they irreparable problems with the relationship, or problems with their own feelings and position. At a stretch, we could say, it’s both of you. But really, it’s the one breaking up that can’t see you together beyond the present. The one breaking up is done trying. I’m not saying they are the bad guy necessarily, but I am saying that you can’t go down the path of “I should have”s. One more kiss or one less disagreement isn’t going to change a pattern, or like I said above, someone else’s feelings.

4. Chances are, they don’t know themselves. Of course we’re going to ask why. Of course you will be given reasons. But, really, if the reasons behind why we fall for people is so cryptic, organic, strange, and unexpected, would you expect no less from the loss of these feelings and the break up?

5. Life goes on. The worst, least helpful, most cruel cliche I’ve saved for last. As much pain as you get yourself into, it will fade from the forefront of your mind over time. You will find someone else better than the last, especially when your head clears and you realize they weren’t so amazing and you weren’t quite right for eachother anyways. More importantly, you can exist and thrive without that other person in your life and you will. What made you attractive to that person in the first place is how awesome and vibrant you are on your own.

None of these things I’m saying will get you through that darkness following a bad ending. That is really something you need to push through on your own, but it doesn’t help to be surrounded by sympathetic ears and distracting personalities.

So this dramatic scene passes, and the nightmare ends, and the world keeps spinning into a new day bringing with it another slew of possibilities.

This post is brought to you by AD&D: Pools of Radiance for the NES, or should I say Famicom? This screen shot is inviting heroes to step up in New Phlan. Really, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I recently started role playing again, and as much as it feels like sitting in that comfy divit in an old chair, I think maybe I picked the wrong chair.

A game master (aka GM or DM: one who runs the game) puts forth a framework in which to operate our imaginations. By playing in their game, we are accepting to follow that framework alongside the imaginings of the fellow players. The GM provides the world and our tasks, and we provide the heroes.

I realized that is my problem with this game I’ve recently joined. We didn’t provide the heroes. We had to fill in most of the lines on the character sheet- like our starting equipment, but we didn’t get to pick the name, sex, race (eg: elf), class (eg: wizard), or background (recent & far past) of our characters. Since we are a sum of our experiences and genetics, that sort of sums up the whole personality of the character we’re playing. We didn’t come up with our role to play while role playing.

At first, I saw it as a challenge. Play a character you would have never come up with on your own. I thought it would be kind of closer to acting in a play. I thought it could be fun.

And it is a challenge, so much so that not only do I feel like I don’t relate to my character in any way, I feel like I don’t know what my own character would do in most given situations. If given time to think I might come up with a list of things he might do with reasonings, but I don’t exactly have that luxury while playing in real time. It’s getting frustrating.

I love characters. If you would ask me why I write fiction or read it… why I play the video games I do or like the movies and shows I watch, it’s the characters. I admire the way they are developed through the story, their interactions through dialogs and gestures, and seeing how they grow and change. In a good story, you get to know the characters as if they’re real people and feel interested and invested enough in them to care what happens to them.

Is it such a stretch to think that the reason I love role playing is coming up with and playing a character? I love being the GM to make up and play many roles. Players only get to be one, single hero. I’m feeling like I’m fitting into my role like it’s a few sizes off, and it’s no wonder. I didn’t come up with or chose it. The one bit of creation that a player is allowed is their character, and I was denied that chance.

And so, it’s no wonder I’m thinking of leaving the group. It makes me sad because the players are top-notch. I really like playing with them a lot.

And the GMing isn’t so bad either, it’s just that he inadvertently took away my favorite part of role playing.

A lesson learned, I guess, but it’s a lesson I already learned once before.

In Milford, MA there used to be a gaming store called The Gamers’ Guild. I was in a game once where I was only allowed to play if I took on an existing NPC (non player character). There were two I was able to chose from. I selected the one I thought would be more fun based on her class.

Then, I tried to develop her as a character through playing her. I was told that my character wouldn’t do this or say that. I found out my character had a history and personality and relationships that I wasn’t aware of. Every time I tried to speak or act, I found myself defending my actions to one player in particular. In short, I found out that this wasn’t my character.

Yet again, they were a group of pretty awesome players, but it wasn’t allowed to role play, I was just a warm body rolling for a NPC of someone else’s imagination.

So, I feel like I don’t want to mess up the game by quitting. I also don’t want to stop playing with these neat people, but I’m fast losing interest in trying to play this character. For all of you thinking I should just kill him off, the in game situation makes even that very difficult.

Should next week be my last game? I can overcome any number of other game flaws if I enjoy playing my character, but without that, I’m not sure anything else is enough.

I think it may be time to take up the mantle of GM once again.

This post is brought to you by Bubble Bobble for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). When programmers run out of ideas (and inside jokes) for levels, they can always use that itself for inspiration.

Remember when growing up you were told that there were no dumb questions?

At some point we stop asking. We stop because to admit that you don’t already know makes you look ignorant and stupid. Even if we don’t care what other people think, we stop because the people we ask treat us like we’re dumb.

I propose again, as we learned when we were still in Kindergarten, there are no dumb questions. If you are really trying to learn, you have to find out somehow. We can read and read and read (Wikipedia), but books and online articles are incapable of human thinking. We sometimes need someone to give us a point of view, rearrange our thinking, and make things make sense. Maybe we just need to hear that we are on the right track. Or perhaps we need to hear that we’re not even asking the right questions. And yes, *everyone* misses the obvious at some point in their life. That includes you.

I have always thought, since I thought to wonder about it, that life is a big learning experience. Why else would we be born knowing nothing but basic instinct with an infinite capability to learn? Why if that was not what we were meant to do?

I wonder if when you ask someone and they give you a snarky response, it’s due to their own issues with their own quest for knowledge. “Well, no one would tell me, so why should I hep you?”. People often take their own insecurities out on others. So, if they have answers and don’t want to share, it’s because no one would help them. Maybe they like having the knowledge and power and it feels better to keep it to themselves. If they don’t have answers, they don’t want to admit it and show their own short comings. So they will answer with a huff, and a puff, and a ‘I don’t know, but hell if I’m going to tell you that!”

So, we’re conditioned to not ask. In being conditioned not to ask, we don’t find answers. Not asking these dumb questions breeds ignorance.

If someone is brave enough to ask me, I hope that I am always brave enough to answer honestly and openly. I hope I will always admit when I don’t know and give information even when I don’t feel like giving up my secrets or taking the time to explain. I’ve always tried to be there and do this for my younger siblings. As the world is fast teaching them about dumb questions, I counter that with an offer: “You can always ask me.”

This post’s screen shot is from the NES game Armed Dragon Fantasy Villgust. This guy is reading the first chapter of Adventuring for Dummies.

What you call yourself? What do you say when someone asks what you do for a living?

Many people say: a student. A student of what? That sends many into a flurry. If you’re a student of everything, aren’t we all? And aren’t you forever a student of your field(s)? You don’t wear a cap and gown and quit learning…

Many people cite what they do to make money. However, what you currently do for money may have nothing to do with it. Working at Dunkin Donuts is a means to an end, not a living. Have the confidence to associate yourself with your longterm goals and dreams. Little sister would say she’s a musician. And she is. She was when she worked at KFC and she still is serving donuts and coffee. Her ability at the oboe doesn’t diminish as she uses the cash register.

Money has nothing to do with it. Was Ray Charles not a musician until he got his first paid gig, or signed his first record deal?

It has everything to do with passion.

What would you still be doing even if no one were paying you to do it? There may lie your answer.