Memory Bank: Caverns of Mars (1981; Atari)

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Near the top of the list of my most fondly remembered early-1980s games (right beside Realm of Impossibility, perhaps), would be Caverns of Mars (1981).

I had never heard of the game before my father -- the vice-principal of Mountain Lakes High School in N.J. -- brought it home one day on a floppy disk.  At the time, I believe the school was going whole hog into computers and Atari in particular, and he had a friend, Frank Pazel, who was constantly shipping us home new games in either cartridge, cassette, or floppy format.  

We had an Atari 800 as I’ve written about before, and many of these games were amazing.  I remember enjoying a lot of them, including Murder on the Zinderneuf, and Temple of Aphsai.

But Caverns of Mars was designed by a high school senior named Greg Christensen in 1981, and it quickly became a smash-hit for Atari. An 8-bit game, it positions the player aboard a small spaceship that travels down a vertical shaft, into the red planet’s rocky interior. 

Along the way, the ship must destroy other ships, fuel depots and the like. The longer you play, if memory serves, the faster your rate of descent, so that soon it becomes insanely difficult preventing your ship from getting pulped on the rock face.

It’s a basic game by today’s standards, I suppose, but as an eleven and twelve year old, I found it highly addictive. I would play the game for hours, and it really got the adrenaline going. 

I showed some images of the game to Joel at one point and he told me, with apologies, that it looks “derpy” by modern standards. 

In this case, I think he may be wrong. Some of the games with basic graphics today, like Undertale thrive on elements not directly related to visual definition, it seems to me.  

Caverns of Mars may not be in the same league, but it was a great game for its time, and a key memory from my first days with the Atari 800. 

Hard to believe it was more than thirty years ago that I first encountered it…

Memory Bank: The Atari 800

I was a lucky kid growing up in the 1970's. I was the first one in my neighborhood to own an Atari 2600.  But also, so far as I know, I was the first one to possess an Atari Computer.

I remembering seeing the Atari 400 in stores, the one with the “flat” or membrane keyboard, and wishing we could get it. The console was released in November of 1979, and was produced until the mid-1980s.

But instead of the 400, my parents sprung for the Atari 800 – which was marketed more as a home computer and less as a game system -- and over the years we had numerous accessories for it, including a light pen, joysticks, a cartridge drive (yes, that was a thing) and then later, a floppy disc drive. 

But the Atari 800 had games too, and we got upgraded versions (with better graphics) of Pac-Man, Missile Command, and -- my favorite -- Attank.  I would arrive home from school in the afternoons and wait for my Dad to pull up on his motorcycle after a hard day’s work.  He was vice-principal at a high school nearby, in Mountain Lakes.  Once he was home, it was on, and we’d go up against each other for three or four games of Attank on the Atari 800. It was awesome, and a good memory.

I also remember playing Star Raiders on the Atari 800 for hours.

'

The Atari 800 was also the first word processing device I owned. And in high school, I wrote my papers on it, and also my short stories and movie scripts (The Intergalactic Police!).  I got to know that system, and that keyboard, really well.  I may owe my writing career to the fact that my parents purchased that machine for the family.

When I went away to college in 1988, my parents gave me the next generation of Atari computer: the much-more sleek Atari 1200XL.  That was a good machine too, but I missed the big-boxy, typewriter-like Atari 800.

Video Game of the Week: Krull (Atari)

Video Game of the Week: M*A*S*H* (Atari)

At Flashbak: A Look Back at Atari's Pong

This week at Flashbak, I also remembered Pong, a game from Atari that was described as having revolutionized “amusement games” in the 1970s.

Here’s a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/product-revolutionized-amusement-game-industry-remembering-ataris-pong-1972-51027/ )

“If memory serves, my first reckoning with the video game revolution -- home or arcade -- came in a now-defunct department store in Totowa, New Jersey, called Big Guys. 

There, on Saturday nights, perhaps once a month, my parents would buy my sister and me root beer floats from the ice cream soda fountain, and then we would all proceed to the store’s mid-way where my folks battled it out at a bright yellow arcade cabinet: Atari’s Pong

Created by Allan Alcorn for Atari and released in November of 1972, Pong was advertised as a “new product…a new concept…a new company.”

Atari also billed itself as an organization “now integrating digital computers, video technology, and laser films into a host of new game breakthroughs.”

The game and the gameplay itself seem primitive by 2016 standards, but both were amazing in the 1970s.  The game is basically a top-down view of a ping-pong table with two paddles (controllable by the users), and a “dot” mimicking the action of a bouncing, ricocheting ball.  Winners with the high-score would win.

Before long -- just two or three years, actually -- Atari released a home console devoted exclusively to Pong through Sears Department Stores. I remember my parents debating whether or not to buy it, but finances precluded a purchase at that time…”

Continue reading at Flashbak!

At Flashbak: Atari 800 - The Timeless Computer

This week at Flashbak, I remembered my first home computer: The Atari 800.

Here’s a snippet and the url (http://flashbak.com/timeless-computer-remembering-atari-800-47864/):

“My first home computer was not the TRS-80, or even the Commodore VIC-20, both of which I’ve looked at here on Flashbak in recent weeks. 

Instead, it was the magnificent (though admittedly boxy…) Atari 800.

I remembering seeing the Atari 400 in stores, the model with the “flat” or membrane keyboard, and wishing we could get one. The console was released in November of 1979, and was produced until the mid-1980s.

But instead of the 400, my parents sprung for the more expensive Atari 800 -- which was marketed more as a home computer and less as a game system -- and we soon had numerous accessories for it, including a light pen, joysticks, a cartridge drive and then later, a floppy disc drive. 

The Atari 800 was advertised as “The Timeless Computer” and advertising was aimed at those consumers who had “no personal experience” with computing, but who nonetheless wanted to join the 1980s home computer revolution.  A key sales point was that the system -- which came with “expandable memory, advanced peripherals and comprehensive software” – would never grow “obsolete.”

Ads for the Atari 800 asked a specific question: “How sophisticated can a personal computer be if it’s outdated in a year? Or even a month?”

This marketing gambit clearly has some drawbacks since people today aren’t using the Atari 800 anymore. 

Not so timeless, after all?

On the other hand, I owned and operated an Atari 800 for five or six years, and that’s better than the lifespan of recent Dell, Sony, and HP computers that I’ve purchased…most of which tap out after two years or so.

But back to the Atari 800. In addition to raw computing power, it had great games too, including Star Raiders, Centipede, and Missile Command. I also used a word processing program with the Atari 800 (Word Perfect?) I still remember typing out high-school papers on that 800...”

Continue reading at Flashbak.

At Flashbak: More Games; More Fun - Remembering the Atari VCS

This week at Flashbak, I recalled the dawn of the home video game age, and the arrival in my life (and the culture) of the Atari 2600 (or VCS).

Here's a snippet and the url (http://flashbak.com/games-fun-remembering-atari-vcs-46013/ )

"I officially entered the video game era on Christmas morning, 1978, when my parents -- or was it Santa Claus? --- gave me and my sister a remarkable and unforgettable gift: the Atari VCS (Video Computer System), which also goes by the designation of Atari 2600. I was nine years old.

We enthusiastically the unwrapped the huge, flat, rectangular box, but had no idea what an Atari was. My folks explained, simply, that it is a game you can “play on the television.”

That sounded….different.

My father hooked up the Atari to our family room TV set (a zenith, color model), and quickly unpacked the first game cartridges: Combat, Missile Command, and Space Invaders.

We played Space Invaders first.  And from the first moment the strange aliens began their downward march on screen (to a military-sounding thump…), I was hooked."

Continue reading at Flashbak.

Advert Artwork: E.T. (Atari Edition)

Memory Bank: Caverns of Mars (1981; Atari)

I’ve been playing a lot of Terraria lately on the X-Box with my eight year old son, Joel.  The 2-D sand-box game is -- at least visually-speaking -- a throw-back to an earlier age of video-gaming, and the experience got me thinking about some of the first computer games I ever played.

Near the top of the list of those early 1980s games (right beside Realm of Impossibility, perhaps), would be Caverns of Mars (1981).

I had never heard of the game before my father -- the vice-principal of Mountain Lakes High School in N.J. -- brought it home one day on a floppy disk.  At the time, I believe the school was going whole hog into computers and Atari in particular, and he had a friend, Frank Pazel, who was constantly shipping us home new games in either cartridge, cassette, or floppy format.  

We had an Atari 800 as I’ve written about before, and many of these games were amazing.  I remember enjoying a lot of them, including Murder on the Zinderneuf, and Temple of Aphsai.

But Caverns of Mars was designed by a high school senior named Greg Christensen in 1981, and it quickly became a smash-hit for Atari. An 8-bit game, it positions the player aboard a small spaceship that travels down a vertical shaft, into the red planet’s rocky interior. 

Along the way, the ship must destroy other ships, fuel depots and the like. The longer you play, if memory serves, the faster your rate of descent, so that soon it becomes insanely difficult preventing your ship from getting pulped on the rock face.

It’s a basic game by today’s standards, I suppose, but as an eleven and twelve year old, I found it highly addictive. I would play the game for hours, and it really got the adrenaline going. 

I showed some images of the game to Joel today and he told me, with apologies, that it looks “derpy” by modern standards. 

In this case, I think he may be wrong. (Hey, he's only eight).  Some of the games with basic graphics today -- the aforementioned Terraria and, of course, Minecraft -- thrive on elements not directly related to visual definition, it seems to me.  

Caverns of Mars may not be in the same league, but it was a great game for its time, and a key memory from my first days with the Atari 800. 

Hard to believe it was thirty-four years ago that I first encountered it…

Memory Bank: The Atari 800

I was a lucky kid growing up in the 1970s.  I was the first one in my neighborhood to own an Atari 2600.  But also, so far as I know, I was the first one to possess an Atari Computer.

I remembering seeing the Atari 400 in stores, the one with the “flat” or membrane keyboard, and wishing we could get it.  The console was released in November of 1979, and was produced until the mid-1980s.

But instead of the 400, my parents sprung for the Atari 800 – which was marketed more as a home computer and less as a game system -- and over the years we had numerous accessories for it, including a light pen, joysticks, a cartridge drive (yes, that was a thing) and then later, a floppy disc drive. 

But the Atari 800 had games too, and we got upgraded versions (with better graphics) of Pac-Man, Missile Command, and -- my favorite -- Attank.  I would arrive home from school in the afternoons and wait for my Dad to pull up on his motorcycle after a hard day’s work.  He was vice-principal at a high school nearby, in Mountain Lakes.  Once he was home, it was on, and we’d go up against each other for three or four games of Attank on the Atari 800. It was awesome, and a good memory.

I also remember playing Star Raiders on the Atari 800 for hours.

'

The Atari 800 was also the first word processing device I owned. And in high school, I wrote my papers on it, and also my short stories and movie scripts (The Intergalactic Police!).  I got to know that system, and that keyboard, really well.  I may owe my writing career to the fact that my parents purchased that machine for the family.

When I went away to college in 1988, my parents gave me the next generation of Atari computer: the much-more sleek Atari 1200XL.  That was a good machine too, but I missed the big-boxy, typewriter-like Atari 800.

Advert Artwork

Willow Video Game (Atari; 1988)

Godzilla Week: Godzilla - Destroy All Monsters Melee (Atari; 2002)

There are two reasons I keep my Nintendo Game Cube hooked up in 2014.  

The first is The Simpsons: Road Rage, and the second is this great game, Destroy All Monsters Melee.  

Many a school morning, Joel and I race through breakfast, and then play a couple rounds of "versus" in this Atari game.  I almost always play Godzilla (1990s), and Joel likes to play Megalon. If Kathryn joins in for a melee round, she teams up with Joel as Anguirus.

I know that technology has passed this video game by, but it remains awesome, over a decade later. 

On each level, players fight one another, and compete to get the Mothra power. If you get it, Mothra flies overhead repeatedly and pulps your enemy.  

Also, we've caught sight of Hedorah cruising over the action several times...

The Last Starfighter Video Game (Atari; 1984)

Gremlins Video Game (Atari 5200)

Memory Bank: Atari Video Computer System

For Christmas 1978, my parents gave my sister and me an Atari VCS (Video Computer System), today more commonly-known as the Atari 2600. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but I had entered the video game age. 

I still remember the initial unveiling of this early game system.  For some reason, we had Christmas upstairs in our den (my dad's office) at 7 Clinton Road that year instead of down in the basement family room as we usually did.  And after I opened several Mattel Battlestar Galactica toys and a stash of Mego Planet of the Apes toys that my parents found at Englishtown flea market, they pointed me to our beige sofa. 

They told me to look behind it, and there, tucked against the wall was a very large rectangular box.

My sister and I pulled out the over-sized box and I still remember our bafflement at the graphics.  What the heck was this thing? 

My parents quickly explained patiently that it was a game you could play “on the television.”  Then we all went downstairs together, still in our pajamas, and my Dad hooked it up. 

The games I remember having initially were COMBAT (which came with the system), SPACE INVADERS, and MISSILE COMMAND.  While my Mom went up to the kitchen to fix us homemade pancakes, my sister and dad and I played Space Invaders…and I was hooked.

Atari was still a big thing the next Christmas, in 1980, and I remember getting the ASTEROIDS game, which featured a craft that like a Buck Rogers star-fighter on the game cartridge art.   I also have very fond memories of school afternoons when my Dad would come home from work and meet me in the basement for a round or two of COMBAT.  He was good with the tanks (and pong...) but I was good with the planes.

If memory serves, I was among the first in my neighborhood to own a video game system, and so our basement family room saw a lot of Atari action for the first two years or thereabouts.  Before long, my friends bought competing video game systems like Intellivision and Colecovision, and the luster of the Atari wore off a bit.  Our family updated at some point to the Atari 5200, and then quickly to an Atari 400 computer.  Then we got an Atari 800.  So between the time that I was ten to the time I left for college, we had an Atari system of some type in the house.

When I did go away to school in fall of 1988, we probably still had sixty or so games (some from Activision) for the Atari 2600, but I rarely played it anymore.   Then, about seven years ago, in 2005, my parents found one for me at a yard sale here in Charlotte --- still in its box and un-played with -- for five dollars.  Boy was that a great discovery.

 The Atari Video Computer System box reads:

“Atari brings a powerful computer to your home television.  This system allows you to build a Game Library with additional Game Programs and controllers.

The Atari Video Computer System Includes:

Video Computer System Console

2 Sets of Controllers

COMBAT Game Program including 27 action-packed game variations.

TV/Game Switch Box

AC Power Supply.”

Today our culture has moved far past Atari in terms of home game systems, to be certain, but occasionally Joel still asks me to bring out the old “Atari,” and give some of those primitive games a whirl. 

He has asked me a bit less of late, in part because Roku offers some of the same games -- like PAC-MAN and Galaga -- and the controllers for that system are much easier for him to manipulate.  Also, he’s begun to get into Playstation 2 games including Madagascar and Ben 10. 

That said, Atari is still the only platform we own that allows Joel to play MISSILE COMMAND.  He loves that game because he loves to see the world get wiped out in a (strobing) nuclear explosion when he loses.  Crazy kid…

Below are some commercials from the 1970s for the Atari Video Computer System.  This is one great toy from the 1970s that lived up to the advertising: “More Games – More Fun.”