Games - Comments by albert

Games - Comments by albert

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Member	Item		Review/Comment
albert 15th Jan 2023		Video Game Elite - Acornsoft (1984)	I loved Elite, there was so much packed into the game that you could easily spend hours and not get bored. Docking took a little bit of practice but once you mastered the skill then it really was quite easy and you could dock quite quickly, [and if I remember correctly there may have been an upgrade for auto-docking that you purchased during your intergalactic trading]. Anyway that was the thing, you started with a really basic spacecraft and through your trading you built up the spacecraft into something that was much more powerful. You could buy 'fuel scoops' which allowed you to refuel your exhausted engines by flying close to the sun, thus eliminating the need to dock and purchase fuel at a docking station, and thereby allowing you to roam the galaxies without limitation. The novel gave you hints on which galaxies and planets had the goodies and the galactic chart helped you plan a journey. You also had to get into 'illegal activity' in order to become an outlaw and I think then be offered amnesty and richer rewards fighting against bad guys plaguing other galaxies. Battles in 3D were fun and when you zapped another spacecraft you got to scoop up their lost cargo, spacecraft upgrade kit, and other items floating around the area. Elite completely shook things, you have to remember that before Elite games were usually 2D pacman/invaders clones, or text based adventure games, or extremely slow 3D maze games. Elite had criticism because of it's line-dawn environment, but 3D gameplay was fast, and showed the capabilities of the Acorn chips, in fact when the game was ported onto other consoles (using shaded blocks) it just didn't work, the limitations of other consoles were brutally exposed - they were just way too slow compared to the BBC machine. Brilliant game.
albert 25th Oct 2017		Video Game Q*bert - Gottlieb (1982)	This was great fun when it first appeared, although game play was a little tricky having to adjust my brain to the 45degree '3D' world (I had similar problems with Zaxxon). Somewhere I did read about the history of the game's development and was amused that some of the features came about through necessity rather than design, such as the speech engine that did not work and instead uttered gibberish. Qbert was originally to be called something like Cube Bert and game play was too easy so they had to add the snake. A solenoid is built into the base of the cabinet to give a thud if qbert falls off the pyramid.
albert 25th Oct 2017		Video Game Space Invaders - Taito (1978)	Original cabinets have the monitor mounted in the base with the image eerily reflected on a sheet of angled glass above, this setup allows for a moonscape-style background to be placed at the back of the cabinet and a colourful bezel to be placed on the front glass. The whole setup looked amazing in comparison to other arcade games of the time.
albert 7th Jun 2017		Video Game Ms. Pac-Man - Namco (1982)	"best fiends" game sponsored this... [YouTube Video] ...I was hoping the jerk would get a killer shock from the monitor
albert 3rd Sep 2016		Video Game Star Wars - Atari (1983)	When Game On visits a city near you go and check it out. They have original arcade machines including the cockpit Star Wars, alas when they were at the Barbican in London (2002 first exhibition) someone had managed to damage the flight yoke - so it was a case of so close yet so far far away.