Here’s a video of Scramble that YouTube user tr0d took from the series How to Beat Home Video Games:

Okay. Now that the mix up has been cleared, I’d like to thank Chris Herr for the heads up. Here’s a video of the real Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the Vectrex:

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Re:Retro viewer: That’s not Star Trek!

Speaking of explosive, this video I found on YouTube totally blew me away:

As you may have already surmised from the title, the video features the classic game Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the Vectrex.

The Vectrex? Oh, yeah, you might not have heard of this 80s console. It’s an 8-bit video game console developed by Smith Engineering and distributed by General Consumer Electric and eventually by Milton Bradley Company in the early 1980s. The Vectrex was markedly different from its contemporaries in the sense that you didn’t need to plug it into a television to play games as it had its own monitor.

Going back to the topic at hand, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was one of the first games created for the Vectrex Arcade System. The object of the game is simple: Fly the USS Enterprise through nine space sectors and destroy everything the ship encounters with phasers and photon torpedoes.

It’s a great game, despite its simplicity. But if you have a Vectrex, you might want to check it out. Oh, and to answer your unanswered question, yes, that’s the Enterprise. It looks like a Klingon Bird of Prey, though, or a Romulan Warbird.

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Woot! Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the Vectrex

Why don’t I just shut up and let you watch the video:

The first time I watched the clip, I found the humor dry. No offense, Richard. We’re roughly in the same time zone, yes, but our cultures are so different that what’s funny for a Bloke isn’t really funny to a Juan. The second time I viewed it, I was laughing like crazy, along with my wife, who thought Frank and Dale were hilarious. Yes, humor takes some time to sink in, but by all means … WATCH IT!

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Company of Heroes machinima: Frank and Dale #1

Well, regardless of which video you choose, one thing’s for certain: They’re both better than the video I showed you in my previous posting, Gordon Freeman in Mario Land.

My only beef with the guys who did the modifications is the way they presented the world of Super Mario Brothers. Come on! The game Super Mario Brothers may be side-scrolling and set in a two-dimensional world, but having Gordon Freeman walk a narrow blocky terrain in 3D isn’t exactly a good translation of the Super Mario Brothers world’s physics.

Hmmm, probably has something to do with Half-Life’s Steam engine.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gordon Freeman in Mario Land #2

Waitaminute! This blog isn’t about comic books! Duh! It’s about retro and classic video games. So where are the crossovers in the video gaming realm? Believe it or not, the most well known crossover in this world still has something to do with comic books. Ever heard of the Marvel versus Capcom series?

Here’s a little backgrounder courtesy of Wikipedia:

Marvel vs Capcom is a series of fighting games created by Capcom in which characters created by Marvel Comics and Capcom’s own characters appear together. While it was the first versus series involving Capcom, the name Marvel exists to distinguish it from Capcom’s other versus series with SNK, Tatsunoko Production, and Namco’s crossover role-playing game with Capcom, Namco x Capcom.

The Marvel characters depicted in these games were often based on their incarnations in various early 1990s animated series (particularly X-Men), and were often voiced by the same voice actors.

Many of the characters and fighting mechanics used in these games were first developed and refined in two other fighting games Capcom had developed earlier, serving as precursors to the series: X-Men: Children of the Atom, which featured characters strictly from the X-Men universe, and Marvel Super Heroes, which gleaned characters from Marvel’s entire roster (X-Men included).

Although the tag-team fighting concept was not new, it was refined with this series (although fans would argue whether this was for better or for worse). New fighting game terminology, such as “Aerial Rave” (the act of performing a combo on an opponent while the opponent remains airborne) and “Variable Combination” (the act of having two or more characters on the same team to perform their hyper combos at the same time) were added to the fighting game vernacular with this series.

Well, this post is not really about Marvel vs Capcom, but about a fantasy crossover between two very popular video game worlds, that of Super Mario Brothers and Gordon Freeman’s Half-Life. Go check out the video below:

Post from: EveryJoe

Gordon Freeman in Mario Land

Post from: EveryJoe

Monty Oum’s Haloid: Samus Aran versus Master Chief

Fortunately, there are old or classic games that do make the cut. Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, and The Sims series come to mind.

Armed with this information, I quickly scoured the Web and landed on the very site that lived and breathed machinima, Machinima.com. Riding on the hype of the recently released Max Payne movie starring Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, I’ve chosen for the viewing pleasure of Re:Retro regulars one of the best machinima using the game engine of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Only The Strong Survive by Riot Films.

Before you check it out, here’s a little backgrounder:

Mission OA-032. The Organization sends two assassins, Andy and Brown, to a deserted apartment complex. As they wait for their target to arrive in the courtyard of the building, Andy gets the feeling that Brown knows something about the mission that he doesn’t.

Only The Strong Survive is a prologue and introduction to the world of the Organization and Andy’s winding story of vengeance and betrayal. This chapter introduces the key event that propels the story into motion, as will be told in Only The Strong Survive II: Delusion and concluded in Only The Strong Survive III: Requiem.

After watching the clip several times, I’ve come up with several observations (to the guys at Riot Films, don’t take my criticism badly):

1) I find the scene where the supposed target and his bodyguards walk into the courtyard and position themselves neatly in the middle of an open area very unsettling. If I were Andy, I’d probably think, “How convenient … too convenient!”

2) When Andy leaped off the balcony to the cold stone pavement, I couldn’t stifle an “Ooomph! That must’ve hurt.” Same goes for Brown’s equally suicidal jump.

3) Is it just me or do all the guys in the film need corrective lenses? Either they’re all bad shots or the film should be renamed Only The Strong Lucky Survive.

It’s okay, guys. The film looks great. You’ve got me intrigued enough to wait with bated breath for the sequels.

Post from: EveryJoe

Retro Machinima: Only The Strong Survive using Max Payne 2 engine

So with that in mind, I’ve decided to start a new topic or category, Video games I want to play forever. It’s very literal. It will feature video games that I love and those that I want to keep playing until my computer conks out, or until my body crumples from exhaustion.

Without further ado, I present to you the Total War series on the PC:

Total War is a strategy game series developed by Creative Assembly. The games combine turn-based strategy and resource management with real-time tactical control of battles. On June 30, 2006, a box set of the first three Total War titles and their expansion packs was released. Called Total War: Eras, the boxed set also included several extra features and the Rome: Total War expansion Alexander, which had previously been only available through download.

When I first laid my eyes on the Total War series, via Rome: Total War, I wasn’t impressed. I found the game dragging and lacking in action. But that was just my initial reaction—a way of challenging myself to try out the game. Raymz Maribojoc, the friend who introduced me to the Total War series, was insistent. Thank the gaming gods I listened to him.

So, on a rainy evening around two years ago, I played Rome: Total War on Raymz’s, uhmm, office PC like there was no tomorrow. Upon my friend’s recommendation, I started the game playing the Brutii, one of three playable Roman factions in the game, the other two being the Julii and the Scipii. (The three factions are named after three great figures in Roman history, namely Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus.

Check out the details after the jump.

Each faction or house has a campaign to follow, mostly at the direction of the Roman Senate. Here’s a brief description from Wikipedia:

Rome: Total War (often abbreviated to RTW or Rome) is a critically acclaimed strategy game composed of both turn-based strategy and real-time tactics, in which the player fights historical and fictitious battles set during the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire (270 BC – AD 14). The game was developed by Creative Assembly and released on September 22, 2004. It is the third game of Creative Assembly’s Total War series.

The endeavors of the player involve a duality of turn-based strategy and 3D real-time tactical battles. The high-quality 3D graphics engine is able to render over thirty thousand men on a single battlefield. The strategic and tactical modes integrate such that the landscape for the battles is the same as seen on that particular spot on the strategic map where the armies meet.

The player takes a role equivalent to the head of one of the three great Roman houses at the time: the Julii, the Scipiones (known as the Scipii in the game) or the Bruti (called the Brutii). Each of these factions has a different set of attributes and initial objectives. After winning campaign as Romans (or using a simple mod) it is possible to play with other factions and take on a role similar to that of Hannibal, commander-in-chief of the Carthaginian armies during the Second Punic War or the Gallic Warlord Vercingetorix.

Prior to its release, a preliminary but completely workable version of the game engine was used in two series of television programs: Decisive Battles by the History Channel, where it was used to recreate famous historical battles, and Time Commanders by BBC Two, where teams of novice non-gamers commanded ancient armies to replay key battles of antiquity. The game engine was fine-tuned specifically for these TV shows by military historians for maximum historical accuracy.

Speaking of Rome, you might want to check out Google’s Ancient Rome 3D project. Sravan Bhamidipati of That Damn PC wrote about the Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth and the LIFE photo archive late last month.

Cool, eh?

Now I’m looking for a full, updated version of Medieval II: Total War and eagerly anticipating the release of Empire: Total War. Yes, I’m going to play these games for a very long time.

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Video games I want to play forever #1: Total War series

As the player explores more of the area, they will encounter power-ups that can be used to pass the previously encountered obstacles, allowing them to explore further, as well as backtrack, in order to find more power-ups and advance. While players are tempted to complete the game quickly, as there are multiple endings determined by the length of completion time, the concept of gradually increasing abilities and therefore acquiring access to previously inaccessible areas, encourages the player to go back and obtain all available items and power-ups.

\r\n\r\nAnother reason for my desire to play Metroid on the Nintendo Family Computer Disk System is the three-slot save system (as opposed to the Nintendo Entertainment System\’s version that allows players to enter passwords to basically \”save\” their progress and advance in the game).\r\n\r\nMore Famicom Disk System and Metroid in later postings. Ciao for now.\r\n\r\nImage painstakingly (it\’s freakin\’ 87.7 MB!) downloaded from Temple of Doom, a fellow retro video games fanatic. Copyrights to Nintendo Family Computer Disk System and Metroid are owned by Nintendo.

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I probably would’ve played Metroid

I love this line: Fear has no form. Fear has no name. But now fear has an address … Castlevania!

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Blast from the past: Castlevania commercials