#yes there were horizontal lines going across the screen for the past 2 years

[jattendschaton]

my laptop is dead dead dead 😞

[antiques-for-geeks]

Games of Christmas Past : Quest for the Rings

Philips (Magnavox) / 1982 / G7000 (Odyssey²) / Originally £19.95

Yes, the Christmas spirit has even managed to permeate AfG towers and in the last editorial meeting those memories of games from Christmas past came flooding back. The good, the bad, the ugly, the over-priced, the cheap and the ones purchased by Grandma because the nice man in the shop said it was the one that all the kids were playing. So naturally, the team were asked to find one game each to write about.

First up, Pop...

When we were asked to write a piece about a game which held strong Christmas memories it took me a while to decide on a single title to tackle. There are so many to choose from! As a kid, Christmas was often the best (sometimes only) chance to get something to play on our gaming machines, and even when I was earning a paycheck I still enjoyed the ritual of making my purchase of a newly released games console or computer during the festive season. 

As a terminal man-baby I still enjoy that ritual; when I finally cracked and bought a Nintendo Switch I needlessly made sure I was unwrapping it as a Christmas gift to myself.

There are a few standouts amongst the many. The year I got a SNES with Street Fighter 2, Pilotwings and the distilled awesomeness that was Zelda 3. The Christmas after I started my first job when I was happily unwrapping an N64 with Goldeneye and celebrating the peace on earth and goodwill to all men with festive long distance sniper head-shots on unfortunate guards.

I honestly wasn’t intending to review this, the last significant G7000 game of my childhood on AFG. That’s certainly not because it isn’t worth remembering; I just have a preference for writing about games that I can actually do justice to by playing them in something like their original form ...if not always on the original hardware. My G7000 is long gone, but I felt the reviews of system classics Satellite Attack and Pick Axe Pete were justifiable because they are simple enough games to get the measure of when played via emulation. Quest for the Rings is a very different story for reasons that will become apparent.

“ You are about to become a legend in your own time and enter an alternate world where dreams (and nightmares) come true with fire-breathing reality. Special microcomputer circuitry will generate the alternate time frequencies and dimension warps necessary for finite control and monitoring of your alter-presence via television - while you remain physically secure in the relative safety of your home dimension. ”

Billed as a part of the Phillips ‘Master Strategy’ series, Quest for the Rings is a very basic game by today’s standards. You and another player travel across the kingdom to try and gather up the 10 rings of power before time runs out and the evil ringmaster plunges the world into darkness (or some Tolkien inspired guff to that effect!). 

There was obviously no way the primitive G7000 was going to produce a credible role playing experience, so most of the richness of the game is generated with a printed game board, counters and a set of written rules. 

That’s right... this is basically one great big board / video game hybrid. That may sound awesomely crummy to you, the sophisticated gamer of 2019, but back in the early 80’s this was very clever stuff. It allowed the designers to deliver scale, complexity, tension and surprise, all while working within the restrictions of a machine that could draw you a few lines and stick people, and sound out with some tuneless beeps and burps.

A box of delights!

This was a game that required collaboration (2 to 5 players!), communication (working together to outwit the enemies!) and imagination (shite graphics!) to get you over the line. That, my friends, is why it’s one of my most fond Christmas retrogaming memories.

Ideally played with 3 people, one takes the part of the nefarious Ringmaster, while the other players choose one of the 4 hero classes:

Warrior: a stick man with a sword! The sword is useful, in that it can actually kill some of the enemies! It’s really short range though, and can only be slashed horizontally.

Wizard: a stick man that can fire asterisks! Not just any asterisks, these are magic asterisks! These confuse some of the enemies, making them spin for a while, and they travel horizontally across the screen for as long as the action button is held. The effect is only temporary.

Phantom: a stick man that can walk though most walls! But not walls of fire! When you’re in the wall enemies can't get you, but they’ll stand around waiting for you to come out, and when you do you’re toast…

Changeling: a stick man that can turn invisible! Invisible stick man cannot be seen by enemies, though he can still be killed by touching enemies. He’s invisible to you too, dear player, which is a pain.

Our bitter experience was that while all the hero classes had their moments you really needed at least 1 warrior on the crew to avoid getting mobbed by the smaller enemies.

The green warrior has a quick slash against the dungeon wall.

The Ringmaster has the important task of setting up the game board. This is done by hiding monster tokens and the 10 ring tokens under location pieces and placing them around the map.

Once this is complete, the players have a limited number of turns to move around the map, entering the locations to gather the rings. The contents of each location is hidden until turned over; the combination of dungeon type and monster type are entered using the G7000 keyboard (keyboard overlay included!). This is one of the few games on the machine that makes real use of that keyboard. Finally the 2 heroes attempting the dungeon are chosen and the next bit is played out in living colour on your TV screen.

There are 4 types of single screen locations the heroes will be met with;

Dungeons: some black blocks randomly spread around the screen! You can’t go through them unless you’re the Phantom. These places are a breeze compared to the rest.

Infernos: some red blocks randomly spread around the screen! Touch ‘em and you die! The phantom is almost entirely useless here. 

Crystal Caverns: some invisible blocks randomly spread around the screen! Like dungeons, but you can’t see the walls until you touch them. A real pain in the ass.

Shifting halls: some black blocks randomly spread around the screen! They shift to the right at regular intervals. You and the monsters can get trapped inside the walls until they move again. A REAL pain in the ass.

The locations are usually populated by the standard bad guys - orcs and firewraths; basically just white and red stick men that shuffle slowly toward you and will kill on touch. However… the crafty Ringmaster can protect his rings with one of two extra perils!

A location with spydroths and doomwinged bloodthirsts will come with a few spider and winged elephant things scattered about. These cannot be killed, can jump at you when in range and are all in all pretty deadly.

A location with a dragon will have a clear band running right across the middle of the screen where a nicely drawn (for the ‘7000 that is) dragon patrols from left to right. If you enter this band he will rush you, shooting deadly fireballs, and will gobble you up upon reaching your burning corpse. The dragon is a real headache; the further away he is when you start crossing open ground the better, and another player running distraction helps too.

The dragon will mess you up... again and again...

Your goal in any location is to reach a ring or an exit. Both players have 1 life per dungeon, and failure means you have to try the location again on the next turn.

There’s one extra twist if you’re playing the game with a third person as Ringmaster; they have a small number of possession tokens that can be played on any location. When that happens the Ringmaster takes over one of the players and can annoy the other player by blocking or attacking them. A simple idea, but great fun!

Having fairly slated the crummy graphics, I’ll just take a paragraph or two to wax lyrical about how good the rest of the presentation was for this game. It came in a sturdy cardboard case that opened out like a jewelry box. Inside sat a beautifully illustrated board and manual, and a plastic tray full of nice solid counters and tokens.

The artwork was top-notch throughout, and really helped our imaginations fill in the massive gaps left behind by the pitiful graphics.

...also, the cartridge had a GOLDEN LABEL! It was beautiful, and I will never forgive myself for selling off my pristine copy a few years back…

Excluding the board-game aspect to Quest for the Rings, I can’t honestly find enough to recommend playing it today. It’s slow paced, and can be in turn frustrating and confusing. What I can’t deny is that it brings back pure waves of nostalgia - much more so than the other games we owned for the G7000. I think this is due to the social nature of the gameplay; though you could mess about in a dungeon by yourself, it really came alive with the full complement of players. Having enough people to play properly was a special occasion in its own right.

So picture the scene: the tree is lit, you’re all stuffed with the first of many turkey dinners. Your cousins are visiting, and you’ve spent the day in a state of hyper-active near meltdown. 007 Moonraker has just finished on the television, and you’re still chuckling about that awesome bit where a pigeon does a double take when Bond takes to the Venetian streets in a hovercraft-gondola. What better way to end an 80’s Christmas evening than to set up a monster 5 player game of Quest for the Rings? 

Score card

Presentation 10/10

The game itself has as much detail as you could ever expect to find in a game for the Philips G7000. Where this really scores is in the packaging, manual and board-game elements, all of which are of the highest quality.  As far as I’m concerned, there are few games of any era that were better presented.

Originality 9/10

The machine was packed with games inspired by arcade hits of the day, but this is a wholly original effort. The bit you actually play on the console is really quite basic, but the way it’s blended with simple board game mechanics made it fairly unique for the time.

Graphics 4/10

It’s a G7000 game, so stick men and blocks abound. The generous 4 is all down to the the dragon, which is pretty spectacular given the general standard on the machine. 

Hookability 5/10

This isn’t a ‘hooky’ game. You have to read the manual and have enough players for a start! Once you had the hang of it the game became a very engrossing challenge, but still some way off a pick-up-and-play title.

Sound 2/10

Very sparse, with some some grating high pitched tones thrown in for things like the Wizards’ spell. No music, unless you count the atonal ear-bleeding loop that plays after you’ve selected your characters that is.

Lastability 8/10

Pretty damn deep for a game from 1982, especially because the unpredictable human factor is built in. If you had at least 3 willing participants this could very well be dusted off regularly for years.

Value for Money 8/10

More expensive than a standard G7000 game, but you could really see where that money went.

Overall 8/10

This score is doubtless tainted by nostalgia, and since I can’t actually play the game any more you should take it with a pinch of salt. One thing I can say for sure is that playing games with other people in the same room as you, either on a board or on a TV screen will never cease to be fun. That remains true no matter how good technology gets at allowing us to physically avoid each other.

Merry Christmas everyone! Stay in school! Try your best not to do drugs!

[thepeakmoment]

Early Peak Returns

Lynch is easily in the pantheon of the great directors of all time. If Mullholland and Inland didn’t clinch, the new Twin Peaks does. As have been saying from the outset, this was going to be Lynch’s magnum opus and a definitive masterpiece. Though I must say, I didn’t expect Peaks to be this exactly. I read a piece just before Sunday that alluded to what Peaks might look like based on his past few films. Very abstract yet artistic — a true auteur for sure. Now a cinematic genius on par with Kubrik? The visuals alone are striking. All the shots look like his paintings come to life, especially the tree in the Lodge with flesh for brains.… I love the panning across the Lodge floor in the opening, gets the viewer disoriented from the start. I only watched P1+2 Sunday night, watched P3 Monday, and tonight I’m rewatching P1–3 before watching P4. So I’m Peaking out tonight. Might watch again before P5 on June 5.… I read Lynch didn’t want Showtime to dump all the parts at once for people to binge watch. After all that effort preplanning for years and then the long production and edit times, plus the build up of anticipation and keeping a tight lid on any leaks, Lynch didn’t want the audience to blow their load so quick binging. Lynch wants us to watch and digest for a period of time before consuming more. The series is so dense now, I would actually prefer a week in between showings. It will end in September.

On May 23, 2017, at 4:37 PM, Erik wrote:

It's hard core Lynch to say the least… I'll do a pro's con's list.

PRO's We now know what happened to Cooper after ep 23. And it's unexpected and interesting. YES. And a revelation in phylosipy, even though he had Bob in him when he exited the Lodge, We also know his doppleganger is on the loose, which is NOT BOB inhabbited. So which is which?  Muahahah.

Ben & Jerry are still together and in their character. Love Jerry's new persuit. doesn't he say most of the Hotel profits come from his pot sales? Something like that. Next time around, I am gonna watch with subtitles on. Good to see the Log Lady, but sad as well. She looks very sick. Albert looks pretty good, knowing how sick he was.

Watching Catherine so frail takes me right out of the moment. Al Strobel, too. And Carl the Giant. But that works in this story because it’s 25 years later.… There was a nice onscreen pause right after Hawk and Catherine hangup. Lynch lingers on Hawk a good 5–10 seconds, I can’t help but believe intended as a moment of silence to Catherine Coulson — somewhat in line with Judge Sternwood’s aside, taking a brief moment. I bet Lynch intended that while editing, since Catherine had died by then. Just a thought.

Watching Catherine so frail takes me right out of the moment. Al Strobel, too. And Carl the Giant. But that works in this story because it’s 25 years later.… There was a nice onscreen pause right after Hawk and Catherine hangup. Lynch lingers on Hawk a good 5–10 seconds, I can’t help but believe intended as a moment of silence to Catherine Coulson — somewhat in line with Judge Sternwood’s aside, taking a brief moment. I bet Lynch intended that while editing, since Catherine had died by then. Just a thought.

Denise Bryson in charge of the FBI  YES! LOLOLOLOLOL what else can I say? Lynch is free to Paint Nightmare images on screen again. This all surpasses anything in Fire Walk With Me. Much more like Lost Highway and his Short Films. And his revenge on Michael J Anderson (who said, "I want a million dollars, I'm irreplaceable"). the Arm has "evolved" into A Failed Art Project Tree!  LOLOL

Lynch is a painter, filmmaker, and also makes music — Twin Peaks is all of his artistic vision in one medium. This series will be talked about for quite a while, and this singular work will make grand fodder for many film scholars. I think Peaks will stand up to one of the best TV series of all time, mostly because of this recent Series 3.

We are hearing back story about Philip Jeffries (if only Bowie had lived) Helps me believe there is a story thread deep under all this that connects things together. May be hard to follow, but it's there. It's like the X-files on outdated acid. Beautifully shot and sound designed.  But we knew that was always going to be true. Not seeing a lot of Snoqualmie yet though.

Love the drone over the Falls shot… dissolved into the wavey red curtains — like a river flowing. Curtains in Blue Velvet intro, too, right?… I notice the titles have more horizontal spacing between characters, undoubtedly adapted to fit widescreen ratio.

New intruiging characteres..  I am liking most of them, though Coop killed some very pretty girls already..(Marsha Marsha Marsha!!) lol  Sorry I had to. :P   There are so many it's hard to keep track. (how many Coopers are there?)  IMDB has updated the Peaks page with all the Actors and their character names. I printed it out and have it on hand while watching now.

Good idea.… On my iPad. Check.

Findingout what some classic characters have been up to.  Bobby? Wow...that was a twist. Natural place for Hawk to be. Lucy Lucy, a career receptionist. Jury is still out on Jacoby. Expanding the story beyond the Northwest. They did so in the film a bit, and we are not stopping now. We have a LOT of ground to cover to find these new locations.  Coop has even gone into Space...or did he?  WTF?  LOL … A return to Glastonberry Grove.  We saw Hawk up there, but then the story just skips the rest. Did he see the curtins? Did he try to go in? He doesn't even mention it when we see him later (Bobby's Reveal). I could not tell if it was the same place they shot the Grove for the series. I will try to get down there and see if the area has been disturbed. But I see numerous shots in The Return that could have been shot up at Franklin Pond.

I looks to me that Hawk saw the curtains, but knowing the Black/White Lodge mythology knows not to fuck with them. I see Hawk having a significant role in bringing Cooper back, I bet he’s directly involved at some point.… Is that what Peaks is officially being names as, Twin Peaks: The Return? I’ve read that a bunch in reviews.

CON's Where the HELL is all the awesome music??? I mean, for real? you got Angelo hired and you are scoring entire scenes with Dave Brubeck's Take 5?  And the Angelo music we do hear is straight off the Original soundtrack or the Twin Peaks Archive. Very strange. That is what is missing for me the most. I want the drums shuffling under the scenes damn it!  Even the movie had this.

I was thinking the very same thing — where’s new soundtrack music and sounds? I only seem to hear a low bass rumble in varying degrees of difference and tone. And it looks like each part is going to end at the Bang Bang Club featuring a different band each night. I get the idea, kinda a good way to feature new music but hope they are atleast songs written for the series and not cherry picked from existing albums. I mean, if Lynch handpicked each performer to appear then ok, I can tolerate that. But why not a Bang Bang house band that played Badalamenti arrangements each night — original compositions of new music for The Return. There would be a slightly more elevated buzz about the series if Lynch graced us with new Badalamenti music.

Ben & Jerry appear for 3 or less minutes in part 1 and it has nothing to do with anything at all and then they are gone. (same with James and Shelly and Mrs. Palmer, even Leland had no purpose).  Where is Audrey, Norma, Big Ed & Nadine, Doc Hayward and the rest? I will wait patiently, but I am missing the RR. (NO pie or donuts references yet at all, one coffee moment so far)

…One coffee moment so far that leads to death! Or is it the act of sex that leads to death?! I don’t know… maybe one and the same. But I agree, I really wish there is more conventional story line featuring the characters of TP, because that’s what made Peaks, as well — not only the Lodge, Giant, Dwarf, BOB, et al. It was the quirky characters that we all enjoyed. Even if the storyline plays us new ones, I’d like to see a narrative that I don’t have to decipher or wait until the scholarly writings appear.

The Music Video endings. Sorry, but really? The songs and cinamatography are not even all that special. It's like listening to KCRW in the morning.lol  When Julie Cruise was on stage, it was special. The music was special, the atmosphere was special. It was an important moment in the story.  But I guess it's a good way to segway into the end credits, but also seems like a waste of story telling time. Where is Mark Frost's influence and dialogue? We may never know. But it's never gonna be all that quirky funny abusrd character dialogue. It's almost like there are TOO many characters. (Mullholand Drivesh) 

I was thinking this a lot, too, yes. Did Frost sign off on all this? Doesn't he know Lynch is very imaginative and has a penchant for tearing up scripts and shoots whatever he wants?? What’s the script for all the Lynch imagery that has only sound, no dialog?

And his scenes in the Casino? Priceless. But I hate seeing Cooper as a total idiot, unable to speak or compreihend his surroundings after he fell out of the sky.  Oh well, I know he is coming back soon.  So all of this adds up to a Solid A rating from me. VERY strong and VERY engaging. I am on board for the run. Hope we get to watch at least one episode together this summer! PS...Better get your arm checked out.  lol

Let's descend on Dom for a Sunday viewing and dinner. 

On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 7:33 PM, Dom wrote:

So I have now seen each of the 4 episodes at least twice. I am fucking living it. Here are some random thoughts....if you have not seen all 4 episodes you may want to stop reading now. `Those shots of New York City were the most beautiful I have seen taken of NYC. Fucking Epic.

In some reviews I’ve read, there’s been several mentions about the NYC shots, how impressive they are.… Dom, I knew immediately as it was playing out onscreen that you were loving the couple getting decimated! And with good reason —it was easily as terrifying as the White Walkers. 

`All the scenes in NYC are fucking brilliant. `Evil Dale is fucking awesome. Another fucking grand entrance.

I frickin’ luv the new Dale! What a fucking bad ass. Kyle plays him well, too. I totally believe him as (big bad) BOB Cooper. 

`Weird they went out of their way to say James has always been cool because its universally known James is weak sauce.

`Will every episode end in with a musical performance at the Roadhouse?

`What the fuck is Jacoby up too?

`So happy Jerry is in the weed business.

`The first scene with evil Cooper in that trailer with those weirdos was awesome. What did Ray and Darya give to the freak in the wheelchair as they walked by?

`The last 10 - 12 minutes of the 4th episode with Gordon and Albert is maybe my new favorite sequence of all Peaks. Fucking perfect. Fucking awesome acting by Lynch there too.

`The beginning of the third episode with that chick with her eyelids sewn shut was also hardcore Lynch. Love it.

`I honestly felt Bobby Briggs was going to turn to the light side and join the Bookhouse Boys based on the dream his father had about him 25 years ago. I did not expect him to be a fricking deputy though. I wonder if he is a Bookhouse boy now though?

I'm about to go watch some more. I truly hope you two are enjoying it as much as I am. Channel 33 "The Ringer" did a great break down of the return of Peaks today. Worth the listen.

Peaks TV Entertainment Weekly A Twin Peaks Podcast Twin Peaks Unwrapped Twin Peaks The Return: A Podcast

I woke up today and could barely move my right arm. No joke. Its still kind of numb. Thank god its not my left arm or I would be freaked out.

Cant wait for episode 5.

June 4