Night before last (Wed), I went over to a friend's to check out their recently-purchased Nintendo GameCube. I love keeping up with the technology side of things, but never found gaming my niche - don't get me wrong, I love to play games, but more of the board variety ... Risk, especially, though I can't seem to find friends that enjoy it as much as I do. I also love to play simple electronic games ... you know, where you have at most a joystick and a button, maybe two. Obviously, "KISS" never caught on within the game developer community and the "joystick" has evolved into a mass of buttons, X/Y pads, mini-joysticks, etc. Bring back the days of Super Tecmo Bowl! Galaga! When I have to worry about how long or hard to push a button or variety of buttons to differ between a bullet pass and soft pass from the QB to the WR/TE, it just gets too complicated. Sure, some of you may say more realistic. But I'm more of a couch-QB ... where I don't want the realism or complication.
Anyway, he had some cool games (Rogue Squadron, Road Rage, Smash Brothers and NHL Hockey game) and I was impressed with their graphics and what-not. My favorite game was Road Rage (it was a Simpsons game, actually). I was surprised that Rogue Squadron was not multi-player - it woulda been neat to dogfight in X-Wings or collaborate on shootin' down the Death Star!
I got in the doghouse a bit because I ended up staying too long, not b/c I played games, but mostly watching my friend play Smash Brothers (for some reason, I enjoy watching people play those fighting games instead of participating myself - must be that complication thing again [I mean, com'on ... "If you press X and then Y+Z and then X again for 2 seconds, you unleash the Death Grip SuperCharge Kick O' Pain" ;)]). Well, maybe it was that I also forgot to give our dog her ear medication the morning before. Whatever the case, I got out of it by taking her out to sushi last night (always a plus in her book :)).
Jason
Update: I took my wife out for sushi ... ;)
Re:You took the dog out for sushi?
Purdy on 2002-02-01T15:13:18
*laugh* - took the wife out for sushi... the dog may like sushi, but being a Golden Retriever, she's happy with rice cakes, too... and rice cakes are cheaper! ;) Jason
Re:Rogue Squadron
Purdy on 2002-02-01T15:15:28
Yup, RS was indeed a cool game, but I couldn't get past the attack the Death Star mission, in the trenches.. and on Hoth, how to fire off the Tow Cable. Of course, I didn't play it but for 15 minutes.The graphics were amazing... things have come a long way since the Atari 2400, my first foray into the console games. Pong, anyone?
Jason
Re:Rogue Squadron
vek on 2002-02-01T15:38:31
but I couldn't get past the attack the Death Star mission
-Destroy all the towers.
-Destroy all the tie fighters (using the targeting computer helps, although if you want a medal you'll want to use this very infrequently).
-Fly down the Death Star trench, destory the laser cannons, destroy the tie fighters, shoot Darth Vader's tie fighter.
-When you get somewhat to the end of the trench use your proton torpedo (B button I think).
and on Hoth, how to fire off the Tow Cable
-Fly near an AT-AT - about half way up a leg is a good a point as any.
-Press the 'B' button (your tow cable will automatically attach itself to the AT-AT).
-The camera angle will now change and all you have to do is circle around the AT-AT 3 or 4 times. Voila - dead AT-AT;)
My start with computer games was a friends Commodore Vic20 (remember those). You could get a 16k ram upgrade cartride and everything. The first video game console/computer I owned was a Commodore 64 - a substantial upgrade from the Vic20.
Of course, if you lived in England back in the early 80's you would also be aware of the Sinclair Spectrum (which absolutely sucked) but was quite popular for a while - gave the C64 a run for it's money as I recall (well I was only 11 in 1984!).
