PixlBit

Last page of notes for Brett Weiss' book The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987.

Turtles! for the Odyssey 2. What's this game like?

                             

Ya, another maze game with possibly some slightly more interesting gameplay twists. The sound, however, is something that could cause seizures. Yikes!

How about a whole 1982 console that is more seizure enducing than the Virtual Boy. Enter Adventure Vision as presented, with dub step accompaniment for further seizure effect, by the Museum of Electronic Games & Art.

                             

What they seem to be doing with this system is pretty cool. I can begin to see some really interesting electronic art possibilities with this flash-in-the-pan console.

But what about Tutankham for the Colecovision? Or as I like to refer to it, 2-Tank-Hams.

                          

Looks like Venture but with better graphics. It's kinda neat. Isn't it interesting to think of how this kind of 2D fantasy dungeon crawl has evolved into a game like Dragon Age Inquisition?

What about Worm Whomper for the Intellivsion?

                        

Pretty cool! It's like Centipede but horizontal. I hope that farmer isn't using DDT. You know that was banned in the 70's. I'm talking to you, creators of Millipede! Worm Whompers reminds me a little bit of Plants Vs. Zombies in the way the insects are moving slowly right-to-left and you are protecting rows of plants.

This book told me about a commercial for Colecovision's Zaxxon. I want to see it.

                       

"It'll blow you away!". Well, Zaxxon was the first game I saw on my friend's Colecovision back in the 80's and it kinda did "blow me away" with its very close similarity to the arcade version. That's what the Colecovision was to me back then, the system that gave you the best versions of the arcade hits.

And that's the last of the 100 games showcased in this book, but there are more games listed on the last pages that just missed the cut. A couple of them caught my attention.

I discovered Frogs and Flies on Atari 2600 fairly recently and had a lot of fun with it with my friend Mark. Later, I found out it was a simplified port of the game Frog Bog for the Intellivision which I tried on Xbox Live's Game Room. The controls for the Intellivsion version are more complex and exact, but I still liked the Atari version better for it's simplicity. Both versions are pretty fun though. Here's a clip from the movie Grandma's Boy where Frog Bog is being played. Thanks to Brett Weiss for referencing this in his book.

                       

Does this kind of thing ever really happen with an Intellivision game? Maybe we should have Frog Bog in a MLG tournament. Ha!

I didn't know that the music for NES game Rad Racer was by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu.

                         

Looks like a good racing game too.

Last game before final words, Smithereans for the Odyssey 2.

                         

"Come on turkey, hit it!" I like the way the Odyssey teases you the whole time. This game is pretty simple but probably a lot of fun with two people. It's makes me think of this game Ballerburg: Castle Chaos I had for the Playstation. It was basically the same thing but in 3D, two castles shooting catapult shot at each other 'til one castle was destroyed.

This book by Bret Weiss was a ton of fun to read. I learned a lot of new things about this era of gaming and got turned on to a few more games I hadn't heard of before. My only gripe is the same that most people would have. HE LEFT OUT MY FAVORITE GAME!!! Or one of my favorites anyway and that would be Sea Battle for the Intellivision. Brett has said that he's not much of strategy game fan, so I guess that's the reason, but I thought it was an important early strategy game and a blast to play. Well, you can't get them all I guess. He managed to cover just about every great game I could think of from this era. Now I can finally take this book out of my already too heavy backpack and put it on the shelf. A keeper for sure.