December 2008

  • Lunar Lander from Atari

    By roskopp on 12/28/08 3:19pm
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    Lunar Lander Copyright Atari

    Lunar Lander was released by Atari in 1979 and challenged the player to pilot a space module and successfully land on the moon. This was a tough game and hugely frustrating placing you in control of the module as it hurtled towards the jagged landscape of the moon. The idea was to find a safe, flat bit of terrain on which to land and to touch down before your fuel supply ran out.

     

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  • Asteroids: Atari's Best Selling Arcade Game of All Time

    By roskopp on 12/28/08 1:56pm
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    Asteroids Copyright Atari

    Asteroids was originally released into arcades in 1979 by Atari. Playing as a spaceship lost in an asteroid field the player could rotate the ship and had to fire to destroy asteroids and the occasional enemy flying saucer. It was a simple black and white game with wire frame graphics and basic sound effects. Asteroids was one of the most popular arcade games ever released and it spawned a number of versions and was updated and ported to various home consoles. The simple game-play was tough but deeply addictive and the world record for highest score was set back in 1982 and still stands at over 40 million points.

     

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  • Crazy Shooter Action with Space Harrier

    By roskopp on 12/23/08 2:40pm
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    Space Harrier Arcade

    Space Harrier was a classic shooter released in arcades back in 1985. Developed by Yu Suzuki for Sega it proved to be a smash hit. The player was cast as a flying man with a huge cannon tucked under his arm which doubled up as a rocket engine. With a view from behind the challenge was to blast your way through a series of bizarre dreamscapes fighting off all manner of crazy looking creatures from prehistoric dinosaurs to huge flying dragons, robots and aliens.

     

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  • Everybody Loves Pac-Man

    By roskopp on 12/11/08 5:01pm
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    Original Pac-Man photographed by sensemaybenumbed

    Pac-Man was an absolute phenomenon across the world. It was first released in 1980 by Namco in Japan and Midway licensed it for distribution in the US. Pac-Man was universally popular and transcended traditional gender barriers attracting an audience of female and male gamers of all ages. The game is quite possibly the most famous arcade release of all time and it has firmly established itself as an icon of popular culture.

     

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  • Star Wars Arcade Cabinet

    By roskopp on 12/11/08 10:34am
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    Original Star Wars Cabinet photographed by greycap

    The arcade game machine I remember most fondly from my youth has to be the 1983 Atari release Star Wars which challenged you to take on Luke’s final challenge in the cockpit of Red Five and destroy the Deathstar.

     

    There was a stand up version of this machine but the one I played on was a mock cockpit which you sat in complete with X-Wing controls and a large picture of Darth Vader on the outside.

     

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  • Bethesda Software Makes Big Strides with Release of 'Fallout 3'

    By Michael Jon Lazar on 12/10/08 9:43pm
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    Have you seen the newest release from the juggernaut software company, Bethesda? The company has recently been garnering much praise from the video gaming community as a whole for their fantastically successful debut of ‘Elder Scrolls: Oblivion’ which was one of the best selling video games of all time, and has been lauded by many as one of the best role playing or RPG games of all time. And now, Bethesda Software is hard at work again, this time bringing to the eager video gaming world their next latest and greatest RPG innovation: Fallout 3.

    Why Change the Old – Just Make it Better!
    With Fallout 3 does come some new innovations in the RPG subset that can be classically attributed to Elder Scrolls; the interface, interactions, maps, item menus and many other features are very similar to those found in the hit game Elder Scrolls, but have been revamped and greatly improved upon to make the game easier to use.

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  • It’s So Easy to Blame Grand Theft Auto IV for all the Problems in the World Today

    By Michael Jon Lazar on 12/10/08 9:33pm
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    Attention avid gamers: are you sick and tired of hearing all of this slandering of violent video games like GTA IV (Grand Theft Auto Four), where parents and society as a whole are apt to always point the proverbial finger at these video games as the root of all problems present in modern day society? It is ridiculous if you think about it, seriously! Video games are played using a plastic controller, attached to a console, connected to a television set – they do not represent anything realistic in any way, shape or form. In fact, most people are not becoming tantalized with the fake, cartoon-like violence that they see in a video game, nor are they becoming desensitized by playing games like GTA IV.

    It’s so easy to Point the Finger
    Yet it seems that every time a kid commits a violent crime, video games like GTA IV are blamed as the culprit. When in reality there are other, far more violent things that our children are being subjected to. Like violent movies, the news, television programs and others.

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  • Xbox 360 Red-Ring-Of-Death Mish Mash Revealed

    By Michael Jon Lazar on 12/10/08 9:24pm
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    If you have not been hearing about all of this news with regards to the common dilemmas that many consumers are experiencing after purchasing the lofty and expensive Xbox 350 video gaming consoles, here is the scoop. Many people are finding that their Xbox 360 console is overheating far too quickly; the fans and the heat synch devices inside of it are not able to properly cool the system. The ending results are that thousands of consoles overheat and become inoperable, and when this happens the power button displays three red rings, most commonly known to the community as the Red Rings of Death (RROD).

     

    Why so Many People are Suing Microsoft

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  • Space Invaders: The Most Popular Arcade Video Game of All Time?

    By roskopp on 12/9/08 3:51pm
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    Space Invaders was released in 1978 and proved to be one of the most popular arcade video games of all time. It was developed and sold by Taito in Japan where it prompted a shortage of 100 yen coins because it was so popular. It was licensed to Midway for US production in 1980 and proved to be equally loved by gamers in the States.

     

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  • Pong Spawns an Industry

    By roskopp on 12/8/08 2:07am
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    In 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari and their first release Pong spawned a whole new industry. The simple and addictive game-play sparked a craze that saw videogame arcades springing up in malls, cinemas and restaurants across the United States and beyond.

     

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  • The First Ever Coin-Operated Arcade Games

    By roskopp on 12/4/08 6:39am
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    Computer Space photographed by Scott Beale

    The very first coin-operated videogame was called Galaxy Game and it was developed by two students at Stanford University. It was 1971 when Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck made their one and only unit of Galaxy Game. Sadly for them just two months later the founders of Atari, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney released their coin-operated videogame Computer Space. Both games were based on the vector display title Spacewar from 1961 but the difference was Bushnell and Dabney used an actual television set in their cabinet to display the game and they were quick to offer cabinets for commercial sale.

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