1001games Part 4: 1982

Hey, it's a movie license game. I didn't see Jeff Bridges in the VR world of Tron, but as I understand it the games are pretty close to the ones depicted in the movie, and I can imagine how cool that was. When I was a kid, every time I saw some made-up video game in a movie or TV show I immediately wanted to play it. A good example is the computer game from Big, which has been remade online.

Tron the arcade game is made up of four minigames; you must beat all of them to advance to the next level, where they all get considerably harder. The games include two where you're one of the oddly-clad guys from the movie, throwing discs, and two set in vehicles. The two non-vehicle games, which require you to enter a circle while dodging cyber spiders and to enter a cone by breaking through a spinning breakout rainbow that's coming toward you, are a bit awkward to be honest. The tank game is serviceable but nothing special. The star of Tron is definitely the cycle game, where you zip around leaving a solid trail and attempt to entrap your enemies while they try to do the same to you; it's kind of like competitive Snake (actually, Nibbler, the game upon which all Snake variants are based, is another 1982 release). It's fun and exciting, and I'd rather play a game consisting solely of it than this one.

0046. Time Pilot (Arcade)

Time Pilot is an unusual shmup in that it doesn't force scrolling vertically or horizontally; instead, you stay centered in the screen and can fly freely in any direction. All around, swarms of enemy planes attack; you must weave between their shots while directing a constant stream of fire at them. You can also score bonus points by picking up parachuters. Each level in Time Pilot represents a time in history - 1910, 1940, 1970 and the far-flung future of 2001. After destroying a quota of enemies, a boss will appear. After defeating this enemy (who is just a bit tougher than the regular enemies, actually), you time travel to the next stage.

This game is unique, fun and I'm actually OK at it. On my second try I got to the third boss and scored over 80,000. This one is worth a try.

0047. Utopia (Intellivision)

The Atari 2600 dominated what everyone for some reason refers to as the "second generation" of game consoles (I'm skeptical that the Odyssey, whose games were hardwired in and whose cartridges contained nothing but jumpers, and company really ought to be regarded as a separate console generation from later 70s consoles), but Mattel's Intellivision was a notable minor success for a few years before being wiped out by the crash of 1983. There were many consoles at that time, more than during any other generation, which is part of the reason why the crash happened, but I digress.

Utopia, developed by Mattel, may be the game that started the "God game" or "Sim" genre, as the text says. It may be. But to me, it's utterly incomprehensible. All I see are a bunch of unattributed numbers, a pair of oddly shaped islands and a pair of rectangular cursors (it's a 2-player game) that I can move around. When I try to do anything, however, including pressing ANY button or following the directions in the manual, which I looked up in desperation, I just get a loud buzzing noise. I'm sure there's a game here, but I can't find it. I know hardware resources limited how much you could explain in game, but some games from this era are just plain indecipherable to somebody like me. It's like a bunch of ancient runes. Then again, maybe realizing that players used to have to have an awful lot of outside-of-screen understanding going on just to play is part of the experience I should have as a gamer. Yeah, that sounds like a good cop-out.

Next time on 1001games: the year it all came crashing down in America, gaming went on in Europe and Japan.

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