What a difference a year can make. Last week I wrote about Tiger’s Electronic Baseball which was one of the company’s first handheld LCD games. It featured simple graphics, basic controls and lame sound effects, and like any kid, I eventually got bored of the game. So when the time came to find a replacement, Electronic Hang-On seemed to offer so much more. The game is dated 1988 on the back, and it’s interesting to see how Tiger advanced the ‘platform’ in just a year’s time. The obvious improvement is the use of a licensed and already popular video game property. While Baseball was rather generic, Hang-On was a well-known SEGA title, and Tiger realized that players already familiar with the console version of the game would no doubt embrace a portable version as well. Clearly, the strategy worked on me.
The Tiger handheld games themselves also saw some much needed improvement. The lame two button controls of Baseball were replaced with a 4-way directional pad on one side (admittedly ‘down’ doesn’t actually do anything) and a set of accelerate and brake buttons on the other. While Hang-On’s gameplay featured the popular and somewhat overused ‘dodge the oncoming traffic’ approach, thanks to twisty roads and a turbo mode it could be quite challenging, and helped to pass many hours in the back of our minivan. I’d have to say the game’s sound effects saw the most improvement, and come pretty close to recreating the actual whine you’d get from a racing bike tearing down the highway. Even playing it now I’m somewhat impressed by how it sounds.
Unfortunately even with these improvements and a few other clever gimmicks the company created for later titles, the Tiger handhelds didn’t stand a chance against Nintendo’s Game Boy which was released in North America in August of 1989. And even though I was quick to embrace the Game Boy when it was released, I still had a soft spot for Hang-On and Baseball which is probably why they’re still in my collection so many years later.
While Nintendo’s Game & Watch devices can probably be credited with jumpstarting the handheld electronic gaming market (or at least giving it a much needed boost) the company was no where near as prolific at releasing different segmented LCD display games as Tiger Electronics was. A few weeks ago I managed to dig up the first Tiger Electronics game I owned, which was a simple and generic version of baseball. No MLB tie-ins, so sports celebrity endorsements, just plain old baseball. The game’s sat untouched in a drawer for almost the past 20 years (it’s dated 1987 on the back) but I wasn’t surprised to see the rough condition it was in since I can remember throwing it in my school bag as a kid and taking it everywhere. However, I was surprised to find that the game still worked when I popped in a set of AA’s.
By today’s standards Electronic Baseball is downright crude, with cheesy beeps and blips used for sound effects, and uninspired baseball diamond graphics in the background. Besides the smaller buttons used for power, sound and difficulty settings, the game only has two simple controller buttons which are used for swinging and advancing your runners on base. And even though the graphics surrounding the display clearly show fielders wearing jellyfish and boxing gloves instead of traditional baseball gloves, your team never actually takes to the field. In fact the game is more like a home-run derby in that you really just need to swing on every pitch and hope for the best. Since this was one of Tiger’s first handheld games (at least in this form factor) it’s not surprising how simple the gameplay really was, but as a kid I still played with it for hours on end. Fortunately over the years the Tiger Electronics handheld games did get a bit more advanced…
The Super Nintendo entered my life on a Christmas morning many, many years ago, and besides the Game Boy, it was the first real gaming console I owned. And while the SNES came with the most excellent Super Mario World, I wanted another game to play during the Christmas holidays, and that turned out to be Pilotwings. Even as a kid I was quite an aviation enthusiast, and even though Pilotwings leaned more towards being an arcade title than an actual flight simulator, it was still quite challenging and entertaining. The game relied heavily on the Super Nintendo’s ‘Mode 7′ graphics capabilities, and while the ground looked pretty fake up-close, while in the air the pseudo-3D effect was quite convincing.
The game allowed you to fly various ‘aircraft’ including a light plane, hang glider and a helicopter (in a bonus mission) and even included a few skydiving missions where it was often more fun to not pull the parachute cord. But for my money the rocket belt levels were easily the best. The controls allowed for left and right yaw rotation while your character would lean forward and back to control his speed. All of the game’s levels required you to fly (or fall) through a series of floating rings and then land on or hit a target for the best score. While landing on a moving target was definitely the most difficult task, the rocket belt levels also provided an overhead view which occasionally made things a bit easier. (Not always though.) The game was eventually followed by Pilotwings 64 on the N64, but to be honest the new version never really had the same appeal to me as the SNES one did. However, I’m hopeful that Nintendo will eventually revive the franchise for the Wii.
While Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the umpteen sequels it’s spawned have become the defacto standard for skateboarding games, ask anyone who spent time gaming on the Commodore 64 and they’ll tell you that Skate Or Die was where virtual cube-gleaming got its real start. Even for the C64 the Skate Or Die graphics and music were actually quite impressive, and it was definitely one of those games you could play with a group of friends since there were several two-player modes. That is, as long as you had a 2nd joystick, since no one wanted to get stuck playing with the keyboard.
And anyone who played Skate Or Die on the C64 has to remember this dude. He was the owner of the local skateshop and even though he appeared to be on the rough side of 40 going on 50, he still sported a wicked purple mohawk. His shop also served as the game’s main menu allowing you to keep track of high scores or enter various competitions. You made your selection by moving a cursor around the screen, and depending on where it was this dude would spit out rad skateboard phrases (all text-based of course) like “Don’cha like my ‘do’” whenever you passed over his mohawk. If I had to assemble a top ten list of C64 games, Skate Or Die would definitely be in there somewhere, and all these years later I can honestly say I still like that guy’s ‘do’.
With titles like Nintendogs, Elektroplankton or the upcoming Wii Music, Nintendo has shown that they’re a big advocate of casual or ‘non-game’ games. (Or whatever you want to call them.) And while you might think this is a recent trend, from what I can recall, their first venture away from traditional games was a title called Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. While it did include a couple of simple games that were basically there to teach you how to use the included mouse, Mario Paint was more focused on creative activities like drawing, painting or even animation. I definitely enjoyed Mario Paint as a kid, particularly when I needed a break from Super Mario World, and in my later years (high school-ish) it even came in handy for creating animated titles for a handful of video projects.
But what really made Mario Paint fun (for me at least), and what seems to have given the game a new life on YouTube, was the built-in song composer where you could lay out various classic Nintendo sound effects on a virtual piece of sheet music and then play back your musical creations. When I first got the game I actually wasn’t that interested in the song composer (the songs I made were usually pretty crappy) until I found a book that showed you how to use it to recreate actual songs like the Star Wars theme. After that I spent countless hours painstakingly laying out the sound effects while I tried to figure out what notes came next in a particular song. By the time the N64 came along, Mario Paint was all but forgotten, but last month I was surprised to find there was still a thriving community of people creating (and re-creating) music using the Mario Paint composer. To give you an idea of what it was capable of, and how awesome it really was, here’s a video of Michael Jackson’s Thriller as re-created in the MP composer.
And if you’re looking to kill some more time, here’s a few other impressive Mario Paint creations I found on YouTube:
And if this post has inspired you to make your own Mario Paint musical masterpiece, but you don’t have an SNES or a copy of the game, there’s actually a PC version (Windows or OSX) of the song composer called Mario Paint Composer which features all of the samples from the original game.
Not only was the Game Boy the first true game console I ever owned, but it was also the first big purchase I had to ‘save up’ for as a kid. And to ensure that I didn’t spend the first few weeks only playing the included copy of Tetris, I made sure to budget a few extra dollars so I could also pick up one of the Game Boy’s original launch titles. This ended up being Konami’s Motocross Maniacs and in hindsight I’m still pretty happy with the decision, since the game is one of my favorite Game Boy titles to this day. Because it was one of the first third-party games available for the new system, the graphics and gameplay in Motocross Maniacs were pretty simple, but the game was still extremely challenging and addictive.
Motocross Maniacs is basically a 2D sidescroller, but instead of running around and shooting at enemies, you’re riding a dirt bike through a series of jumps, loops and other physics-defying obstacles. And all the while you’re racing the clock trying to complete the course in the allotted time. (Harder difficulty settings simply meant less time on the clock.) The courses were also packed full of different power-ups including the all important nitro ‘N’ block which provided you with a burst of speed that was actually necessary to make it across certain jumps later in the game. And like I said, while Motocross Maniacs might have been a simple game in concept, I can remember it being quite difficult at times. But it’s amazing how you’re able to overcome the urge to frustratingly whip your Game Boy against the wall when it represents months of your own hard-earned money.
Long before Mortal Kombat hit the scene and got everyone riled up about video game violence, there was a game called Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior which I played on the C64. (Though I only ever knew it as Barbarian.) It was your standard 2D fighting game, but instead of fancy martial arts or magical fireballs you had to rely on your sword and basic fighting moves like kicks, rolls and even head butts. Come to think of it the game was probably pretty accurate in that regard, since it supposedly took place during the dark ages. Two opponents of slightly varying color schemes would square off in a handful of medieval venues, and eventually you’d get to challenge a wizard who was the game’s final boss. For some reason though, my copy of the game was stuck in an endless loop, so no matter how many opponents I defeated (sometimes close to 50 before I gave up) I never actually made it to the final wizard stage.
But I still thoroughly enjoyed the game, mostly because of one special move where your character would do an impressive 360 degree spin with his sword, taking your opponent’s head clean off in the process. In fact I found this move worked right from the start of the match, but only with every other opponent. The ones in-between apparently had some level of improved AI that allowed them to block the attack. But for those who weren’t so lucky, once beheaded they would slump to the ground and a bizarre green troll-like creature would stroll across the screen, kick the head out of frame and then drag the body away. (After stopping to make some weird sound effect.) And again, by today’s standards the game looks pretty lame, but in 1987 that pixelated blood was more than enough to send the squeamish running from the room. But if you have any doubt about the awesomeness of Barbarian, I’ve included a YouTube video showing the game in action, after the jump. (Note: The squeamish still might want to look away.)
I think it’s safe to say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the original Test Drive was the greatest ‘driving around a mountain’ simulator ever developed for any gaming console. At least that’s what I assumed the game was about, since there was always a towering brown wall to the right of your vehicle you had to avoid, in addition to the occasional traffic coming from the opposite direction. And even though I had no idea where they could set up a speed trap on a mountain road, the game also required you to watch your speed, otherwise you’d find the police chasing you in your rear-view mirror. Thankfully your car was also equipped with a radar detector (the device in the upper left corner of the screen) so you knew when to keep your speed down and when you could jam your joystick all the way forward.
But I think what really attracted most kids and even automotive enthusiasts to the game was that Test Drive featured actual licensed cars, and as far as I know it was the first driving simulator to have that. You had your choice of 5 different performance vehicles including the Chevrolet Corvette, the Lamborghini Countach, the Porsche 911 Turbo, the Ferrari Testarossa and the Lotus Esprit Turbo. As you scrolled through the choices you also got a brief spec sheet for each ride so you could see how they performed in terms of acceleration or 0-60 times. (Not that any of those numbers actually translated that well when it came to the in-game driving.) As a kid I can remember being absolutely blown away at the ‘high-resolution’ graphics of each car on the selection screen, and while I shake my head looking at them today, back then it made me wonder how things could ever improve. Thankfully though, the original Test Drive was far from the pinnacle of video game graphics.
It seems that if you want to guarantee your sports title has some level of success these days, you need to make sure it features a professional athlete in some capacity. But believe it or not there was a time when game developers didn’t shell out millions of dollars to license actual players. In fact the first game to feature sports celebrities didn’t come out until 1983 when a then small company known as Electronic Arts released Julius Erving & Larry Bird: One-On-One for the Commodore 64. While the in-game characters looked nothing like their real-life counterparts, the box featured a photo of both NBA stars on the front which pretty much guaranteed the game would appeal to even the most passive of basketball fans.
As you can see the graphics were particularly bland, even for a Commodore 64 title, but the background music was quite addictive and the gameplay was pretty decent. One thing I never really liked though was that the players got tired as you approached the end of each quarter. As a result they would start to move as slow as molasses, so we’d usually just put down our joysticks and let the clock run out until they were back to full speed at the start of the next quarter. I’m sure the feature seemed like a clever idea on paper, but it became quite tedious when you were actually trying to play the game.
And to be honest, the sports celebrity angle was never the reason my friends and I played the game. In fact as grade school kids we barely knew who Dr. J or Larry Bird even were. But we loved their game for the simple fact that you could shatter the backboard with a slam dunk. You never knew when it was going to happen, but when it did the backboard would turn into a pixelated mess as it fell to the floor, and a disgruntled janitor would have to come out and sweep it up before the game could continue. It was actually a very small part of the game, but as far as my friends and I were concerned, shattering the backboard after a dunk was probably the greatest accomplishment any NBA player could pull off in their career. And it was just as satisfying for us to do it sitting in front of our C64s.
Related Tags: Gaming, Nostalgia, TGWP
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