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What are the first games you remember playing?

Started by Barry Admin, September 06, 2017, 07:52:43 PM

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buzby

Quote from: Goldentony on September 11, 2017, 06:08:19 PM
Thinking about it, the first game I seem to remember playing properly was either Pitfall or Centipede on my mum's side of the family's Atari. Absolutely adored Pitfall and i've not played it for years. Watched that four part Atari documentary ex staff made themselves a few years ago and I don't think fucking Pitfall came up once. No cunt ever talks about Pitfall. PITFALL.
Pitfall probably didn't feature in the documentary because it was developed by Activision, not Atari. I had it for the Mattel Intellivision.

Super Ape

#91
I'm almost certain the first thing my Dad bought for the Mega Drive was Mega Games 6, which was a compilation of six games: Golden Axe, Revenge of Shinobi, Super Hang-On, Streets of Rage, Columns, and World Cup Italia '90. So I think my first would have been one of those, and, given that I've always had something of a penchant for bloodlust and righteous destruction, I'm pretty sure I'd have made a beeline for Streets of Rage.

Dumb question(s): since it was possible to fit six Mega Drive games onto one cartridge, does that mean a single game from MG6 (say, Streets of Rage) could have been about four, five, or six times as long/large? Seeing as there were four years between the original 1991 SoR release and the release of MG6 in 1995, was it just a matter of Sega not realising or not knowing how to use the console's full capabilities at the time the game was made? Did developers find better ways of managing storage space as time went on?

Super Ape

Sorry. I missed The Basics of the Intro to Game Design for Beginner Dummies class.

Super Ape

Essentially, I'm wondering how the heck they managed to fit six in there.

biggytitbo

Later megadrive games could be as big as 5-6mb and all those games on MG6 are early games that wont be more than about a mb a piece. I'd imagine columns was only a few 100k.

Super Ape

#95
Quote from: biggytitbo on September 15, 2017, 09:04:00 AM
Later megadrive games could be as big as 5-6mb and all those games on MG6 are early games that wont be more than about a mb a piece. I'd imagine columns was only a few 100k.

That's what I wanted to know. I'd no idea about the exact sizes, but I had a feeling it all had something to with later advances in cartridge memory. It's amazing to me that, just in terms of numbers, there's more information packed into some of my Word documents than a game like Columns, though I realise by saying this I'm probably betraying my lack of understanding about data and computers somewhere here.

Thanks, bigs.

(As for my other questions, I'll try being proactive for a change and go find some answers myself.)

buzby

Quote from: Super Ape on September 15, 2017, 05:26:41 PM
That's what I wanted to know. I'd no idea about the exact sizes, but I had a feeling it all had something to with later advances in cartridge memory. It's amazing to me that, just in terms of numbers, there's more information packed into some of my Word documents than a game like Columns, though I realise by saying this I'm probably betraying my lack of understanding about data and computers somewhere here.

Game cartridges use chips called Mask ROMs. These have the data for the program set into them at manufacture and are not reprogrammable. The price of getting these ROMs fabricated decreased over time, which allowed the games companies to write larger games that could be sold for the same price.

The Mega Drive used a Motorola MC68000 processor, which allowed up to 16MB of address space. However, that 16MB was broken up by the Sega designers into 4MB blocks, with blocks of address space allocated to access peripherals like the onboard RAM, Mega CD and 32X. This meant the largest a game could be using a single block of memory addresses was 4MB. However, there was second unallocated block and another partially allocated block that could be accessed by applying memory mapping techniques to allow up to 10MB, but it was very rarely used (Super Street Fighter II used it, as it needed 5MB of ROM).

One thing to remember when comparing old games to document files - the games were largely based on 8 or 16-bit instruction and data elements (the text in a game would be made up of string of 8-bit ASCII characters, for example). Word documents now use Unicode encoding for characters, which uses 16 or even 32-bit values for each character.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Super Ape on September 15, 2017, 05:26:41 PM
That's what I wanted to know. I'd no idea about the exact sizes, but I had a feeling it all had something to with later advances in cartridge memory. It's amazing to me that, just in terms of numbers, there's more information packed into some of my Word documents than a game like Columns, though I realise by saying this I'm probably betraying my lack of understanding about data and computers somewhere here.

Thanks, bigs.

(As for my other questions, I'll try being proactive for a change and go find some answers myself.)


Yes it's amazing how small those games where. You could easiky fit every megadrive game ever made on £5 USB stick with room to spare for every snes game to boot.

MojoJojo

Quote from: buzby on September 16, 2017, 12:40:58 AM
One thing to remember when comparing old games to document files - the games were largely based on 8 or 16-bit instruction and data elements (the text in a game would be made up of string of 8-bit ASCII characters, for example). Word documents now use Unicode encoding for characters, which uses 16 or even 32-bit values for each character.

I believe Word actually uses UTF8.

I think that's "Post of the Year" in the bag.

buzby

Quote from: MojoJojo on October 05, 2017, 03:36:19 PM
I believe Word actually uses UTF8.

I think that's "Post of the Year" in the bag.
Yes, for English language users the XML files in a DOCX archive are encoded as UTF8 by default (though this means it has to use escape character prefixes for some of the punctuation and symbols). The point I was trying to illustrate is that there's still tons of extra crap in there besides the typed text (even if it's now compressed).

Have a virtual cigar.

Neomod

In 1980 we got the Binatone TV Master MK 6



but my friend James had one of these.



He wouldn't even swap it for a topless poster of Toyah.


FredNurke

For me, Pac-Man, on (I believe) that very Atari system, c. 1984-5.

Black Ship

At school there was a BBC Acorn on which we played Granny's Garden. Never could get to the end before getting attacked by the witch.

dmillburn

The first game I can actually remember playing is the arcade game Boot Hill, but at home my first was the mighty Grandstand 6000 a year or so later in about 1978



10 different Pong variants, and in colour too, but that was wasted on me as I only ever played it on a tiny black and white TV.

We then upgraded to a console I've not been able to trace, some VCS knock-off purchased from the local Electricity Board shop circa 1980 or so which came with a few games on separate cartridges (the games were clones of Space Invaders, Combat and other 2600 big hitters). I can still vaguely remember getting it, and the salesman convincing my mum to buy it as it was half the price of the 2600.  I can't for the life of me work out what it was though, I'm guessing it was a re-badged US console as friends of ours bought something similar around the same time (they got a Grandstand Adman, which was a re-branded PAL version of the Magnavox Fairchild Channel F with it's distinctive joysticks with the thumb control on top) but trawling through hundreds of pictures hasn't turned anything up. In all likelihood it's probably still in my dad's loft so I'll get to see it again at some point.

From the mystery console it was on to the Vic-20 and endless games of Blitz from the free tape that game with it.

Barry Admin

SHIT! I owe you a PM!

Seeing as early consoles have come up, ill copy in my post from the other thread:

I've been trying to work out what our first console was, and I think it was this second generation marvel, or a clone:



QuoteThe console was produced by different companies and sold with different names. Not every console is compatible with others due to differences in the shapes and dimensions of the cartridge slots, but all of the systems are software compatible.[2] In the article about the 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System there is a table with all the software-compatible consoles grouped by compatibility family (due to the slots).

Certainly the paddles look very familiar, with that joystick and the buttons. Looking at the games on YouTube seals the deal. I only remember two games, Space Invaders (or Super Invaders), and what I guess is Hunting, which is like a sort of carnival shooting game where things fly past and you try and shoot them. I seem to recall there were different modes, and that the bullets could be steered somewhat.

Not sure if it was the first one I played, possible though. Might have predated my Commodore 64 and playing Kangaroo at the Saturday morning club.

I guess those sit-down tabletop games would have been early on too.

I have played a fuckload of games.




This is Hunting, definitely remember this game:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8sTNj82iVLU

The original version of the console was released in 1978. Imagine that.

buzby

Quote from: Barry Admin on September 07, 2017, 08:28:14 PM
I was delighted to be reminded of Bomb Jack, and I was immediately surprised that he's not been reprised and rebooted to appeal to people of our age. I see Tecmo has ceased trading as of 2010, but yeah, a great wee character and I'm surprised more wasn't done with him over the years. I like the wiki article, I wonder if it's ever been edited by Mr G Jones of London.

Any Bomb Jack experts who know another reason that score might be so well-known, buzby?

No idea, but it's not a 'famous' score as it's not in any of the verified entries in the online high score sites. The 3 masters of Bomb Jack are Gary 'LordGaz' Lee, Paul 'kernzy' Kearns (both from the UK) and Saulo Bastos (Brazil). There are 2 record categories - Tournament (5 lives) and Marathon (play as long as you can). Saulo holds the current Tournament record at 4934900 and Paul Kearns holds the marathon record at 73378560 (and is second on the Tournament record at 4888740 - there's a 51-minute video of this up on his Youtube channel).

Back in 2009 the Wiki entry used to have one of Paul Kearns scores in it with a link out to the Twin Galaxies socre page for the game, but it was deleted by some editor who reckoned TG couldn't be classed as an official source.

Barry Admin