The Ad Game: Vanguard for Atari VCS/2600

Vanguard was an arcade game developed by "shadow" developer TOSE, and released in Japan by SNK in late 1981 and licensed for North America by Centuri.  It was an important intermediate step towards modern side-scrolling shoot-em-ups such as Gradius and R-Type, improving on a genre first formed by William's seminal Defender.

Today in the Ad Game we feature a TV commercial for the Atari 2600 port of Vanguard:

Vanguard was definitely a great arcade game, and the 2600 version a spectacular port that demonstrates the amazing things Atari programmers were able to pull off with the platform as it matured.  This ad, however, doesn't do any of that justice.

For instance, who trades off the joystick to their buddies in the middle of a game?  Hard to keep your concentration and momentum going with some jerk begging for the joystick.  Just wait until he crashes, it won't be long to wait.  Try shouting "The wall, the wall!" into his ear, that oughta speed up his destruction.

One of the big innovations touted in Vanguard was the ability to shoot in four directions, but in the ad the shooting looks pretty spastic.  The key to any successful shooter is the precision of your shots, and here it looks like the gunner is having a seizure.

Then, of course, we have the hulking Luthor, who's sole responsibility is to defeat the Gond, the boss at the end of the round.  A man of few words, it is rumoured that Luthor once, when a kid refused to give up the joystick to him, stuffed the poor bastard's hand completely into the cartridge slot.  We can only know his moods by his demented chuckling.

Perhaps Luthor is related to Beavis?

The Walking Dead as a C-64 Game

It's impressive to me that I've been able to watch Zombies shamble into the pop-culture landscape, lurch past the "played out" label, and become a new,  timeless horror genre akin to vampires and werewolves.  AMC's The Walking Dead is a cable TV series that premiered in 2010, designed to bring Zombies to the small screen, and was wildly successful in the process.

The series spawned a point-and-click adventure game from Telltale Games in 2012.  One of the writers on the project, Mark Darin, has recently published some image mock-ups of how the game would have looked if released on the Commodore 64, the classic home computer of the early 80's.  They are the thing to behold:

You can check out the rest on the German gaming blog Shaffigames.

source: N4G.com

Conan Mocks Atari Bankruptcy

Sure, the recent bankruptcy of what was left of pioneering video game company Atari was sad, but who says we can't kick 'em while they're down?  So thinks Conan O'Brien, with this jab from his TBS show.  The bit would be even more cutting, if it wasn't on TBS.  Zing!

Starcade Archive

This is Starcade!

Let me shine a light on a collection of videos at the Internet Archive, episodes of the classic arcade game series Starcade.

The show ran on Ted Turner's WTBS cable channel from 1982 - 1983, and in syndication the following year.  Billed as the first video arcade game show, Starcade featured players facing off against each other on the popular arcade games of the time.  Watching the episodes is like glimpsing coin-op Valhalla, with shiny Tron, Super Zaxxon and Stargate cabinets filling the backstage.  It prefectly captures the 80's in video amber.

We might not have arcades in our neighbourhoods anymore, but we still have Starcade.

Mr. Dressup Honoured by Google Doodle.

Early ad for Mr. Dressup

Ernie Coombs was a mainstay of children's programming on the CBC, as the title character of Mr. Dressup, running on the network from 1967 to 1996.  Along with his puppet friends Casey and Finnegan,  he was a gentle and friendly accompaniment to my formative gaming years of PONG and Atari.  He passed away in 2001.

That Google has chosen to celebrate what would have been his 85th birthday really... wait for it...

Tickles me.

Google.com

BAM! The Wizard of Wor is hit! POW!

The following is a TV commercial for CBS Video Games.  Dating from 1982, it purports to show clips from what is called "Challenge of Champions", a head-to-head competition hosted by longtime football commentator John Madden.  It featured one of the company's latest wares, "Wizard of Wor", a home adaptation of the popular arcade game from Midway, released in 1980.

In fact, the clips are a dramatization of the competition.  It's not even clear if the match had an audience, although I like the American Idol set and Madden's fevered pitch.  Madden, of course, would go on to put his name on something a bit longer lasting than CBS VIdeo Games: EA's preennial Madden Football series.  The first, John Madden Football, was released in 1988.

Clip courtesy of The Museum of Classic Chicago Television.