Kids: Why Adults Feel Old.

[Shawn]

A couple months ago, Electronic Gaming Monthly ran an article in which various children were given gaming systems starting around their parents generation.

Their analysis kills me, even if it dates me.

Here is one segment:

Pong

Niko: Hey—Pong. My parents played this game.

Brian: It takes this whole console just to do Pong?

Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?

John: I'm just going to do this [twists the paddle controller as rapidly as possible].

Tim: John, don't do that. You'll die.

Andrew: This is a lot like that game. Um, whatchamacallit—air hockey.

Sheldon: Except worse.

Andrew: Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.

Becky: I don't even see the point of having sound on this.

Andrew: Wow. The score is tied. It's so exhilarating.

Brian: I saw a documentary on this. The game was so popular in arcades that it got jammed up with quarters.

John: In this thing? [Points to the Pong game console]

Tim: I would never pay to play something like this.

John: I'd sooner jump up and down on one foot. By the way, is this supposed to be tennis or Ping-Pong?

Becky: Ping-Pong.

Gordon: It doesn't even go over the net. It goes through it. I don't even think that thing in the middle is a net.

Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.

John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.

Sheldon: Hey, why does it say Sears on the controller?

EGM: Sears sold it for Atari.

Andrew: Isn't Sears, like, a clothing company?

Becky: Sears makes everything. Actually, I've never been in there.

EGM: Guess how much this thing cost when it came out.

Kirk: Twenty bucks?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $50?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $100?

EGM: Yep.

Kirk: My God—I could almost buy a PS2 for that. I'm sure when this came out, it was better than whatever else was out. Want to play chess with me, son? No way, Dad.

Brian: I want to play Pong!

Tim: Oh, I'm starting to suck. John, you drained my skill.

John: Yes, I used a power-up.

Tim: What? There's no power-ups in Pong. The concept of a power-up hadn't been invented yet.

You can read them slaughtering the rest of my youth here.

[Kooperman]

I don't know what I won more free beer with, barroom foosball or Pong....probably foosball because it did tend to keep you awake a lot longer than Pong, at least until the totality of the beer consumption kicked in. As a side note, some of the grandchildren got a foosball table last year and immediately challenged me.....heh heh......too bad they didn't have any beer.

[Shawn]

lol, you could have won if you would have soused them first.

[HolyMoly]

Sheldon: Hey, why does it say Sears on the controller?

EGM: Sears sold it for Atari.

Ahhhh, a rip-off game. Pong was invented by Coleco (ahem, I have a working Coleco Pong console). But, Atari did rip it off for their C-100 system.

[Yoda]

Atari kicked ass and it still does.. they had better games back then on SuperNES and Nintendo and Atari than they do now actually. I played them alot longer through the day. Now I just get frusterated and smash controllers.

[HolyMoly]

Atari kicked ass and it still does.. they had better games back then on SuperNES and Nintendo and Atari than they do now actually.

True. But, there was a lot of "designer dissatisfaction" in the early days, too -- which is where ActiVision Games came from (disaffected Atati designers). BTW, a trivia question. When ActiVision made it's debut, they wanted their first game to capture a lot of media attention without having to "pay" for advertising. Name their first game release.

[Yoda]

True. But, there was a lot of "designer dissatisfaction" in the early days, too -- which is where ActiVision Games came from (disaffected Atati designers). BTW, a trivia question. When ActiVision made it's debut, they wanted their first game to capture a lot of media attention without having to "pay" for advertising. Name their first game release.

hell if I know.. Im only 15 Im in it for the games and the fun..

[spraymonkey]

I remember there was a trick on the atari console to get rapid fire on space invaders.My buddy and I would spend all night turning the score over 7-8 times.TALK ABOUT A WASTED YOUTH!!!

[Yoda]

Yep but it was a fun wasted youth :P

Do you ever get games now where you and your buddy stay up all night trying to beat a stupid score :D Only game to do that to me lately was The Sims for Playstation2 and thats because we were trying to get my chick pregnant and it took forever ;)

[HolyMoly]

ActiVision's first game was "Dragster" ... but the thing that gave them media attention was the fact that the game could be played on the Atari 2600. ActiVision did NOT licence from Atari ... they exerted creative control over the format since ActiVision designers (originally Atari designers) had helped to "create" the 2600 format. Other companies followed ActiVision in writing for the 2600 - including Mystique, creators of the most infamous video game of it's day -- CUSTER'S REVENGE -- which depicts a naked General Custer trying to cross a desert area while arrows come down at him, in order to get to the naked Indian squaw tied to a cactus. Object? Rape the squaw and win the game.

Click here to download CUSTER'S REVENGE in PC-rom (and emulator).

[Shawn]

Yeah I've seen that Custer game. Super classy.

[HolyMoly]

Yeah I've seen that Custer game. Super classy.

Surely you jest, hehe. That was about the rudest crudest game ever made. But, it did have the virtue of getting a lot of people to vent their spleens over it -- native American groups, women's groups, moral-majority types -- there was something about the game that everybody could hate.

Perhaps the first of the "classy" games (of the naughty kind) to come out was McDoe - aka "Madame Ching's Dungeon of Ecstasy" developed by a North Carolina company, BSX International, for DOS PCs. The player imagines himself an astronaut who crash lands on the planet Tralfaz. The evil Madame Ching imprisons the player in her dungeon and injects him with sexual stimulants. In order to stay alive, the player must go through the dungeon's maze to find 3 things ... 3-condom packs, keys to doors, and women to screw (and the game won't let the player screw without condoms). The difficulty is that, while a player goes through the maze, his sexual tension level increases ... and if the player doesn't occasionally screw a woman, his balls explode and he loses the game.

The "classy" part is that, besides having the ability to keep a "high score list," it's one of the first DOS game programs to include a "Boss Button." In short, if you're playing it at the office and see your boss coming your way, simply press the F2 key and the game dissolves into a fake DOS directory ... making it look like you might really be working (grin). When the boss goes away, press the ESC key and the game picks up where the player left off. Not bad for a game designed in 1990 when most people were still using DOS 4.01.

I have that game and occasionally drag it out for memorobilia sake. I've never won the game (by escaping the dungeon) and probably never will. If anyone wants a peek, it's only a 62k zipfile ... and I can attach it to a later post.

[Shawn]

If it's that small, throw it up here.

[rainbowdemon]

If it's that small, throw it up here.

Sure. It sounds like fun to me!!

[treveinta]

god i loved attari

Niko,

[HolyMoly]

If it's that small, throw it up here.

Done. Remember, this is a DOS game. I know it works in my Win98SE shell but not sure about other shells. When you download the ZIPfile, unzip it into its own directory (lots of files inside). Then just connect MCDOE.EXE to a desktop icon, double-click on it, and off you go.

mcdoe.zip

[Shawn]

Just double clicking the executable opens a dos window in XP.

You don't want to know how long it took me to realize that 'special' key was the insert key. Once I figured that, I made it upstairs 2 levels, but died 1 click away from relief.

Pretty funny game. :D

[HolyMoly]

Nowadays, you couldn't get away with using its BOSS button, though. But back in 1990, most bosses would have been clueless. True story. When my employer (big) purchased some automated equipment years ago and had it installed by the manufacturer, it didn't seem to work for them right away. Management called in one of their own technicians to find out why ... and the first question the tech asked was, "What operating system are you running?" Management's response, "What do you mean by 'operating system'?" Hehe. The tech went home and got his own copy of DOS 3.3 ... and after installation of it and then the application program itself, things started moving (snicker).