Centipede

This game had DDT. THAT alone could be 'nuff said.  Centipede had a surprisingly large amount of game play for it's apparent simplicity.  Controlling the descent of the centipede by the placement and removal of the mushrooms added a strategic element to the otherwise twitchy proceedings.  The trackball was the perfect analog control for this game, AND it had DDT.  These DDT containers may have been manufactured in the same plant as the missile command missiles because they also had slow motion explosion technology.

Time Pilot

Having seen many a horrible port onto the 2600, the ports on the ColecoVision looked like gifts from all-father Odin himself.  Time Pilot was no exception.  This game was awesome.  It preserved the multi-screen scrolling and time traveling stages of the arcade version with a visual fidelity that really impressed.  There is not a ton of complexity or depth to the action and some of the challenge came from weakness in the controls, BUT Time Pilot kept us coming back for more.

Venture

Venture took AdVenture up a notch.  The colecovision had screaming hardware, hardware that seemed indistinguishable from arcade hardware to my young eyes, and Venture was a great port on the system.  I believe I heard about Venture from the same sortie that first brought back word of Dig Dug.  Venture included elements of Adventure, multiple enemies of an early Roguelike, and Berzerk and was an absolute blast to play and a blast to talk about. LOVED IT.

V~ FB Friend Podcast - 9/23/10 (featuring Jim)

Wizard of Wor

Gather Worriors for the Wor to end all Wor!  Fight against deadly Burwor, Garwor, Thorwor, and Worluks until you rise to the rank of Worlord (Worlard maybe??)! Fine I get it...everywhere you should have written War...you write Wor...funny joke...effing hilarious, good one Midway, you all get a bonus. This game is somewhat similar to Berzerk but it had a pseudo fantasy setting that really appealed to me at the time.  It also had level music that could really ratchet up the tension. TIME FOR WOR!

Kangaroo

Somewhere half-way between Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr lived Kangaroo.  It has ladders.  It has fruit.  It has stunningly bad graphics on the 2600.  Sometimes you want to go parking and sometimes you want to make a kangaroo punch a giant bell.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Many people don't know that Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" is a thinly disguised adaptation of Sonic's memoirs.  As a tribute to my planned trip to Rolla, Mo, I want to talk about Sonic.  Sonic the Hedgehog is not the only game I've played in Rolla.  We of course also played a LOT of "is the townie 18", but Rolla is also the town that showed us Sonic at the top of his game.  It really added something to the standard platforming formula of the day.  Sonic really was fast and that was exciting. We won't talk more about what they have done to Sonic since then.

Frogger

There are a couple ways I could go on Frogger. One of them is a full review that says 'meh'. I might also comment that the inclusion of the lady frogs that you need to mount and carry back to your pad makes Frogger reasonably crazy and awesome, even though I don't think the actual game is fun.  Thanks to Josh I can link this video. NSFW for the record.

The greatest minds of the late '70s determine our children's futures.

Dig Dug

I heard about Dig Dug before I ever saw it...the insanity of this game actually matches my imagination of its' insanity based on the description I had heard.  The main character inflates his enemies with a bicycle pump until they explode.  THAT is good stuff, and when I finally saw the game in action I couldn't believe that advance reports had been correct.  You can also create tunnels under the rocks and drop them on enemies skulls, and that is also pretty entertaining.

Q*bert

I have no use for Q*bert. I hate the character design. I hate the late 50's sunday comic strip swearing.  I hate the game play.  I hate jumping off the edge of the map and falling.  I never found Q*bert to be fun and I might spend my time travel to go back and stop it and let somebody else take care of Hitler.

Mat Mania

My grandma was really into wrestling, Old time wrestling, SCIENTIFIC wrestling!  Not these thug wrestlers with their punching and kicking!  Even though Coco Savage continues to be typecast to this day and now winces at the racial insensitivity of his portrayal here, Mat Mania was a solid time waster at the Cville Country Club.  We eventually came to understand that the AI was completely busted and that it could be played until you passed out (Go Go Bobby D) but this was a great fighting game on the leading edge of real greatness right around the corner.  This game had great voice, cool presentation and incredible fun factor.

Lord of the Rings Online Goes Free to Play

We tried D&D online for free and it never really grabbed me.  I played LOTRO in the beta and felt like it was already pretty good way back then before release.  Who wants to check it out?  I'll update this post with server information when I finish my download.UPDATED: Look for Eldread on Windfoal server
Get Started Here

Kung Fu

An unhealthy amount of Kung Fu was played.  I first saw this in an arcade, but this is an NES game to me.  Drawing heavily from the plot of a movie where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Kung Fu delivered a challenging but approachable gameplay experience.  Your character climbs the levels of a tower as the difficulty ramps up and new enemy types are introduced.  This formula has been done to death a million times since Kung Fu, but it still felt fresh at the time that it came out.  Also having endured the graphics of the 2600 the NES really delivered in terms of both graphics and control.

Adventureland

In a time when a cassette tape was an elite data storage mechanism there was Adventureland (I rememberd this as being just called Adventure, but the mind is a fragile and delicate meatgrinder).  I believe this was my introduction to Text Adventures and I remember really loving it.  When Eddie and Charlie, and I weren't out roaming the campus with throwing stars we might be playing this game.  Nestled in the land between a novel, a choose your own adventure, d&d, and space invaders the text adventures explicitly decided to trade on the landscape of the mind.  This is not what I was thinking when we made a Ghostbusters text adventure in FORTRAN, but Adventureland was a great game. Long live the vic20.

 

D&D (red and blue box)

Steve and Tony know all the devilish detail.  Back when you had to roll your own dice, we played some Not That Massive Pen and Paper Role Playing Games.

Food Fight

Another classic at Venture.  Another step closer to Robotron.  When our protagonist actually eats the ice cream cone that is his goal his already huge head expands to incredible size, which is pretty darn amusing. Another really fun game with a lot of crazy.

Night Driver

If you have ever said something like "graphics don't matter" here is your test.  The bad news is that you would have also have said "gameplay doesn't matter" to make much of a case for Night Driver.  This is a first person driving game with a big idea.  If the game is at night, and it's really dark outside all you can see are the the perfectly spaced white stakes along the side of the road.  GENIUS!

Qix

If the image below seems to make very little sense, that is because Qix is a crazed fever dream of a game.  Another standard at the Holidome,  Qix is an abstract puzzler with a strong random element and a frustrating quarter gobbling amount of difficulty.  I never played it on a console, but it probably is a better experience in this context.  I know some people have affection for this game, but I did not enjoy it.

Xevious

I was totally blown away by the more representational graphics of Xevious.  Instead of flying across space or a highly abstract playing field.  The battle of Xevious unfolded above a lush panorama of fields and forests.  Looking at the screenshots now it is a little bit difficult to understand why I thought that, but Xevious had graphics that were amazing for its day.  I also really liked the finite range of the bombs and the bomb sight.  Xevious was a big step toward the modern top-down shooter and a great game.

Jimdex = ( 8 love + 6 play it now)/2  = 7