#The meat shield generation since 1981.

[nando161mando]

The meat shield generation since 1981.

[hendrixeros]

It would be easy to imagine that Adrian came from a broken home. The most generous would assume that his mother was overworked and unintentionally neglectful. His father wasn’t ready to settle down so he wasn’t around. The most malicious might assume that his parents were some combination of abusive, addicted, or dead.

But Adrian will be the first to tell you that he fucked up his life all on his own. Both of his parents are still alive and well, still married and happily approaching their 37th wedding anniversary. 

Emmett Henderson (59) and Ruth Henderson (56) met at a concert in 1981. Emmett was the guitarist for the opening act, Ruth was experimenting with teenage rebellion for the first time in her very sheltered life. Coming together involved a complicated scheme to sneak back stage so Ruth’s friend could meat the headliner’s frontman. The two bonded over their love of music, their strict parents, and some spark of attraction that refused to die when the night was over.

After a whirlwind secret romance that would have made Romeo and Juliet look like ammeters, Emmett and Ruth eloped just two weeks after Ruth’s 18th birthday. Three months later, Ruth found out she was pregnant. Unfortunately, she spent much of her pregnancy alone in the bedroom she occupied in the home of her new in-laws while her new husband was away on tour. There were nights when she would lie awake and wonder if she’d made every possible wrong choice she could have made. Another series of events, elaborate schemes, where one wrong move could have put her in a completely different situation.

Adrian came due two weeks after Emmett came home from his first and last tour. One look at his wife holding their son was enough to ground him. He knew he never wanted to be away from them. Emmett quit his band and joined a studio house band. The money was more stable and the traveling was minimal. Every major blues record recorded in New Orleans in the late 80s and early 90s features Emmett’s guitar riffs. While Emmett worked, Ruth went to night school and eventually became a music teacher.  The couple bought a house in what they thought was a quiet town outside the city. A place they could raise their sun and live their lives. Eventually Emmett would change careers to one less seeped in the kinds of things they wanted to shield their son from. While Ruth worked as a teacher and gave private piano lessons in their home in the afternoon, Emmett attended night school and became a nurse, specializing in hospice care. It was a relief to be home every night for dinner, rather than locked in a studio with a demanding musician and producer.

There’s no way they could anticipate the damage a car wreck and a prescription to narcotic pain killers would do to the son they’d raised. The son they’d loved and cared for his whole life. It was as if, over night, their son had become a different person. Years of laughing over family dinners, sitting under the stars on the back porch singing country songs while Emmett and Adrian played guitar together, church services and choir practices had all drifted away under the fog addiction brought over their family. 

And as quickly as Adrian had changed, he vanished from their lives with a note that was more of an apology than an explanation. In the beginning Adrian called, but he couldn’t stomach listening to his mom cry and beg him to come home. So, instead he wrote letters. Some were thoughtful and apologetic. Others were written and mailed thoughtlessly under the influence of one narcotic or another. These were the hardest and most painful to read. But Ruth kept them all the same, anticipating the day that contact from her son would stop coming all together.

Even as three years have passed since the Prodigal Son’s return home to Olympus, Adrian still has not reached out to his parents. The closest he has come was a near run in with his dad at the grocery store. But even after a double take in his direction, Emmett didn’t seem to recognize his son. 

What Adrian doesn’t know is that Ruth has seen him around town. She knows that he’ll come back to her when he’s ready. And she and Emmett are both waiting to welcome their son home with open arms if he chooses to reach out to them.

[antiques-for-geeks]

Game Review : Satellite Attack

Philips (Magnavox) / 1981 / G7000 (Odyssey²) / Originally £14.95

“I’ve been lost in this damned asteroid field for what seems like days. I snuck into the launch bay and climbed into a waiting mining cruiser… hoping to scoop enough precious space rocks into the hold to feed me, my wife and our 7 kids for the rest of our lives… but those flashing red lights on my nav-com were there for a reason. This sector is a death trap! Maybe if I keep flying toward galactic central I’ll find my precious ore and a way home…”

Many of the games for the G7000 were barely concealed copies of popular arcade titles of the era. There were a couple of licensed conversions by Parker Brothers late on in the machine’s lifetime, but almost everything else was an original work or an unlicensed facsimile of some kind. This tac eventually ended with Phillips being court ordered to withdraw their excellent Pac Man ‘homage’ KC Munchkin from sale.

What I really appreciate about these games is that they attempted to retain playability by re-working each game within the heavy limitations of the machine, leading to interesting and enjoyable twists on the copied game’s mechanics. 

Take Satellite attack for example. One of the best games for the G7000, on paper it’s a shameless copy of Asteroids. Worse, it’s Asteroids with the rotational controls and thrust-physics completely removed! Thankfully we get smart new mechanics to replace what was lost. 

There are, of course, floating asteroids. These come in two different flavours; the bog standard aimless ones and the fast spinning magnetic ones that get spawned when two of the basic ones collide. These are worth more points, and follow your ship around like an affectionate puppy. 

There are also vicious enemy saucers which periodically fly across the screen trying to tag you with their laser blasts.

Hovering just out of range, shield up!

Your ship can move in any direction on command within the bounds of the single screen asteroid field. Unlike Asteroids, you cannot ‘wrap’ your ship or your shots from one side of the screen to the other. You are surrounded by a rotating dot ‘shield’, and whilst it is active you cannot be destroyed. You temporarily lose shield cover by smashing into an asteroid, firing your lasers or being shot by an enemy saucer. Take a hit while the shields are down and it’s game over ...yeah, G7000 games are almost all single life score attacks for some reason. The shields will restore to full cover within a couple of seconds, but until then you’ll need to be careful. 

So you have 2 ways of destroying the asteroids for points; bash into them while your shield is up or shoot them with your laser. How you aim the laser feels highly original, though it does take some mastery. One of the dots which make up your shield is brighter than the rest, and this indicates what direction you’re aiming. When you move your ship in one direction, the bright dot begins to rotate that way too. It takes a little time to get there, and since you usually need to keep your ship on the move, this means that you have to carefully manage its position to nail those asteroids. Firing the laser brings your shield down too, so drawing a bead on the fast moving saucers without getting tagged by one of their shots is pretty difficult! You can always smash them with you shields up, but be sure to approach them from a cardinal direction as their diagonal shots are fast and deadly.

Zapped by a saucer. This looks better in motion, honest! 

There’s not too much more to the game than that, but this game retains a satisfying depth that still makes it an enjoyable game to play today. Note for example how when the asteroids are destroyed their debris can hit and destroy other rocks nearby (or even saucers) causing a satisfying chain reaction... or the balance of risk and reward, the ebb and flow of defence and attack caused by the shield recharge time. These are the small details which so many other contemporary games lacked. 

Buying it today

This was a ubiquitous title on the machine, and there are still plenty of copies floating around. There also isn’t a high collector demand for the G7000, so you should be able to pick up a nice boxed copy for under a tenner.

Commentariat

Tim : It’s like asteroids, but it’s not. That’s the best way I can describe Satellite Attack (or UFO! depending on your territory). I love that it’s colourful and crisp, even if it’s look is basic.

The game is sadistically hard and the way the controls are changed from those you'd expect from an asteroids homage doesn’t make life easy. Yes, we are into difficulty as a replacement for variety territory here. Oddly though, that did not put me off, instead drawing me further in, determined to do better with each attempt. It’s good fun and I could easily see Pop and I wasting a good afternoon trying to best each other with this title...

Pop: I feel like some kind of crazy apologist for the Philips G7000 sometimes, but I honestly think this is ‘good retro’. I often find more enjoyment in talking and reading about games on these second generation consoles than actually playing them, but found myself hooked in straight away, transported back to a Saturday morning 35 years ago trying desperately to best my brother’s high score. The only shame is that I can’t play this on the original hardware with the original joysticks anymore.

I’d also rather have this than Asteroids on the Atari 2600. That’s not a bad version per-se, but the concessions made to get it to work on much more basic hardware really knocked my enjoyment of it down a notch or two.

Meat: Are the graphics in all these G7000 games just a bunch of + and x signs flashing over each other? I’ve seen more detailed ASCII art! My first feelings were of pity for the kids playing this when they could have had Pitfall on the Atari, but after actually sitting down to play I can see how it could be fun once you get past how basic everything looks. I’d still have snatched your hand off for an Intellivision or Colecovision instead.

Score card

Presentation 8/10

A nice sturdy plastic box (these things will last forever!) with appealing cover artwork. No real in-game presentation, but that’s a given for games of this era. 

Originality 7/10

The premise is as unoriginal as it gets, but this plays like it was created by somebody who overheard someone else talking about Asteroids while drunk in a bar. The way the ship and shooting mechanics work make it feel like something quite distinct.

Graphics 4/10

As simple as G7000 games always are, but everything is clearly defined. You have to give some recognition to how much is done with a few colours and simple sprites here. You can clearly tell what the condition of your shield is and where you’re aiming with basic visual cues.

Hookability 7/10

A premise so simple anyone could grasp it, but there’s some subtlety to getting the best from the ship. If you try and play it like asteroids, only using the blasters you’ll soon come unstuck.

Sound 3/10

Very basic sound effects only, but at least not actively annoying!

Lastability 8/10

As a score attack game or for a quick occasional blast this does the trick, in much the same way as asteroids does.

Value for Money 8/10

Game cartridges were expensive back then so this is subjective, but this one had tonnes of re-playability.  

Overall 8/10

Might well be the best on the machine, and a fine example of the genre.

[kurmawholesale5735-blog]

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