laurir@sri-unix (09/03/82)
How about a subgroup, "net.games.atari"?
I recently bought some Atari cartridges, as follows:
-- Haunted House (by Atari): you wander in the dark through a 24-room
house, four floors each of which has 2 by 3 rooms. The idea is to
pick up three pieces of a broken urn, thus magically reassembling it,
and return to the entrance. There are a few spooky monsters -- a
ghost, some spiders, etc. -- wandering about also; if one touches you,
you're "scared to death". Nine deaths and you lose. There exist a
magic sceptre which wards off the baddies, and a key for locked doors.
You can only carry one thing at a time, except that multiple urn
pieces count as one object, since they meld when you join them.
Variations: some doors become locked; some monsters can follow you
through locked doors; etc. My opinion: interesting for a child,
doesn't hold me. The graphics are great, the game just isn't
interesting.
-- Defender: a stripped-down version of the arcade game. You operate
an air (or space) ship cruising above the earth's surface. Alien
ships are in the vicinity, shooting at you, and some of them are
descending to the surface and kidnapping the inhabitants. You must
destroy the aliens with a ray blast (a very snazzy rainbow color
effect), then snag the humans as they fall back to earth. You have
both a short-range and a long-range radar screen; the long-range one
covers the entire universe. Opinion: captivating. Takes a few days
to master.
-- Star Voyager by Imagic. You're the pilot of a ship proceeding from
here to there. When you get to there, the game's over. The screen
shows your view out the front port, ie, stars streaming by you,
with much better graphics than the original "Star Ship" game.
At the bottom of the screen is a long-range radar screen (they're
all the rage for the current models of space ships.) You
get to your destination by locating and passing through a series of
Buck Rogers-like "star gates". On the way, you are attacked by
several enemy ships which resemble the original Romulan vessels.
(And the theme music is the first few notes from Battlestar
Galactica -- these guys show no favorites.) You have *two* weapons,
a laser blast which uses ten energy quanta, and a photon-like
torpedo which uses one. You start life with 99 quanta, and are
replenished each time you pass through a star gate. Being hit by
an enemy blast detracts from your energy, naturally. Zero energy
makes for a dead player. The two weapons controls are the buttons
on the left and right joysticks, while the left joystick controls
direction in the same way as Star Ship. I put the right joystick
on the floor and use it as a foot pedal (works with bare feet).
Opinion: also captivating. Very hard to master. The first time
you get all the way through, you'll cheer.
-- Adventure from Atari. A real sleeper. It sounds as though it would
be unimpressive, but I have spent many dozens of hours with this one.
You inhabit a world with twenty or so rooms. You direct "hero",
a little square, around in the eight standard directions by pushing
on the joystick. Moving off the end of the screen puts you at the
opposite end of the screen in the next room, if there was a doorway
there instead of a wall. There are three (initially locked) castles,
yellow, white, and black, each with an associated key located
somewhere; there are three dragons, red, yellow, and green, each with
a distinct personality, the way Pac-Man is supposed to work; there
is a sword which you can find and use to kill a dragon; there is a
bridge with which you can pass over walls (necessary in one maze);
there is a magnet for pulling things "out of walls"; there is a
golden chalice (actually a dazzling rainbow effect). There is also
a bat which flits through the world, randomly picking things up and
exchanging them for other things, for example trading your sword
for a live dragon (ouch!). The goal is to put the golden chalice
into the golden castle. Before you can do this, you must find the
golden key and unlock the golden castle. Usually you must unlock
and enter one or both of the other castles. If a dragon eats you,
you "resurrect" yourself by pushing RESET, which leaves all objects
unmoved but also resurrects all dragons. With the third game
variation, all objects are initially placed at random locations.
You can only carry one thing at a time; you pick it up by running into
it (like Rogue) and you drop it by pushing the joystick button.
Opinion: spellbinding!
Note to Adventure cartridge owners: there is a sequence of
actions which cause the game to display the name of the author.
Hints: there is an invisible object that you have not yet found.
It is located in a room in the maze beyond the black castle which
has no door but can be entered via the bridge. The object must be
picked up and dropped in another room, then other things must be
done.
-- Andrew Klossner (decvax!teklabs!tekmdp!laurir)mark (09/08/82)
Another way to find the signature is to be picked up by the bat, who will then take you on a tour of the world (the bat flys through walls, taking whatever it is holding with it). I think what really happens is that the bat picks up whatever you are holding, and sometimes you don't drop it, so you go with it. I have seen this happen during the "in-between-game" - after you are eaten but before starting another game. The invisible object is actually visible as a dot, but not in its original location. One silly thing about this game is that while you can't go through walls, whatever you are carrying can stick out into the walls. Also, one word of caution. Most ATARI games, when you get killed, will go into a mode that cycles through various colors so your TV set doesn't get lines burned into the phosphor. Adventure does not do this, so don't leave it on for long periods of time in between games. While the Woods/Crowther version of adventure we all know and love is no fun once you know everything, this adventure, at level 3, will give you random games every time, so it's always interesting. Even at level 2, the bat makes life unpredictable.