PixlBit

The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987. Why books don't have multimedia enhancements is a missed opportunity to continue making physical books relevant. Put some chips in the book to instantly send links to your phone so you can watch videos or hear music relevant to what your reading. In this backwards age, I have to do it manually through this blog.

Bounty Bob Strikes Back: This was the third game by Big Five Software, the makers of Miner 2049er. Why the two sequels to Miner were called Bounty Bob etc. . . and not Miner 2049er: Bounty Bob etc. . . . Seems like a bad business decision to me, but the company did well, at least until the video game crash of '83 when they started to go under, making this 1985 game super rare.

Darn I really dislike the sounds on the Atari systems. I think I'm going to have a seizure if I listen to much more of it.

Bump 'N' Jump: I've played this on the NES and really liked it. It's the best version out there I think, but the Intellivision version described here in this book isn't bad either. I'm definitely going to have to have this as part of the collection if I get back into vintage Intellivision again sometime.

I like the music.

Carnival: I kind of assumed this might have a light gun periferal, but I never heard of one for this Colecovision version. Turns out you don't need one. . . But I want one for this.

The music for this Colecovision version is by Juventino Rosas called Over the Waves. Classic carnival music.

Look at those Russians go.

And speaking of music. High praise was given to the music for Castlevania for the NES. I need to hear that right now.

Darn this is some sweet chip tuneage. Gotta play this sometime.

Cat Trax, a Pac-Man clone with cats and dogs instead of Pac-mans and ghosts for the Arcadia 2001 was mentioned. What the heck is an Arcadia 2001, I'm thinking. Turns out it was a console that came out just after Colecovision in 1982 just in time for the video game crash of '83. It was dead 18 months after it's release. I guess that's why I never knew about it.

So far in this book there have been a fair amount of arcade ports featured. It got me thinking. I used to scoff at all arcade ports to these old systems because they mostly aren't as good as the arcade games they came from. I think I was biased though by, in these modern times, having access to the arcade roms. There are some good things about these ports to golden age consoles. Some have an extra level like Burgertime for the Intellivision and some have extra features like the Atari 7800 version of Centipede which has a two player competitive mode. I'm benefiting from a new appreciation for some of these arcade ports by reading this book.

On a related (but only just) topic, I have to say, the DDT bomb used in Millipede seems totally wrong to me now that I've read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which was all about the permanent damage done to wildlife by DDT. What were they thinking in 1982. Silent Spring came out in 1962 and DDT was banned in 1972 in the U.S..  Not good.

On a even more related subject, how about the song by Buckner and Garcia "Ode to a Centipede". I want to hear that one.

God this is some kind of 80's awful.

Finally, the Atari Flashback consoles have been mentioned quite a bit and they seem very cool to me now especially since they have some 5200 and 7800 versions of games I've only played on the 2600. I'm going to have to pick one up next time I see one.

Atari Flashback 5 came out in October this year! I'll have to consider getting it.