Journal Entry #7: Video Games

Date: November 5, 2007
Time: 20:37

There was a time, many centuries ago, when if you wanted to play a video game, you HAD TO LEAVE THE HOUSE!

You could go to a pizza parlor, a stationery store, a discount department store, and at least one instance, a pet shop.

The simplest video game was the auto or motorcycle racing game. The car or motorcycle was a flat piece of plastic that was situated above a screen, then after you put in your quarter, the screen came on and so was the race. It was basically a type of movie that you participated in.

Over the years, video games got more and more sophisticated. What follows is a list of some of my favorites.

NARC – You’re a narcotics agent shooting or arresting members of a gang dealing and selling drugs. You also have to collect any evidence you find to gain points. At the end, you have to destroy the big boss who just happens to be a giant head. After it’s all over, and you’ve won, the game congratulates you and tells you to report to your local D.E.A. office.

R-Type – You are flying a ship through space. You have to collect different kinds of weapons to defeat all the enemy ships you see. One of the best weapons, even though it was futile against this one section where you really needed a powerful blaster, was the rebounding lasers.

Midnight Resistance - You are one of two soldiers infiltrating an enemy base. As you fight, you find keys that let you get different weapons. The value of the weapon depends on how many keys it takes to open the case it is in. When you near the end of the game, it is imperative that you have six (6) keys. These are to let your family members out of their cases. If you are unable to let out all six, when you have finished the game, you will see shooting stars that correspond to a family member that could not be saved. I don’t believe I’ve ever finished this game in the arcade, although I have completed it in the SEGA home version.

Heavy Barrel – You are one of two soldiers fighting against hostile forces. Along the way, you collect pieces of a super-weapon. Once you collect all the pieces, a deep voice calls out “Heavy Barrel”, and the weapon puts itself together in your hands. Unfortunately, this super-weapon has a short life span. This game is like “Midnight Resistance”, except “Midnight Resistance” is what is known as a “side-shooter”, and this is a “top-shooter”.

Quartet - You are one of a group of four mercenaries. You blaze through level after level of all sorts of bad guys and assorted weird creatures. However, you cannot linger in one spot for too long as a stylized figure of Death flies down and zaps you with his spinning two-headed scythe. It’s sort of a “side-shooter” version of “Gauntlet”.

Psycho Soldier – You are one of two characters, one male, and one female. Although in a single player game, you are the female. You go through a ruined city, zapping mutant insects that start as caterpillar-like creatures, and then grow to giant proportions. All the while, your power scale is increasing. If you get the “power-egg”, you turn into either a dragon, or a phoenix. If you are playing with someone, the other character can ride the dragon or phoenix. But be careful when you shoot the egg, you might hit the one that will explode into little caterpillars.

Xenophobe - This game is interesting in that as there are three control sticks, the screen is split into three horizontal parts. The object of this game is to clear spacecraft, space stations, and colonies of alien creatures. The cool part of this game is that all the characters are dressed in “Starfleet” styled uniforms. Note: The best weapon in this game is the laser pistol. But be careful when you throw any of your weapons away, they could explode.

Ikari Warriors - I don’t remember much about this game, or its sequels, except that it was fun to play, even though I never finished it.

Rampage - You’re one of three giant monsters, an ape, a lizard, a werewolf. Your goal: Destroy buildings and other objects, eat food and people, and try not to get killed. If you’re playing with someone else, and their monsters loses all its power it will turn human again and try to sneak off-screen. If you’re fast enough, you can grab them and eat them for more points.

Gauntlet – It’s a kind of a role-playing game wherein you choose to be one of four characters, a wizard, a warrior, a Valkyrie, or an elf. You collect treasures and potions, eat food for health points, but you must kill all the demons, ghosts, and other assorted baddies you find throughout the game.

Revolution X – This is a game that is rather unique in that it features famous people. It has to do with the rock group Aerosmith, and an organization called New Order Nation. It seems that NON wishes to abolish music in all its forms, starting with rock, and take over the world. To that end, they kidnap all the members of Aerosmith. It’s your job to first, find their car and play the message. Once you do, you have to choose one of three places to go to next. It’s like one of those shooting gallery type games, except instead of grenades, you fire CDs at the bad guys.

P-38 – You’re the pilot of a plane in what I think was World War II. You destroyed troops and other planes and assorted weapons. All the while, you’re picking up points and power-ups to help you on your way.

RYGAR – This was an interesting game. You are a warrior with a kind of a yo-yo weapon. You used it to vanquish the bad guys, and foil any traps. As with most games, there were “power-ups” and treasures to find. The “power-ups” in this game would give the yo-yo weapon different abilities.

KLAXX - This was an interesting variation of a “Tetris” style game. The player has to make stacks of blocks, all the same color, to get points. The difficult part comes in that the blocks are flying at you, and if the blocks reach a certain height before you can get rid of them, you lose.

Gyruss - A game that takes place in outer space, way, way, out in outer space. The ship you are piloting can move around the entire screen in a circle. Your ultimate goal is to reach each and every planet in our solar system, and each planet has other levels.

Forgotten Worlds - You are one of two warriors fighting your way through strange enemies. You pick up coins of varied sizes and worth for use later when you want to upgrade your weapons when you enter the “shop”. This was one of the few games that I have completed.

Truth be told, with the exception of a few, NARC in particular, I have never finished any of the games I’ve listed here. Hey, it took me $15.00 in quarters to finish that one. I got pretty far with some of them, and others I didn’t do too well at. Regardless of the outcome, completed them, didn’t complete them, it wasn’t important. I just had fun playing them.

There are others, whose names escape me at the moment. There was this one game, and it was a shooting gallery kind of game, where the object was to invade enemy camps, while firing a machine gun and tossing grenades, and rescue hostages. (I have since remembered the name of this game as “Operation: Wolf”.) The next one was another shooting game, but this one involved the destroying of aliens. However, you collected different kinds of grenades, such as one that froze everything. It even had a pedal you could press to back up. The third game was what is called a “top-view shooter”. In this game, you had to kill these blob-like alien creatures. (I remembered the name of this game as well, “Alien Syndrome”) The fourth game, whose name I can’t remember involved firing this really cool laser gun. Well, the character you controlled was doing the firing; all the player really did was press the fire button. The character I always played had a green laser weapon. This was not through choice; it was just that in a single-player game, that was the player I was given. When you collected the “power-ups”, your weapon increased in strength, and range. What was meant by “range” was that the “beam” was a little bit longer and the field of firing was wider as the beam was fired from the gun. There was a fifth game which I took to be a sequel to “Ikari Warriors”.