Favorite Game made before 1985 or extremely rare games.

[VCDHunter]

The three Atari games I liked the most were Space Invaders, Breakout and Pinball. All the hours I spent playing those .....

The little bastards growing up today just don't know how good they have it, do they? My little 12 year old cousin utters the word "Atari" with so much contempt I want to slap the shit out of him.

You should slap the shit out of him. I had some killer games on my ST520 : Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, Stunt Car Racer, Blood Money, Xenon 1 & 2, FOFT and many, many more.

Little bastards nowadays . . . .

[SLK001]

Planetfall.
An old freeware game for the PC called "Sailing".

[Capmaster]

Oh ...I forgot to mention, about 1984 or 1985, the original Microsoft Flight Simulator that came on 5" floppy. It had the 1918 dogfight mode that was absolutely addictive

[BJ_M]

anyone remember the orig. "lesure suit larry" ?

i can't remember what games came with my old Tandy 1000 , but it had a great spreedsheet and word proccessor that came with it ..

[VCDHunter]

anyone remember the orig. "lesure suit larry" ?

Yeah - I think they are still going IIRC.

[Capmaster]

anyone remember the orig. "lesure suit larry" ?

i can't remember what games came with my old Tandy 1000 , but it had a great spreedsheet and word proccessor that came with it ..

Remember Quest For Tires that came with the Tandy? It wasn't too bad.

The app was Deskmate or Deskview ...?

[tgpo]

I remember in school playing Super Bunny and Oregon Trail. Very fun games!

Super Bunny!

[gitreel]

Pitfall

[srenaud]

Atari 2600: Demon Attack from Activision
C64: Ultima 4, Dragon Wars

and many Odyssey 2 games

[northcat_8]

The three Atari games I liked the most were Space Invaders, Breakout and Pinball. All the hours I spent playing those .....

The little bastards growing up today just don't know how good they have it, do they? My little 12 year old cousin utters the word "Atari" with so much contempt I want to slap the shit out of him.

Then per our spanking thread...beat his ass, he probably deserves it, if not for disrespect, I'm sure there is some other reason that is just unknown right now.

I am talking pre-1985 here, in 1985 I was 16 and at that time my favorite games required one of 3 things, females, alcohol, or fighting. I still play 2 of those game regularly...by the way...in the "Female game, has anyone beaten the "Bitch" level?? I can almost clear it but then I **** up and have to start back at the beginning of the level. (I sure wish they would have put a save point in there somewhere).

My favorites were:

Donkey Kong
Combat - tank game
River Raid
Kaboom

Although much like BJ_M, I prefered Chess, Euker, Spades, Poker, or Monopoly.

[Doramius]

I remember Oregon trail. It was dang hard to shoot the deer at that time. There was also some tractor trailer game, I think 'Cross Country', that was pretty addictive having to pick up and drop off shipments within a certain time. I think Carmen Sandiego first debuted before 1985. I miss those classic Apple IIe games.

Ahh, the days of slacking off at the school library.

Also, let's stick to popular and favorite rare titles. Atari's E.T. was buried for a reason. I heard a gas station now sits on the site where the cartridges were buried. They couldn't even dump them in a landfill. They bought a space in Mexico and some buldozers and buried them under dirt and tons of concrete. It's a shame recycling wasn't very big back then. They should have based The Exorcist on this story.

[northcat_8]

I remember Oregon trail. It was dang hard to shoot the deer at that time.

the oregon tail game I remember was all text

[DeleriumMDK]

For a rare game...Radiant Silvergun on Saturn. Pure 2-D twitch shooter goodness. As before 1985 I couldn't say as I was born in 1982, I can't remember playing a lot of games until I was 6 or 7 and that was playing on an Atari 2600.

[teegee420]

I remember Oregon trail. It was dang hard to shoot the deer at that time.

the oregon tail game I remember was all text

Jesus Christ, did it have a punch card interface too?

[BJ_M]

The first computer game is generally assumed to be the game Spacewar!, developed in 1962 at MIT (Stephen Russell a.o.). Spacewar originally ran on a PDP-1 computer the size of a large car. By today’s standards, the graphics are rather primitive, although less primitive than many games form the 1980’s. The game as such is not bad: Two players each control a spaceship circling a planet. The players can shoot each other, turn their ships, and accelerate. The goal is - naturally - to hit the other player before being hit yourself.





The first "text adventure", Adventure (Crowther & Woods 1977) was created 15 years after Spacewar!. Unlike the action game, an adventure is not based on fast reflexes; the time of the adventure game is on pause when the player does not do anything. In the text adventure, the player communicates with the computer textually - movement is initiated by typing the direction one wants to move in. A typical start of Adventure looks like this (">" marks what the player types.)



you can read all about it here
http://www.jesperjuul.dk/thesis/2-historyofthecomputergame.html

[thayne]

Tank
Defender
and Asteroids

[fmctm1sw]

Atari 2600: Demon Attack from Activision
C64: Ultima 4, Dragon Wars

and many Odyssey 2 games

Demon Attack was a wildly popular game by Imagic actually. Imagic also turned out the even more popular Atlantis. It was recently discovered that there was an Atlantis 2 that was used in tournament play years ago and given to the participants. Extremely rare....

[Sifaga]

brings back good memories

i used to hang out at a place called video village, used to ask people for their last ball on the pinball machines then i would clock up a few free credits and then sell the credits to people, great way to waste a few months.

some machines if you hit the coin eject button hard enough you could get some free credits, some machines if you turned it off and on it would give you one credit.

bomber jack was another game i used to play

was Space Invaders the same everywhere as in did you all count the number of shots you made so you could get the 400 points on the tank ? it was a multiple of seven if i remember correctly

[fmctm1sw]

The three Atari games I liked the most were Space Invaders, Breakout and Pinball. All the hours I spent playing those .....

Space Invaders is what put the Atari 2600 (more accurately termed VCS back then) over the hump. Sales for the Atari were not so hot until 1980(?) when Sapce Invaders came out. Sales exploded and millions of Space Invaders games were sold. Word was the programmer made hardly anything off the game. That kind of stuff is what led to Atari employees quitting and forming their own software companies, like Activision and Imagic. If you notice, games made by Activision and Imagic feature information and even photographs of the programmer.

[fmctm1sw]

was Space Invaders the same everywhere as in did you all count the number of shots you made so you could get the 400 points on the tank ? it was a multiple of seven if i remember correctly

You lost me on that one... There were seven rows of 8 aliens and an occasional UFO that went across the top of the screen. And three "shields" between you and the aliens. Ever wonder how people got hugh scores? Hold down the reset betton and turn the game on. It gave you two shots when you pushed the button!

[Sifaga]

I think this is how it went

you would shoot 7 shots ( sometimes into the barriers) then wait for the tank if you hit it it would be 400 points

then you shoot 21 shots, if your running out of time you would shoot into the barriers

and wait for the tank and it would be 400

if you lost count the tank would be a different value

the best players could get the maximine number of 400 point tanks per round

they would leave 8 space invaders to go across the screen until the last moment to get the last 400 point tank

the way to piss someone off if they were waiting for the tank was to press the shoot button, then they would shoot like crazy to get to 21 shots again

[glockjs]

my memory is kinda fuzzy before 85 since i was born in 81


from what i remember of the 2600 i loved to play:
jungle hunt
crysalis palace
keystone capers
ms pac man

i dont really know what qualifys as a rare game?

master system bump n run was pretty fun(im a poet and didnt even know it)
nes was always final fantasy, mario 3, zelda. blaster master too!
genesis was shadow run, and joe montana football. sonic was pretty bad ace for the day oh yeah and x-men too
snes was secret of mana, ffII, ffIII, chrono trigger

[Sifaga]

I just found this

To achieve higher scores, count the number of shots fired from your base. Begin counting shots as soon as each level begins. Fire 22 shots and then wait for the UFO to cross the screen. Use shot number 23 to hit the UFO and you will receive 300 points. After hitting the UFO, start counting your shots again. This time, count to 14 and use the 15th shot to hit the UFO. Once again you will receive 300 points. Repeat counting using the 14 shot method until the screen is cleared of enemies. When the next level starts, repeat the procedure using 22 shots, 14 shots, 14 shots, etc...

[fmctm1sw]

I just found this

To achieve higher scores, count the number of shots fired from your base. Begin counting shots as soon as each level begins. Fire 22 shots and then wait for the UFO to cross the screen. Use shot number 23 to hit the UFO and you will receive 300 points. After hitting the UFO, start counting your shots again. This time, count to 14 and use the 15th shot to hit the UFO. Once again you will receive 300 points. Repeat counting using the 14 shot method until the screen is cleared of enemies. When the next level starts, repeat the procedure using 22 shots, 14 shots, 14 shots, etc...

Interesting, I don't remember that one.

[Roundabout]

I worked as a manager and tech at an arcade back in 1981 - 1983, I remember one thing in particular:

On "Tempest" (X/Y Vector type game) you could let the game end with the last two digits of your score being 46, then game over...when the game goes back into attract mode, it would have 40 credits on it.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on, when I saw kids playing all day and not putting money into it. Later, the company put out an updated ROM that prevented this from happening. Apparently, this was an intentional "defect" put in by whoever programmed the game so they could play free (after the first quarter, that is) all day long.

Most of the games had a "tilt" switch to reset it if you tried to slam the coin door for credits. I saw a lot of different tricks to get free games. Some of them, you could rub your feet on the carpet to build up static, then "shock" the game on the coin door, and it would often give free games. On Donkey Kong, kids were lifting the front plexiglass out and reaching down inside and pressing the coin switch until I caught them.

Other favorite tricks: using a straw to squeeze through the hinge on the coin door to hit the switch (worked on a few games), using string glued to the quarter to hit the switch and pull it back up/out of the coin slot (foiled by razor sharp string cutters we added to the coin mechs), and one other thing: taking worthless ChuckECheese tokens and smashing the edges to make them the same size as a quarter, worked more often than not.

Kids are resourceful, I'll say that much. The one good thing was finding 90% Silver Quarters (pre-1965) often in games. Obviously stolen from parents coin collection. I had one kid give me 6 Kennedy Half-dollars from 1964 in mint condition. I asked where he got them from (though I already guessed) and he just shrugged. I gave him his quarters

Working there was an interesting experience, but not one I care to repeat. It took me years to get all those sounds out of my head.

[fmctm1sw]

using string glued to the quarter to hit the switch and pull it back up/out of the coin slot

Guilty as charged....

[fmctm1sw]

Here's a twist to Space Invaders:

[quote="Atari Age Website"]
This is one of the more interesting Atari collectibles. Coco-Cola commissioned a game from Atari to give to their Atlanta employees. In this case, Atari redesigned Space Invaders so that you shoot the letters "P E P S I" instead of space creatures. There were 125 copies of this game made. There is no real box for this one, just a flimsy Styrofoam shell. So it isn’t really a prototype, but it wasn’t a commercially available game either. And no, Coca-Cola does not have any copies left.[/qoute]

[srenaud]

Atari 2600: Demon Attack from Activision
C64: Ultima 4, Dragon Wars

and many Odyssey 2 games

Demon Attack was a wildly popular game by Imagic actually. Imagic also turned out the even more popular Atlantis. It was recently discovered that there was an Atlantis 2 that was used in tournament play years ago and given to the participants. Extremely rare....

My mistake, long ago and was in high school at the time. I had it for the Odyssey2 but played it a ton on my friends 2600 also.

Arcade favorite was Robotron 2084, still love that game.
Another was Mach 5 (I Think) Fighter/bomber planes imposed on photo quality terrain.

[fmctm1sw]

Atari 2600: Demon Attack from Activision
C64: Ultima 4, Dragon Wars

and many Odyssey 2 games

Demon Attack was a wildly popular game by Imagic actually. Imagic also turned out the even more popular Atlantis. It was recently discovered that there was an Atlantis 2 that was used in tournament play years ago and given to the participants. Extremely rare....

My mistake, long ago and was in high school at the time. I had it for the Odyssey2 but played it a ton on my friends 2600 also.

Arcade favorite was Robotron 2084, still love that game.

Another was Mach 5 (I Think) Fighter/bomber planes imposed on photo quality terrain.

Imagic made only two or three games for the Odyssey 2 I believe. May be rare if you still have it....

[burnman99]

I just found this

To achieve higher scores, count the number of shots fired from your base. Begin counting shots as soon as each level begins. Fire 22 shots and then wait for the UFO to cross the screen. Use shot number 23 to hit the UFO and you will receive 300 points. After hitting the UFO, start counting your shots again. This time, count to 14 and use the 15th shot to hit the UFO. Once again you will receive 300 points. Repeat counting using the 14 shot method until the screen is cleared of enemies. When the next level starts, repeat the procedure using 22 shots, 14 shots, 14 shots, etc...

Interesting, I don't remember that one.

That trick works, I've tried it! Saw it in a book or magazine or something. The "46" trick on Tempest works also. Lots of free games there. There was another number on temepst 48 maybe, you could stop on and would let you start on any level!

I think My favorite games are Gorf, Missile Command, Tempest Donkey Kong, and a rare game called Lost Tomb, Anybody remember it?!


Later

Rog