Old School Sundays: Summer Games (EPYX 1984)
August 17, 2008
This week we take you back to 1984, where Hulk Hogan defeated Iron Sheik to become WWF Champ, Michael Jackson is burned during filming for a Pepsi commercial and McDonald’s made its 50 billionth hamburger. Oh yeah, it also was the year the Summer Olympics took place in good ole Los Angeles, California. What a better way to commemorate this years Summer Olympics than to show you how it was done.
Summer Games is a sports video game developed by Epyx and released by U.S. Gold based on sports featured in the Summer Olympic Games. Released in 1984 for the Commodore 64, it was also eventually ported to the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XL/XE and Sega Master System platforms. Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari ST versions were also created for inclusion in compilations. In 2004 it would be “re-released” on the C64 Direct-to-TV.
The game was presented as a virtual multi-sport carnival called the “Epyx Games” (there was no official IOC floppy disk. licensing in place) with up to 8 players each choosing a country to represent, and then taking turns competing in various events to try for a medal. On most versions, world records could be saved to the floppy disks.
Old School Sundays: Coleco Mini-Arcades
August 10, 2008
Remember these? Coleco’s Mini-Arcades were “The Arcade Games You Can Take Home With You!”
Ms. Pac-Man, Frogger, Pac-Man, Galaxian and Donkey Kong were the first Coleco Mini’s that were produced in the 80’s. Not really portable but Coleco marketed them as the “Arcade Game You Can Take Home…” The commercial below shows just how big and clunky these devices were. And running on 4 C’s, you know this should have been on wheels. Nevertheless, growing up in the 80’s where Arcades WERE the main gaming system, Coleco made a good attempt of trying to capture them.
Images of my favorite Mini-Arcade: Donkey Kong
Images Via Videogamecritic and Handhelmuseum
Old School Sundays: SEGA Mega Drive Portable
July 27, 2008
Blaze International announced this week that they released a new 16-Bit Blaze Handheld system with 20 built-in classics from the SEGA Mega Drive. The new handheld console containing Sonic and Knuckles, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Ecco the Dolphin, Columns and 15 more superb retro titles for only £29.99 is set to take the market by storm! If you are interested in purchasing one, check out Segaretro.net. For the price, it’s not a terrible deal, especially if you do not have a PSP or DS. If you have those, there’s always the “homebrew” route when it comes to retro gaming.
Old School Sundays: E3 Edition, Mega Man
July 20, 2008
In tribute of this past weeks announcement of Mega Man 9, we’re going back to 1987 to bring you how it all started… Mega Man part uno. Known to some as Rockman, Megaman, developed by Capcom, was a side scrolling action NES game. Mega Man was the only NES Mega Man title to feature a score counter. I consider Mega Man to be one of the first strategic games due to the Robot Master attributes you gain after you defeat them. For ex. The easiest way to kill CutMan relies not in your Mega Buster, but in your Super Arm that you got from GutsMan in the last stage.
Characters
- Mega Man — Tool assistant, originally known as Rock (or Mega in the remake), created and modified by Dr. Light to combat Wily.
- Dr. Albert W. Wily — The antagonist of the game, his goal is world domination. He appears as the final boss in a hovering ship (at first a tank-like machine in the remake).
- Dr. Thomas Light — Creator of Mega Man, aids Mega Man on his adventure to stop Dr. Wily.
- Roll — Mega Man’s sister, she makes her debut in this game, though in the NES version her name is not mentioned. She is only seen at the ending of the credits in the NES version, but she can be downloaded in the PSP remake as a playable character.
- Robot Masters — Cutman, Gutsman, Elecman, Fireman, Iceman, and Bombman.
Mega Man is made up of six stages, with a Robot Master at the end guarding a weapon. The stage select screen allows the player to choose from these six stages, and when they are all completed, the seventh and last stage appears in the middle of the menu, replacing the text “Stage Select, Press Start”. This last stage is in fact more like four regular stages linked together, some a bit shorter than average, but with bosses that are considered harder than usual.
Mega Man 9 is due out on the XBox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. We’ll keep you updated with all the news “Mega Man 9″ related.
Old School Sundays: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link commercial
July 13, 2008
It’s incredible that this Nintendo classic has hit the 21 year anniversary. Not to be confused with the latter side scrolling adventure game ‘Battle of Olympus’ Zelda II was released in 1988 in North America and 1987 in Japan. Many Zelda fans did not accept The Adventure of Link even being called ‘the black sheep” of the Zelda series. Sales were still high, as expected, possibly due to this Japanese commercial.
I think the little girl said, “Haha, we got the game first! You filthy American’s get it next year.”
Enjoy your OSS!
Old School Sundays: Kung-Fu Master
June 29, 2008
In 1984 Arcade Galleria’s had their hands on an instant classic. Kung-Fu Master was a great action fighter
game that included 5 floors of kicking and punching (and sweeping midgets).
The player takes the role of Keiji Thomas, a man in a Keikogi and slippers. Thomas’s girlfriend, Sylvia, has been kidnapped by “Mr. X”, and Thomas must fight through five side-scrolling floors full of enemies to rescue her.
The first floor of the temple contains Grippers (standard Kung Fu henchmen who charge Thomas and grab him, draining his life bar) and Knife Throwers (men who throw knives high or low). But subsequent levels introduce Tom Toms (small dwarves who can surprise Thomas by jumping on his head), poisonous moths, fire-breathing dragons (Thomas must punch or kick them before they breathe fire), snakes, and confetti balls. (These hang in mid-air for a few seconds and then explode into three pieces after a few seconds; Thomas must jump kick these before they explode. If Thomas is hit by any pieces of debris from an exploding confetti ball, he takes massive damage.)
Each of the five floors ends with a different boss who must be defeated before Thomas can climb the stairs to the next floor. The first two bosses are ordinary men armed with a stick and honed boomerangs, respectively. The third is a Giant, the fourth a Black Magician, and the fifth is Mr. X, a versatile Kung Fu master. Thomas must complete each floor within a fixed time. The timer starts at 2000. If it falls below 330, a warning sounds. If a boss defeats Thomas, the boss laughs. Although there are five bosses, the game only uses two different synthesized laughs.
Enjoy your Old School Sunday! Hii-Ya!
[ad#adpinion-1-post]
Old School Sundays: Return To Zork
June 22, 2008
[ad#ad-1]
Return to Zork is one of those special OSS pieces that brings great memories to any point-and-click adventure game enthusiast. This was the first time in the Zork series that they moved away from the text parser to a clickable mouse interface. RTZ also starred a number of celebrities and for that era the graphics were among the best for a 1993 DOS video game.
The story begins with you as a sweepstakes winner on an all paid vacation to the Valley of the Vultures, in Zork. You are first greeted by a wizard in a crystal ball. During you conversation your asked to retrieve a battery for the wizard. The Crystal ball disappears and your quest begins…
Old School Sundays: Wizardry
June 15, 2008
Most of us recall the first game we really got into on the PC. My first was Wizardry, a simple (yet complex for the time) dungeon crawler published by Sir-Tech. Although there were some similar games at the time, this would probably be what I considered the first true “dungeon crawl”. You start the game in a podunk town and have to create a party of up to six characters from an assortment of races including humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits and gnomes. This was also one of the first games where you could choose alignment which included good, neutral and evil. You could also choose from four classes for each of your characters including fighter, mage, thief and priest. Later in the game, you could also upgrade certain characters to elite classes.
