Retro classic gaming tales part 3 of ..er.. we'll see

Intellivision


I remember looking at the Intellivision over and over in the Littlewoods catalogue. In fact, the word 'Littlewoods' in Greek, means 'small payments, long time, big total'. The Intellivision had two fairly large controllers which were 8-way directional discs with buttons on the front. You got two plastic overlays with each game that you slid into the controllers for your basic selections. There were also two buttons on each side of the controller for more action packed goodness.

One I think I played a lot of was Auto Racing. Top down racer, with the tracks that were much larger than just one screen. Five different cars, from slow and turnable, to fast and drifting. In two player mode, it was simple, as you both played on the same screen, the first player to reach the leading edge of the screen won the point. So it was a good balance of, I'm in front but have less time to see the corners. The part about this I got into later was going off the track into the wilderness. Which was really just what ever the programmers had put in areas you were just never meant to look at. I get the feeling that you COULD go into these areas because they simply never even considered such a thing might happen. It was an exciting adventure that could last many minutes, navigating the bushes/trees/random squares of concrete. If you did this, you too would have discovered the drag strip. Once you knew the track layout, and put in a little time, it seemed that your car was always oriented for one turn ahead, and you could even perform 360's on the turns. But remember ONLY try this if you're a professional. Looking at it now, it does seem strange that the tracks were all set in what looked like residential areas, and not just raceways.

Also played a LOT of Soccer, because I think it's the one you got with the system. This was the first I remember of how you always could score a goal if you shot from the corner of the penalty box. A life skill which carried me through many soccer games for years to come.

Astro Smash was just a vertical asteroids of sorts. Left, right, shoot, avoid incoming death. Even had endless random teleporting. This resulted in anyone playing it the first time thought they were first to figure it being a way of being invincible, and got killed about 10 seconds into the teleport-button-spamming technique.

Space Hawk, now that was something. Adventuring through space coming across all sorts of weird aliens, and hopefully one day being able to tell my grand children, that I was one of the few that met, in person, the Space Hawk.

If you feel the need, you can get this as an Xbox Original, directly to your Xbox360. Gosh darn it, after all this, even though I have it on the PS2, I may just have to splurge the Microsoft Points myself!

Retro classic gaming tales part 2 of ..er.. we'll see

Game and Watch Donkey Kong


Yeah I was going to be clever and mention that you can now get this in the US via Club Nintendo, for the DS. It includes three original 'Game and Watch' titles, of which, Donkey Kong was the one I had as a kid.

Register your DS or Wii games to get gold coins, then you can redeem them for weird Nintendo related shwag. The games come with a printed serial number. Remember to stop and look at all those health warning flyers that you normally throw straight away, and other useless little pieces you get, as the codes are on the back of one of them (somewhere).

Complete a survey, get coins. Do enough surveys, cash in your coins, get stuff.

I don't have enough coins for this particular trip down memory lane... yet.

Retro classic gaming tales part 1 of ..er.. we'll see

At the end of 2008 I heard more classic gaming stories, than in previous years.

So here's my journey...

The earliest game I can remember is a yellow LED battery powered game, Galaxy Invader 1000 that was something like Galaxians... only er... not quite. Played it to death, and I remember it being VERY hard!



I originally put the entire gaming history of Krysss.com towers in one post. However it became a long list of YouTube videos which while a lot of people would identify with, wouldn't really be that interesting. So I need to go away and try to remember some vaguely interesting stories to put around these games.

As for this little plastic game, I cannot remember much about it, but I am shocked I could track it down online.

Little Gaming Consoles

How about a PS3 for $2.99, or a Wii, or an Xbox360, maybe even a PS2? Now you can thanks to the jolly chaps at Gamestop.com.

They are supposed to be gift card boxes. You can put gift cards inside, and they are transported in a safe black felt enclosure, surrounded by globs of geeky gaming nerdiness.


You can see how tiny they are with the real PSP at the back.


Sorry to break the magic, but they are just boxes to put gift cards in.


The rear even shows details like network, and power sockets.


These dudes really did the business with the PS2, and included the little logos on the edge. And yes, I forgot to clean the crud from the edges.


They cost just $2.99 a piece, made of thin metal, and really have a lot more detail that you are seeing here. Any real gamer would love to get one of these, and you could confirm their gamingness by learning that perhaps in six months time they still didn't know there was anything inside them, but they would be in pristine condition still.

Nintendo Free Stuff

While reading through the stuff at mynintendo.com I noticed that in a similar way that most PC games require a serial code to install the game, Nintendo have serial numbers included with your games (and consoles) to register them. No big deal until I saw that just by registering you can extend your Wii warranty by 90 days.

Also by registering the DS Zelda - Phantom Hourglass game, they send you a free feather stylus*. So from now on I will be taking note of all that paper that usually is covered in FCC regulations, and epilepsy warnings, to see if there is a registration code in there somewhere. It just turns up in the mail, but sadly doesn't make the treasure discovery sound just like the game, when you open the package**.

As far as I know, it's only Nintendo games that come with the codes in the box. So for now, registering the DS games, and PSP system has produced booty. The PSP one was a demo UMD disk of Killzone which arrived in the mail.


*Ok I know, it's not complicated but it IS very Zelda.

** But you never know, yours just might.

Wii

Ever since the Wii was supposed to be in the stores here in America, I have been asking at my local Best Buy if they have any in stock. It finally paid off during my last visit, when one of the staff there who remembered I kept asking, remarked that they currently had three in stock. Of course I thought they were joking, because this was the VERY FIRST time I had NOT asked about it. But sure enough, there were three on the shelf. As negotiation* over accessories began, the others were snapped up by passing families.

Buying extra controllers and chargers (and of course a couple of games) brought the price up from the standard $250, to unmentionable levels. You do get one set of controllers with the console, but right now $60 gets you another set of controllers. Being the console that supposedly brings non-gamers into gaming, only having one set in the box, means you have to add that $60 to the $250 before you even start to think of all those 'must have' accessories for it. Ker-ching!

I plonked down the bucks for a 4 Wiimote recharge station, that comes with 4 rechargeable battery packs. So you don't have to keep buying two AA batteries for each one, or even worse, buying expensive rechargeables and charger**. If you do buy this one (which the Best Buy dude tells me I need because the Wiimotes eat through batteries at fearsome rates) you can't leave the included rubber jackets on because they obscure the charging contacts on the back. Instead of a battery pack, you get 4 replacement battery doors, with the rechargeable packs molded into them. So when you want to charge your Wiimote, you just put it in the charging base. When seated they are quite wobbly, but the normally blue light on each slot turns red until the charge is complete. It is totally worth it for the overall blue neon lit round base.***

Next morning the game disk slot was pulsing and flashing blue. I suspected it to be speaking to the recharging base about something to do with nanobotic** legs. This wasn't true. I had connected the Wii to my wireless network so it could get updates etc, and it had been gathering messages from the Nintendo mother ship. This blue flashing was to tell me there were unread messages, and there were a LOT. Nothing of note, but all to do with the strange Wii 'channels' I had looked at. One was a voting channel, where they asked you simple questions like "If you won the lottery would you still work?" or "Do you turn your PC off at night?". You could answer them, and then predict what you considered to be the most popular answer. Remember kids, popular rarely equals right. Not to give too much away, but more people said they WOULD continue to work if they won the lottery! So the blue flashing was letting me know there were more questions to answer, and poll results from others were in. One handy feature for anyone who needs to make sure younger household players are not spending too much time with the Wii, is the daily calendar of what, who, and how long the different members of the household have been playing.

One REALLY smart move, was to charge for the internet browser. The Wii has no user log in as such. You can create a personal character, called a Mii, which you can model on yourself, and it actually appears in the games you play. So when you start a game you say, I want to use my Mii. The score and records for that Mii change accordingly. So if your kid plays a lot one day, it shows up in the daily messages. Also the mere fact of charing 500 points**** for the web browser, means this is one less piece of network connected equipment you have to worry about your children using (so much). There are parental controls but to use them, you have to point at the code on screen***** and that's going to last about three seconds when the kid finally persuades you to let them get online for something.

Most of the Wii games were great fun, just flinging your arms about in some vaguely realistic manner depending on what activity you are doing (cow riding still to be confirmed), is all great fun. So far nothing broken although not for lack of trying on a nearby table top, chair, and a stunt breakaway lamp. Shall I save grandma's ashes, or get that backhand in properly?

If you can find one, it's a must buy. If you can't find one, pretend.





All the Wii hardware so far reminds me of medical supplies from the future.
*Not actually any negotiation. Just the heart stopping realization of the cash total at the checkout, which you feebly try to cover up. Of course, everyone ELSE in line knows exactly how much their pile o' booty is going to come to, and will scoff at your inability to add up. Even though they too are locked in the Sauron like gaze of consumerism.

**Which you instantly lose all the batteries after leaving them unattended for more than 2 hours. Rechargeable batteries share the same hyperspace as balls of string, retractable measuring tapes, rolls of sticky tape, and little headphones. I think they make them from special nanobotic plastics, which grow little legs in the dark, and just go home.

***If you are 8.

****1 point, 1 cent. Did you hear that Microsoft? PS3 owners are even better off because they just get the price marked on screen. Microsoft Points (with which to purchase Xbox content) have a algorithm known only to people long dead, as to how many points is one dollar.

*****Something Microsoft DID do right, by making the pass code, be a sequence of buttons you press on the Xbox360 controller. With the Wii you have to enter on your 8 feet wide TV screen, with exactly those people you don't want to know it, er... knowing it.

Xbox360 red ring of death

Back in August I succumbed to the Red Ring of Death on the Xbox360. Three red lights showing around the power button. The ones that usually turn green, indicating which controllers are active. So I got online, filled in a form, received a box, put the Xbox360 in it (after removing the hard drive), waited, got it back again.

They send you a small box. That box contains a plastic bag, two pieces of foam, a strip of sticking tape, and a UPS label. You remove the hard drive from your Xbox360 just by pressing the button and lifting it off, put the unit in the bag, then in the foam padding shapes, seal the box with the tape, slap the UPS label on the outside (over the one that got it shipped to you), and then just leave it at any UPS place. You can monitor it online, where I could follow every step, from them processing my request, to letting me know the unit had been shipped back to me.

They swapped mine out for a new one it seems. I assume it's new because one of the little mysterious receiver windows on the front of the unit still had that clear plastic you are supposed to peel off if you are not anal about scratching things. And the fact they said it was a different unit. I put the hard drive back on, and powered up. All groovy, although since I sent it off, I purchased an Xbox360 Elite, so I had migrated my live account to that one a while back. So when I tried to access that account on this unit, it said the account was invalid. I don't think I will bother going back to that unit anyway.

They put a months free Xbox Live service in the form of a scratch off card, in the box. Also included was a notice telling me how to reconnect the wireless controllers by holding the connect buttons. I always wondered how to do that anyway. Sometimes I press the button in the center of the controller to power the unit up, but it just continues to flash and not do anything else. So if you hold the connect button on the unit, and then press the one on the controller they can see eachother again.

So for me, the whole process from reporting the fault, to getting a new unit back in the mail was approx six weeks. I say approx because I was on vacation when it came back. But now I DO know that you can get an Xbox360 through the x-ray machines at the airport, and they survive. No I didn't put it in a suitcase, I had it in a bag with a ton of wires and crap which I was sure they were going to make me pull out and account for every single strand. They didn't, and it still worked, smiley.

Halo 3

I managed to snag a copy of Halo 3 a short while ago during a vacation. It seems the reviewers are right for the most part (at least the ones I've read anyway) that the game is ok, but nothing significant over the others. The graphics look great on the Xbox360 but it's just not as involving as Half Life 2 for instance. Gears of War, and Half Life 2, both had easy get-in-able plots, which for the most part let you get on with enjoying the action.

Halo 3 on the other hand had a lot of chatter between levels, but were they talking about a name of a star ship, a place, a race, or a process, and were they talking about the bad guys or the good guys? It didn't detract from the action but you sometimes found yourself wondering why you were storming a tower, or shooting something.

I haven't done much multi-player up to now but with the new weapons it should be fun. As long as I can keep it together during the ritual burning of my useless carcass by hordes of unsupervised kids online, with nothing in their lives but to roast anything that moves on Xbox Live. I was given quite a show by someone who had obviously mastered multi player, and how to show past battles by replaying them. You don't see a recording of the match, but a replay of the data. This means you can see it from any angle, or player viewpoint. All this lays to rest any outrageous claims of manliness by anyone, as you can now ask them to prove it instantly.

All in all, its a nice game, not enough WOW moments, and certainly not something that should have taken this long to get out. Plenty of value in the multi player though, now if I can only find someone who is worse than me? If you either are not that bothered by these types of games, or are a little strapped for cash right now, I have the feeling that there will be a few more traded in Halo 3's laying in game stores than you might imagine, soon enough.