nuttl'm
iiuttViii
u huh*
A Galactic Neophyte Sees a
Vision of Video Games in
His Sleep, and Begins a
Manual of Philosophy to
Appease bis Conscience.
TT V E L THREE
Choose One. Enter A or B.
A) You never play video games.
B) Smart bomb my Swarmers;
I'm ready for the Yliabian Dog
Fight
(Correa answer below.)
You walk past. Dens of elearonic
attraaions only repel you. You re
fuse to play them on some obscure
pretext or another They waste
money, they make ugly sounds,
they confuse or distraa attention to
the extreme, they are the bastards
of a technological age, they are
foolish . or so you think. But you
never play them, so you don’t
know
Perhaps you are wise to hesitate.
Once the appeal of the video
games has taunted you into a
wrangle, all safety fades. Doubts
enter your mind. You find yourself
looking for quarters. You close
your eyes and see rainbow explo
sions. Again and again and again
(Correa answer is B if you have
read this far Proceed to the next
level)
LEVEL TWO
Some basic, temporal strategies
are laid for a number of games. If
you still insist the games won’t
graze you, hyperspace ahead to
level three. If you expea solutions,
proceed with extreme caution.
The best general strategy for all
elearonic video games is to prac
tice. All the advice in the world
won’t inform your fingers when
and how to punch “thrust" with
your index finger instead of “fire’’
with your thumb. Words can help,
but experience means knowledge
Games can be plotted in your
sleep, on paper, or daydreaming —
imagining the screen and envision
ing your moves schematically — but
nothing comes easy. Mastery takes
quarters
Much of the for what-it’s-worth
advice below has been taken from
the H-ATO computer system notes
files communication network. Hun
dreds of anonymous computer ad
dias, sitting at terminals around the
world, exchange information over
PLATO on a myriad of subjects;
video games, logically, have a file
unro themselves.
£=: TARGATE
The sequel to DEFEN
DER, STARGATE has all
the wonders that made
its predecessor the
prince of video games,
plus more. The landers, mutants,
bombers, baiters, pods and swarm
ers are still deadly, but you're fight
ing new threats in addition:
firebombers, fireballs, Yllabian
space guppies, dynamos, space
hum, phred, Big Red, and munch
ies Since unlike most video games,
the enemies attack you simulta
neously, you might expect STAR
GATE to be even more difficult
than the high-test DEFENDER. But
no, STARGATE has some minor
DEFENDER bugs smoothed out.
Smart bombs work more consis
tently and don't slow the game
down. The explosions look nicer,
so that you might not even mind
losing your planet. Mutants and
landers move more slowly. Higher
scores are easier to get
Tips: The volcano spurting lava is
a decorative distraction; ignore it.
During the first wave, try ignoring
most of the enemies and concen
trate on saving humanoids from the
capturing landers. Catch four hu
manoids on your spaceship (being
careful not to touch ground or
they'll hop off), then fly into the
Stargate warp box and be instantly
transported to the fourth wave
Don’t forget to use Inviso. You
are invulnerable when you hold
down the button with your right
thumb, continuing to thrust and fire
with your other fingers Inviso is
great for gening out of a tight spot,
so use it sparingly.
If you get blisters on your right
hand, you’re probably spending too
much time on "thrust" instead of
making good use of your vertical
stick. (See Level Six for more sex
ual theory.) Professional callouses
appear on the left hand
STARGATE wears your eyes out,
but worthily. A few games leave
you with multicolor hallucinatory
afterimages for hours.
s ONKEY KONG
Mr Arakawa of Nintendo
claims, with a giggle,
that DONKEY KONG Is
now the most popular
game in both Japan and
i America. The name comes from a
bad translation of Japanese for
"stupid gorilla." As the hero climbs to
rescue the girl from the gorilla, he
must use ladders, conveyer belts,
and the ulique “jump" capability to
dodge falling fireballs, fuel carts, and
barrels The game was released in
Japan in July 1981, and test-marketed
in the States that same month. Nin
tendo has ceased production of its
other games to concentrate on DK,
and the key to its special status Is
psychological. DONKEY KONG has a
role-playing feel, a narrative dimen
sion usually lacking in games.
No one knows what's in the
barrels.
EMPEST
Atari’s Quadrascan non
linear graphics moved from
black and white (ASTE
ROIDS, RED BARON) to
color with TEMPEST, an ab
stract space battle of shapes. Al
though likely to undergo new pro
gramming transformations in the
near future, some controversy al
ready rages about the best ways of
playing it now. Some skip ahead to
high levels for high points and last
play; others proceed through the
levels for a longer game but in
equitable point accumulation
If, instead of starting on level
one you begin at nine, you’ll re
ceive a bonus of ‘>4,000 points (but
not the extra lives awarded for
regular accumulation of 20K and
40K points). If you make it past
level 11, you get 74K bonus points
Some think spinning the knob to
ward “expert" at game's beginning
is, thus, "cheating," but it is a way
for a good player to face a chal
lenge sooner and get more points
more quickly. If you make it up
through level 16 the slow way, you
don’t get as many points, which Is
rather unfair.
The color patterns change from
blue, to red, to yellow, to light blue
on the 49th level. Shoot spikers
when you can, or they’ll come back
out as tankers. You can tell If a
tanker Is going to change Into two
fuseballs or two flippers by looking
at the center of the tanker A pink
ish center reveals that it will
change Into fuseballs.
Many players sit on one tulte and
fire at a steady rate of about 3
shots per second, until flippers ap
proach Then they fire as fast as
possible Some think this method,
which can last up to 19 levels, is
boring. Others think It’s smart
TEMPEST is not cute, it is the re
ductive essence of video game
space battle, almost the idea of it
put into abstract motion graphics.
sFis ALAGA
The Chicago manufactur
ers, Midway/Bally, pro
nounce it “GAL-uh-guh,”
but some say “Guh-LA
guh.” Either way, the
game improves upon the space in
vaders theme by having the attack
ing inseas swarm down in flying
patterns before lining up above to
continue attack The key to ad
vanced scores is to allow your ship
to be captured by the Galaga’s blue
beam; then, if you are careful to
kill the captor with your remaining
ship, you get your old ship back
for double fire power against the
insects. Stay near the center of the
board when possible, dodging the
insea fire carefully and swiftly. Re
maining in a fixed position for the
first two or three challenging stages
works to best advantage, even when
the dragonflies start spinning down
in curleycue confusion
ROGGER
Not all video games pro
vide space battle. FROG
GF.R has the earthbound
plight of the lowly frog try
ing to cross the road and
river without getting squashed or
eaten Move as fast as possible;
every second saved earns points.
Move your frog forwards or back
wards; don’t think you have to stay
on a sinking turtle's back just be
cause there's no log in front of
you. The real key to a good third
level play Is to use the alligator's
tail as a leaping place; it doesn’t
kx)k safe, but it is.
FROGGER scores never range
Into the astronomical, and there
seem to be bugs in many of the
machines sometimes your frog will
jump in a different direction from
what you expected Hut It's a game
of simple pleasures anti survivals,
almost with an anti technological
theme Your graceful oomedttwn to
reality after Intetgaiactir voyaging
the Peace Frog
_I. E V E L ONE
The literature of video games Is
fly Ivy night Ken llston's Irest.vellei.
Mastering I'm Man. Tom Hlrsch
feld’s How to Master the Video
dames, and the many other pub
fished attempts to circumvent loss
frustration in the arcades can’t be
of use beyond the life of the game
machines, and most machines have
a life expectancy measured in
months rather than years. Does
anyone play 1979’s original hit,
SPACE INVADERS, except as nostal
gia? Will PAC-MAN be an obsolete
curio by 1983?
Bernard M. Powers, director of
marketing for the Bally’s Aladdin’s
Castle chain of arcades, claims that
PAC-MAN holds some kind of re
cord, with a peak popularity that
lasted a record 14 months. “It's on
the downswing now,” Powers says.
"The life cycle of games is critical.
ASTEROIDS, which was released
the same time as PAC-MAN, tasted
six months. We hope for six
months with any game. Those few
long-lasting ones you fall in love
with."
New games about which nothing
has (yet) been dissected by book
include DIG DUG (an underground
maze game), FRENZY (an improved
and more difficult version of BER
SERK), ROBOTRON (another high
speed, humanistic save-the world
drama from the makers of DEFEN
DER), the three-dimensional ZAX
XON, and TRON, a tour part game
cleverly based upon the Disney
movie.
Already new chips and challenges
have made PAC-MAN overly famil
iar. MS. PAC-MAN, a ribboned danc
ing female gobbler, Wes for atten
tion. Uston’s careful patterns for the
original PAC-MAN may still work on
some machines, but the book is
likely to be classic only in the
sense that It was made obsolete
upon publication.
An article In Playboy recently
gave strategies for CENTIPEDE, DE
FENDER, and PAC MAN, but the pat
tern for the latter differed con
siderably from Uston’s model. "On
the first three boards, the move
monts of the four ghosts aren’t
predictable, so pattern following is
a useless and dangerous — af
fair," was the Playboy Philosophy.
Uston, however, brazenly gave use
less and dangerous patterns to use,
some of which worked on roa
chines only In regional locations ai
least for the first Ivoards, you are
Ix'tter off practicing on paper, has
ing your moves on the close obser
vat ions done at familiar machines
Remember, you can’t do a flawless
board one pattern if you make any
mistakes You’ll have to put in an
other quarter, and start from
scratch, which is frustrating.
Answer books exist because win
ning is both paramount and an iro
(continued am page 14)