whoa never heard of Bee Wary. My dad had a TRS80 but it was for work, not video games. Grrr.
Obscure gaming videos
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 On 12/27/2016 at 08:13 PM by SanAndreas See More From This User » |
I thought I'd take a break from all the Christmas stuff to post some game videos.
My videos of old games tend to be a bit different. For one thing, I tend to highlight obscure games. Pretty much everybody knows what games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros are, and I figure that there's not much point doing videos of the more famous classics unless you're going for a world record or a record-breaking speedrun. I therefore tend to show videos of less well-known second tier games, or even games that are so obscure, the number of people who've played them could fit inside a medium-sized closet.
For another thing, I'm using a freeware video capture program. I don't have slick video-producing or editing equipment. I also don't have a huge amount of time to devote to making slickly produced Youtube videos. At some point I'm thinking of buying one of those boxes that will let you record video from consoles that don't have that ability built into them like the PS4 and Xbox One do, but for now, this is what I've got. I'm not PewDiePie or Markiplier. :)
Bee Wary (TRS-80 BASIC, 1979)
In this game, you play as a bee. You're trying to sting a spider, while the spider is trying to eat your bee. That's it. It's surprisingly well-animated and sounded for a BASIC program on such an old computer. If you successfully sting the spider, which is difficult because the hit detection is very wonky, you get treated to her death throes. The game doesn't really have an end, and this is all there is to the game. It doesn't even have a two-player mode where player 2 is the spider. But this is one of the earliest games I remember playing at home.
War of the Bugs, Or Monsterous Manouvers in a Mushroom Maze (Armenia Ltd, Arcade, 1981)
When the convenience store near my home in Oklahoma got this machine in, I noticed that this was a bizarre knockoff of Atari's Centipede. It may or may not have been made in Armenia, which was part of the Soviet Union back in 1981. Yes, it really is spelled that way in the game. Maybe it was made by a bunch of Armenian guys living in the US, I don't know. Like in Centipede, you're shooting at a multi-segmented creature and other insects in a field of mushrooms. However, the scrolling stars in the background, the colors, and even the soind effects identified this game as being built on a hacked version of Namco's Galaxian arcade game. The mushrooms take four shots to destroy, just like in Centipede, but instead of showing damage, they change colors when you shoot them.
And you know, back then, these kinds of knockoffs were common, especially on home systems. Companies wanted to cash in on the popularity of arcade games such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders, but since Midway and Atari snapped up most of the US licenses to these games, companies had to make their own versions.
Mega Zone (Arcade, Konami, 1983)
A vertical scrolling shooter I used to play at a grocery store back at home. Ah, for the days when arcade games could be found in every grocery store and gas station out there! This game never got ported to any of the home systems or computers back in the day, and never even made it into Konami arcade collections. The only time I know of that this game had a home release was for the now defunct Xbox 360 Gameroom. It's a bog-standard shooter with a lot of eyeballs in it. The final boss is even a face with these eyeballs.
So there you have it. Three of the weirdest video games you never heard of. I hope you've enjoyed this little slice of gaming history. I've played all kinds of obscure games like this over the years, and I'll probably keep posting new vids periodically, since it doesn't really cost me anything in time or money. Until next time...
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