Nothing’s perfect

If you’ve been following US politics lately, your feed has probably been filled with headlines about how Democratic Socialists have been enacting something of a coup in the Democratic party. Multiple establishment candidates have been passed over in favor of newer, younger, more progressive candidates in the primaries–that is, candidates who might actually try to give voters what they want, instead of shrugging their shoulders as Republicans steamroll over everything, and maybe writing a strongly-worded letter of condemnation if you donate $50.

Regardless of your political leanings, or your thoughts on Democratic Socialism, it seems undeniable that people are fed up with the old guard, and they want change. I’m not saying these progressive firebrands will magically change everything overnight and fix all the country’s many, many problems. Hell, I’m still not entirely confident we’re even going to have midterm elections, come November. But right here, right now, seeing record numbers of voters turning up and finally putting their feet down in protest of the completely ineffectual status quo, I feel something like hope that things might actually start getting a little better. Which brings us to today’s word.

utopia, noun – a perfect society

Learned from: Utopia (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel Electronics

Published by Mattel Electronics (1982)

When people think of real-time strategy games, they probably think of Starcraft, Command & Conquer, or maybe Age of Empires, games which by this point in time, are objectively kind of old. It’s a genre that died out a bit in the mid-2000s, with occasional attempts to revive it, to varying degrees of success. But the oldest game in the genre I can think of is Utopia, a one-screen, two-player game with a set time limit, where the objective wasn’t to build armies and decimate your opponent, but to try to make the people of your island as happy as possible.

That isn’t to say you couldn’t attack your opponent. If memory serves, the only offensive measure you could take was building PT boats to go after and sink the other player’s fishing boats, though I think they were expensive, and didn’t directly do anything to help your score. Instead, your focus should be on planting crops, building schools and hospitals, and repairing damage if a storm swept through your settlement.

Utopia was a surprisingly laid-back game, considering the warfare and defense-building that would come to define the real-time strategy genre in future years. It was also surprisingly complex for something that came out in 1982, on a console with a controller that kinda looked like a phone receiver.

The perfect society is surprisingly low-res. But considering there were no microtransactions, or expiring licenses, or season passes back then, maybe there’s something to this…

Catching flak

I don’t normally give the word of the day away in the title of the post, but most of this story is going to be so convoluted, I thought at least some part of it should be straightforward.

So, Thanksgiving is a few days past at this point, and my cat has barely eaten since then. Like, she saw us preparing all these different and extravagant types of food in large quantities, looked at the food she had been eating–quite contentedly I might add–for awhile up until that point, and decided, “No. I also want something new and different. This plain old food simply will not do, human.”

At least, that’s the conclusion we eventually reached. Initially, we were worried that she was sick, or had swallowed something that was causing a blockage, or that she was depressed or something. But she would still eat treats–she caught and ate a spider, for that matter. And she’s eaten bits of the new food we’ve picked up for her. She was just throwing flak at us for having the audacity to celebrate a food-centric holiday without cutting her in on the deal. Which brings us to today’s word.

flak, noun – anti-aircraft fire, (or in the example above: harsh criticism)

Learned from: Mission X (Intellivision)

Developed by Data East

Published by Mattel Electronics (1983)

Mission X is a vertical-scrolling shooter, in the same style as the much better-known Xevious. And while its graphics are nowhere near as good, it actually brought a lot more to the table. You still had forward-facing guns, and could drop bombs, but you could also change the altitude of your plane, to be more accurate with your bombs, or fly above enemy planes or flak. There was also a day/night cycle, where it was significantly harder to see your targets during night missions, as well as a pretty decent variety of things to shoot at and bomb. The only thing Xevious had over Mission X aside from graphical fidelity (and market saturation), was the thematics: fighting sci-fi space aliens, instead of Axis powers in World War II…unless you were me, growing up.

See, despite having the manual for this game, I never really saw it as a WWII shmup. And that’s because I always conflated Mission X with the 1987 movie Project X that they played weirdly often on weekends for awhile. It starred Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt, and it was about a secret Air Force project designed to teach chimpanzees how to fly fighter jets. And my five-year-old brain latched onto that concept for dear life whenever I played Mission X, because the idea that I was an escaped, experimental chimp who stole a bomber and was wreaking havoc across the countryside was automatically a better, more fun idea than whatever dusty old nonsense the game was trying to be about.

There’s our floofy little tyrant, who, despite going on a hunger strike, has plenty of energy to climb up the spare mattress we haven’t gotten rid of yet, so she can judge us from on high.

Balrogs not included

I considered several titles for this post, including “ain’t no mountain high enough,” and simply, “you shall not pass!” but ultimately went with this one because out of all the bizarre assortment of monsters in this game, Balrogs aren’t one of them. Which brings us to today’s word.

impassable, adj. – unable to be traversed

Learned from: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel Electronics

Published by Mattel Electronics (1982)

I have to confess something here: I’ve never actually played this game. I had the other D&D game for the Intellivision, Treasure of Tarmin, but when I got the system from one of my cousins, it somehow came with the instruction manual for this game, but not the game, itself. But I sunk countless hours in to Tarmin, and I always wondered what this mysterious other game would be like to play, as I would occasionally look through the manual and dream.

Cloudy Mountain put you in charge of a team of three identical adventurers, armed only with a bow & arrow, sent on a quest to find and reunite two halves of a lost crown atop the eponymous mountain. Standing in your way was a menagerie of monsters that went from 0 to 60 (or from rat to demon) with seemingly nothing in between. I don’t know how evenly dispersed these beasts were, but the idea of fighting spiders and snakes, only to turn a corner and find a dragon or an unkillable slime seemed absurd–but also exciting–to my five- or six-year-old imagination.

But it wasn’t just things that wanted to kill you that were keeping you from your quest; various environmental obstacles barred your path. On the (presumably) randomized overworld map, there were forests you could only cut through with an ax, rivers you could only cross by boat, and color-coded mountains that either had caves or were impassable (black and brown, respectively).

I’m aware that I’ve had ample opportunity to download a ROM of this game, and finally experience it after all these years…but I know it could probably never live up to the experience I dreamt up in my imagination decades ago. Plus, the Intellivision controller looked like an old-school phone receiver with a paddle on the bottom of it, and I really don’t know how you’d effectively replicate that on modern hardware. (A numeric keypad, sure, but for the analog paddle it almost seems like you’d need a Joycon or something in your other hand.)

I’m sure it doesn’t look like much to daydream about, but as a small child, I imagined a story in every one of those mountains.

You can’t win if you don’t play

It’s Christmas Eve, and since I have the day off, I thought it would be a fine time to do an update. I couldn’t think of any seasonal words off the top of my head, but I and the gents over at the Friends Occasionally Not Disagreeing podcast recently took a look at the indie smash hit, Balatro, which made me think back to a much, much older poker game I played as a kid. It’s back-to-back Intellivision games with today’s word.

ante, noun – the minimum bet required to play a round of gambling;

verb – to put forth the minimum bet required to play a round of gambling

Learned from: Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack (Intellivision)

Developed by APh Technical Consulting

Published by Mattel Electronics (1979)

People sometimes make a fuss about how loot boxes in games today are essentially gambling, but when I was a kid growing up on the mean streets of Not Having A Nintendo, I was learning the ropes of actual gambling. And I know “ante” generally refers to card games, but I’m stretching the definition a bit, considering you also need to pay before shooting craps, or spinning a roulette wheel.

Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack was never my favorite game on the Intellivision, but I did spend plenty of afternoons alone or with my father, trying to beat the dapper, yet shifty-eyed dealer at his own game. The game offered blackjack, and several variants of poker, all of which I ended up with at least a working knowledge of, while I was still in elementary school. Despite this early exposure, you might be relieved to know that I did not grow up to have a gambling problem. Maybe being introduced to card games at the same time as games where I could shoot aliens, or explore dungeons showed me there were more entertaining options out there. Compared to fighting monsters and venturing to different worlds (or, decades later, playing a roguelike version of poker), the prospect of sitting in a smoke-filled room with a bunch of strangers and (likely) losing all my money seems downright boring.

Do you read me?

Recently, my friends and I over on the Friends Occasionally Not Disagreeing Podcast did a review of Faith: The Unholy Trinity, which has voice work that reminds me a lot of the synthesizer module they made as an add-on for the Intellivision. That is to say, everything sounded garbled, heavily synthetic, and only borderline-intelligible. Here, that was by design, but back in the day, it was the best they could do. Which brings us to today’s word.

gauge, noun – an instrument displaying a readout for some value

Learned from: B-17 Bomber (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel

Published by Mattel (1982)

Based on the fact that Mattel was trying to add actual voice lines to games way back in 1982, you could say they had lofty ambitions. Even the base Intellivision was ahead of its time, with an actual analog pad instead of a joystick or 4-directional d-pad, and an entire phone’s worth of buttons, allowing for games with a staggering amount of options for the time, from displaying maps, to managing weapon loadouts, to pulling up gauges for things like altitude, pitch, and roll (I thought yaw was included here too, but I appear to be mistaken; I must have learned that one directly from my father).

Anyway, B-17 Bomber puts you in the role of the pilot (and bombardier, and gunners) of the titular plane, tasked with hitting various targets in WWII Europe. All the while, enemy fighters would be assaulting you, forcing you to worry about ammo management, fuel management, and timing the dropping of your bombs (not to mention how many bombs to load in the first place), and then trying to return home in one piece. Again, this was 1982, ambitious stuff in a time when most games weren’t any more complex than “avoid the ghosts in the maze and eat all the dots.”

I was never terribly good at this game, but I would occasionally load it up, just to hear the technology of the time croak out “Bee se-ven-teen Baw-mer!” at the title screen. Those were simpler times.

Behold, the IntelliVoice module! You’d plug this unwieldy thing into the cartridge slot, then jam a cartridge into the right-hand side, and if you were lucky, it would load. Mattel: Being Sega before Sega was Sega!

Die a hero, or live long enough to become a villain

If you’re like me, you’ve probably enjoyed watching the stratospheric rise in popularity that Dungeons & Dragons has enjoyed over the past ten years or so. Regardless of your thoughts on the quality of some of the products *cough*Spelljammer*cough* the fact that so many new people were coming into the hobby was objectively a good thing. It made for a healthy community, full of endless creativity and sources for new ideas and settings…and that’s all poised to change.

If you don’t run in those circles, you might not know that, over the past week or so, social media on the topic has been exploding about Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, and their decision to rewrite the license that let third-party sources develop content based on D&D‘s mechanics/settings. Without dwelling on the details, the new license seems to render any previous versions invalid, replacing them with one that is far more restrictive, far more costly, and includes a clause that basically says…well, I think this is pretty cut-and-dry: “You own the new and original content You create. You agree to give Us a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable,
worldwide, sub-licensable, royalty-free license to use that content for any purpose.” Emphasis, mine. You can read the full text of the Open Gaming License, version 1.1 for yourself here: http://ogl.battlezoo.com/ The text I quoted is in section X, subsection B.

This sort of thing hurts. I’ve been playing D&D in some form or another for nearly as long as I can remember–be it the tabletop game, video game adaptations, choose-your-own-adventure books, or what have you. And thinking back to the days when the franchise wasn’t operated by a greedy, faceless, multi-billion-dollar company brought to mind today’s word.

hauberk, noun – a chainmail tunic

Learned from: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin (Intellivision)

Developed by APh Technological Consulting

Published by Mattel Electronics (1983)

Aside from maybe ogling the art of the Creature Compendium at a bookstore as a child, Treasure of Tarmin was my first introduction to D&D. It was also my first introduction to the idea of gaming in a 3D world. The game took place in a dungeon of varying size (depending on the difficulty you selected), that you ventured into, searching for a treasure guarded by a minotaur. Each level was laid out on a grid that you traversed in first-person view, one square at a time, fighting monsters, finding weapons, discovering hidden doors, and searching for the ladder that led further downward. Hopelessly simplistic by today’s standards, it blew my young mind. With a hunger mechanic, inventory system, ammunition (arrows) you had to keep track of, and more, it was pretty complex for its time. There were tons of items to find, most color-coded by their strength, including various types of armor: shields, helmets, gauntlets, and hauberks.

I remember the hauberks not looking like much, in the crude, pixelated representation the game was capable of–I think they looked more like scarves than anything. But I have to hand it to the artist for taking a crack at accurately showing what a bunch of loose chainmail would look like, laying on the ground, instead of just drawing it as a shirt. A lot of thought and effort went into this game, from the wide variety of monsters, to the inclusion of traps, to the fact that you could keep going past the minotaur into deeper and deeper randomly-generated levels, as deep as you wanted to go.

It was a wonderful game, complex but accessible, and always with a new adventure to be had. I mean that about D&D as a whole. Seeing what the game is about to become is nothing short of tragic, because some of the best content is often created by third-party studios. And I can’t imagine anyone would really want to keep making content, when it can be taken from them at any time. This will hurt the hobby, but there is hope.

Dungeons & Dragons isn’t the only game in town. There’s a multitude of other systems out there, offering different takes on traditional fantasy, but also sci-fi, horror, spy fiction, and everything in-between. Sure, it won’t feel quite the same, but with some searching, you might find a system and setting that fits you even better. D&D has always been a game about exploration; I think now is the time to take that theme to heart, and go discover what else is out there.

Farewell, old friend. It’s been good while it lasted.

Happy New Year

Ye gods, the holidays are busy. Between social obligations, longer hours at work, and an unfortunately-timed head cold, I haven’t had a lot of time to sit and focus on this project. I did have time to bake two surprisingly gigantic loaves of cardamom bread, after discovering how much my wife likes that particular spice…which brings us to today’s word.

pestle noun – a club-shaped utensil for pounding or grinding material in a mortar

Learned from: Tower of Doom (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel Electronics

Published by INTV Corporation (1987)

So, the recipe I was using called for ground cardamom, but all we had on hand were whole seeds. After grinding them by hand, I think Home Ec. should count as a gym class substitute–those things were tough! Also, the entire house smelled wonderful for days afterward, so it was totally worth it.

As for the game itself, Tower of Doom is one of the first roguelike games I ever played, and certainly the first one I played with real-time combat. The story was simple: You’re stuck in a labyrinthine tower full of monsters and traps, and you have to find your way out. For some inexplicable reason, you start at the top of the tower, but coherent plots generally weren’t a high priority back in the ’80s.

In traditional roguelike fashion, besides the enemies, the tower was filled with a variety of mysterious items that had different effects, each time you played. So, that red potion might heal you, or poison you, or make you blind. The same thing went for scrolls, wands, mortars & pestles, etc. Tower of Doom was actually pretty complex for a console game of its time, and thinking back, the Intellivision actually had a lot of games like that. It was a system ahead of its time, and the fact that they’re going to be reviving it this year with the Intellivision Amico makes me smile.

tower_of_doom

I mean, look at this: a procedural map, inventory system, health bar. This was impressive stuff for a system whose games were only a few kilobytes.

Happy New Year!

Oh, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Between visiting family, traveling, and spending time with friends, getting to update this just wasn’t going to happen. But it was fun, and I hope you all had holidays as enjoyable as mine. Still, it was kind of a mess in a way, so this word seemed fitting.

snafu, noun – A situation characterized by egregious mistakes.

Learned from: Snafu (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel

Published by Mattel (1981)

Originally a military acronym (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up), snafu has since become a word in its own right. While my holiday excursion was hardly full of mistakes, it was pretty hectic at times.

So what was the game? Well, it’s essentially a competitive version of Snake. Or the light cycle races from Tron, if you prefer…except that Snafu predates that film by about a year. It’s also nowhere near as fun or fast as Tron made it seem. It’s just you and maybe one other person (the Intellivision only had two controllers), and a couple of AI bots making lines around the field, and trying to steer the others into them so they crash. Even for its time, the gameplay was kind of lacking, compared to other one-screen, competitive multiplayer games like Combat! or Archon, which came out in a similar window. Still, even something this simple can have value.

snafu