Favorite video games, anyone?

[Fred588]

I grew up long before there were video games. Our first TV was black and white and there were only four channels (and this was near a major city). We did have something similar, however, just the way Fred Flintstone had a car. We had arcades with pinball and similar kinds of machines. When an aunt and uncle retired and moved away I was lucky enough to be the inheritor of a full-sized pinball machine. The game was called "Manhattan" and was a pretty straightforward pinball machine of the type probably built in the 1950s or late 40s. (I received it about 1960). I played that machine heavily for years and eventually wore it out. It went to a landfill about the same time I went to college. I think we kept the glass top for something. Not too long ago I tried to look up the "Manhattan" machine in a database of collectable pinball games but could find no reference to it.

[water_bug_62208]

I also enjoyed the arcade game* where you defended against incoming missiles and had to destroy them before they MIRVed, and there was one wher you had to enter a area and had to face off against a robot** that kept saying, "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" There was one pizza place across the campus that my friends and I liked to frequent, and it had some sort of primative, black and white TV arcade machine featuring a moon landing game*** where you had a limited amount of fuel to land your lunar module. If you landed too hard, your lunar module either blew up into pieces or bounced on the lunar surface with feedback words describing the damage to your vessel. Also, as you landed, as you approached the surface, the game would go into magnification mode for a close up of your simple lunar module. Sometimes if you weren't careful, you'd clip the edge of a lunar mountain and end up tumbling in pieces.

*Missile Command
**maybe Berzerk? Was there a bouncy floaty smiley face?
***Lunar Lander

Ah, yes, thank you!

Yep, it was the original Atari Missile Command when it first came out, and, yes, Berzerk, again the original Atari version when it first came out. Ah, and Atari's Lunar Lander... that was a fun and interesting game to play... so simple in design, yet full of suspense.

[Mynock]

How far we've come.....
1992:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdcnQISuF_Y

2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENTC-mAQ0tI

[Magic Engineer]

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[Magic Engineer]

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[nachtjaeger]

Amazing. I thought it was great that the single-player mode of Starcraft had an awesome SciFi story woven through it. Now, the line between movies and video games is getting blurrier by the day.

How far we've come.....
1992:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdcnQISuF_Y

2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENTC-mAQ0tI

[Mynock]

^^I'm stoked for this. There hasn't been a FPS title with a decent single player campaign in years. Plus killing virtual Nazis seems like a great way to spend Memorial Day weekend.

[quagmire_uk]

This guy has done a complete playthrough of the previous Wolfenstein game released in 2009. He decided to play on the hardest difficulty setting, and while he has a couple of stupid deaths in the first video, he gets the hang of it by the second video. (And you gotta love the montage at the end of the first video, with Nazis floating in zero gravity with music from 2001 A Space Odyssey.)

It's pretty awesome because it starts off like an 'ordinary' World War 2 game, but then it goes all Indiana Jones with the Nazis doing an archaeological digsite where they find a super-powered mediallion that allows you to step into another dimension. And then you get Nazi disintegrating death ray particle cannons and a Tesla Gun that shoots zaps of lightning that hit several enemies at the same time, causing them to amusingly spasm for a few seconds before sending their smoking corpses flying off in random directions.

Apparently the new Wolfenstein: The New Order game that they are currently advertising has a laser gun that allows you to cut holes through walls, in whatever shape you like. So you can stay in cover, slice a tiny hole and then stick your machine gun through to mow down a bunch of Nazis on the other side. It also brings back the old 100 health, 100 armour thing where you need to pick up medical kits and so-on, unlike most modern games that give you regenerating health. In the easy and normal difficulty settings you will regenerate 20% of your health, but in hard mode or above there is no health regeneration! Also, just like the old games there are secrets such as hidden rooms and tunnels behind picture frames and secret doors and stuff. A good way to blend modern graphics and gaming technology with the 'old skool' gaming of Wolfenstein's original roots.

[Mr Mudster]

The one I play the most is Counter Strike:Source. Great online FPS. And, for us elderly chaps, there are a few servers with those of our age and reflexes!

[water_bug_62208]

How far we've come.....
1992:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdcnQISuF_Y

2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENTC-mAQ0tI

That first one reminded me of that arcade game featuring that dragon slayer knight dude (can't recall the name of the game) where you move room to room and try not getting killed along the way.

Amazing the advances in technology over the years.