MAGGI PICAYUNE

Part two! These games were actually harder but still fun. Kept it to five like last so here we go with the next batch!

Commando: I mistook this game for another one that focused on being a soldier taking on a whole army. Actually two games. The point is you’re this soldier, progressing up the screen and you have to take out the enemy in the way. You can do this by shooting in eight different directions and grenades. It moves rather quickly for a game of its age (early Eighties).

Mad Planets: Another rare entry by Gottlieb (they’re only success in video games was Q•Bert). You fly a wedge-like ship around the screen shooting planets which form and grow from middle of the screen. They eventually work their way out to the edges, swooping around, throwing fireballs/moons at you. They’re easier to destroy when they start out in their porto-planet origins. As the game progresses in levels, you can earn additional points rescuing drifting astronauts. I actually enjoyed it and have played it again. The combo controls of the joystick (position on the screen) and dial (facing for the ship) wasn’t as hard as I feared.

Black Widow: This is my personal hypothesis, but I think Black Widow was Atari’s answer to Williams’ Robotron 2084 via gameplay/controls except it uses Atari’s trademark  of XYZ displays (Tempest, Battlezone). Here you are the spider defending its web from various insects; one joystick to move, the other to fire. It has an element of Joust too, some enemies turn into eggs you need to push off the web and if you take too long, something invincible will chase you.

Phoenix: This game I remember from my youth very well. One of my classmates had a hint book (pre-Internet days!) covering numerous games, some I’d never seen because Springfield wasn’t exactly a metropolis. The book made it intriguing but when we moved to Houston, I finally saw it in action…a pseudo imitation of Space Invaders and Galaga. There are interesting touches: limited shields, bird enemies which re-grow their wings and a battle station. Plus, what I learned in the book didn’t make me any better at winning.

Sinistar: Still as hard as I remembered. You fly around, shooting opponents that are either armed or unarmed. All the while they’re building the main menace, a giant flying head called Sinistar. I know you get these smart bombs to take out the boss but I continue to fail at killing off the ships responsible for building it.

Now that I’ve appeased my push-game addiction into landing a PS4 (special bundle with Destiny), I got back into the pinball groove. However, the newer Pinballz has a whole section dedicated to video games, many from the early Eighties which would’ve been the Golden Age of the cabinet games. So I thought about playing each one of them and writing a little blurb. Hell, I might find one I like to play on a frequent basis because the home consoles just can’t imitate them exactly. One additional rule, for now, the multi-cade machines don’t count. It has to be a cabinet that’s only capable of running one game.

Quasar: A rare game from Italy circa 1980. Never heard nor saw it until Pinballz. It starts out like Space Invaders with your ship at the bottom of the screen. After defeating a couple small (like 3-4 ships) waves, you then move closer to the middle and it becomes Asteroids. Other than being a rare import, Quasar doesn’t have much appeal.

Pyros: An early side-scrolling which reminded me of Ghost ‘n Goblins. The hero doesn’t have much range with his fireballs and he has to do a fair amount of jumping. But if you get touched once, you lose a life. Not my kind of game generally since Goblins gave you armor to prolong the lives you had.

Defender: I still suck at this big time since there’s just too many buttons for my liking. I did succeed in getting past the first wave before the saucers showed up to rush me. Nope, those jerks appeared in the second wave. Maybe I’ll practice on this one since it’s relatively cheaper than pinball. Defender remains pretty cool as a game and story line, protect the people on the ground from the aliens who will eat them; once all the people are gone, the land/planet blows up and then you’re in a world of hurt. I don’t think I’ll ever be as impressive as one classmate in high school, he casually rolled it in an afternoon.

Satan’s Hollow: A truly weird game and I think it was made for repurposing Gorf cabinets since they had the same manufacturer. You’re this cannon shooting at what appear to be vultures. Every once in a while, you get pieces of a (I think) bridge to assemble. After a wave or two of vultures, you then have to shoot the devil. Unlike Gorf, you also have a shield to raise on occasion for the vultures will try to kamikaze you.

Breakout: My hubris with old games got me on this one and/or the CRT’s instability with the paddle. The ball moved faster than I remembered plus the paddle wasn’t as wide. I may have been tricked by my past games of its descendant Arkanoid. They story behind this game (involving Woz & Jobs) is more interesting than its play.