What could be more fun than a stroll down Nostalgia Avenue? Alone? At night? With a dead car battery and no cell phone? I don't know why you'd be carrying a dead car battery, but put it down and let's talk video games.
Our species is one of narrative. It's in our nature to weave stories; given any two variables and we'll certainly draw a connection between them regardless of how absurd. I mention this because I'm a child of the seventies and a teen of the eighties, and my personal development quite coincidentally mirrors that of video game history, and I think I've got some old war hero stories for you.
My family didn't have the Atari 2600, or as we called it back then "Atari". We invested in the Magnavox Odyssey2, known today as that thing that was on the market back then that wasn't the Intellivison. Much like many Nintendo systems that followed, the Odyssey suffered from the lack of third party support. As such, you could conceivably collect the whole set of 56 games on 46 cartridges if you didn't mind owning a lot of trash (kind of like baseball cards).
You may not have experienced the 8-bit era yourself, but you've no doubt seen images. That paints a pretty accurate picture of what we were playing; hardly jaw dropping even by our primitive standards. But we weren't concerned about jaw dropping graphics. We were captivated by the fact that we could control what we were seeing on our TV screens! I don't even think remote controls had been invented yet.
And the Odyssey2 had some gems, games with rudimentary layouts that you could inadvertently sacrifice hours of your life on. Fun fact: in my mid twenties I dusted off the old Magnavox and inadvertently sacrificed hours of my life on it. In other words, they got some real mileage out of the minimalistic tools at their disposal.
So I wanted to take some time out of my busy schedule to honor some of the unsung classics that never achieved 'giant' status but certainly belong in a museum.
Computer Golf!
If there are ever two words undeserving of an exclamation point when put together, it's these. There wasn't much that stood out about this game, but it gives me a chance to mention a few important specs. The Odyssey2 had two primary sources of input from the user; a pair of single button joysticks, and a qwerty keyboard for educational games (yeah, that tried to happen even the late seventies). Hence the 'computer' in the title.
The golfer was an all purpose character I refer to as Sprite Guy. If you've played the original Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, Cranky mentions having to deal with a two sprite walk back in his day. Sprite Guy is who he's referring to. Sprite Guy was perpetually frozen in profile with his (what passed for) arms held out like a zombie. The only thing that change was his legs that would move apart every alternate frame to create the illusion of running or standing as need be.
Sprite Guy was the William H. Macy of 8-bit games. He could appear in any context and play whatever role was needed. And in Computer Golf! he had the distinction of being a much shorter tempered golfer than his Atari counterpart (which Odyssey had blatantly ripped off). Bounce your ball off a 'tree' and Sprite Guy would strike the ground repeatedly with his club in an unsportsmanlike manner. It was a little thing, just a touch of humor from the faceless developers, but it was one of the earliest examples of a game character with personality that would become so important down the road.
Smithereens!
This one required two players. On each side of the screen is a medieval tower (if you kind of squint), and behind each tower is a Sprite Guy with a catapult about half his size. There is also a moat right in the middle of the screen. The object is to pull your joystick away from your target and release it with careful timing to hit your opponent's tower. Too soon and you land in the moat. Too late and you miss wildly, or with a bit of luck might hit your opponent's catapult or your opponent, putting both temporarily out of commission. You can, and will, accidentally destroy your own tower.
Now I want you to think about how simple of a setup that is. This- was our Super Smash Brothers. Carnage, bloodless violence, skill, and a bit of randomness; we were entertained for hours. But the fun didn't stop there, because we had the added layer of "The Voice", a hardware add-on that is probably owed some residuals from Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.
I saved up my own allowance money to throw down seventy bucks on this upgrade, but it was so worth it. "The Voice" provided artificial speech for several Odyssey2 games, and for Smithereens! it was a running commentary from an outside observer. Hit the moat and you were treated to a man mimicking a splashing sound or drowning "Gl-l-l-l". Launch your rock off screen? "Come on turkey, hit it!" Take a boulder to the face? "Ouch! Help!" The game was inherently funny, and "The Voice" acknowledged that the game knew it. Back then, that was called innovation.
K.C. Munchkin!/K.C.'s Krazy Chase!
I mentioned this little guy in my Pac-Man blog a while back. K.C. Munchkin was Pac-Man with a happy face and antennae. Atari had exclusive rights to port Pac-Man to home consoles (and dear lord did they screw it up) while Magnavox beat them to the market with an obvious knock-off that was superior in every way to what Atari gave us. In the end the courts unfairly ruled against K.C. I mean, sure, the intellectual property was appropriated, but it's no different Mr. Pibb taking the Dr. pepper concept or Disney reworking Kimba the White Lion.
The coolest element of K.C. was the level editor, which you could design using the keyboard. I was prone to building a single tunnel that linked all the munchies linearly while the munchers were given the rest of the negative space to wander aimlessly in. Power gaming at it's finest! It was only through glitches that I'm not still playing my masterpiece today.
Krazy Chase gave us the Draterpillar as the antagonist as kind of K.C.'s F.U. to Atari's Centipede (and no, I didn't plan out that anagram). The "Voice" guy is back, but he's less MST and more softball bleachers dad. "Run!" "Hurry!" "Watch out!" Um, thanks, I can figure the threats out myself. But even if the overall quality of the sequel had ebbed, the little guy himself was a trip. If Pac-Man was William Hartnell, K.C. Munchkin was Patrick Troughton. Just, you know, awesome. Hey, speaking of timelords...
Attack of the Timelord!
Right behind Galaga, this is the greatest Space Invaders styled game ever created. You only have a fleet of eight ships to shoot down in each level but those punks can move! They snake around the screen frantically, only getting dispersed if you happen to hit the lead ship.
But strangely enough, you're given better rewards for shooting down their incoming missiles than in taking out the armada. It starts easy enough with a cluster of three white darts that rain straight down. But level two introduces the red dot homing missile that doesn't quite line up with your laser blast. Round three gives the green x's that land and then roll about a fifth of the screens length in your direction; you don't want to be in the corners anymore. Although if you really want to feel like a daredevil, slide your ship under them at the last possible second to confuse their tracking, they'll roll a little in the wrong direction before adjusting. Last and certainly the most high score inducing are the purple diamonds that behave like homing missiles on a caffeine binge.
Now if obliterating half a box of Lucky Charms isn't interesting enough for you, there's the character of the Time Lord, who appears before each stage to mock you (or just gnash his teeth if you didn't buy "The Voice"). "Defend your world!" he challenges you. "Goodbye earthling!" he threatens (either to destroy you or leave Facebook). And my personal favorite that I know I'm not hearing correctly, "Mop-head human!" Who you calling mop-head, laser breath? But when you get to the fourth stage, an odd thing happens. Old laser breath starts respecting you. "You're a worthy opponent!" With the full understanding that at some point you're going to eventually lose (these games didn't have victory endings) that's kind of a feel good way to watch your home world perish.
Monkeyshines!
Sprite Guy is back! And he's...okay how do I explain this? You and your buddy are zookeepers, maybe? Some fairly versatile yellow monkeys are loose. And it's up to you pick them up and throw them. And then they get pissed, turn red, and try to beat you into paralysis. I have no idea, maybe this was a long lost gladiator game?
So, yeah, that sounds pretty stupid, but damn if it wasn't something special. The monkeys had minds of their own, four in all. They would dance, laugh at you, hang from bars over head, typical monkey stuff. You wouldn't actually pick them up so much a you would let them crawl on you and then start jumping in place to keep them on you. This game would never be made today.
So what we did was use the real time level editor to take overhead bars away from the monkeys while they were on them to eventually get all four to fall on the same hopping Sprite Guy. Then we'd build an escape route for the second guy and minimize the monkeys' access to where he was hiding. Then we'd let hopping Sprite Guy rack up as many points as possible by throwing all four monkeys downwards and holding the button. This caused four angry monkeys to bounce off the ground and back into Sprite Guy who would keep taking advantage of the glitch as-he-was-dying. The second Sprite Guy then spent a few suspenseful minutes trying to avoid four hostile monkeys who took this act personally for some reason. Then repeat with the survivor. It was the single most awesome suicide pact, and I'm certain the Sprite Guys shared a plot with only their high score on the headstone.
Take the Money and Run!
You know I've counted five Odyssey2 games in total that don't feel the need to emphasize their thrills with an exclamation point. Some of my personal favorites purely by title are Keyboard Creations! Pocket Billiards! Turtles! and one I've actually played, Pachinko! which really does live up to it's self-hype.
This is a two player game, but for a change Sprite Guy is your antagonist(s). You and your friend are playing a pair of characters affectionately named Lumbering Oaf Man, or Lom. You're in a randomly generated K.C. Munchkin-esc maze designed for Sprite Guy. Lom is two and a half times the size of Sprite Guy, which means you're going to be hitting your head.
Fortunately the joystick's button allows you to duck, which slows your movement some but gets you through tight spots. The object is to get money, a life's lesson for us all. When Sprite Guy is white, it means he's worth money. The amount he's worth runs down like a timer, and he starts off very fast but gradually slows to a crawl. When Sprite Guy is pink, the opposite happens. he represents income tax. Here he starts out slowly with the higher amounts but gets faster and greedier as the counter goes down.
That's pretty much the intended game play, but there were a few quirks that made this game really special. One was learning the algorithms. Tax collector Sprite Guys would often get stuck running in loops that could protect you. And glitches. If you pressed Lom against the wall in a lower corner you could make him vibrate, which had the inconsistent advantage of tax collector Sprite Guy not actually being able to reach into his pocket. This same glitch could be used in a few other creative ways, like hitting the wall and moving slightly up or down would cause Lom to slowly creep the wall in the opposite direction. Player one could actually slip into the money counter area where Sprite Guys couldn't go. I can think of few childhood experiences more frustrating than me straining my hand muscles trying to avoid my tax collector while my buddy casually wandered around in the safe zone singing "I'm in the money."
But the best element of all was the way Lom moved. He had at least a four frame walk (a luxury) where his arms swung freely. The guy just looked groovy as he roamed. And there was a sadistic delight to be had positioning him under a low bar and watching his head get batted over and over. Lom may have been the first video game doofus; just so inherently laid back you couldn't help but love him.
So that's my memory lane jog; old school stuff, but true gems. Although if you're familiar at all with the Odyssey2 library you may have noticed a curious omission from the games I've discussed. And yes, there is one more game that I believe is the actual diamond of the whole system. I was going to include it here, but this blog got a bit longer than I'd planned, and I feel it deserves a bit more attention than I can give it right now. So be on the lookout sometime in the future for a retrospective on dungeon crawls. Until then, always make time for play.
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