Sad New Day, Go Away

...am I right?  Oh, right.  Why, do you ask?  Well, first, here's the link to the cultural reference.  And here's a Wikipedia link.  Apparently, it's from an album called "One," as in he's only going to do one album.  But it happens.  And "In Living Color" does it in their Honeymooners parody, and it's a small part of eternity from now on.  TV eternity, not film eternity.  Film's a little better about preservation.  Anyway, the thing I was sad about is the ultimate passing of "Tetris Battle."  But, if the programmers are good, they should be able to translate all that ActionScript code to HTML5 in no time, right?  Am I right?  Ooh!  And they should do that douche-y thing where you scroll a website down now, and there's, like... multiple levels to it!  Like you're walking in a skyscraper through a glass covered bridge from one building to another.  That kinda crap.  In the meantime, I want to just save the levels for posterity, or posteriority, whichever comes first.

Atari Emulator -> Action!

For those of you old enough or Atari-ically inclined enough to recall, a company called OSS made a programming language called Action!  All the speed of machine language, but without the portability.  No messy line numbers of BASIC, what have you.  You know, just because you wrote what you thought was a good game didn't mean you could just waltz right in to Antic! and expect them to like it, and immediately start selling it for $34.99.
And somewhere, somehow, as part of the Action! package, there came three games.  One was called Amazing! (Mushca disc 108), a Pac-Man clone where you couldn't score more than 65,535 points, and you had land mines instead of power pills.  Another was Rats' Revenge (Mushca disk 127),... a clone of the final level of Donkey Kong where you have to get all the rivets, except that instead you have to run over all the girders while avoiding your (not-so) fellow rats.  The last one I remember was called "Gem" (Mushca disk 294) where you and up to four players total have to go into the Thunderdome, grab the gem, and return to your corner.  As these Graphics 1 games go, it's pretty good!  It certainly influenced my own Graphics 1 game-thinking a little bit.  There was one last one: a Defender-clone, but I never discovered that one, so screw it.  Maybe these were on an accompanying 5.25" disk or something.  Must've been it.  I didn't have an Atari modem back then, alas.  I could've really did some damage with that thing, lemme tell you!

Atari Emulator -> Tigris

...what, no Euphrates?  Tee hee hee.  Well, sometimes one tires of the world of the infinite game now.  I mean, who would've thought I'd be playing Candy Crush for the rest of my life?  Every once in a while, there's a slight pocket of resistance, and of course the failed game show.  Was it on CBS?  And so, I felt like playing one of those 3D Tetris clones.  (Note to self: "Drop it" on Mushca Disk 111)  But before I could to get to the Atari emulator one, I happened upon this one on Mushca Disk 107 called Tigris.  Addictive game play, as they say.  But I suppose most game play is.  "Fortnite" is the current reigning champion.  I mean, when world health organizations are calling for a stop to the video game-induced madness, you know they're on to something.
And so, this Tetris clone the Germany-based mortals have decided to call "Tigris" is much like the original Tetris, with a few tweaks.  Most notably, the German, first of all.  I guess the German for "next" is "Vorschau."  You'll find you'll be relying quite a bit on what the next piece is.  Second, you have the usual seven Tetriminos, but they've expanded the piece set a bit!  Unfortunately, you get a lot of 'Q's and 'X's in the mix.  Sure, there's the occasional two- and three-square Tetriminos, but there's a few five- and six-square ones as well.  You might call those Tigris-minos.  You don't get the full set, I'm afraid, but just enough to make the game last a lot less than forever.  I acutally just scored about 4000 points in my most recent outing, but I think that was mainly out of the luck of the draw.  Even love the music; two notes of impending dread.  Very German, indeed.

Atari Emulator - Wall War

...welp, I played that!  I'm down to the dregs now, much like humans and the last drops of oil on the planet.  Well, it is a more fun energy source than solar and wind.  Anyway, this is in the vain... vein?  Of Quarxon, and some of the sounds are like Demons to Diamonds... that's right, that stupid Atari 2600 game.  Well, there's something about it.  Plus, there aren't many Shoot 'Em Ups where you get to use the paddle, what can I tell ya?  I got to level 3, and apparently that's the extent of the advantage I get against the "robot" opponent.  Much like Quarxon, you have to shoot through a wall at your opponent's store of... whimsical magnetic fields?  And you keep shooting at that until it's all gone.  Fun times.  I have a newfangled appreciation for finite games.  And now, I must get back to Candy Crush and Tetris Battle.

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.