I know, I know … it’s nothing new. But it takes a lot of patience, not to mention a good grasp of video games history, to come up with a clip like this. Tell me what you think.

Personally, I like the background music and that little parody the video’s producer pulled off two minutes into the video.

Post from: EveryJoe

Classic and retro video game montage

Tron is a 1982 Disney science fiction film starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn (and his counterpart inside the electronic world, Clu), Bruce Boxleitner as Alan Bradley (and Tron), Cindy Morgan as Dr. Lora Baines (and Yori) and Dan Shor as Ram. David Warner plays the villain, Ed Dillinger (and Sark), as well as providing the voice of the Master Control Program. It was written and directed by Steven Lisberger. Being one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, your next question, if you haven’t watched the film that is, may be, “What does an 80s movie have to do with retro video games?”

Everything, I assure you. Tron paved the way for tie-ins between films and video games. The only difference being Tron started as a movie and ended up as a video game … several video games, actually. I even tried making one myself using the Basic computer language in a format well known to 80s book lovers, Choose Your Own Adventure.

Anyway, Tron spawned, as I said, several video games. Atari had plans to develop a real Space Paranoids game based on the movie, but these were shelved due to the video game crash of 1983. Tron wasn’t the only casualty. Atari apparently also scrapped arcade adaptations of Superman III and The Last Starfighter.

Midway, on the other hand, was a little bit successful in adapting the movie into mainstream video games. In 1982, Midway Games released an arcade game of the same name consisting of four mini-games based on sequences in the movie, including the one featuring Light Cycles. About a year later, Midway released another Tron game, Discs of Tron, a sequel that featured the disc combat shown in the movie. There are other Tron video games out there, some developed by Mattel Electronics.

Whew! At this point I’d like to leave you a bit to explore for yourselves. Meantime, allow me time to re-explore Tron by rifling through my stash of (gasp!) Betamax format video cassettes and watch the entire movie.

The Light Cycle scene from the movie Tron. Funny how technology at the time allowed the filming of such a scene using computer graphics but not for video games. Go figure.

Post from: EveryJoe

Remember Tron?

Great production. Hey, what else can I say? Wait! I need to ask this question: Why the hell did the video jump from the 1980s to the 1990s? I’m sure I am not the only one asking this.

Post from: EveryJoe

Another take on the history of video games

Here, go take a gander (hint: focus on the way the games are represented rather than struggling with the fact that your favorite games didn’t make it to the list):

Now tell me … tell me you missed Number 20. Gawd! You mean I’m the only one who missed Frogger?

Post from: EveryJoe

Top 20 Retro Games in cartoon countdown

Well, here’s my list:

Pong, Space Invaders, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Pac-Man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, Leisure Suite Larry, Afterburner, Double Dragon, Prince of Persia, Tetris, Secret of Monkey Island, Sonic the Hedgehog, Castle Wolfenstein, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Minesweeper, Myst, Rayman, Command & Conquer, Tekken, Tomb Raider, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, and Total War.

Darn, I think I have to brush up on my video games history and literature again.

Post from: EveryJoe

The History of Video Games in two minutes

This image put a smile on my face today. It’s a screenshot of the classic Atari 2600 game Circus Atari, designed by Mike Lorenzen and published by (who else!) Atari.

Prior to its release as an Atari 2600 game, Circus Atari was an arcade game (Exidy’s Circus, 1977) and an older Atari game (Clowns, 1978).

Oh, yeah, about the smile. Well, aside from playing this game as a (very) young man, some very good memories come to the fore whenever I view the image: Hours of playing with cousins and friends, despite the very angry glare of our grandmother, who was adamantly opposed to us playing the old Atari 2600 on her television set. And then there’s the feeling or sensation I got whenever I sat down to play Circus Atari.

Yes, I know, gameplay is sucky considering the fact that it’s a Breakout clone, in a sense. But I didn’t know that back then. To my young mind, it was the bomb. Hmmm, I think my fascination had something to do with the clowns, if not them, it could’ve been the seesaw. Haha.

Post from: EveryJoe

The circus is in town!

If you’re a regular visitor of this blog and the rest of the Video Games Channel of b5media, then you probably already know why I’ve been gone for almost a week. If not, well, here’s a short explanation (which I also posted on my other b5media blog, MMOtaku):

Whew! What a nasty week! I won’t bore you guys with details; suffice it to say that I—and I guess a hundred or so Internet service subscribers in this little town—had a hell of a boring time with little or no Internet connection.

Well, if any good came out of the sudden loss of Internet connection, it’s probably the extra time to break out some old consoles and games and play them. And I’ve played a good number of old games on my now-dysfunctional Atari 2600, Nintendo Family Computer, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I tried to make my rusty and musty Apple IIc up and running, but it’s just too old and dirty—courtesy of a family of mice that have made the computer their home. And my Coleco Telstar Arcade isn’t in any better shape, with only the Pong side running—and I’m not really in the mood for Pong or any other game that emulates tennis in some form.

So I’ve stuck to playing some of the Atari 2600, Nintendo Family Computer and Super Nintendo Entertainment System’s most beloved games, including two Star Wars games, Jedi Arena and Death Star Battle, Street Fighter, and Starfox.

Okay, that’s it for now. Stay tuned to Re:Retro for more retro-gaming goodness!

Post from: EveryJoe

More Atari, Famicom, and SNES games on Re:Retro

Post from: EveryJoe

Blast from the past: Egad! It’s the Coleco Telstar

Interactive entertainment is an important part of the entertainment industry. Each year, video games usually make as much money—or even more—than the movie box offices. Let’s get a category created on the world-famous Hollywood Walk of Fame to recognize the video game starts who have become part of our daily lives.

Video games have been popular for decades, and visitors to Hollywood would like to see their favorite interactive stars honored, too.

We, the undersigned, ask the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to add a new “Interactive” category to the Hollywood Walk of Fame to honor starts like Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and numerous others who have reached true celebrity status.

No kidding.

About two weeks later, the petition started getting attention—and some commentaries, among which is from Rick “32_footsteps” Healey of Netjak.

Healey wrote, “First off, just look at the petition’s goals. They want to see, I quote, “stars like Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda and numerous others” honored by Hollywood. Like it’s worked so well every other time Hollywood has given any attention to video games (the Super Mario Bros. movie, Alone In The Dark, Resident Evil … I dare not continue). I’d think video gamers, at this point, would realize that the two are like oil and water.”

He was, of course, referring to video games and Hollywood. Healey then pointed out “One thing that works against the petition’s aim is that Hollywood is very reticent to honor fictional characters. They’ve given out over 2100 stars on the Walk of Fame. Ten of them are fictional characters: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Bugs Bunny, Godzilla, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, The Simpsons, and The Rugrats (don’t ask me about that last one—I don’t have a clue either). Those are pretty heavy names (except for that last one) with a huge reputation. Mario might squeak in there, but I don’t know if any other video game character (not even Link or Zelda, considering Daffy Duck doesn’t have a star) could make the criteria. For live roles, it’s even stricter—the only live role on the list is The Lone Ranger, and even that name is shared with the actor who portrayed him, Clayton Moore.”

These two quotes from Healey weren’t the ones that caught my attention, though. What got my eye was this:

The ultimate goal of the petition is, other than to hype Nintendo’s roster of mascots, to have gamers and game developers hold their heads high and stand equal to other media. After reading that list, though, we ought to aim higher than that. Let’s instead make a Gaming Walk of Fame. Put it in Kyoto or San Francisco, and honor Peter Molyneux next to Keiji Inafune. We don’t need an institution of phony acts and hateful people. We just need to stand for respect on our own merits, and that should be good enough.

That’s cool, Rick. It’s so cool that it actually came true. Check out this story from BBC News:

Star honors for video game icons

Pong creator Nolan Bushnell and Donkey Kong maker Shigeru Miyamoto have received the first-ever “Walk of Game” stars for video games in San Francisco.

The two men were honored at a ceremony for their services to the video game industry.

Pong was one of the first video games and was made by Bushnell while at Atari. Miyamoto’s Donkey Kong helped usher in a golden age of gaming.

Video game characters Link, Mario and Sonic were also inducted.

Bungie’s masterpiece, Halo, became the first video game to have its own star on the Walk of Game—a riff on the Walk of Fame stars in Hollywood.

“Thank you very much for this honor. It’s always fun to be walked on wherever you can be,” said Bushnell.

The Atari legend also said he had not lost his love of video gaming—confessing to a 16-player session of Halo at home with his children and their friends.

“What I leave behind in reaction time I make up for in stealth and guile,” he said.

Pong was created in 1972, but it was not until 1981 and the arrival of Donkey Kong in arcades that video gaming began to enter the mainstream. A variant of tennis—Pong was played with two “paddles” controlling on-screen bats to serve an electronic ball to your opponent. Video games are now a US$20 billion-a-year business and remain the fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry.

The two men had metal stars embedded into the floor of the Metreon Center, a Sony-branded shopping mall.

Post from: EveryJoe

Whatever happened to … ? #1: Mario’s bid for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

I welcome you to the first post of the new Re:Retro (sounds kinda ironic, doesn’t it?). Since, admittedly, I can never match the writing prowess of the venerable Al Ewing, this space’s former blogger, I’ll focus more on what I know—old video games.

Well, not just old games, but games I played when I was young(er)—from the dot-crazy world of the chomping smiley face known as Pacman to the vertically challenged player movement in Space Invaders to the fast-becoming classic role-playing games from Strategic Simulations Inc. like Champions of Krynn and Pools of Radiance.

What happened to these games, you might ask? I sealed them up in a box and hurled ‘em all into a ditch, which I filled to the brim with good gaming memories that I knew would serve me well in years to come.

Now, I am faced with the daunting task of dredging the ditch and clearing the dusts off this box full of games. Daunting, yes, but exciting as well. Nostalgia is such a funny thing.

Here are fond childhood memories:

My first handheld video game platform (if it can be called that) was a folder-shaped black box that had a big screen and a knob and a button which served as controls. The game featured a jet that you move horizontally to evade missiles. The downside was the jet couldn’t shoot back. Eh, what’s the button for? It was the power switch.

My first console was a Coleco Telstar Arcade, a cartridge-based, triangular-cased machine that had a light gun, steering wheel with gear shift, and paddles—one set of controls for each side of the triangle and for each game cartridge that comes with the console. The Telstar Arcade’s best game was Pong, of course—like all Coleco machines.

My first personal computer was an Apple IIc on which I played some of the most memorable video games in recent history (at least in my mind), including Hard Hat Mack, Lode Runner, and Taipan.

So there you have it … that’s probably how far back I can go back to collect the data needed to write about moldy, dusty video games. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, if I can only find those video game arcade tables my uncle stored in his garage back in the 80s. It’ll be a blast to play Pacman and Galaga again.

Post from: EveryJoe

Re:Retro Re:Novation