More Facebook Games

LOL, OMG, WOW... I finally took the bait.  I took the bait, but I still don't get it.  Well, I mean, I DO get it.  I suppose the next frontier is to turn all the internet's Click Bait into a game somehow.  But I did find out that I'm a tsunami: a force to be reckoned with.  Sure, I'm a wall of water that's only three inches tall, but I do more damage to beachfront property than you at first think.  Then Gilbert Gottfried makes a joke about me, and he loses his hard-fought-for corporate sponsor.  Unfortunately, with these clickbait games, there's too much click, not enough bait... is that getting tiresome yet?  For example, I put some ketchup on my open-faced tuna melt the other night, and you know what?  Too much up, not enough ketch.
But to be fair, that OMG's got potential.  I am slightly curious as to what Stan... I mean, Satan would have to say to me, but Satan seems to me to be more of the silent type.  I mean, he... and he's probably definitely a he, shows up when you need him the most, and you usually just take the deal, as rotten and as back-handed as it is.  Pleasure doing business with you, I'll return upon the slightest contract breach, that kind of what-have-you.

Atari Emulator - Laser Gates

I've spoken a little about Laser Gates, haven't I?  Did I ever tell you about how I hacked an already hacked copy of O'Riley's Mine?  Well, I actually ALSO did a similar trick with a hacked copy of Laser Gates.  See, there was a problem with my hacked copy: the ship wouldn't make a hole in the grey walls when you shot at it.  I could therefore only get to about level 5 or 6 before I completely lost it.  Very frustrating at that age.  So, I figured out where the data for the ship was.  I would load the data from the file into a player-missile, thereby enabling you to find the shapes of certain thigns... things.  So, I found the ship and just erased it!  And it worked like a charm... maybe too well.  For you see, with no visible ship, you can't make that halfway pitstop to get more fuel, and so you have to just speed through the whole thing.  And for some reason, shooting the big 6502 chip at the end of the level got harder and harder.  It seems you need a visible ship for that or something.  That's just how beloved this game was to those of us who played it and liked it.  I mean, for God's sake!  You actually wanted to get to those higher levels to see what color the planets would be.  So far on the emulator, I've only gotten to level 9.  Guess I've just got to try the old trick again somehow.

(Jan. 4) - Whelp, the old trick worked and... I never thought I'd say this!  It worked way too well.  Also, I managed to overcome the programmer's other barrier to entry of the game.  See, they anticipated my hack of finding the ship in the game's code.  Well, first of all, they seem to have turned on the '128' bit for all player-missiles.  Either the 128 or the 1 bit.  So there's that.  Second, when you get to levels 13 and above, all the little bumps on the big 6502 chip in the game don't like it when you shoot at them.  It takes from your ship's shields, even when the ship doesn't technically exist!  So the trick is to shoot at the very bottom of the 6502 chip... the one in the game, not the one in the Atari computer.  And so, now that I'm at level 32, I guess the colors of the various planets isn't that interesting anymore.  I'll post the new attached photo and you can see for yourself.  See?  Mostly the bright pastel numbers, a few blatant repeats, what have you...  Never meet your childhood heroes, so to speak.  And don't tinker with your childhood games either.

Atarimania home of Laser Gates

Mushca home of Laser Gates (scroll down to Diskette 40)

Something Found - Phinal Phantasy XIV

Another idea for a Bill Maher New Rule - Clearly we need to change the name of the game "Final Fantasy XIV" to something like "The Fantasy That Will Not Gracefully Retire XIV."  Or how about "The NeverEnding Fantasy XIV"?  Get what I mean?  I understand that it's an oxymoron and all that, but not all oxymorons are the same!  Let's go to the Wikipedia List of Common Oxymorons and study on this a little bit... well, they don't have everything, as it turns out, but they do have the external link!  More oxymorons than you can shake a Smart Stick at!  Okay, let's pick one at semi-complete random: J.  You've got "Justice Rehnquist" and "Justice Thomas" in the list.  Now, arguably, neither one of these are oxymorons, depending what household you're in.  I mean, I don't hear a lot about Justice Rehnquist these days... not as much as our current (Russia-endorsed) president hears about Frederick Douglass, anyway, but sure, Justice Thomas.  For one thing, he's got two first names!  Second, he's a poster child for abortion... I mean, Supreme Court term limits.  No, abortion's too sacred these days to drag its good name in the mud with a cheap phrase like "poster child for abortion."  Not everything in the 80s was nostalgic, just saying.  That and parachute pants.  And formless Spandex.
Anyway, if you read the fine print of this ad, you'll notice something about... I can't read it.  Better dial it up in my image cropping program... okay, got it.  It says to update your version of Flash if you experience problems.  And that's the other thing.  How can you get rid of Flash?  One million Five Two hundred thousand FarmVille players can't be wrong, right?  Adobe put a lot of work into buying it from Macromedia, and now you're going to just toss it aside like Adobe Illustrator?  Is HTML5 really that suitable of a replacement yet?  I don't think so... on the other hand, if getting rid of Flash means no more playing of games like Final Fantasy XIV, maybe it's a good thing.  In the long run.

Atari Emulator -> Pie Man

Do things from the past ever reach out to you in your brain?  For the longest time, I all but forgot about "Fred Garvin: Male Prostitute."  I forget what brought it back, probably one of those SNL Best Of shows or SNL documentaries that they now have way, way too many of... but it came over me like a wave of anti-nostalgia, and there it was front and center again.  But every once in a while, maybe as your brain cells slowly die off, an old memory is triggered.  In this case, as you can see from the blog title post, and perhaps the attached picture as well, that old "Pie Man" video game came back to me.  Mostly the music.  For music compilations on these old Atari games, Preppie! 1 is the first one to come to mind.  That had some good music.  You could really get your game on to that... and it was actual music, too!  Something that fell into the public domain, I'm guessing.  "I was strolling through the park one day, picking up golf balls along the way..."  Pie Man is the rare game to attempt multi-tempo music.  Okay, there's arguably just two tempos, but still... maybe three.  There seems to be eight songs in the Pie Man playlist.  And two channels, no less!  "Pinhead" only has a one-channel playlist of songs, and if memory serves... I think it's all one tempo.  I mean, these are programmers making all this stuff, not musicians here.
As for the game itself, well... basically, you're a baker whose job it is to make pies.  A pie man, if you will.  Alas, they make the job look a little too simple.  Well, this is the Atari we're talking about, after all.  You gotta cram one game into 16K.  That's 16,384 bytes now!  Not 16MB, as used to be a PC minimum once upon a time.  Anyway, unlike the game Homer Simpson got addicted to on his SmartPhone (TM) (R) (C) that had four actions, you basically have three here in Pie Man.  You add whipped cream to a pie crust, put a cherry on top, then take it over to the finished pie section.  It's almost a version of Frogger, if the goal were to take something out of the top part of the maze, rather than installing yourself into it.
Naturally, there are obstacles along the way.  Every once in a while, probably every two minutes, some doofus comes walking through your workspace, making a circular motion, carrying a bunch of boxes.  If you hit him, you make a noise and stop.  And if you're carrying something when you hit him... scratch that, when HE HITS YOU... that thing you're carrying disappears.  Could be a pie piece, could be a whole pie... GONE.  Gone in a New York instant... hmm!  This could actually be advantageous at times.  See, as with most good games, things speed up the more you play.  As the pie shells come on faster and faster, and there are more obstacles to walk around, you might have to lose a whole pie in order to save one from falling.  That's the other thing: you have to finish a pie by the time it gets to the end of the ... treadmill.  Words fail me.  Conveyor belt, that's it.  It's like that Lucy sketch where she and Ethel end up stuffing their bras with candies, once they've ran out of mouth space to store them.
So all that game play's not quite interesting enough.  We need one more element.  I mean, this is the nationals!  This is an ATARI game we're talking about.  Not something for the whores that use a Vic 20, no no no.  They'd stoop to anything, for God's sake!  And so, the longer you play, the more obstacles appear on the work room floor.  And they're abstract art obstacles, too.  That's a little unique.  The white ones are clearly Jackson Pollack-inspired piles of lemon meringue.  You can't walk through those.  Then there are red ones, which are probably / clearly piles of vomit after someone went to the Olive Garden and threw up their lasagna with ravioli on top of it.  You can walk through those, but whatever you're carrying disappears.  Again, could be advantageous when you're really down to the wire and you have to burn one pie in order to save one from falling.  You can only drop seven pies off the conveyor belt.  After that, the game's over.  Boy!  Who knew that the baking of pies was so complicated?  An art fraught with extra obstacles.  I used to think the only obstacles a baker of pies had to face was their own stomachs.  Hmm.  Must be why those chef suits are so elastic.
Oh, there's one other thing.  Almost the whole reason I did this in the first place.  Like any good game, there's a list of ranks you'll be forced to ignore.  I'll try to format this so you can cut and paste it into Excel...

RANK --- # of pies required to achieve said RANK

NEW BAKER ... 0
BAKER APPRENTICE ... 3
BAKER 3RD CLASS ... 9
BAKER 2ND CLASS ... 15
BAKER 1ST CLASS ... 21
LEAD BAKER ... 27
CHIEF BAKER ... 33
HEAD BAKER ... 39
BAKER MASTER ... 45
BAKER SUPERIOR ... 51
BAKER SUPREME ... 57

...and that seems to be where the trail runs cold.  Personally, I would've ended with THE EMPEROR'S PERSONAL BAKER, but what do I know.  I didn't research this thing!

20 Games That Defined Atari 8-Bit Gaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYhGqnIlip0

This is a reply to the following YouTube(TM)(R)(C) video... for some reason, I can't bring myself to leave this comment on the YouTube(TM)(R)(C) page proper itself.  Thankfully, they go in chronological order... or maybe not thankfully.  It is kind of hard to rank these things in terms of the degree to which they defined Atari 8-bit gaming... but I'll certainly give it a shot!

1979 Star Raiders (Atari)

Certainly didn't hurt.  A nice title from Atari itself for $34.95, made people imagine the possibilities of trying to emulate Star Wars with just 16K.

1981 Caverns of Mars (Atari)

I believe this one is featured briefly in the 1985 movie D.A.R.Y.L.  It's the game of robotic kid geniuses!  Not bad, but I think I'm more of a Phobos man, personally.

1981 Eastern Front (1941) (Atari)

Meh.  But it certainly didn't hurt to help define Chris Crawford as an Atari(TM)(R)(C) genius.  Probably his most memorable title, second only to "Gossip."

1982 Aztec Challenge (Cosmi)

Seems like these lists always have a ringer or two that slip the guy or gal compiling the list a little something.  You know, like the old payola radio days.  "Perhaps Mr. Benjamin will convince you to add this to the list" type of deal.  It's like how Entertainment Weekly compiles its annual list of Greatest Movie Farts.  They start off by giving the #2 slot to Adam Sandler's latest.  I will say that, while Aztec Challenge is certainly not the WORST title that Cosmi had to offer... Crypts of Plumbous gets that distinction... I can see how it led to the inspiration for titles like Super Mario Bros.

1982 Miner 2049er (Big Five Software)

Classic.  Used to have it in cartridge form!

1982 Shamus (Synapse)

Classic.  Used to have it in cartridge form!

1983 Dandy (Atari)

Classic.  Led to the creation of Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2 in the arcades, if memory serves.

1983 Blue Max (Synapse)

A fun one.  Alas, it doesn't quite work the same in emulation form for some reason.  It led to a sequel, which clearly didn't make this list.

1983 Jumpman (Epyx)

Classic... even though it's more of a Commodore 64 title.  Boo, hiss!

1983 Alley Cat (Synapse)

Never played it.  Maybe part of it was just the general love for Synapse Software, maybe the rarity of having a cat as the avatar.

1983 M.U.L.E. (Ozark Softscape)

Never played it.  Didn't Electronic Arts buy this one?

1983 Archon: The Light and Dark (Free Fall Associates)

Classic.  I kicked the ass of my high school buddy in this one... Archon 2, not so much.  Man, that guy was good.

1984 Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (Big Five Software)

...meh.  Not as good as Miner 2049er.

1984 Bruce Lee (Datasoft)

Classic.  Probably Datasoft's best title... well, second only to "The Goonies."  In Goonies and Zorro, they don't use Player Missiles.  Bruce Lee used a TON of 'em.

1984 Ballblazer (Lucasfilm)

Classic, but I remember it better as "Ballblaster" by a different company... Careful when you cite these names in mixed company.

1984 Rescue of Fractalus! (Lucasfilm)

Fun one, even though the 3D takes forever.  It just did in Atari, for those who remember.

1984 Koronis Rift (Lucasfilm)

Never played it.

1985 The Eidolon (Lucasfilm)

Played it, never did finish it.  Borrowed it from the same friend from earlier, if memory serves!

1986 International Karate (System 3)

Never played it.  It's all about that Australian background, though.  I remember that screen shot from Antic! magazine, maybe Compute!  What is it with these computing magazines and the exclamation point?

1986 Star Raiders II (Atari)

Classic.  WAY more fun than Star Raiders 1.  But maybe that's just me.  Sure, those big spaceships get a little annoying after a while, I'll give you that.



Okay, here's my question.  What about the glaring absences from the list?  What about BOULDER DASH?  What about Lode Runner?  Arguably, Lode Runner transcended the Atari platform, probably.

Something on Facebook

Like that song says, players only love you when they're playing.  But maybe it's time to take a break and web log a bit!  These ads keep catching the corner of my eye, so I thought I'd finally do a screen grab.  You know, I think the Victoria's Secret catalog does the same thing.  They take one picture of a certain type of lingerie, then change the color of it digitally.  Which I'm afraid does a bit of a disservice to... someone.  Not sure who.  Probably the workers who actually make the stuff.  Okay, back to work.  Ah, the Russian click farms.  Where would I be without them?