#exp. 2601

[everygame]

Well, I absolutely did not expect it to take an entire year from exp. 2600 to the next issue, but such is life, honestly. Either way I'm terrifically pleased to announce that exp. 2601 will be debuting this weekend as part of Spring Online Canzine 2024, Canada's premiere zine festival running April 13th to 21st. 

This issue covers the eleven games released for the Atari 2600 in 1978, with essays on Space Invaders and the year 1978 to provide context. Even if you're not particularly interested in the Atari 2600, I think there's a lot in here for anyone interested in video games and their history, so I hope you'll check it out.

As with the first issue, exp. 2601 is being published in a signed, numbered limited edition of 52 and I'm also making it available as a PDF and ebook for people who don't want a little object, but still want something to read on an iPad or a Kindle with a bit more focus than they'd give to a webpage.

I am opening pre-orders here today, in advance of Canzine, so I can announce the issue with enough time to ensure subscribers know about it and are aware that they automatically receive 35% off in our ko-fi shop (including on new issues.) It's just $1 per month to become a subscriber, and you'll also get new articles a week early (as well as regular exclusive articles.) Physical copies will be sent out in the last week of April, with digital copies arriving as soon as Canzine begins.

In addition, and not to bury the lede here, for the first time since 2020 my ebook collecting the best of the original run of exp., exp. negatives, is also available for pre-order today, and will be on sale during, and only during, Spring Online Canzine 2024 (to reiterate: April 13th-21st).

If you don't have any of my available digital publications (exp. 2600, 2601, and negatives) I have also made a bundle of all three available for pre-order with a $2 discount for all (and if you're a subscriber, that stacks with your discount!)

I'd like to thank everyone reading this for their support across the years and let you know that there are more exciting things in the pipeline for exp. this year. Did you know it's been ten years since I started Every Game I've Finished? That fact might become important...

[oliveratlanta]

Doraville’s Northwoods remains a midcentury modern treasure trove. Just ask the neighbors

Marketed in the 1950s as “homes of smart design and superior construction,” these residences have stood the test of time

Since the very early 1950s, the midcentury modern homes of Northwoods in Doraville have attracted the attention of architecture aficionados.

Northwoods, the state’s first Planned Unit Development, began with 15 homes “built in either ranch or contemporary style,” as stated in the May 1954 issue of American Builder, by local contractor Walter L. Tally.

The modest, 1,100-square-foot residences were based on plans by Atlanta architects Ernest Mastin and John Summer.

Originally built as affordable housing for workers at the nearby Doraville General Motors plant, the homes were so popular, the neighborhood exploded to more than 700 residences by 1962.

Through the years, Northwoods retained popularity among enthusiasts of the MCM genre, even as appreciation for the style waned.

More recently, many neighbors have collaborated to celebrate the community’s history. After much lobbying by local residents, Northwoods was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

They also installed midcentury-inspired entrance signs leading into the neighborhood, and obtained street-sign toppers that note Northwoods’s history.

A 1950s advertisement for Northwoods.

Since moving into the neighborhood in 2001, Northwoods resident and Doraville City Council Member Joseph Geierman has seen too many changes to count.

“When I moved to Doraville, I don’t think midcentury style or ranch homes were thought of as anything special at all,” he says. “We were lucky that, unlike other neighborhoods in metro Atlanta, we did not see the spate of teardowns that could have destroyed a lot of what makes Northwoods special.

“I’m thrilled that young families are moving in and renovating these historic homes.”

When the neighborhood first took shape, the three-bedroom homes—some with one and a half baths and family rooms, according to a 1950s advertisement—were priced between $13,350 and $15,300.

Today, those same homes are listing between $100,000 and $500,000, such as Jennifer Sibley’s home, which is currently listed at $315,000.

Her 1954 house at 2601 McClave Drive is slightly larger, with 1,264 square feet.

eXp Realty

Sibley purchased the home two years ago and conducted a full renovation, with an updated kitchen, remodeled bathroom, and a new deck behind the house.

“When this neighborhood came on my radar a few years ago, I couldn’t wait for the right house to come on the market,” Sibley told Curbed Atlanta via email. “After living here for two years, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

True, Sibley’s selling her current home, but she’s searching for another property in the neighborhood, where she can apply what she’s learned about renovation and design.

Another home down the street is reaching higher, in terms of resale price.

At $465,000, the property at 2804 McClave Drive is larger, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,200 square feet.

Select Premium Properties Inc.

Built in 1958, this home is essentially all new construction, given that renovation work stripped the structure down to the studs. Still, the property aims to pay homage to neighborhood history while embracing the latest technologies.

Blending yesterday with today seems to be the motto for Northwoods these days.

“Both old and new neighbors work together to make this neighborhood a truly unique place,” says Andrew Morris, president of Northwoods Area Neighborhood Association. “Our eclectic and growing group loves to gather for all sorts of social events, and we work hard side by side to maintain and improve the neighborhood.”

source https://atlanta.curbed.com/2019/5/17/18629527/midcentury-modern-atlanta-doraville-northwoods

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[everygame]

"One of the finest of his generation of critics"—Kieron Gillen (Die, The Wicked + The Divine) Fifty-two essays composing the very best of veteran video game developer and writer Mathew Kumar's "Every Game I've Finished" project, published for the first time in print with commentary from the author. Releasing October 21st, 2024 in print, and available for pre-order now for Kindle or as epub/pdf. Games covered include legendary icons (Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord), indie darlings (Papers, Please), beloved obscurities (Attack of the Friday Monsters!), Triple-A franchises (Mass Effect) and modern classics (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Essays take the form of everything from straight critique to strategy guide, and represent an overview of the state of the art in video games across its history distilled into ten years of highs and lows. A book that takes video games as seriously as any art form and as deserving of collected criticism. “Mathew’s project, to finish the games he plays, and to write about those he finishes, can be simply stated but it represents a noble act of critical commitment. When taken in concert, these reviews –– unflinchingly acerbic, truthfully stated, and deeply unconcerned with external factors of fashion or consensus –– provide both a diary of criticism, and a long view of the judders and lunges of this still-evolving medium; A charter, too, for what we might cherish, and what we might disdain, in this emergent art form.”–Simon Parkin (A Game of Birds and Wolves, Death By Video Game)

---

Phew! When I announced exp. 2601 I mentioned it was the ten year anniversary of Every Game I've Finished in 2024 and that it might be important, and here it is, a celebration of my last ten years of writing that you can buy as a book that you can own in your house. I didn't originally plan it this way! I intended to release Every Game I've Finished 14>24 as a (somewhat) quick and dirty ebook release, and I did the majority of the work at the beginning of the year pre-exp. 2601, but after realising it would only take a "little" more work to self-publish the book physically I decided if I was going to vanity press, I might as well do it for real.

Of course, it's taken a lot longer than I expected, but I finally have a proof in my hand that I'm satisfied with, and it really does look very nice. 

Vanity press or not, there are a few vectors to this release. Firstly, if you've ever enjoyed any of my writing of the past ten years, here's a nice way to support me and either get a lovely physical or handy digital edition. Secondly, if you haven't, here's a way to immediately get fifty-two of the best articles I've written which you can peruse at your leisure.

Thirdly, I just honestly think that there should be a culture of criticism around games just as there is for literally every other art form, and I think that this book existing makes as much sense as, say Clive James On Television, so I'm just fucking going for it.

That all said, Every Game I've Finished 14>24 is being released on October 21st 2024, and is being released in print on Amazon. I'm no happier about this than you are, but it's the simplest method. I would love to offer copies here on Ko‑fi for launch day, but they (sneakily) give author copies a long lead time and (of course) it's impossible to compete with Amazon's postage rates.

Amazon also--for bafflingly unclear reasons--won't allow me to offer a pre-order of the print edition, so please mark the date in your calendar or follow me on Bluesky or (spit) Twitter if you want to get a copy.

However! If you're just looking for the ebook, you can pre-order it on Kindle or epub/pdf right now! Subscribers will receive their shop discount on the digital edition, so don't forget you can support me for just $1 a month. This release has been, and I know it's a cliche, a real labour of love, just as Every Game I've Finished has been a labour of love for video games (even if it doesn't always read like it.) I can't wait for you to get your hands on it, and I'm so thankful for all of you who have joined me on this journey.

[everygame]

Wizard of Wor 

Developed/Published by: Dave Nutting Associates / Midway Released: 5/06/1981 Completed: n/a Completion: Played it a bunch? Version Played: Midway Arcade Origins

The Xbox 360 marketplace is dead.

Now, I know that’s a strange way to begin an article about an arcade game from 1982, but it’s the reason why I played it. With Microsoft shuttering its Xbox 360-specific digital storefront, I was driven to pick up any games that I hadn’t made a point of picking up already, and was surprised to find a couple of things. Firstly, that the Xbox 360 was, for me, largely a system I played before ever starting writing this project, and secondly I probably had about everything I ever wanted for it, bar things that I wasn’t willing to shell out for–and in many cases, those would remain backwards compatible on Xbox One/Xbox Series, which means that if I was desperate to play them I could buy an Xbox One for probably cheaper than you can get a 360 now.

What this meant, ultimately, was that I ended up going completely off piste and buying a Kinect for $10 so I could make sure to download a bunch of “Kinect Labs” games before they became totally inaccessible, but while I was doing that I realised I was unclear if I bought anything on the backwards compatible store after the old marketplace shut down if I could get it on my Xbox, so just in case I picked up Midway Arcade Origins, which, shockingly, is the latest collection to feature some of the greatest games of all time–Defender, Robotron 2084, you know what I’m talking about–and it came out in 2012!

It seemed worth a fiver.

Now, to quickly capsule review it: it’s… barely worth a fiver. It comes from the most bare-bones era of collections, with no filters or anything (though don’t forget you can run an Xbox 360 on a CRT. I did, for years) and to be honest I’m not sure about how good the emulation actually is. I also forgot that the Xbox 360 d-pad is absolute bobbins.

But no matter. I have it now, so I thought I’d play Wizard of Wor.

Designed by Dave Nutting Associates, whom I last had a run in with discussing their version of Taito’s Western Gun in exp. 2601, Wizard of Wor is a game that made me realise that I was probably a little harsh on 1978’s Fire Truck, because this is probably only the second co-op action game ever–and it’s a shooter. I mean Dave Nutting and Tom McHugh basically made Doom here.

Well, sort of. Really, Wizard of Wor exists in the context of Berzerk, which is really the first sort of hint to what games would eventually become. Designed by Alan McNeil, himself once a Dave Nutting Associates employee, in Berzerk you run around randomly-generated screens shooting robots and trying to avoid “Evil Otto” who appears if you dally too long. There’s no much to it, but it featured a synthesised speech chip telling arcade patrons it had “detected” coins in their pocket, and was suitably different from the more restricted, focused play in Pac-Man or Galaxian.

I suspect–though look, I’m just hypothesising–that Dave Nutting Associates felt they couldn’t take an ex-employee creating a hit lying down, and decided to do them one better, with Wizard of Wor similar in some respects but with more graphics, more monsters, more design, more speech (and good lord does it never shut up–though it’s hard to actually understand compared to Berzerk) and even co-op play.

Although fondly remembered, Wizard of Wor is… clumsy–and it’s not just that player one starts on the right. Taking Bezerk’s play but crushing it into a Pac-Man like maze with large graphics mean there isn’t a ton of room for manoeuvre, and trying to move your “worrior” into position–or even just around corners–is honestly rather frustrating. Enemies move around randomly and you don’t want to walk into them, and while the game (strangely) has a “bump” mechanic where if you are “between” spaces as you move into enemies you bump back, you end up having to turn corners, head away from enemies, and only then turn around to shoot them, and it’s slow.

The trick, really, is that the game doesn’t really work unless you’re playing it in two-player. While you can accidentally kill each other, the trick is to constantly play with your back to each other meaning that, technically, you should never be caught unawares. But there’s actually another little trick to the game–it features line-of-sight on all but the weakest enemies, meaning you have to rely on an on-screen radar, making doing things like turning corners even more dangerous (and annoying), so even then you aren’t completely safe.

The goal–such as there is one–is to clear each screen and when possible kill the bonus “worluk” creatures who grant you double score on the next screen, and keep that chain going, accepting that certain screens (“The Pit” which has no walls) and rare appearances from the Wizard of Wor (who teleports around) will act as harsh skill checks for even well coordinated co-op players.

The thing about Wizard of Wor is that it’s… fine. It’s just simple enough to make you want to play it more, but it’s also just annoying enough to make you want to stop. It’s very close to something great, but it would Eugene Jarvis who would get there, taking Berzerk to the next level truly with Robotron 2084 just a year later.

Will I ever play it again? That all said, if you see this in the arcades it’ll be a jolly old time in co-op if you can find someone dedicated to trying for a high score with you.

Final Thought: A weird thing about Dave Nutting is that not only is this huge name in the early days of arcade games, he also designed the Jeep Wagoneer, so is in some respects at fault for the rise of the SUV and global warming by creating a car that literally got eleven miles to the gallon. 

Hmm. Seems bad!

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[everygame]

Space Invaders Part II

Developed/Published by: Taito Released: 7/1979 Completed: 04/06/2024 Completion: Able to polish off three waves counting shots. I could do better.

Not exactly by design but I’ll admit the last few weeks of Every Game I’ve Finished have been like “you should really buy exp. 2601 for context” and this week is even worse, because my article on Space Invaders there is such a banger.

However, in precis, I look at Space Invaders like Bishop looks at the Alien: I admire its purity.

I mean, there really is nothing like it. The heartbeat. The clean, immediate, graphics. You not simply against the machine, but your own ability to count shots to ensure you get the highest score. That beautiful Pepper’s Ghost.

Space Invaders Part II, which Tomohiro Nishikado pitched by writing “Space Invaders” on a big whiteboard and then adding an Y with two lines through it (this caused a lot of confusion in the office because the symbol for yen in Japan is generally 円 not￥and no one thought “Space Invadersy” was a good name) is therefore in an awkward position. Change too much, and the intense and specific flow is gone. Don’t change enough and it’s not really anything.

Of course, you have to remember the context of 1979. Everyone is still Space Invaders mad, and really all you need to do is offer people enough novelty to keep them playing. To this end, Space Invaders II offers a few things. Most simply, it allows people to actually log decent high-scores with their initials, making in the version for glory hunters, and adds some little interstitials which interestingly prefigure those that would be seen in Pac-Man not too soon after. In terms of play, however, the main changes are that there are now Space Invaders that split into two when shot, meaning that the formation can now have gaps (gasp!). Interestingly, this doesn’t happen until the fourth wave in the Japanese original, but for the US Midway release, titled Space Invaders Deluxe (guess they didn’t think it was different enough to deserve that II) you actually get to see this happen from the second wave onwards. And UFOs are slightly different: you can still count shots to ensure you get 300 points, but some of them blink on and off and can only be shot when visible, which weirdly gets you a flat 200 points in Deluxe but 500 in Part II.

And that’s not all! For the truly dedicated, you now get a 500 point bonus for the last Space Invader you kill if it was one of the octopus ones (the lowest two rows) and a 1000 point bonus if it’s the very bottom left one, requiring some creative shots (I certainly haven’t managed it.) Oh, and UFOs can sometimes drop new invaders into the formation, ruining everything!

It sounds like a lot, and it does actually significantly increase the mental load compared to the original, but in particular if you’re playing the Japanese original you’re going to have to be extremely good at Space Invaders to really notice most of it.

Which, to be honest, I don’t mind. If you’re used to playing Space Invaders, you slip into this like a warm bath, and for Pepper’s Ghost fanatics, the machine has an even more beautiful backdrop, where you’re now defending a wee moon base, your bases fitting perfectly on top. I mean for that alone I’m tempted to rate this higher than the original.

This really does manage to ride the line of being different enough, but not too different; it feels like exactly what it was intended to be: the version you upgrade to once you feel like you’ve mastered the original. 

Will I ever play it again? Whenever I see a Space Invaders machine, be it the original or Part II, I’m gonna play it.

Final Thought: Speaking of: I took a trip down to the Rochester Museum of Play to see their new video game focused expansion and sitting in the middle of their Video Game Hall of Fame, was an original Space Invaders cabinet. It was superb and practically worth the trip on it’s own. In fact, it made me fall in love with the “real” experience that after googling around I discovered that desktop toy maker MyArcade makes a tiny desktop arcade Space Invaders that marvellously uses the real pepper’s ghost technique for the screen, and I was so excited to pick it up for it’s honestly quite reasonable price until I found out that it doesn’t feature the 23-15 UFO shot timing, rendering it sort of pointless. Admittedly there’s also the Numskull quarter arcades Space Invaders if you’re absolutely determined for “the real thing, only smaller” but comes in at an eye watering $340 and I literally cannot imagine using those ridiculous wee controls. I guess I’m stuck driving to Rochester. Could be worse I suppose, I love a garbage plate!

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[everygame]

Atari Basketball (Arcade)

Developed/Published by: Atari Released: 5/1979 Completed: 03/06/2024 Completion: Was winning handily when my credit ran out.

Released almost a full year after the release of Basketball for Atari 2600 (covered in exp. 2601: buy a copy today!) Atari Basketball is a bit of a strange duck, almost the opposite of what you generally expect of the arcade/home version divide: while you wouldn’t hate playing this in the arcade, it wouldn’t feel too much of a stretch to call this a pale imitation of the 2600 original.

And I do mean pale. Similar to the rest of the Atari coin-ops of the era, the arcade version is in black and white, which gives the game the feeling of watching one of those old-timey basketball games rather than the dynamic sport I’m sure it already was by 1979. Just like the 2600 version, you’ve only got the one button which either launches you into the air to block or shoots (you aim your shots based on when you release the fire button) meaning that you have to rely on crowding your opponent to steal the ball, though it seems more difficult. The  twist here, unusually, is that the game uses trackballs rather than a multi-directional joystick, which was still not the standard in 1979; Atari had previously done this for Atari Football at the end of 1978 (which I haven’t written up, because it’s two-player only) seemingly inspired by an earlier Sega game about proper football that is almost impossible to Google (have a go and see if you find any more than this flyer.)

Of course, because I don’t have access to a real machine, I can’t tell you if using a trackball here makes the game especially fun or anything, but I suspect it doesn’t do much. What really stands out about Atari Basketball instead is its extremely aggressive monetisation. A credit (or two) only buys you between 30 seconds to 2 minutes 30 of play before it asks you to stump up more cash, calling to mind if, as a kid, you ever tried to play NBA Jam in the arcades and realised with horror that your 20p might only get you a quarter. Actually that probably made more sense in the US where a quarter got you a quarter?

Here though there isn’t even a sense of a game to win, with no trappings like quarters to let you know when a game would be over. And the AI is if anything more rudimentary than the 2600 version, seemingly less viciously determined to crush your dreams, so once your time is up you think “I guess I won?” and I assume move on.

Will I ever play it again? No.

Final Thought: Like most of Atari’s arcade output in this era, this is trapped in the mindset that an arcade machine is something that people play with others essentially as a distraction–at a bar, maybe as a bit of friendly competition. But by this point, the hypnotic Space Invaders had changed the context so much this can’t seem anything but old hat. Especially when you could be playing that for a while, going for a high score for your pennies rather than getting mere seconds of a rudimentary basketball game that, honestly, would be more fun at home.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[everygame]

Gridrunner (VIC-20, C64, Atari 8-Bit)

This post, in which I write about the three (original) versions of Gridrunner included in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is for subscribers only! You can subscribe for just $1 a month at https://ko-fi.com/mathewkumar, but if you don’t fancy that, you can read or re-read my review of the release as a whole. And don’t forget there’s years of articles in our archive, and physical issues of exp. 2601 are still available for pre-order until the end of the month.

[everygame]

Atari Baseball (Arcade)

Developed/Published by: Atari Released: 6/1979 Completed: 04/06/2024 Completion: Well, I definitely played it!

Baseball is, absolutely, not my forte. Since writing about Baseball on NES I’ve become a little more au fait with it, having now been to see the Blue Jays (twice!) and the Dodgers (once) in their home stadiums, and largely what I’ve learned is that baseball, the game, is an excuse to eat nachos out of a tiny baseball helmet and remortgage your house to drink one (1) beer (as a millennial, this is impossible to me. Though both stadiums had decent veggie dogs, so that’s nice.) Essentially, it’s nice to sit outside, snack, and sort of half-watch something where something interesting might happen, but if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

You may love baseball and consider that I’m being terrifically unfair–but there’s honestly something to appreciate about the game’s low demand on your attention.

The same, of course, can’t be said about trying to play a baseball video game, where you unfortunately or not, have to actually learn and understand all the rules of the game to play it “properly,” even here, in Atari’s 1979 crack at the format.

They’ve previously had a couple of goes at this: 1976’s Flyball, which featured batters and pitchers only, and 1978’s Home Run for Atari 2600, which is a mess outlined in exp. 2601 (buy now!) but this is their first proper attempt at a “real” baseball game, and it weirdly succeeds. Well, in some ways.

A cocktail cabinet designed with two-players in mind, it is again in black and white, but unlike basketball, where it doesn’t feel right at all, baseball still feels like an old-timey sport so it’s fine. Cleverly, as you switch between batting and pitching the direction of the screen changes so you’re always viewing the action from the right angle, which is good, but what’s not so great is the graphics are absolutely tiny.

Now, it’s obviously hard to fit the batters, umpire, pitcher and outfielders all on the screen at this time (and have them move–though the outfielders don’t actually move independently) so I probably shouldn’t complain, but it’s not so much watching baseball from the nosebleeds as from a position in space where you’d have trouble breathing, and I assume in 1979 each player basically had their nose pressed against the glass to even just read the scores.

It makes the experience a bit underwhelming, but Atari Baseball plays, from my somewhat uneducated position, almost as good a game of baseball as the NES would over four years later, with the same level of control over pitching and batting requiring timing and thought, proper scoring, and a brutal CPU opponent, though you can’t steal bases in this one.

The issue, of course, as it always is with these sorts of things, is that as an ancient sports game that’s just trying to recreate the sport there is absolutely no good reason to play this over literally anything else. There’s no twist, no spark, no nachos in a tiny helmet.

Will I ever play it again? No. I guess unless I'm at an arcade with someone who loves baseball and we need somewhere to rest our beers (I can afford a beer at a barcade).

Final Thought: There actually was originally intended to be a wee twist to this, admittedly (not that it would be too exciting these days). This was supposed to be Atari’s first game with digitised speech with digitised umpire calls, but the inclusion of a speech board was nixed for (I assume) cost reasons.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[everygame]

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Atari 2600) 

Developed/Published by: Parker Brothers Released: 7/1982 Completed: 21/04/2023 Completion: Got a high score of 1216 on easiest, but also played it in smart bombs/solid walker modes. I could do better! Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

As a hardcore follower of everything I’ve been up to, I’m sure you already know I’ve been working my way through Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, but what you won’t know, probably, is that when I reached Attack of the Mutant Camels I had a minor crisis: do I go on and play it without the foreknowledge of The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600, or do I go back and play that, even though it’s jumping several years on from where I’ve got in the Atari 2600 catalogue? But today is also the last day to pre-order a physical copy of exp. 2601, so writing about another Atari 2600 is almost promotional. [You can still order a digital copy!]

It gets me started on playing through all the Star Wars games chronologically, too, because it’s, surprisingly, the very first licensed Star Wars game. You’d probably think that would be Star Wars in the arcade (the very first arcade game I ever played, fact fans!) what with it being based on the first movie and everything, but nope, it’s this, released over a year earlier but still two years after The Empire Strikes Back. It’s unclear if the decision to go with The Empire Strikes Back was an attempt to catch the (two year old) zeitgeist or was design led–there’s an interesting contemporary interview with the designer Sam Kjellman and programmer Rex Bradford in the January 1983 issue of Electronic Fun with Computers and Games where Kjellman says “we considered the Death Star scene in the first movie” but there’s not much to make of it either way (there’s a great paper prototype image in the article, though.) And weirdly… Atari’s arcade Star Wars would be released the same month as Return of the Jedi in cinemas!

The Empire Strikes Back is a post-Defender game–one of the earliest, in fact, to not simply be a direct clone, following really only Choplifter on Apple II (Chopper Command, ironically also helicopter based but a “true” Defender clone predates it on the Atari 2600, though). Using the Battle of Hoth as its setting, the player controls a snowspeeder and is attempting to defend Echo Base from the approaching AT-AT Walkers, with a game over if they manage to make it to the base (which unfortunately isn’t marked in any way other than it is, I guess, just off to the right somewhere.) Unlike the movie, however, where AT-ATs are famously impervious to the snowspeeders attacks, here you are stuck shooting them to death, with each taking 48 shots to die, colour cycling so you know how damaged they are, because you can’t knock them over or anything. In fact, rather hilariously, the manual makes a point of the fact that you can’t shoot their legs, which is probably the one bit of them that would make sense to shoot.

There are, however, lots of surprising quirks and designerly touches to what would, otherwise, be a fairly straightforward shooter. The game has the usual overblown “32 games” claim that 2600 games basically always did (4 modes in single and two player, with five difficulty levels, basically) but the modes include the ability to make the walkers solid (which actually feels sort of more right, even if it is harder) and to add “smart bombs” which the walkers can fire and which follow you around and you need to shoot to survive (which I can take or leave). Whichever mode you play, walkers occasionally reveal flashing weak points you can shoot to destroy them instantly, which creates this interesting risk-reward as you have to fly around them to try and shoot the weak point in time, putting yourself in danger.

Most interestingly, however, you can actually repair your snowspeeder by landing it, up to two repairs per life, with your snowspeeder able to take up to five hits. And if you can survive for two minutes without dying, you “use the force” and are invincible for 20 seconds and can then repair your snowspeeder up to two more times. So the game also layers on damage management–you don’t want to be constantly repairing, because you lose precious time and you only get two, so you have to very carefully track how many hits you’ve taken, especially as the walkers get more and more powerful the more you take down. There’s honestly quite a lot going on.

There is, however, no ending to the assault, as it’s a pure score chase. Released earlier in the 2600’s lifetime it might have been saddled with a time limit (after two minutes and forty-five seconds the rebels escape…) but it’s definitely better this way even if you really don’t get a breather. This fact, however, leads to the rather absurd fact that Video Review magazine enlisted SF author and legendary prick Harlan Ellison to write a review of this despite the fact that he had never played a video game and clearly hated them. Readable in a couple of his essay collections (I borrowed a copy of Sleepless Nights in the Procrustrean Bed from archive.org, which cements how essential its borrowing library is for research) it’s a genuinely rather unhinged screed in which Ellison accidentally implies that he’s had sex with a non-zero number of ten year-olds:

“No ten-year-old I’ve ever encountered can write Moby Dick, create a Sistine Chapel fresco, or fuck with any degree of expertise.”

I guess at least he didn’t enjoy it???

Anyway, he spends most of it whining that you can’t win, referencing the Myth of Sisyphus because, you know, he’s sooo clever. 

I’m not particularly interested in having an argument with a long-dead self-confessed nonce–in fact I rather enjoy that he was so pleased with his zingers that he wrote a post-script a year later where he crows over the video game crash. And I suspect he forgot all about this by the time he would, hypocritically, declare himself “greatly amused by the prospect of ‘a game that you cannot possibly win’” with Cyberdreams 1995 adaptation of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (according to the Digital Antiquarian in a brilliant article as always.) But I will say that Kjellman and Bradford’s take on The Empire Strikes Back is better than it really has any right to be. The controls are far from perfect, and the game struggles massively with the fact that your snowspeeder’s position on screen often makes it hard to react quickly to walkers or their attacks. You can almost see the Llamasoft inspiration in how much the game makes you feel like you’re an annoying fly, buzzing around a quadruped, as you have to carefully “loop” your snowspeeder around in front of or behind the ship trying to maximise your hits (unless you have to suddenly dash for a weak point.) But there’s something there, and you can strategise–the manual recommends a farming strategy where you weaken the front and back walkers so you can have more time destroy the ones in the middle, and while it’s hardly Geometry Wars or anything, there’s a pleasure in attempting it.

Enough of a pleasure, actually, that I played this for much longer than I expected. For 1982–the year of Dig Dug and Deadline–The Empire Strikes Back ain’t bad! Lighten up, Harlan!!!

Will I ever play it again? I could be convinced to. I suspect I’d rather play it again than the next Star Wars game chronologically: Star Wars: Jedi Arena.

Final Thought: Ellison ends his postscript, joyful at the video game crash:

“At moments like these, I find my reluctant acceptance of the transient nature of the human race ameliorated. Perhaps the cockroaches won’t take over in my lifetime.

On the other hand, the spirit of James Watt is still with us.” 

The heck did he have against James Watt???

Hi. Thank you so much for being a supporter. I’d like to ask you for one more favour–could you check out the fundraiser my best friend Steven is running to help cover travel insurance costs? I know there are so many deserving causes, but Steven has a stage 4 brain tumour and it would mean the world to me if you considered donating, or sharing his page, to help make his remaining time the best ever.

[everygame]

Break Thru 

Developed/Published by: Data East Released: 1986 Completed: 18/04/2023 Completion: Got to the end by feeding credits. Version Played: Retro Classix / MAME Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

Stop! Before you read this, you should know that you can only order a physical exp. 2601 from my ko-fi shop until May 1st! Remember, as a subscriber, you get 35% off instantly!

You may have seen recently that the “Retro Classix” line of Data East re-issues, available on GOG and Steam, are being delisted at the end of April, and wondered “should I get those before they’re gone?” Well, I’m here to answer this, because I took a cursory look at them, downloaded the one that I think is earliest in the Data East chronology (Express Raider might be earlier?) and gave it a shot.

No. You don’t want to get any of them. Break Thru is probably the worst retro release I’ve ever played! To be clear, I’m not talking about the quality of the original game (which I’ll get to–it’s no great shakes, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever played) but the release, which is bare-bones to the extreme. Buy this and you get the arcade rom… and a 3D arcade wrapper that makes it feel like you’re playing it in Grand Theft Auto 3. You can, thankfully, turn that off, but what you can’t turn off is terrible smeary graphic smoothing, and you–at best–have to mitigate it by also using the included CRT filter. Now, I’m not a fan of “perfect pixel”–I prefer even a weak attempt at a CRT filter, usually–but the one here is nasty (maybe even worse than the Astro City Mini) with horrible curvature and a general dullness.

And that’s… it. There’s no save states, no dip switches or settings, nothing else. You'd be better off being handed a zip file with the rom in it.

I’m not entirely sure of the provenance of this series of Data East reissues. Before the Retro Classix line these were all included in the similarly weird “Johnny Turbo’s Arcade” series for Nintendo Switch, which all seem to have been yanked from the eShop at the end of October 2023 (which is after the Retro Classix versions were put on sale.)  I assume that whoever has the Data East rights has been selling them off cheaply but with limited and non-exclusive rights, which is why you get things as tossed off as this, but it’s interesting to note that the Johnny Turbo’s Arcade releases managed to have better graphical options and save states, so they at least did the bare minimum.

(Though it gets odder. The Retro Classix versions were also on sale on Switch until November 2023, from the same publisher as the Johnny Turbo’s Arcade series, “Golem Entertainment” though they all have the same crappy emulator wrapper as this release, even though the at least slightly better Johnny Turbo’s Arcade versions were already there. Confusing!)

Anyway. You now know to let the Retro Classix line go off gently into that good night in the hope that the next suckers to buy a job lot of Data East releases goes to the effort of putting them out nicely (I’m looking at you, Digital Eclipse). But should you play Break Thru anyway? The answer to that is… also no!

Gradius was released in early 1985 and set the benchmark, and this doesn’t even reach the lofty heights of Sega Ninja. A side-scrolling shooter with five levels, the “twist” here is that you’re driving a car, though the stand-out thing about the car is that it does two things that cars don’t normally do: it shoots bullets and it can jump, awkwardly, into the air. The latter quirk is supposed to be the highlight–as you now have to leap over obstacles, and can even leap to land your car on enemies and squash them.

There’s one power-up (a three way shot that’s generally on a timer, but sometimes it isn’t) and a small number of enemies. Shockingly, there are no bosses.

The thing about Break Thru, really, is that it… sucks. There’s little to no variety, the enemies don’t do anything much (only a few have interesting attack patterns) and the controls feels so bad that I actually had to test this release against the MAME release just to make sure the emulation wasn’t fucked up here. I mean, to be fair, the emulation could be fucked up on MAME as well, but the car in Break Thru controls horribly. You can speed up, but it feels like it makes everything on the screen speed up, and there’s no sense of friction. You get the idea–that you’re supposed to speed up to dodge bullets or enemies–but it just doesn’t seem to work.

In fact, once you know the levels, the majority of Break Thru is absolutely trivial, with the only speed bumps the few enemies that you only seem to survive randomly. There’s a helicopter that I couldn’t kill that you just need to be lucky to leap past, and a gauntlet of small tanks in the final level that almost goes full bullet hell.

I guess there’s actually a wee animation at the end to make this feel worth beating, but without a final boss or anything it feels wildly anti-climactic. Everything about this, really, is just very, very bad.

Will I ever play it again? If there really is a Digital Eclipse Data East collection I’ll boot it up… once.

Final Thought: Something else a bit strange: there were 17 Johnny Turbo’s Arcade releases, but only 12 “Retro Classix” releases, which is why I picked up Break Thru and not Shoot Out (I think the earliest of the Johnny Turbo releases.) I have spent too long thinking about this!!!

Hi. Thank you so much for being a supporter. I'd like to ask you for one more favour--could you check out the fundraiser my best friend Steven is running to help cover travel insurance costs? I know there are so many deserving causes, but Steven has a stage 4 brain tumour and it would mean the world to me if you considered donating, or sharing his page, to help make his remaining time the best ever.

[everygame]

Gradius (NES)

Developed/Published by: Konami Released: 25/04/1986 Completed: 14/02/2024 Completion: Finished it, fake 1CC (saving at the start of each level.)

Stop! Before you read this, you should know that this is the LAST WEEK to order a physical exp. 2601 from my ko-fi shop before it goes off-sale. Remember, subscribers, get 35% off instantly, and it's just $1 per month to support my work!

So as advised by me in 2023, you (in 1986) have chosen to save your christmas money and not buy the (honestly good!) Famicom port of Twinbee and instead wait for Gradius, because Gradius is better than Twinbee and Konami have already proven they can nail an NES port. Have you been rewarded?

Have you ever. In fact, I can’t get over how good Famicom owners were eating in 1986 already (well, if they were savvy with their purchases, anyway) considering how spotty really stand-out releases have been to this point. Sure, this port is far from arcade perfect, but it still feels like you’ve got Gradius at home, and there’s a giddy joy to that even if in 2024 I could have just, you know, booted up the arcade original.

The issues are clear: there’s a graphical downgrade with a bit of flicker. You can only have two options (boo!) and the laser weapon isn’t one long beam (boo!!!) so it just seems sort of wrong. Levels that used to have some vertical scrolling have none, and the famous laser cage never shows up either.

But… it doesn’t really matter, because it feels exactly like Gradius anyway. Yep, you start too slow and dying at the wrong point can lead to a unavoidable death spiral, but they’ve cleverly made this a bit more accessible for the home audience by including some warps (Super Mario Bros. strikes again!) and the famous Konami code (which you enter here while paused to get a fully upgraded ship). The code doesn’t feel that much like cheating considering that in the arcade "Nemesis" version, the game gives you basically a full upgrade worth of power-ups every time you die. What seems to be a slight reduction in difficulty–and definitely removing vertical scrolling–makes this a touch easier and honestly a bit more pleasant than the arcade original, so much so that I had loads of fun trying to 1CC this.

It’s probably not an essential cart, but when I think about making a shelf of Famicom games, Xevious is on there and this is being put next to it, so..

Will I ever play it again? I’ve still got the PC-Engine version to play!.

Final Thought: It’s literally only in the last couple of days that I’ve thought that “Gradius” is just a mis-translation of gladius (a Roman sword.) It’s better this way.

Hi. Thank you so much for being a supporter. I'd like to ask you for one more favour--could you check out the fundraiser my best friend Steven is running to help cover travel insurance costs? I know there are so many deserving causes, but Steven has a stage 4 brain tumour and it would mean the world to me if you considered donating, or sharing his page, to help make his remaining time the best ever.