Second Generation Appreciation Thread

[J T]

I was raised on Colecovision. I need to get me one of those Flashbacks, though it's missing many of the games I grew up with. Back then I had Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Frogger, Lady Bug, Popeye, Smurf Rescue, Venture, and Zaxxon. My friend had Space Fury, which I regularly borrowed. I loved all these games (well, Smurfs a little less than the others, but still loved).

I also will stop and play almost any arcade game from this time period if I see it out in the wild. I love these old arcade games. I especially love the old white glow of vintage vector and raster graphics like Asteroids or Space Invaders when overlayed on a hand-drawn backdrop. Doesn't this kind of image just make you smile? There's something about a game like that. It's a crude machine that relied more on the humanity of the drawings around it to give it sci-fi authenticity, though at the same time, there are few game characters as simple and recognizable as the pixelated Space Invaders aliens. It's really just brilliant.

I want to mention a special PC game at the tail end of this generation though in 1984, and that is Elite. The game was written in machine code, and though the designers only had 14 kilobytes of memory space to work with on their old hardware, they still managed to create a game with eight galaxies and 256 planets that basically is the grand-daddy of all space trading and sci-fi flight simulator games. They also were some of the first game designers to ever use wire-frame vectors to simulate 3D graphics. Oh, and did I mention that their development team consisted of two guys (David Braben and Ian Bell). Yeah. The fact that they did all of that in the early 80s still blows my mind today. It is still to this day considered the most optimized PC game of all time.

You can still get a lot of the Elite games for free, or just play the original in your browser.

The most recent sequel to Elite (Elite: Dangerous) just released and now boasts the entire Milky Way recreated to scale. That is 400 billion star systems. These guys think big.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Nice post, J T.

And Elite is a solid game indeed. Even got a NES port in Europe!

Today I was pleased to discover that Hardcore Gaming 101 has this listed as a "Theme".
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catalo ... -older.htm

[Gunstar Green]

I have mad respect for Elite as it serves as the basis for other games I love like Wing Commander Privateer and Freelancer.

[BoneSnapDeez]

So yeah. Missile Command rules. RULES.

Anyone know how many unique levels are in this beast?

Juggling a bunch of these old games. I'm still plugging away at Dig Dug II, Bomb Jack, Popeye, and BurgerTime...

[Gunstar Green]

I don't know about any of the various ports but in the arcade Missile Command stops getting harder at level 19 and repeats that difficulty until level 256 then it resets back to the beginning.

[BoneSnapDeez]

^ Good info. I'll keep pluggin' away.

Anyone ever play SNK's Sasuke vs. Commander from 1980? It's a fixed shooter like Space Invaders and the enemies are ninjas dropping throwing stars. The twist is that defeated ninjas drop the bottom of the screen instead of simply disappearing and will hurt the player upon impact. Three lives, no continues. There's a humorous Game Over "cutscene" where your character (the "good" ninja?) is shown tripping over a rock.

[Gunstar Green]

Trippy looking game, no I've never heard of it. Those little ninjas look hard as heck to hit.

Speaking of SNK I remember years ago I was excited to play the arcade version of Vanguard for the first time. It was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games when I was a kid. I unfortunately didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Still, Vanguard is really damn impressive for 1981. Scrolling and shooting in multiple directions? Madness!

And the advertising art had eye laser grandpa! He looks pretty shocked about the eye lasers. Could this be the true origin of the Phalanx guy?

[CRTGAMER]

Trippy looking game, no I've never heard of it. Those little ninjas look hard as heck to hit.

Speaking of SNK I remember years ago I was excited to play the arcade version of Vanguard for the first time. It was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games when I was a kid. I unfortunately didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Still, Vanguard is really damn impressive for 1981. Scrolling and shooting in multiple directions? Madness!

And the advertising art had eye laser grandpa! He looks pretty shocked about the eye lasers. Could this be the true origin of the Phalanx guy?

The 5200 version is close top the Arcade cabinet.

@ JT - Great post! I first played Elite on the C64, really a great game. Sadly instead of getting into the huge commerce trading, I spent most of the time as a pirate shooting lasers at the ships leaving the space station.

[BoneSnapDeez]

@Gunstar Green

Vanguard is tight. I have it on 5200, it's a surprisingly decent port. I'd like to check it out on 2600 too.

Incidentally I fired up SNK Arcade Classics 0 for the first time last night (hence the Sasuke vs. Commander post). It contains Vanguard II (which I didn't even know existed) but unfortunately not the first game.

[ExedExes]

The arcade Vanguard is super sloppy. Lots of collision issues. But this is through emulation so I'm not 100% sure if the real cab has these issues.

I prefer the 2600 port. Colorful, difficulty ramps up well and I could play it forever.

Vanguard II, well... SNK,