From: chrispi@microsoft.com (Chris Pirih)
Subject: Star Wars and other reminiscences, Re: The Classics
Date: 13 Dec 92 13:03:17 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Distribution: usa
Keywords: Star Wars

In alt.games.video.classic woodruff@Cadence.COM (Ken Woodruff) writes:
;"Using the force" is accomplished by not firing while in the
;trench AND not getting hit by any fireballs or bridges.  This 
;means you have to DODGE all the fireballs, so it requires 
;significant skill. Using the force at higher levels yields 
;incredible bonusses. (>10,000,000)

Getting hit in the trench does not void the "force" bonus;
you just mustn't shoot until the target appears.  At that
point, you drop in the bomb and can shoot whatever turrets
are on the sides of the trench and still get the bonus.  I
think the maximum bonus is around 100,000 (it's been a
while).  You'd also get a 50,000 bonus for knocking off
all the laser towers in the surface phase.  No special
bonuses I know of in the tie-fighter phase, except taht
Darth's ship was worth twice the normal ships.  My high
score was 27,000,000; I don't think I've ever seen any
higher.  I had to dump the game with 9 shields left on 
level 128, 'cause I had a date.  I know, lousy priorities.  
I don't remember ever seeing any writing on the Death Star -- 
they must have had the brightness turned way down where I
played.  There was one here at Microsoft for a while but 
it never worked very well.  I guess the controllers were a 
bitch to maintain (and when they went bad, they were baaaaaaad).

Star Wars was by far my all time favorite video game.  
I could never get the hang of Empire Strikes Back, but that
was about the time I stopped playing the vids anyway...

Other favorites:

Robotron -- what a great controller setup.  That seemed to
be the only game that let you move and shoot independently,
though it seemed most people didn't make use of that fact.
Made it very hard to go back to standard shoot-wherever-
you're-pointing joystick+button games.

Dig Dug -- that damned theme song would get stuck in my
head for days.  Exploding the monsters with the air pump
was so satisifying.

Star Castle -- never a line to use that one, for some
reason.  The ship always seemed somehow more controllable
than the one in Asteroids.  Sometimes you'd totally destroy
the castle, but just couldn't get into position to shoot
the mother ship...  Very nerve wracking.

Tac Scan -- don't remember much about it, except that it
was very cool.  Maybe it was the blue and yellow color
scheme that I liked.  Or the tunnel effect.

Time Pilot -- not the first one, in World War II, but the
second version that took place on the moon.  You had these
"smart bombs" which would behave most idiotically if you
didn't get them targetted before firing.

A couple whose names I don't remember.  One was an adventure
style game.  Took place in a pyramid.  You'd use whips on
the bad guys.  In some rooms you could pay quarters for more
whips (!!!).  The other one was a vertical scrolling shoot-
'em-up spaceship type game, where you'd fly your ship over
a high tech alien space station sort of landscape.  The action
was incredibly fast, and there were these weird glowing,
throbbing, pulsating features on the ground...  Not very
detailed a memory, but I used to play it a lot while waiting 
for pizzas to cook...

Frenzy and Berzerk -- "Intruder alert!"  "Stop that humanoid!"
"Chicken, fight like a robot!"  I thought the second one (I
can't remember which was which) was more interesting, with the
big robots and cheesy computers, and the reflective walls...

Rip Off -- strictly a two player game.  I could never keep
it going more than a few waves without my trusty co-pilot.
(And neither could he without me.)

Galaga -- cheat mode would always impress the hell out of
people who didn't notice the aliens weren't firing...  Heh
heh.  Just tonight I saw what appeared to be a hacked 
version of Galaga -- the bitmaps were all different, but 
the machine looked just like the classic.  I couldn't get 
close enough to see if the play was different.  Anybody 
else seen this?

---
chris
Newsgroups: alt.games.video.classic