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mingos-commodoreblog · 6 months

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RECOIL 6.4.0 - Retro Computer Image Library decodes Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari Portfolio, Atari ST/TT/Falcon, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Commodore 16/116/Plus4, Commodore 128, Electronika BK, FM Towns, HP 48, Macintosh 128K, MSX, NEC PC-80/88/98, Oric, SAM Coupe, Sharp X68000, Tandy 1000, Timex 2048, TRS-80, TRS-80 Color Computer, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum picture formats. The project contains a simple viewer, plug-ins for general-purpose image viewers and editors, and an everything-to-png converter.

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humor-y-videojuegos · 6 months

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Zaxxon 🏢 Sega 📅 1982 🖥 Apple II, Arcade, Atari 8-bit, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, DOS, Handheld Electronic LCD, Intellivision... #videogames

#Apple II #Arcade #Atari 8-bit #Atari 2600 #Atari 5200 #ColecoVision #Commodore 64 #DOS #Handheld Electronic LCD #Intellivision #MSX #SG-1000 #TRS-80 #TRS-80 Color Computer #Wii #ZX Spectrum

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old-web-dreams · 5 months

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Games i played in my childhood - Alley Cat (PC-1984)

#alley cat #pixel game #8bit game #1983 #1984 #Synapse Software #Atari 8-bit #Atari #PC #retro games #childhood games #my post #nostalgia

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zentendo · 5 months

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Bruce Lee: A Vintage Martial Arts Odyssey on Atari 8-bit - Exploring the Classic Gem of the '80s

In the annals of classic gaming, few titles hold the nostalgic weight and martial arts flair quite like Bruce Lee. Released in 1984 for the Atari 8-bit family, this platform game, penned by Ron J. Fortier and brought to life by Datasoft, remains a timeless gem. Let’s embark on a journey through the chambers of a wizard’s tower, exploring the graphics, gameplay, and lasting impact of Bruce…

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#&039;80s video games #Atari 8-bit #Bruce Lee game #classic chiptune music #Commodore 64 #gaming nostalgia #historical video games.#martial arts platformer #multiplayer gaming #nostalgic graphics #retro gaming

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hardcore-gaming-101 · 1 year

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Into the Eagle’s Nest

World War II and video games have gone together like peanut butter and chocolate during the medium’s existence. Interpretations of the historic war range from serious strategy games & detailed simulators to the high-flying fare of Wolfenstein 3D or the Call of Duty series. Interceptor Micros, a publishing studio riding the wave of British microcomputers, had their take with Into The Eagle’s Nest, released in 1987, on a host of computing platforms of the time. Its setup and pedigree had potential to be something quite thrilling, but the finished product leaves much to be desired.

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everygame · 10 months

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The Eidolon (Atari 8-Bit)

Developed/Published by: Lucasfilm Games / Epyx Released: 12/1985 Completed: 07/04/2023 Completion: Beat the final dragon. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

The Eidolon is one of the very first games I got for my Amstrad CPC. Mind those mail order club “eight CDs for a penny” scams, where you’d get a bunch of things for free as long as you give the company “implied license” for them to send you things at full price in future unless you can work your way out of it? Well, we definitely did one of those when I got my Amstrad CPC and my dad definitely managed to get out of it ahead… somehow.

Of course, it depends on your definition of “ahead.” I was given full freedom to select the games I wanted for the Amstrad, and considering I was a tiny child it’s not like I had any (literally any) critical faculties. So I know we got the Amstrad CPC conversion of the original Star Wars Arcade machine. And outside of that, I know we got Inflitrator and I know we got The Eidolon.

Strangely, I’ve already written about Infiltrator once in passing, and in a write-up of one of Lucafilm’s “launch” releases, Rescue on Fractalus (the other, Ballblazer). With Infiltrator, I could never get the bloody helicopter to take off because I was a tiny child. With The Eidolon? The disk almost never worked.

So maybe we didn’t come out ahead, even for our penny. As far as Infiltrator, I remember getting the helicopter to take off once. With The Eidolon, I remember getting it to load once, or twice, being confused by what was going on, possibly seeing the first dragon that I’d looked at for so long on the back of the box, and giving up because I had no idea what to do.

Well, it’s 2023 and I have to say that with the manual to hand, the entire interne on offer, and “being an adult” it took me a bloody long time to understand what the fuck you’re supposed to do in this.

To not get ahead of ourselves, let’s start with what The Eidolon is. It’s one of Lucasfilm’s second “wave” of releases from the end of 1985, which amounted to The Eidolon and Koronis Rift. These titles begin the “forgotten” era of Lucasfilm between Rescue and Fractalus/Ballblazer and Maniac Mansion, and are almost totally unheralded (although some people do seem to like Koronis Rift a lot.) Oddly–and I don’t have my copy of Rogue Leaders to hand, nor offhand knowledge if it even covers this–the unfettered creative hotbed of early Lucasfilm knocks out two games entirely built around the fractal landscapes of Rescue on Fractalus at once, which… well, I guess it’s efficient.

The Eidolon’s take is to just “flip” the mountain landscapes of Rescue on Fractalus to turn them into caves, which is, to be fair, a decent use. The problem is, unfortunately, the game designed around this. Designed by Charlie Kellner–who doesn’t seem to have stuck with video games after 1994’s the Page Master–the game was originally intended to be a narrative where the player plays as the dragon versus a knight, but due to the limits of what they could do with the Atari 8-bits they ended up sanding things off until all they had were, well, caves to walk around, and thanks to Charlie’s interest in HG Wells, the game suddenly became about an inventor of a mysterious craft being transported to the depths of his own mind which just happened to look exactly like a bunch of samey grey caves.

To be fair to Charlie, there’s a couple of firsts or near-firsts here. The Eidolon, in some respects, one of the earliest “first person shooters” considering that it’s the main way you interact with the world (even though, as I’ll go on to explain, not in a way you’d expect); Maze/Maze War from 1973 is definitely earlier, but there’s a dearth of examples in between, and this is (as far as I can be arsed to research) the earliest with smooth 3D movement. And The Eidolon is probably the first steampunk video game. Sure, the genre feels embarrassing now. But not if you were first!

Anyway. The Eidolon has a beautiful manual, written from the perspective of the inventor, that (unfortunately) it takes real effort to understand the intended play for, so I’ll summarise it here.

There are eight levels.

Your goal on each level is to defeat the dragon you’ll find somewhere in the maze. You can’t get to the dragon until you collect the associated crystals required to awaken in.

You collect the crystals by killing monsters, all of whom are sleeping in dead-ends in the maze until you wake them up by walking up to them.

You defeat monsters by shooting energy balls at them, usually the red ones. You’ve got four types of energy ball to fire: red (damaging), gold (only useful against some dragons, I think?), blue (freeze enemies), green (transform enemy into something else. Doesn’t transform dragons.)

Sometimes there are red energy balls flying around that will damage you; fire a red energy ball at them to turn them into a harmless gold energy ball.

Everything you do costs energy, but handily there are energy balls floating about all over the mazes and you can capture them.

When awoken, dragons will also fire energy balls at you, but you can capture those too!

You’ve got a time limit to finish the game, and only get a couple minutes added for each level you beat, so you can’t dawdle and need to accept you’ll have to map the mazes to actually finish the game (or *cough* find a map online *cough*).

You die when you run out of energy.

That’s about it, basically. It is not especially deep, and I have to admit once I’d finally worked it all out I was pretty disappointed it was this slight. While moving around the maze is breezy enough, the technical limitations make most of the action, at best, clumsy button bashing. Every enemy is just standing in a corner, basically waiting for you to walk up to them and fire just enough fireballs at them to kill them (it’s amusing that contemporary reviews complained “why can’t you talk to the monsters”) and combat with the dragons locks you into the space so you basically just have to hammer the “fire energy ball” and “capture energy ball” buttons as fast as you can to get it over with as quickly as possible. There’s supposedly some tactics to it, but fireballs are on screen for a handful of frames making it almost worthless to try and time it out.

In fact, playing this rather brutally aggravated my wrists as the final boss is a marathon of button bashing (I read one forum poster stating that they had to put their Atari on the floor to mash the spacebar with their foot!) and it leads to one of the most hilariously baffling ending sequence where (spoilers!) Robert Goulet hands you a pterodactyl egg. It is… not worth it.

I hate to say it but the problem with The Eidolon is that it’s not really… anything. It’s a collection of things, for sure, but they don’t actually add up to a video game. The only thing I really thought was that interesting was having to use the “transform” energy ball on certain enemies so you could defeat them, but that’s… not much.

It’s a real missed opportunity, too, because the smooth scrolling cave represented a perfect opportunity to push the CRPG forward. Yes, Ultima IV had really only just come out, but Wizardry had been kicking since 1981, and the tech here is good enough that it’s not like you have to do anything nearly as complex. Just a simple dungeon crawler would have been pretty incredible, but it’s possible I’m asking a bit much. I mean… if you really get down to it, Wolfenstein 3D is less complex than this, so it may simply be that this was the right seed of an idea at the wrong time technologically, and as soon as things moved forward a bit both Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld would be possible. The Eidolon just doesn’t really manage to be a forefather of either.

Will I ever play it again? I won’t. I did think about playing through the CPC version of this instead of the original, which is a bit more colourful if a touch slower. But I was worried it wouldn’t load properly. Some things stick with you..

Final Thought: Above I mentioned this was from Lucasfilm’s forgotten era, and I really do mean it: it’s quite remarkable how little information is about this game online despite being from one of the most beloved developers probably ever, and I do think it’s a shame, dead-end or not. I mean I’m very glad I finally played it. I got my dad’s penny worth. Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

#video games #games #gaming #lucasfilm #lucasfilm games #lucasarts #the eidolon #eidolon #atari 8-bit #atari 800 #review #txt #text #1985

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oldgamedebris · 2 years

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(Finally got to the game Attack of the Flickering Skeletons was named after.)

#Atari 8-bit #The Domain of the Undead #Title Screen #Game Over #Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of #seizure warning

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smbhax · 1 year

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“An ad for Juggles’ House from the fall 1983 edition of Atari Connection magazine.”

From Atari 50 on PS4

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rexandbalances · 2 years

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Axel F - 44 Khz version 2021 - Atari 8-bit demo

ALL YOU BITCHES POSTING ABOUT “80′S AESTHETIC” ARE MISSING THE POINT. THIS IS IT. RIGHT HERE.

#youtube #axel f #harold faltermeyer #atari 8-bit

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billloguidice · 3 months

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THE400 Mini Complete Game List - All 25 Games!

THE400 Mini Complete Game List - All 25 Games! #the400 #the400mini #atari #atari8bit #gamelist

Thanks to this AtariAge thread, we now have the complete list of 25 games found on the THE400 Mini, which is just $199.99 on Amazon. Here’s the list of 25 games with links to screenshots: Airball Asteroids Basketball Battlezone Berzerk Boulder Dash Bristles Capture the Flag Centipede Crystal Castles Elektraglide Encounter! Flip and Flop Henry’s House Hover Bovver Lee (aka, Bruce…

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#Atari #atari 400 #atari 8-bit #atari 800 #game list #the400 #xe #xl

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stormkeepergu · 2 years

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The Rebinding of IsaacStorm and Other Updates

New Blog Update: The Rebinding of IsaacStorm and Other Updates

Anyone who gets the reference in the title gets 10 Internet Points! Okay folks, so here’s the deal… I’ve decided to restart my Isaac save for let’s plays because it’s been so long since I’ve done a recording that I feel like a fresh start is the way forward! The old videos will of course be left on my channel, but I will be starting a brand new iteration of the series, although I should be able…

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oldschoolfrp · 11 months

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Wizard of Wor, 1981 flyer for the 1980 Midway arcade game, later ported to Atari, Commodore 64, and Bally Astrocade (the latter as The Incredible Wizard)

#Wizard of Wor #1980s #Atari #8 bit #wizard #Midway #Commodore 64 #Bally Astrocade #computer game #video game #arcade game #maze #labyrinth #The Incredible Wizard #dungeon #science fantasy

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humor-y-videojuegos · 1 year

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Joust 🏢 Williams Electronics 📅 1982 🖥 Apple II, Arcade, Atari 8-bit, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Atari ST, ColecoVision, DOS...

#Apple II #Arcade #Atari 8-bit #Atari 2600 #Atari 5200 #Atari 7800 #Atari Lynx #Atari ST #ColecoVision #DOS #Game Boy #Handheld Electronic LCD #Mac #NES #PS3

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arjorge1987 · 12 days

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VCF East!

#retro #retrogaming #80s #8 bits #atari #spectrum #commodore #commodore 64 #msx #vcf #vcf east

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hardcore-gaming-101 · 1 year

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Final Legacy

Old video games introduced many of the basic concepts and genres that are still used today, which were refined over time. Platformer shooters still exist for example – see Cuphead. Beat-em-ups still exist as well, such as Super Crush K.O. or even The Wonderful 101, both of which put original twists on that genre’s style of gameplay. There are also the games which are credited with birthing or popularizing a genre, such as Wizardry or Ultima, among the earliest dungeon crawlers and RPGs in existence.

To a modern gamer, playing the oldest examples of such genres might be like watching the movie Halloween or TV show Seinfeld – the ideas that they pioneered have since been copied and refined many times over, so much so that the progenitors look bland by comparison.

But some old games tried ideas that were not only original, but not truly copied since. Final Legacy, developed by Atari themselves, is a game that innovated for its time, and is based around a concept that could well be considered original by modern standards. It lacks the polish of modern games, but its originality makes it stick out both for the time and even now.