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The First Starfighter


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Just how long has Zoom Rabbit been the bestest starfighter pilot in the Rebel Alliance? :) Glad you asked...

 

*(TIME WARP: November 26, 1985.)*

 

Student Union building of the University of Puget Sound, in the basement there is a busy game and recreation area. A projection big screen teevee fills a corner of the room, showing the latest A-Ha and Jefferson Starship videos on MTV. (In those days, MTV still actually ran music videos.) In another corner is a small snack bar where ernest young students cook mini-pizzas to earn extra money. The rest of the room is taken up by videogames.

 

Our attention is drawn to one of these early stand-up videogames--it is Star Wars. That's it...no Rogue this, Empire that. It is called Star Wars because it is the very first of its genre, and the ONLY Star Wars game at the time. The wireframe graphics are crude by today's standard, but in 1985 it is state of the (unclassified) art...

 

That whole semester, every quarter I had went into that darn machine. ;) I'd been playing it since it came out two years earlier, and by then I was pretty good at it. On an average night I could get through five or six levels before I ran out of deflector shields and went *game over.* Most of the high scores on display were mine, and my friends couldn't take me. I was the Star Wars champion.

 

:dozey: Then came the night I cleared eighteen levels.

 

It had never happened before, and never did again...but one night I had an incredible streak of luck. Level after level came and went, and I kept sailing through unscathed! People began to gather around, and by the time I was up to level twelve I had an audience.

 

Every time you cleared a level, the trench run on the next level would get harder, with jutting catwalks and all sorts of complicated obstacles you had to avoid (just like the trench run in Rogue Squadron, as a matter of fact.) By the time I was up to level fifteen, we were seeing catwalk patterns that no one had seen before...and the next three levels were exactly the same. :D I had gone farther than the game designers had anticipated.

 

Anyway, I finally *died* after playing that game for more than an hour. The unreal high score (which I forget today) stayed on display for a week, until a janitor unplugged the machine and wiped its memory... :mad: As far as I know, eighteen levels is the record.

 

:max: For the entire Star Wars universe. Who's your daddy?

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Back when I was in high school I worked at a movie theater that had the Empire Strikes Back sequel to that game. The cool thing was that we had the key to the coin box, so after hours we could open 'er up and set it for dozens of free games.

 

The best I ever did in an arcade with my own money was on a game called Mach III, which was a computer generated jet fighter and targets superimposed over actual flight scenery off of a laserdisc. I played for over an hour on that one one day. I just got in a groove.

 

The only time I had an audience though is when I played to the last level of Dragon's Lair. I botched it though... :(

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I was seriously addicted to a number of arcade games growing up. Me and my mate Roger used to go to the chippy after school and play for about an hour none stop (I'm talking all through secondary school - 1982 to 1987). We kept our lunch money (and basically starved ourselves all day) just to play the arcades.

 

The games I remember most are Out Run, Choplifter and Double Dragon.

 

Out Run was just brilliant. The music, the graphics and the gameplay. I had mastered each and every turn and knew just when to turn the wheel. Clocked that game over and over and loved every minute of it.

 

Choplifter was an extremely hard but enjoyable game. Control the chopper, pick up the peeps, back to base and then go a bit further, pick up some more peeps and back to base, all the while being shot at and avoiding rocky outcroppings in caves and the like. Just a brilliantly addictive game.

 

Then of course there is Double Dragon. Oh man how I loved that game. I spent an absolute fortune playing it. It was the first real fighting game of it's time. Kick, punch, beat with a baseball bat, pick up bottles and barrels and throw them, beat the big beefy bosses and generally beat the crap out of everything in sight, all with a mate by your side. When you reached the end of the game, you had to fight each other and oh man did the adrenaline pump then.

 

The only audience we had was the chippy owner. Some greasy greek guy lol. We used to call him King because the shop name was King's fish bar. When we got mad, we hit the machine and he always used to shout at us. Ah sweet memories. :D

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Well - I never went to the arcade when I was little - unless you count Chucky Cheese or Bullwinkles. Besides that it's Dave and Buster's for me. I LOOOOVE the game Time Crisis 2 and House of the Dead 2. Oh and the firefighter game. I haven't been able to go since I had the baby. Those were fun times *sniff *sniff

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Anybody remember that Moonwalker game with Michael Jackson, that was a kickass game, I wasted so many quarters on that game. Then there is Metal Slug 2 (for some reason they had that at Ft. Gordon so i was playing it again, addictive game). Then there was the XMen Game, the Simpsons game (so much fun with lots of people playing). And the ever classic pacman and Donkey Kong.

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Actually, back in the day I wasn't much of a video junkie. Star Wars was the only one I got addicted to, with 'Tail Gunner' a distant second.

 

Further note about the Star Wars story: when I got Rogue Squadron on N64, and got to the Death Star trench run level, I had to pause it partway through. I was too busy laughing when the catwalks started popping out of the wall--it was clearly a nod to us old dawgs who remember the early Atari game...

 

Of course, Nintendo got it WRONG when they designed corners into the trench. :dozey:Corners? It's an equatorial trench--the only one in the whole universe that specifically does not have corners!

 

:max: Anyway.

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Originally posted by Zoom Rabbit

Of course, Nintendo got it WRONG when they designed corners into the trench. :dozey: Corners? It's an equatorial trench--the only one in the whole universe that specifically does not have corners!

 

I thought that was the DUMBEST thing i ever seen, was that trench haivng corners!

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Originally posted by leXX

Choplifter was an extremely hard but enjoyable game. Control the chopper, pick up the peeps, back to base and then go a bit further, pick up some more peeps and back to base, all the while being shot at and avoiding rocky outcroppings in caves and the like. Just a brilliantly addictive game.

 

:D yeah i played this half my childhood.. i had it for my atari800xe .. i actually played it 2 months ago when i somehow found an emulator.. whooooohooo .. i am flying a helicopter .. tamtamtam take this you migs .. *sigh* MEMORIES .. :)

 

i can remember i also played spyvsspy, supercobra, star raiders II and river raid ..err.. very intensive .. :p

 

oh.. not to forget mercenary..

 

what a luck for me to get that atari. because we lived in east germany and such things werent very available for us.. but my uncle was allowed to travel to hamburg in west germany to visit his grandma.. he bought the atari and gave it to me..

 

i gave it to my uncle when i got my amiga back in '91, i asked him and he said he still haves it.. i mean the complete thing with all the disks and stuff..

 

 

..

 

1985 .. yeah .. exactly it was in those days .. i was like .. 8 - 9 years old.. boooaa-- i am soooo oldgrown wise.. :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think my first flight sim was 'top gun' for nes

 

which im not sure about the name, cus the only thing it had in common with the movie was that you flew in a jet, destorying enemy jets ^_^

 

but then it got interesting, yet somewhat lame, that you get into this third person view bombing mission.

 

interesting how they add these 'wraith of god' weapons that can clear the skys in one shot. Too bad you could only carry two fo those at one time :D

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Originally posted by Jared

the first video game I ever played in my life was rogue squadron. ^^

I kid you not

 

Nope, it was definitely The Phantom Menace. We split the cost after getting addicted to the demo, remember? ;)

 

Rogue Squadron was the second. (And completely his idea, I'll admit...I didn't like it at first... :D)

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Originally posted by Redwing

Nope, it was definitely The Phantom Menace. We split the cost after getting addicted to the demo, remember? ;)

 

Rogue Squadron was the second. (And completely his idea, I'll admit...I didn't like it at first... :D)

 

 

ok maybe we played the TPM demo first, I can't remember, but I got RS3D for christmas....and then the full version of tmp in about feburary 2001 , when I joined these forums.

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Admiral: Howdy! :D Long time, yo...

 

I count Rogue Squadron as my first *modern* video game. I had stopped playing Star Wars years before when the game stopped turning up in arcades, and watched the developing game console boom with only mild curiosity. When I bought a Nintendo 64, it wasn't for me at all, but my girlfriend's kids.

 

Then, one day, they advertized Rogue Squadron on teevee. I had been unaware of the X-wing series on PC, and had NO IDEA that Star Wars flying games were still popular. :dozey: Needless to say, I went right out and bought it.

 

I've been enjoying my second childhood ever since... ;)

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woot, i'm part of videogame history! first game i ever played was either tetris or GP1 (grand prix 1, by accolade) on a beautifull hercules graphics pc :D (wich means black/green colours) i even have metal gear on it! (the first one) it takes about 30 min to load, but it has really addictive music during the loading :p

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