It’s been a while since my last recap of NextGen, mainly because these take a long time to transcribe. Also because they’re kind of long. Still, it’s time to return to this chunk of video game history, and with it take a look at some of the platforms that fell by the wayside.
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This issue has the results of the 7th annual Nintendo Power Awards.
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This week we have a bunch of movie licensed games and the launch of a major puzzle franchise that continues to this day.
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We return to our regular episodes with two streetball basketball games – one with NBA stars, one with Looney Tunes characters. If there was only some way to get them to meet…
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Moving right along with NextGen Magazine #3 for March of 1995.
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The Play It Loud era continues with a pair of Kirby titles.
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We return to our regular issues of Nintendo Power with the first issue of the Play It Loud era.
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I’m continuing with NextGen Magazine with the NextGen #2. With the second issue hitting in February of 1995, it makes keeping track of what year I’m on a lot easier.
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It has been a long time since I did Where I Read for a video game magazine, as much of the work I had been putting into my read through of Nintendo Power has been going into the Nintendo Power Retrospectives, and the second magazine I’d been covering – Electronic Gaming Monthly – has made something of a return. However, with my coverage of Nintendo Power for the show having reached 1995, I feel like I’ve lost some perspective on where the game industry was at this point, so I’ve decided to launch a read-through of another magazine, that is contemporaneous for where we are in gaming in the N.P.R.
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We wrap up the Best of the Rest with some movie licensed games and fighting games. (more…)
This time we’re covering issue #52 of Nintendo Power for September of 1993! (more…)
This time we’re covering The Best of the Rest for Nintendo Power’s 5th year. (more…)
This time we’re covering issue # 48 of Nintendo Power for May of 1993 (more…)
This time we’re covering issue # 47 of Nintendo Power for April of 1993 (more…)
This time we’re covering issue #46 of Nintendo Power for March of 1993. (more…)
This time we’re covering Issue #39 for August of 1992, featuring another major title for the SNES.
We return to Nintendo Power proper with Issue #37 for June of 1992.
This week I’m taking a look at Nintendo Fun Club News issue 2, with thoughts on Legend of Zelda, Pro Wrestling, Slalom and Volleyball.
I’m taking a break from Analog Computing this week to instead take a look at the first issue of Computer Gaming World, for November-December of 1981.
We start off with an ad from SSI, hyping their port of their Civil War Strategy game “Battle of Shiloh” and the World War II game “Battle of the Bulge: Tigers in the Snow.” It’s kind of interesting. Nowadays we’re used to strategy games which will take either larger battles or even campaigns and allow the player to control them from the strategic level all the way down to the tactical level, like with the Total War games. Whereas here, on the other hand, you’re either on the strategic level, or the tactical level. If you’re on the tactical level you’re controlling a fairly generic fight or only one battle, and if you’re on the strategic level you’re either controlling a massive battle (like the Battle of the Bulge), or you’re controlling an entire theater of operations. (more…)
It’s been almost a month since my last Where I Read, so to make up for it here’s my Where I Read for Nintendo Power issue #52 for September of 1993. This issue’s cover game is Super Mario All Stars, with Mario jumping and hitting a block. However, the inside includes guides for Final Fight 2, Rock & Roll Racing, and Enix’s RPG The 7th Saga. Let’s read on, shall we? (more…)
We have another recap of an issue in Nintendo Power, just in time for a significant, coinciding event in the modern video game industry.
The issue is Nintendo Power #51, for August of 1993. Our cover game for this issue is Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduces the ability to have same character matches in the game, as well as the ability to play as the bosses, coinciding nicely with the release of Capcom’s latest fighting game to include Street Fighter characters – Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
In the letters column for this issue we have a letter from a 47 year-old chuck driver, looking for assistance with Blaster Master, and who has also been having problems with Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy. According to the writer, he got so frustrated with the game, that he nearly ran over his Game Boy with his big-rig until another driver stopped him (I presume this was at a truck stop). The writer discovered that the other driver had been stuck in the same spot in the game he was, and he got some instructions about how to get past that part of the game. I have to admit that I never thought of big-rig drivers as hardcore portable gamers before, but now that I’ve been exposed to the concept, I’m not too surprised. I wonder if the portable game systems are still popular with long-haul truckers today, and if so, I wonder what systems are popular? (more…)
I’m continuing on with my walk of Analog Computing Magazine with issue #3 for May/June 1981. Our cover story is programming languages, and we have an ad at the beginning of this issue for Mosaic Electronics spring catalog, and their 32K RAM expansion board. Cygnus Micro systems is also advertising their new disk loader, word processor, and electronic Ledger. Also, COMPUTE! Magazine has a couple new books coming out.
First up, we learn that our editors are full-time college students, and because of their course schedule, they’re going to have to ease back on their publication schedule, as not only are they the editors of the magazine, but they’re also the entirety of the writing staff. I’d cut them some slack, except they have to be all snide and snarky and talk about how other editors don’t know all the work it takes to make a magazine, something which, bare minimum Steve Harris and Dan Hsu would take issue two.
They also have a call to fight against computer piracy, as it discourages publishers from supporting the Atari 8-bit platforms over the inferior (their words) Apple and Texas Instruments systems. We also get a call for more article submissions – pity your poor, poor writer-editors.
We get a massive letter complementing them on their Composer articles, as well as a request for more advanced programming articles. There’s also a request for contact and ordering information for a few hardware manufacturers. Another reader wants to know about this “Compuserve” thingie. There’s a request for a review of a recently released Apple emulator, and information on wargames for Atari Computers. Well, if you’re a little patient on that last front, SSI will have some stuff that should scratch that itch. Finally, the director of Kurta Corporation has a correction for their review of their tablet from last issue. Apparently the $100 does more then buy you some demo software… it will also buy you the power cables for the tablet, as well as interface cables to hook it up to your computer… so you can actually use the tablet. Congratulations, you just unsold me.
Dow Jones has some investment management software. Microsoft has announced their upcoming release of Atari BASIC at Summer CES. Plus there’s a new assembler app coming out. Floppy drive production by Atari has also been stopped briefly to incorporate some new changes to cover reading information off of disks that were written to by drives of different speeds. It probably seems odd to you that something like this would require a significant change to drive designs, but remember that around this time consumer floppy drives were fairly new.
Temple of Apshai, the latest game in the DunjonQuest series is getting a port to Atari 8-bit systems. The game’s publisher, Automated Simulations, is also putting out the Kaiju game “Crush, Crumble and Chomp” where you have to destroy as much of the city as possible before being stopped by the military. Optimized Systems Software in Cupertino also has a new variant to Basic, called Basic A+.
A program listing for an application to provide information on attached devices and whether the system recognizes something being there. Useful for troubleshooting.
This listing basically expands the range of sounds your computer can handle so it can do sounds in the base range. I don’t know how good bass sounds sound on Atari 8-bit systems though, especially since the sound range isn’t normally accessible.
This installment in the series covers the Assembler, and some of the option commands.
This is an assembler program, if you couldn’t tell from the title. They like the program, though they don’t like that you’re required to use the bundled text editor for your coding.
No relation to Word Perfect. I’ll give them props for disclosing that this is a program that’s advertised in the magazine. Unfortunately, they review commits the cardinal sin of being apologetic. The opening of the review describes it as being one of the best word processors they’d ever used, but then proceeds, in the course of using the review as a tutorial for the application, they enumerate a litany of problems with the application, to the point that they had to send the program back to the manufacturer and get a patched version back. This would be bad on its own, but the fact that the program costs $150 in 1981 dollars just makes it worse.
If you’ve played a Bioware game, you know this.
Atari has released Othello, Video Pinball, and Missile Command, and Activision has released Freeway and Kaboom. In terms of upcoming titles, we have Ice Hockey and Stampede announced by Activision, and Warlords, Asteroids, Super Breakout and Haunted House from Atari. Also, we get a heads up that 2600 carts don’t work on an Atari 8-bit system, in case you didn’t already know.
Basically, this is a suite of file-management applications. They like it, and it’s actually less expensive then Letter Perfect at $40.
If you couldn’t tell from the title, this is a typing tutor program, to help you speed through those program listings in the magazine. They like the program, though it has its problems. However, considering there’s not a lot of competition for the time, you’ll probably have to take what you can get.
We also get a little ad here for surge protectors, which is a little notable considering that now they’re practically ubiquitous.
They like this (unsurprising), though they don’t like how it handles strings.
This is a review of the Atari 8-bit version of the game. This version does have 2 less cities (and thus less missiles) than the arcade version, and you’re using a joystick instead of a trackball, so take that as you will.
Basically, this is a shooting gallery game that you control with a joystick.
This is a basic drawing application which lets you draw lines and fill closed areas with solid colors. Nowadays this isn’t much, but for a two page listing, that’s rather impressive.
Target Blockade is a multiplayer snake/Light Cycle clone, and Battle Warp is a Space War clone. These reviews also have numerical scores, though we don’t get any information on the scale.
This is a column about online services, wit ha par for the course hating on Apple users and their computers. This issue covers uploading a program listing instead of manually typing in while connected with your 2800 baud modem. This includes a couple listings to help with the uploading process, as FTP clients haven’t been invented yet.
Want to pimp your comp? Well, check out these boards that will give you a whopping 32K of memory. The boards even have gold plated connectors so they won’t oxidize causing your computer to crash and you to lose your data.
We have some corrections for earlier listings
More advice on writing better code for Basic on Atari 8-bit systems.
Just in time for the 25th Anniversary of the US launch of the Nintendo Entertainment system, my Where I Read for Nintendo Power has reached issue 50, for July of 1993. It shouldn’t be a surprise to say that this issue’s cover game is a notable one – Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Game Boy – the first portable outing for the series.
Our letters column for this issue has an interesting question – when they added two more face buttons on the SNES controller (in addition to the two shoulder buttons), why did they call them X & Y instead of C & D? According to the official answer, it comes from CAD, and relates to the fact that X & Y are the secondary buttons, as opposed to the main A & B buttons. I don’t know enough about CAD to say how definite that is (aside from X & Y being the axis for any two-dimensional plane), but it sounds good. If anyone who knows more about CAD wants to chip in with more information on what could be referenced here, I’d appreciate it. We also have a couple good-bad Legend of Zelda jokes, from Alex in Victorville, CA:
Q: How did Link help his team win the basketball game?
A: He used his hookshot!
Q: What did Zelda tell Link when he couldn’t unlock the door?
A: Triforce. (Get it, “try force” – I’ll get my coat)
So, just to get the age of game across here – it still has WWF in the logo instead of WWE. It’s got the Big Letter logo instead of the Scratch logo. The Undertaker has a goatee only, no moustache. Also, it bears mentioning that of the five wrestlers pictured here – Bret Hart, The Undertaker, Rodney “Yokozuna” Anoai, Curt Henning, and Scott “Razor Ramon” Hall, two are dead (Henning and Anoai), one is out of the business due to being an alcoholic (Hall), one basically can’t actively wrestle after having too many concussions (Hart), and one’s retiring Real Soon Now (The Undertaker). Hey, at least it doesn’t have Chris Benoit in it, if it did then the game wouldn’t exist anymore. 😉
The game itself has four gameplay modes – single player career, tag team career, three-man tag, and battle royal. It’s interesting to note that when wrestlers use a chair as a foreign object, they hold it upside down. Of course, like most steel chairs on WWE programming, they can only withstand a couple swings before becoming unusable for anything really. It’s also interesting to note that while the game has a tag team mode, only two real “tag teams” are represented here – Mr. Perfect and Ric Flair, and Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon, and both those are situations where one wrestler was the other’s “bodyguard”, not that they were a regular tag team and neither team ever held the Tag belts. I bring thus up because earlier games usually had one tag team in it that had held gold, usually the Road Warriors/Legion of Doom, or occasionally Demolition.
We get a list of wrestlers here, and their signature moves – which is a new touch for WWE games. However, the game doesn’t include submissions, something that WCW’s first game did include. I don’t recall if this game includes rope breaks on pin attempts though. Still, from a feature standpoint, they’re behind their competition.
This is a sort of run and slash action-platformer like Strider. We get maps of the all the stages before the last one, including boss strategies. Of note – according to wikipedia, the boss for level 2, a massive reclining undead woman, was originally just a massive reclining woman in the Japanese version, but Nintendo of America had them change it to avoid their “No Violence Against Women” policy – the same policy that lead to the stripper-riffic women from Final Fight being changed to transgender men in the US release of that game. Yeah, their priorities weren’t in the right place.
Before Will Wright gave us Spore, we got this ambitious title from Enix for the SNES. Basically, you control a creature of your own creation, and earn Evolution Points by surviving, by eating creatures and so forth. Evolution points can be spent on various genetic mutations that will help you do better later on. For example, as a fish, you can evolve a lure similar to the lure of the angler-fish, to help draw in food.
We get a run down of various edutainment games as we approach back-to-school season. Several of these games, like the Miracle Piano Teaching System, have previously been covered by the magazine, and nothing is really in-depth.
This game is a little interesting, as while the game was originally licensed when it was released on the SNES, the Genesis version was initially unlicensed (a licensed version was released later). We get maps for levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16 (the final stage). We don’t get any boss information though, it’s entirely possible that the game doesn’t have any bosses until the end, or that the bosses are on the levels we don’t get maps for.
We also get a gallery of the covers of all of the last 50 issues of Nintendo Power. Thus far I have to say that I like the cover of issue 2, the Castlevania II cover, the most. Our Nester’s Adventures strip covers TazMania and is has no useful advice at all.
This is, as it says, an in-depth retrospective. Apparently they consider the Castlevania II cover their “worst” cover, because it gave kids nightmares. Personally, I would say any piece of cover art good enough to cause nightmares would be a sign that it’s quality. Anyway, the official history here downplays the magazine’s role as a piece of advertising, instead describing it as a way to give a lot of information about Nintendo games for fans, and not including advertising as a way to avoid any awkward conflicts of interest, never mind that this is a house organ, and thus will probably skip on saying anything too negative about their products.
At the very least, they attempt to leave the American kusoge (shitty games) out of the magazine, and to be fair, with the Quality Control picks I’ve played, while some are bad, I haven’t seen anything as bad as Deadly Towers, or the far, far worse Dragonlance: Heroes of the Lance in the magazine, at least not very often.
While the Starfox comic continues, I’m still not going to cover it because it’s still not good.
So, this guide covers enough of the overworld map to get you to the first three dungeons of the game, and maps of those dungeons. That’s unfortunately it. Most other guides usually give a glimpse and maybe a few hints of what’s to come later, but this has none of that, unfortunately.
This is a sequel to the spinoff game based on Ghouls & Ghosts/Ghosts & Goblins. We get strategies for all the bosses right off, as well as a full two-page spread of the overworld map. We don’t get maps of the dungeons, but I’m okay with that. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded if, with Legend of Zelda, we had gotten no maps of the Dungeons, and just gotten a complete overworld maps and a few useful notes on the dungeons (for example, in this dungeon you can only defeat some enemies with jars, and you can only lift those jars after you find the Power Bracelet in this dungeon).
This is a port of the arcade light gun shooter… for the Game Boy. Yeah, no good can come of this. Mind you, I liked the arcade game, but light gun games really need to be played with a light gun – either one hard locked to the machine (T2, Operation: Wolf), or a couple on cables, possibly dual wielded.
Moving to the NES, we have a licensed game based on the Addams Family animated series. I watched this show a fair bit as a kid, and I have to say that the animated format probably worked better for the Addams Family than the live action format, at least outside of big features like the two films with Raul Julia. We get a map of the hub area and notes on the individual levels, but no full maps.
So, what do you do when you want to port one of the best fighting games of the last 5 years to the NES, when the system can’t handle it? You put out a Super Deformed version! Thus, we have Mighty Final Fight, a version of Final Fight with Chibi characters. Plus, it has a level up system, and we have Guy in the game! We get maps of the levels and notes on beating the bosses. Frankly, I like this game’s visual style, and I’m probably going to make it my Quality Control pick.
Remember Bubble Bobble? Good. Now you’re getting more of it. We get notes on a smattering of levels from the game and their World’s bosses – 3, 11, and 15 in World 1, 21, 24 and 36 in World 2, 42, 45 and 59 on World 3, and after that is the final world.
We also get a mini-merch catalog, which includes the opportunity to get every single back issue of Nintendo Power for just $50. That’s actually a pretty good deal. There’s also a Member’s Only shirt, and the Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Adventures graphic novels.
For our Top 20 this issue, Star Fox now holds the top spot on the SNES, bumping down Street Fighter II (original version) and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. On the Game Boy, Super Mario Land has once again been bumped off the top spot, and not by Metroid II. Instead, Super Mario Land 2 has claimed the top of the charts, pushing Samus and Kirby further down the charts. On the NES, Mario 3 retains the top spot, followed by the original Legend of Zelda (who has been on the Top 50 for the magazine’s full run), and Mega Man V. It bears mentioning that every NES Mega Man game is on the charts and every Metroid game released as of this issue is on the charts. We are missing Zelda 2 from the charts on that franchise, and the original Super Mario Bros and Super Mario World are absent from the charts from that franchise.
Now for the best of the rest. Ultima V: the False Prophet is getting a SNES release. Unlike the PC games you can’t carry your character over from the last game. Seika is releasing Super Turrican, JVC has the Wizardry clone Dungeon Master, There’s also a Game Boy game based on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
As my favorite wrestling commentator, Jim Ross, is fond of saying, business is about to pick up. Capcom is preparing to release Street Fighter II Turbo, with the ability to play as the bosses, as in Champion Edition, plus a speed boost. However, Midway has their own major fighting game on the way, albeit in a bowdlerized fashion – Mortal Kombat. By bowdlerized, I mean that many of the finishing moves have been toned down, though the people writing this column attempt to downplay this – and fail. Ultimately, this game, more than Sonic vs. Mario, is what truly divides the Genesis vs. SNES camps.
Konami also has a fighting game of their own, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters. This one also has its own differences between the Genesis and SNES versions. The SNES version has more characters from the animated series (like Bebop and Rocksteady), while the Genesis version includes more characters from the comics (like Casey “10 Minutes For High-Sticking” Jones). Finally, Capcom is taking Mega Man to the next level with Mega Man X for the SNES.
Finally, for my Quality Control pick. While Super Turrican in the Now Playing section caught my eye, I’m going to go with Mighty Final Fight.
We move on with the issues of Analog Computing with its sophomore issue, for March and April of 1981. As you can see from the cover, we’ve got coverage of some printers for the Atari 8-bit systems.
Last issue’s Editorial column was a statement of principles, while this issue’s column is a request for feedback from readers asking what they’d like the magazine to become. They also stated that at the behest of Atari dealers they’ve decided to stop running ads for their own Atari software. That’s kind of disappointing. Yeah, it could be construed as being biased in that you’re not reviewing your own apps, but on the other hand, that they’re publishing their own software provides a bit more clout to their reviews – they’ve developed for the system, so they know what software development for it entails.
They’ve also announced that they’re not going to run ads for mail-order houses or specific retailers. I can kind of get why they’re doing that, but it still feels like a boneheaded move to me. Part of having editorial integrity is, in my opinion, you run ads for the people you want to run ads for, in accordance with your ad policy – and once you’ve set your ad policy, you don’t change it because retailers who carry your magazine get pissy because you’re running ads for competing firms. Considering that last issue they strongly came out in favor of Atari fanboyism, their yielding compromise here feels a little depressing.
Additionally, they’re accepting program submissions, for review, and possibly for listing. They’re also announcing that since they stopped running ads for their own products, they’re depending more on advertisers for revenue instead of subscriptions. Since they’ve also cut mail-order firms and other retailers from their list of approved types of advertisers (which is something that EGM didn’t even do), then this could be a little tricky.
That was fast. Usually it takes an issue or two to get letters, at least that show up in time for deadline. I guess that being bi-monthly makes that less of a problem.
Our first letter has a possible solution for the program lock-up problem from last issue. Apparently the “BYE” command can clear up lockups like this. I can’t find the details, but presumably BYE is the kill process command. The letter also had a little news tip of interest. Apparently Ham Radio operators who are also Atari enthusiasts were trying to start some sort of Atari Ham Radio program on Monday nights at 8 PM eastern, at 14.329 Mhz. It’s kind of interesting, the ways computer enthusiasts found to exchange information, before Usenet started finding its way outside of academia.
Letter number two starts off with asking about what readers have permission to copy. Remember when you had to have written permission to photocopy stuff? I’m glad those days are over. The writer also runs down a few computer issues that the customer doesn’t have to be in warranty to have Atari fix, even if the computer is out of warranty. Most of these problems involve adding or removing capacitors from the motherboard. Also, apparently crossing your power cable with your printer cable could cause RF interference. God, the loads of cables coming out of the back of my tower would have tremendous problems with RF interference back in the day. We also have an alternate method for making hyperspace jumps in Star Raiders.
There’s a bit more stuff related to contacts on Atari computers, and that Atari might want to switch from their current contact design to gold-plated ones for improved conductivity. There’s also a letter from the head of marketing at Axlon Inc, hyping their new memory module for the Atari 800, that can expand the system’s memory up to a stunning 256KB of RAM. No one could possibly need more than that!
Another writer brings up the TRS-80 and the Apple, and how Atari is the last hope for the industry since those systems are crap and won’t be anywhere in the future. Well, he’s half-right. Finally, we get a very impressive letter from an 8th grader with what is basically an article submission, explaining what the PEEK and POKE commands do. It’s not perfect, but this probably the first time this kid has done technical writing, so I’ll cut him some slack. Wonder what he’s doing now.
Atari is working on an accounting suite for businesses. It has an Accounts Receivable system capable of handling up to 300 customers at a time, with a max of 1200 monthly customers. The General Accounting application can handle 2700 transactions a month for up to 750 accounts and finally, Inventory control will handle covering stocks of up to 1000 different items. All in all, this sounds like a decent application for a small business.
Atari’s also working on a word processing application, which I’ve used and I’d say it was okay when I was in grade school, but now I prefer WYSIWYG applications like OpenOffice or even premier.
First up is a brand spanking new modem for the Atari from from the Micro-peripheral corporation. The modem includes a printer interface, so it can print off everything you see on your screen for later reference, as well as a tape recorder so you can record the information you viewed for playback later. Or, to put it another way, the tape recorder lets you save files. Frankly, that’s kind of awesome. It’s horrifically dated now, and even if I had one of these, I wouldn’t be able to use it as the BBS services would no longer be up and running. Still, were this the 80s and were I a hacker or just a general geek who hung out on BBS services, I’d want this so freaking bad. That said, this would cost $249 in 1981 dollars (approximately $546 now).
Activision has home ports of Kaboom and Freeway for the 2600, both of which have been released for Game Room, and have been covered on GiantBomb.com’s Game Room features. Meanwhile, Automated Simulations has a few games for the Atari 8-bit systems under their Epyx brand. They have The Datestones of Ryn, Invasion: Orion, and Rescue at Rygel. None of these I’d heard of before. Manhatten Software (that’s not a typo – at least not my typo) has a casino blackjack game designed to teach you how to get thrown out of casinos by counting cards. For the record, fuck casinos who treat card counting like cheating.
We have our first program listing of the issue, with a 100-item inventory management app. While the application isn’t very useful in modern systems, the listing might offer a little useful information on the theory of designing database systems.
A column from Charles Bachand about being a better programmer – particularly with regards to using system resources more wisely. Bachand boasts that the programming techniques he recommends will cut down on memory space used by 80%. First, they recommend using single byte numbers (255 or less) through a chunk of memory (about 256 bytes large) starting at the memory location 1536, or $600 if you’re using machine language. These sections would have to be accessed with PEEK and POKE.
Next, you can hack basic to handle the limitations for array storage. Basically, (no pun intended), in ATARI BASIC, Arrays – places you store variables are designed to only be able to be two-dimensional, and there are some limits to their size in two-dimensions. Thus, if you’re making a lot of variables, you might end up needing multiple arrays. Well, not anymore, as Charles has a hack for you that lets you create 3-dimensional arrays instead. Finally, if you need arrays that are bigger than the 256 byte space at 1536, they recommend using DIM to define the arrays… as strings.
Now, all this programming advice is very useful if you’re doing, say, Atari 8-bit home-brew programming. However, if you’re using anything else then this advice won’t nearly be as useful, as modern versions of C, for example, handle memory usage differently then ATARI basic would.
This is sort of like the Quartermann column, but not presented in anything near as interesting a style. Of note in the rumors are:
We get an ad for Letter Perfect from LJK Enterprises, a word processing program that boasts the ability to adjust your header and footer, and even delete whole lines of text, all for the low, low price of $149.95.
For our next program listing, we’re continuing with the practical programs with one to help you balance your checkbook. This code is a little better documented than the last app. Still, there are already existing open source apps you can check out if you’re looking to write your own checkbook app, like HomeBank.
Like the title says, this article covers Player/Missile graphics when you’re writing games. What are Player/Missile Graphics you ask? Well, with Atari systems, the “player” is whatever sprite on-screen that’s being controlled by the character. The missiles are autonomous sprites which move on their own accord, based on rules set by program. They don’t give the details for what this program listing does, but my suspicion is that it’s a Space Invaders clone.
I suspect that if you were a programmer in the 80s, and Spam E-Mail existed, instead of herbal Viagra, you’d get messages telling you how you could unleash your CPU’s inner power. Anyway, this article does have some useful information, like how the system has a dedicated GPU, called ANTIC. To my knowledge this makes for the earliest computer system to have a GPU. Anyway, Basically, their way of boosting your processor speed is having your system stop using the GPU if it has to some heavy thinking, whether it’s math calculations or plotting out a chess move. That would explain some of the blinking in the 2600 version of Reversi that’s on Game Room (as commented on by Jeff and Ryan) in past Game Room Rundowns. For those who are wondering about that, Reversi is one of the games commonly used when designing AI systems. Chess is used as well, as is Go – though people working on more advanced game algorithms have yet to design one that will work for Go, due to the game’s complexity.
This is a listing for an artillery duel game, one which doesn’t have the player account for wind speed, which is disappointing, as that’s what separates the children from the adults, when it comes to artillery games.
First up is Decision Maker. Basically, this application lets you enter all the information you have for a decision – where you must choose between one of 10 options, weight the information based on how important it is to you, and then tells you which one to pick. Frankly, this is one of those things that would probably be easier to do with a pad of paper.
For our Music Composer program, we get a listing for an application that will let you more easily and perfectly translate your compositions in Music Composer to a text hard copy that you can then re-enter, and have translated into music again. To show you how the program works, we also get an output/input listing for “Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles. When do we get AC/DC?
The 2600 has gotten its first big 3rd-party publisher, and perhaps the first major 3rd party publisher in general – Activision. Activision is putting out their first five titles: Fishing Derby, Dragster, Checkers, Bridge, Boxing & Skiing.
This little listing is another useful piece of code for writing games. The last one taught you how to draw Player & Missile characters. This one handles drawing off-screen without getting error messages. Now, I’m not going to enter the listing, so I’m not going to get the details about what it looks like, but I do wonder if this just has drawing off-screen, or if it will have the image wrap. Similarly, I wonder if this would allow for scrolling images – and thus scrolling levels, and thus, theoretically, I dunno, Mario for the Atari 8-bit? Commander Keen? Anyway, I’m putting the listing up as an image if you want to read it and maybe play with it.
This is meant to be a new ongoing column that will serve as a combination game design/game review column. It’s an interesting idea. I haven’t heard of any columns anywhere that connect directly connect game design theory discussion and game reviews in this fashion. Now, I just hope that they’ll try to keep the design concepts connected to the game reviews – illustrating a concept and then focusing on games that carry out that concept with varying degrees of success.
This issue they’re talking about building playfields, and in particularly randomly generating them. This is different from modern procedurally generated content. This is more of a less sophisticated Nethack – like randomly populating a Snake/Light Cycle level with some obstacles. They’re implementing this with a sort of ship battle game – we have two moving ships on-screen, a Player (the player’s ship – natch) and a Missile (the enemy ship), plus additional missiles for any shots fired by the ships. However, we want to populate the field with some islands, and to make things interesting and varied between plays, we want to randomly place them, but we don’t want them to be put on top of each other, and we don’t want to accidentally spawn a ship on top of the island. So, we get another useful subroutine for handling the generation of the playfield. This makes the third useful subroutine for designing games we’ve gotten this issue. Now, all we need next is one for collision detection, one for shooting, and one for the actual AI, and we’ll have all the pieces for a game. From that it would be just a patter of putting the pieces together.
Our next review is for another “edutainment” simulation game on par with last issue’s SCRAM. Specifically, we have Energy Czar. Your job is to regulate energy policy to meet certain environmental goals without pissing off the public so much that you get fired. This feels like the kind of game that the Atari 8-bit systems would have problem handling, but might work a little better now, in the hands of the right developer. Their reviewer like the game’s challenge, though he came in suspecting it would be terribly dull.
We also have a review of the Mosaic Memory Expansion Kit. Basically, this is a kit you can install into your system that lets you increase the amount of memory you can work with, thus making it easier to do software development. The device was actually made by a company that would have been not too far from me – Mosaic Electronics in Oregon City. Mind you, installing the memory isn’t as easy as it is with modern systems, as you have to solder the memory onto the board. Naturally, this process will void your warranty, though apparently since the system only shipped with a 90 day warranty, this might not be a problem.
As an aside, a 90 day warranty! Really? Most computers now ship with a one-year warranty! My God, and my customers when I did tech support complained when we wouldn’t do support longer than a year, saying that warranties were longer back in the day.
Next up is a review of War at Sea, a serial-numbers-filed-off port of Battleship. It’s apparently a one-player only version, though it has some interesting sound presentation, particularly with Morse code effects and some engine rumble, as well as a ticker-tape message for the winner. The reviewer things a two-player version could work, but I’m not so sure of it working for hot-seat play.
The exclamation mark was their idea.
Anyway, this listing is another useful, practical application – an app that lets you save the output from your modem to a floppy drive or, presumably, a cassette tape drive. Practical for the time, but not really useful now.
We have a review of a calculator application. Not something I’m particularly interested in. There’s also Mind Bogglers, a collection of simple puzzle games, like variants of Simon, Hunt the Wumpus (called Mystery Box), and an Othello clone.
There’s also a round-up of various first party Atari printers – an 80 column and 40 column dot matrix printer and a thermal printer. All the reviews are favorable, which is unsurprising, considering their fanboyism at this time. We do get a sample printout for each printer, which is a nice touch though.
This is another program listing of the practical sort. Apparently Atari’s own Assembler/Editor cartridge doesn’t translate Machine Language back to Basic very well, after you’ve done the original translation from Basic to Machine Language. This is something that’s kind of important, if you’re planning on selling a program to someone and you want them to be able to edit the code – something that was somewhat important at the time.
As it says, this isn’t a tutorial on how to use Atari’s Assembler/Editor. By which I mean it’s not a complete tutorial, instead covering some of the basic features of the Editor side of the app, like auto-numbering, exporting your program to a floppy disk, and so on.
I get the impression that Assembler/Editor just came out, as that’s the big running theme for this issue. They could have, in theory titled this issue “The Assembler/Editor Issue” on the cover. Anyway, the manual for Assembler/Editor said you could CLOAD code from tape (CLOAD, I presume, meaning “Code Load”). However, it doesn’t work that way – so instead they have a little subroutine they’d written to help you do that. We also have advice on what to do when you have two files with the same name (apparently this version of DOS doesn’t catch that automatically).
We get a look at some of the programs being developed by Adventure International. They published Star Trek 3.5 that was being reviewed last issue, as well as a bunch of upcoming text adventure games. Adventure International would later develop a text adventure game based on the Buckaroo Banzai film.