PixlBit

Every month, another year forward in my life. I started 2017 with my birth year of 1967, and now I'm about to enter the 80s in 2018. I'm using this method to choose all types of media, but I'll focus on the games here. 

I was 12 in 1979. Just about a teenager. The thing I played the most was Mattel Electronics Baseball handheld LED game. 

A very simple device, but actually fun. I was huge into little league baseball, and so I was into this game. A neighbor of mine had the football version. He was a football player. Weird how we played electronic games related to our real life sports of choice. I guess it was only natural, but I wonder at it today. Seems strange to me to want to play a virtual version of a sport you play in real life. I guess I like driving in games and I used to drive for a living. I wonder what I should play working in a library?

On console, I played Atari 2600's Adventure. I got kind of freaked out by those dragons that look like ducks in the game. Not for their appearance, but because they would pop out of nowhere and chase you relentlessly until they swallowed you. I've heard the greatest fear a kid has is being eaten. 

I also played Bowling on Atari 2600. This was a very simple bowling game but challenging enough to keep me coming back. You could put spin on the ball in one variation of the game. Throw the ball and give the joystick a nudge at the right moment to get that strike. It's still fun today, strangely enough. 

In the arcades, I probably played that year's hit game Asteroids the most. Pretty fun Atari game, and it was everywhere. I found it biking around town at a Sears department store, at a local hotel, the mall, and pizza shops. 

What do I want to revist though? First off, I'd like to try Richard Garriott's first game on Apple II, Akalabeth World of Doom, the first-person dungeon crawl that started it all. Maybe it's playable on archive.org in a browser? I'll have to check. 

Then I'd like to play Namco's Galaxian, maybe their first hit game. I'll play it on Namco Museum for original Xbox. It seems to be the most recent collection with the game. It's sequel Galaga is much more common. 

Then I'm going to play [already played] a Taito arcade game, Lunar Rescue. This is a game I really like and is kind of a combination of Lunar Lander, Space Invaders and Asteroids all in one. It was meant to be the sequel to Space Invaders. I guess it didn't hit quite as well because I never knew about until a few years ago. 

I played this originally on PSP's Taito Legends Power-Up and couldn't stop, but I traded that game. Luckily it's on Taito Legends Vol. 2 for PS2, and I still have it. I want to play this on the big screen this time anyway.

Finally, I reacquired Atari Flashback Classics Vol. 1 and 2 for Xbox One. I'll quickly revisit Lunar Lander and Bowling on Vol. 1 and Adventure on Vol. 2. 

And that will be my retro for the month. I'm excited to dig into the film/TV, literature and music as well.