Atari Emulator -> Eliminator

Kinda like Laser Gates, but without the gates. Not enough backstory, or incentive to go forward, here.
On a positive note, though, I do like the sound made when you catch one of those falling... pilots? I guess this was partly good preparation for Coleman for the programming involved in Raid Over Moscow some time later.

Atari Emulator -> Rainbow Walker

You know, a very foolish person once asked me why I'm replaying a video game that I've already beaten. Any hardcore gamer knows the answer to that question, and why it's so foolish... don't they? Actually, it's probably just me. Guess I'm too cheap to invest in an Xbox 360 like I should, or a Playstation 3 or whatever the hell is the modern equivalent of the Atari 2600. Ah, the experiences we share as a global community these days.
Anyway, this Steve Coleman fella... he was a nut. And I should know, because I'm a nut! And nuts of a feather tend to find each other and stick together. Whew! Thank God that eventually rhymed. His two classics, Pharaoh's Curse and Rainbow Walker, they're what we call fuzzy game play, especially that Pharaoh's Curse. In Pharaoh's Curse, you can walk through some of the walls and climb up them as though they were ladders. You don't have quite as many outs or cheats with Rainbow Walker, now that I think of it. You just gotta be damn good. It helps to just be damn good at the game. Now if only the bonus rounds went a little faster...

1/9/2013 - ...You know, I think this may be my best score ever!

Atari Emulator -> Blue Print

Have a bad case of the blues? Need a good game to play with some nice blues-y music? Why not try "Blue Print"?... actually, maybe it's not the best game to play when you got the blues. It gets harder awfully fast, and frankly, the whole idea of a video game with a bomb in it makes me uncomfortable. Also, like, there's totally racist undertones, right? I mean, check out that dude's suit! Totally trying to be a zoot suit. Sad that a whole era gets besmirched like that.
Or, maybe I'm misinterpreting the whole thing. I am just a blogger, after all. Damn, I don't want to go blind. My eyes sure are tired for some reason, I'll concede that. Don't even feel like reading a damn book! Delay, delay...

Atari Emulator -> Hard Hat Willy

No, not the Electronic Arts classic Hard Hat Mack, but rather the Bruce Thompson Graphics 2-based epic Hard Hat Willy. Genius. Bloody genius. You start off with spirals in a sky. Pure insanity. Then, the centipede comes. You have to hit it with the thing on top of your head. What kinda game is this? And then, the big reveal: you're stuck in a giant scrolling maze! And the pieces of the centipede you didn't get come back to haunt you... more importantly, they steal your hard hats! Anyway, you gotta clear the walls and bash the eggs with your hard hats. If you don't bash the eggs, these evil orange Pac-Mans burst forth from them and kill you... unless you got the white hehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giflmet and kill them right back. And to think... I don't read instructions anyway, but I had an illegal copy of this game and didn't know that you could kill the orange things with a white hard hat. So many wasted afternoons. For some reason, I'm making up for lost time now. I wonder when the double points thing goes away? I think it eventually does.. or does it pay to save it til level 8? Not necessarily. Level 2's a waste of it, though. Maybe save it til level 5 or 6 when you have to get those two diamond thingies. Anyway, with my new PC Atari emulator, I've also scored a million points by cheating and saving my games, so I haven't lost any Willys either. Oh, and I suppose I wouldn't be a proper blogger if I didn't point out that Willy's some kind of radish from hell with eyes and legs that your college roommate left in the petri dish behind the microwave too long.

Bruce Thompson's home at Atarimania Seems like all these great Atari programmers had only one or two great games in them... and then they were discarded like so many used coffee grounds. Not Sid Meier, though. He will never cease to be relevant.

Here's how I roll...

I was just thinking... I know, rare for me, but as I sit here, blinking my eyes hard, hoping they'll straighten up and fly right on me, it was either school or the job that would provide a refuge from the constant bombardment of radiation from a computer monitor. Not so much now! I get much more heaping doses these days. And it's taking a toll.
Anyway, here's how it works. I've got it on this disk with Buried Buck$, Centipede and a bunch of other games. Plus, Hard Hat Willy. So I gotta play it, therefore! QED

Atari Emulator -> Buried Bucks

Or I guess that's Buried Buck$! This has got to be the silliest video game of all time... Now that I've got either your attention and/or the web crawler's attention, allow me to back up my assertion. Here's the deal: you're flying a helicopter. And with this helicopter, your mission is to pick up dollar bills. There's just one catch: they're buried underground. Your only weapon... rather, your only tool to help you get those damn dollars is a virtually endless supply of bombs. Your score drops as the bombs dissipate, and it also drops to the tune of about 4 points per second, just for good measure. Your score is measured in dollars, so it serves as a metaphor for real life, I guess. Here's the other catch: the holes you blow in the ground get filled up. By what, you might ask?  Why, by clumps of dirt being dropped by a passing plane, of course!  What are you, STUPID or something? Needles to say, it represents a complete yin/yang circle of life somehow. Must be what I like about it. The explosions look just like the ones in programmer Tom Hudson's other big game, Planetary Defense. At least that one made a little more sense.

Buried Bucks at Atarimania

Lesson learnt: When you run out of bombs, go back to the landing pad and get 75 more. Your best bet is to throw off the dirt-dumping plane and bomb the hell out of as much of the landscape as possible without disturbing the water.

Good double bill with: O'Riley's Mine. Might as well tell my O'Riley's Mine story here. I had an illegal copy of the game, and I was an especially naughty boy. I found the byte that controlled how many treasures were strewn about the playing field. I found out the hard way that the maximum is 40... something like that. So, to make the game less challenging I set it to 255 and GBOOM! Highest scores ever for O'Reilly's Mine. Ah, the good ol' days. I don't know how one would do it now, but it might could be done. Might could.

Hamsterball

Welp, I've still got about 17 "plays" left in my phree tryuhll of Hampstuhrbahll... and that's probably enough. God, I hate the "Frenzied" level. Think I'll try the basic level again... sorry, but I was born a Marble Madness man, and I'll die a Marble Madness man.

There's just something about that damn Crystal Castles

The Atari video game, not the band. I know, I know, I could just watch someone play Cr.Ca. on YouTube, why am I freakin' out? Incidentally, why didn't Atari include Marble Madness on their li'l B.S. CD-Rom? I guess they're not up to adapting all those games like Paperboy, Championship Sprint, Marble Madness... all those games that have that cool font. Indiana Jones and the Road-Runner as well... and RoadBlasters. Damn you, Windows Vista! They won't let me use my old MAME thingie. I've either gotta upgrade or go back to my Windows XP machine. Anyway, it'll all have to wait as I try to get my masters degree.
But back to the subject at hand. Like Ed Crane says in "The Man Who Wasn't There" when he's on Death Row and talking about a rat in a maze. The shape the rat makes as it wanders through the maze, well... that's the shape of your life! What's my life-shape say about me? I'm damn close on this one. I got as far as Berthilda's... Dungeon? Berthilda's Dungeon again. Decided to stop going for the magic hat on the Impossible Staircase for a while. Can't seem to jump forward that well anymore. I actually won the game with a straight mouse; now all I got is this stupid trackball thing. How are you supposed to win a game with a trackball? It's impossible. What else? So it's just down to nine levels now. I've got the "Extra lives every 70,000 Points" level down pretty well. Those gem-eaters just move too damn fast. I gotta learn to take 'em out at Level 8. Cross Maze: I seem to have lost my mojo, but am slowly getting it back. Hidden Ramp: got that down pretty well. Make sure the trees get stuck on the switchback ramp and you're okay. Berthilda's Fortress at Level 8... God, I love that thing. Get the tree onto the platform and you're sorta on easy street. I actually took out the gem-eaters once; don't know how. Dumb luck, I guess. Impossible Staircase: it's pretty easy once you get everything in place. I think I better go for the honey first from now on. Nasty Tree: God, I hate that one. I tried letting the gem-eaters get all the gems on the big open prairie that the tree always catches me on. One of these days I'm going to have to learn to position myself right underneath the magic hat so I can just catch it right away and go from there. Hidden Spiral: God I hate that one. Better just go for the hat right away, get the honey, then contend with the ghost.... or maybe contend with the ghost while I got the hat? Too many choices. As for the end, well... as long as I can stun the tree long enough to get to that northwest quadrant and get the honey... something like that. Anyway, better get back to my damn thesis.

Oh, I almost forgot. I read a YouTube post from a Seinfeld wannabe talking about crystal castles, saying "There's no crystals! There's no castles!" First of all, there's SOME castles. Take Berthilda's castle, for example... isn't that what Level 1, Round 4 is called? Can't risk looking right now. There's definitely some tower-type formations. And you're supposed to collect gems, a TYPE of crystal. Okay, not geodes or amethyst, true, but still. And yes, the trees and gem-eaters have no relation to anything. Everything needs a mythology and a backstory these days. Sheesh. Did you know that they were originally going to call Pac-Man Puck Man? They didn't do it ultimately because......................................

Real Life

Wait a second! I played a REAL game today! Happened to find myself at the local Indian casino. A fine buffet to be had, but I really should just stick to either chicken or beef... probably beef. I mean, chicken. Or what's that other thing? Dessert! That's it. Maybe bring a moist towelette. Man, did the fried chicken get on my fingers today. Anyway, after that part of the day, I made the mistake of thinking I was still hot sh... stuff on a slot machine. I bought in for five bucks. The machines will just gobble up the money right there. Not so at Tulalip, last time I checked. Needles to say, I lost, ... well, I won 15 cents. Didn't have the heart to cash in the ticket. Some other lucky so and so can make a mint. But even if I did win lots of money, the wafting cigarette smoke would ultimately bring me down.
In other video game doings, I finally broke down and tried to go straight for the level 10 jugular on Crystal Castles. I got as far as the Impossible Staircase.. no, wait. I got past the I.S. and made it to Nasty Tree. I think it's another Hidden Spiral after that, then Berthilda's Dungeon, and finally the end. All other Crystal Castles emulators suck. Atari computer: suck. Atari 2600: SUCK!!!!! Can't bring myself to play that one. How dare they consider it one of the 80 classic games.

Atari Emulator -> Pastfinder

Well, since my eyes are getting blurry from the combination of sugar and lack of sleep, perhaps it's time to wrap up another day after all. But before I do that... just two quick things. 1) This 80 classic games stuff is still acting a little wonky, as the Chinese say... I mean, Canadians. and 2) Ah, Pastfinder. Part River Raid, part... Raid Over Moscow? Actually, it's mostly River Raid, but slower and more dignified... something like that. With River Raid, it's just shoot shoot shoot. Except for the occasional fuel stop that get increasingly rarer as the game progresses. Well, if there's two of them, you can use one to fuel up, and one to shoot for the economic point-based incentive involved. But with Pastfinder, there's the spectre of sectors! Just like Blasteroids, only different. Also, you gotta pick up these discs, and take them to statues for extra bonuses. I used to play this game a lot 20 odd years ago, and I would seriously play it in 3 hour stretches trying to get to 999,999 points. But today, with Atari 8-bit Emulator, I just dial up the right sector and Boom! 999,999 points in an instant. What a world we live in. Maybe it's time to move on to different games. The author, David Lubar, is some kinda genius with his own damn web site, davidlubar.com. Why not visit today?... will he visit MY site now that I've posted a link to his? Prob'lee not. WAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4/11/14, 9:23pm - ...I have to do EVERYTHING around here!  In case you were wondering, here's the list of Pastfinder ranks.  Apparently, no one else on the internet has it... maybe Lycos

RANK                                                                                   PROMOTION AT...

RAW RECRUIT....................................................................................5
LOST LEAPER.....................................................................................10
CLOD HOPPER...................................................................................20
DUST CRUNCHER..............................................................................30
ROCKET ROOKIE..............................................................................40
SPACE COWBOY...............................................................................50
CLONE RANGER................................................................................60
MOONIAC...........................................................................................75
STAR SEARCHER...............................................................................100
JUMP GENIUS.....................................................................................125
SUPER EXPLORER.............................................................................150
MR WANDERFUL (no period).............................................................175
KING QUASAR...................................................................................200
COSMIC HOPPER............................................................................YOU ARE GREAT

Oh, Pastfinder... clearly your standards are too low.  I never used to keep track of the ranks in between "Raw Recruit" and "Cosmic Hopper."  Clearly I have too much time on my hands, which is a pre-internet expression.

Atari Emulator -> 80 classic games!!!

At last! My delayed persistence pays off! All I had to do was change the compatibility of all the .exe files to Windows 2000 and BOOM! It works! Super Breakout 2600! Tempest! Crystal Castles! Millipede! THEY'RE ALL BACK! Goodbye free time.