Year of the Animal: Day 266 - Millipede

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Millipede from Hal America.

Year of the Animal: Day 153 - Paperboy

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Paperboy from Mindscape.

Year of the Animal: Day 151 - 720°

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's seminal arcade skateboarding title, 720°.

 

 

 

Year of the Animal: Day 141 - Vindicators

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Vindicators.

Year of the Animal: Day 80 - Rampart

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Rampart from Jaleco.

Year of the Animal: Day 55 - Skull & Crossbones

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Skull & Crossbones from Tengen.

Year of the Animal: Day 52 - Cyberball

 Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Cyberball, published by Jaleco.

The Summer Of 8-Bit 3.0: Gauntlet II

Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Gauntlet II from Mindscape.

The Summer Of 8-Bit 3.0: Marble Madness

Today's video takes a look at the NES port of Atari's Marble Madness from Milton Bradley.

The Summer Of 8-Bit 3.0: Road Runner

Today's video takes a look at Tengen's NES port of Atari's Road Runner.

The Atari Grave Was Found, But What Does That Mean?

A few months back, I wrote a post about the US game industry crash of 1983, and mentioned one of
the events regularly attributed to this event happening being the doomed release Atari's ill fated game based on the movie, E.T. From the failure of this game arose a bit of an urban myth that recalled Atari dumping an unknown number of E.T. cartridges in a landfill somewhere in the Southwest United States. Because no one would substantiate the story, it remained an urban legend for decades, a piece of gaming lore that would take about 30 years to prove true.

On April 26, 2014, that exact thing happened when a documentary film crew descended on the town of Alamogordo in Southeastern New Mexico and dug up the infamous game cartridges. The dig will be a pat of a documentary about Atari, so it made sense that they would seek out the "Atari Grave" was found. I have to wonder if it was worth it to seek out a monument to the worst moment in American video game history. While this landfill did yield better results that Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capone's "vault", it leaves me with feeling of lacking.

Will seeing this remind geme publishers and developers of the constantly fragile state of modern gaming? Will gamers too young to remember a time where video game consoles were a hard sell and a niche product see where their favorite pastime could end up? To say I'm nervous about the current state of gaming is an understatement. I worry because while there is such a vast amount of fresh ideas and quality gaming content out there, most attention and money goes to the same old thing. We as gamers can talk until we're blue in the face about what we want and how awesome new original games will be, but if we aren't supporting them we venture ever closer to another "Atari Grave" situation. I for one, love gaming and I really don't want that to happen. 

*This video is credited to it's owner. No copyright infringement intended.

Paperboy Is 30. Do You Feel Old Yet?

Today's video takes a look at Paperboy, a beloved title from Atari as it celebrates it's 30th anniversary.

The Crash Of 1983: The Price Of Greed 30 Years Later

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30 years ago, an event happened that could have destroyed the gaming industry. It’s something that has made gamers nervous for years, especially with the proliferation of games with incredibly high production budgets and consoles that are only as good as the non gaming applications attached to them. There have been a number of conflicting claims as far as where to point the finger of blame for causing The Video Game Crash of 1983, but it boils down to simple greed.

Atari had a lot of problems leading to the crash. One of which was simple arrogance. You see, Atari did silly things on occasion like produce more copies of a particular game than they had consoles in the market.

This was case with the Atari 2600 port of Pac Man. In 1982, when the 2600 port of Namco’s iconic title was released, Atari decided to produce 12 million copies of it. This wouldn’t have been a problem if not for one important fact: Atari only had 10 million consoles in homes. In the end, Atari sold only 7 million copies of Pac Man and was faced with legions of angry fans who sought refunds after playing the incredibly subpar port of Pac Man.

Pac Man wasn’t the only miscue Atari faced, and the next one was one of legendary proportions. When the movie E.T. was released in the summer of 1982, Warner Communications, who owned Atari, demanded that a video game based on the film be available in stores by Christmas. Atari was given a mere six weeks to see a video game through from concept to store shelf. The resulting game was what many consider the worst video game ever made. Again, Atari was left with millions of unsold cartridges, which they took to a landfill in New Mexico, destroyed, and covered by cement. The “Atari Landfill” as it became known over the years has become something of an urban legend among younger gamers, but is all too familiar to us old enough to have seen the catalogs with 1 cent sales on 2600 cartridges.

Finally, there may have been way too many crappy games and random consoles on the market. In 1982, Atari had two consoles and two computers on the market. Also, several companies had consoles that played Atari 2600 games, several other game consoles and computers, and games available for all of them. It was incredibly confusing and left many gamers and their parent not even wanting to be bothered. This led to store being flooded with stock hogging shelf and stockroom space. As a result, the average parent could buy their kid an Atari 2600 for $30 and games for $1-$5.  The losses were monumental and in 1983, many companies either abandoned their video game divisions, or went out of business.

The Crash of 1983 was something that many younger gamers never heard of, but that doesn’t make it any less real. The fact is, some of the problems that damaged the industry them, most notably flooding the market, is definitely happening now with titles being released on an almost yearly basis. If the gaming industry were to crash again, I’m hard pressed to think it would recover. There are those who have pondered the validity of console gaming with the rise of gaming on devices not typically designed for it, like phones and tablets, but as console gaming goes, so does gaming on PCs and mobile devices. If this upcoming generation of consoles falters, then who can assume that anyone would be willing to stay the course with those other devices.

The evidence that gaming may be slowing down or that gamers are just getting tired of playing the same games over and over may be the fact that in one particular month a single game, Grand Theft Auto V, accounted for nearly half of all video game sales on the market. While Atari would have killed for this to happen with Pac Man or E.T it does point to a problem in gaming. Gaming can ill afford to repeat the events that led to the Crash of 1983, but simple human greed could lead to history repeating itself. Unfortunately, There may not be any room for a new Nintendo to rise from the ashes and save the art form that we have grown to love.

The Summer Of 8-Bit 2.0: Roadblasters

Today's video takes a look at Mindscape's NES port of Atari's Roadblasters

The Summer Of 8-Bit: Gauntlet

Today's video takes a look at Tengen's NES port of Gauntlet

Getting Up: Marc Ecko's Only Foray Into Video Games

I can't really recall why, but today I woke up with a particular game on my mind. I don't own this game, but I should have bought it a while ago. It wasn't an exceptionally good game by any stretch, but it also wasn't a bad game. In all honesty, it's one of the best executions of one of the elements of Hip Hop ever infused into a game. It was the brainchild of Marc Ecko and featured the voice acting of Talib Kweli(for better or for worse). The game I'm referring to is Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

Getting Up follows the exploits of Trane as he rises from amateur tagger to graffiti legend in an oppressive city that places their heel on the throat of anyone who tries to express themselves. Not only does he have to contend with the corrupt mayor's personal police force, but he also has to deal with a rival crew and in the process starts his own crew. The story was actually deeper than expected from a game about the art of graffiti, but as someone who never had to run from cops for my art, I really didn't know what to expect.

The core gameplay mechanics in Getting Up involve writing graffiti burners to spread your message of freedom against the corrupt government, and random tags on random smaller structures. This may reminds players of Sega's classic Jet Grind Radio, but in practice, Getting Up is very different. It plays like a hybrid of Jet Grind Radio and Prince of Persia with the use of platforming to get to various locations around the cityscape. Once a spot for a tag or burner is reached, you can scroll through which tag you want to put on a location, and how big you want it to be, then you get to painting the burner. As expected, you don't get unlimited paint in this game, so in similar fashion to the aforementioned Jet Grind Radio, players will have to scour the game looking for more paint while avoiding or fighting off police and rival crews. It really does feel like Jet Grind Radio without the cel shaded sheen.

For all the mediocre reviews Getting Up received, it was one of the better attempts at 3-D platforming on the PS2. It was also a very mature and gritty take on a gameplay concept made popular by Sega's classic. If it weren't for a few technical hiccups(the camera getting stuck in strange spots was my main issue), Getting Up could have been one of those games that's looked at with reverence. Sadly, it's a good game that a few gamers really like that is lost among the ghosts of the PS2s massive library.