Azathoth

Twisted Tuesday 16: Video Game Stories

Tuesday, 25. November 2008, 22:25:04

This is the Twisted Tuesday that would have been posted last week if I had posted one last week (I got another coming up today that is sorta also my Thanksgiving post even though its not technically Thanksgiving themed so that one is clearly this week's Twisted - you see my logic on that, right?

Twisted Tuesday #16

Atari Story Albums

First up we have a bunch of story albums based on classic Atari video games - and what could be more twisted than video game story albums?

Back in the 80's, record label Kid Stuff decided to cash in on the Atari 2600's popularity, so they acquired the rights to produce a few game-themed audio storybooks for games like Asteroids, Missile Command and Yar's Revenge. Here in all its glorious cheesy awfulness is...

Asteroids

"While on a routine mission, the Cosmic Space Patrol ship, Intrepid, is trapped in a time-warp and is rocketed into the past! It's up to Captain Jim Stanton and his computer sidekick, Chip Brain, to find their way back to safety. Blast off for adventure with Atari's Asteroids!"

This also came out on cassette with a read along book...

Yar's Revenge

"Deep in outer space, in the Razak solar system, lives a race of super-beings, half-man/half-fly, known as Yars. when one of their planets is destroyed, the Yars vow to seek revenge against their mortal enemy, the evil Qotile! Fly alongside the Yar warriors, as they attack their enemy in a thrilling space battle! Take off for excitement with Atari's Yars Revenge."

The read along book for this one is included. I also threw in the comic book that came with the Atari 2600 game cartridge.

Missile Command w/ read along book

Star Raiders w/ read along book

Data Age Mindscape Flexi Disc

Data Age, the company that brought us the Atari 2600 Journey Escape game, made its debut at the 1982 Summer Consumer Electronics Show with 10 employees, five science-fiction games and a commitment to ship those games on October 1. Data Age met the ship date it announced at CES and accompanied its initial release with what was regarded (at the time) as "one of the most innovative point-of-purchase materials in the industry".

Called "Mindscape," the 3 1/2 minute sound track, recorded on a flexible plastic disc, dramatized the sounds of Data Age's Bugs, Sssnake, Airlock, Warplock, and Encounter at L-5 games. The disc, an audio version of the standard consumer catalog, was offered free to dealers and its customers and was the first industry-wide attempt at using the sound medium to generate buyer enthusiasm.

Mindscape is very psychedelic and even a little creepy/scary - it sounds like it could be from the soundtrack to some so bad its great sci-fi B-movie. I'd recommend checking this one out even if you aren't into video game stuff and are visiting the blog for the more horror/sci-fi/monster related sort of stuff I mainly post.

More Kid Stuff Video Game Stories

While I was at it, I decided to post the other Kid Stuff video game based stories that I have - which amounts to Donkey Kong and enough Pac-Man to choke a ghost

The Amazing Adventures of Pac Man

Pac-Man Picnic

Pac-Man Christmas Album

I guess this makes this my 1st Christmas post of the year as well!

Baby Pac-Man Goes To The Market

*update* Baby Pac-Man is here thanks to lane! wooo!

Donkey Kong

And in case all these video game stories have you itching to crack out your Atari 2600 (or emulation software as the case may be) and play some classic games you haven't played in years, here's something to help you remember what you are doing

Conquer the Video Craze

Conquer the Video Craze was issued in 1982, at the height of arcade games’ popularity. Over a background of ambient arcade noise, Curtis Hoard, “Atari Champion finalist”, reads convoluted game tips in a slow nasal monotone.

"There are few games in the marketplace that Chris has not mastered. He has extensive experience at playing video games and deciphering their patterns and techniques of play. His analytical mind automatically envisions patterns and virtual line drawings of the games. He currently logs more than 8 hours of play per day and has been coined by his peers and friends as the 'Human Video Game'."

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Azathoth # 25. November 2008, 22:26

---> Atari Pack

---> Asteroids Story Booklet (wasn't included in the Atari Pack)

---> More Kid Stuff Video Game Stories Pack

---> Baby Pac-Man Goes To The Market

---> Conquer The Video Craze

Azathoth # 25. November 2008, 23:05

Thanks, shout outs, and cyber hugs go to the following without whom this post would not be as extensive as it is... Check the Cool Wax blog where I originally got the Video Craze; DavesWorld56, Lane2002 and Crystaldragon from the Mostly Ghostly Forum (Lane for the Pacman Picnic, Crystaldragon for the Yar's Revenge & Asteroids story booklets, and Dave for some album cover scans (Dave's covers are always the best) I found on his awesome Children's records and More blog. And to Tenzhi who demanded Atari stories while threatening me with his Sweet Cocotato Cream Pie (his illness inspiring sweet potato & coconut pie concept.

)

And here's some Pac-Man paint by numbers pictures just because I had them

Anonymous # 26. November 2008, 01:20

crystaldragon writes:

Thanks for the shout out, Azathoth!

Anonymous # 26. November 2008, 05:15

Anonymous writes:

Thanks for all this and the shoutout. :D

I actually downloaded Pac-Man goes to Market read-along mp3s from some share some time ago, can't remember where though. I can put it up for you if wanted.

~ lane

Azathoth # 26. November 2008, 05:21

That would be cool.

Anonymous # 26. November 2008, 14:16

Anonymous writes:

There ya go: http://rapidshare.com/files/167582259/PM-KSR-616.rar

96 kbps mono. Not my rip, thanks to the original poster.

~ lane

Tenzhi # 26. November 2008, 14:25

Oh, the memories! I used to have the Asteroids and Yars Revenge records long ago in a galaxy right here. The only thing that could make this day better is a slice of Sweet Cocotato Cream Pie.

Azathoth # 26. November 2008, 14:50

lane: thanks for all the help! oh boy, I have to edit the post now though (ugh)

tenzhi: Gross!

Azathoth # 26. December 2008, 08:07

crystaldragon: Thanks for the Asteroids scans!

Anonymous # 22. October 2009, 12:38

Anonymous writes:

Pac-Man goes to Market read-along but say The file could not be found. Please check the download link.rapidshare please reupload this

Anonymous # 22. October 2009, 12:40

Anonymous writes:

Pac-Man goes to Market read-along but say The file could not be found. Please check the download link.rapidshare please reupload this

Anonymous # 22. October 2009, 23:48

Az writes:

stupid rapidshare, that's why I don't use them - I don't have access to the file right now since my hard drive died so if anyone who grabbed it before could help out it would be great.

Anonymous # 6. November 2009, 18:31

Anonymous writes:

this is stupid it doent even show the whole picture god it is dumb if your going to do something like this you need to make sure you show the whole picture. gez have some common since why don't you.

Azathoth # 7. November 2009, 11:16

Show what whole picture? Its hard to know exactly what you're talking about when instead of providing useful information, you waste your time calling me stupid.

If you are referring to the fact that some of the image links in the post are broken I am aware of that and its nothing that I did, its the image host. (However, I'm not sure that's what you are referring to since you say "the whole picture" and the broken pic links are of 'course completely not there, so then I wonder perhaps you have your browser doing something STUPID where the pics are not sizing to the screen right? Or perhaps you are having an issue with a specific scan - if so all I can say is those are the best scans I could find and often even they were very hard to get and if any of them are not of the whole album cover or whatever "shrug". It really would help if you said what particular image or album you are referring to.)

In any case, my image host seems to have deleted some of my older files so some of the images are gone from these posts that are a year or more old. Its something I'll get around to fixing eventually when I have time (which I haven't since I have been making tons of new posts for people to enjoy which I rarely get thanked for at all - as opposed to nitpicky whining from rude anonymous posters which makes me rather less than inclined to address the problems btw), but for the most part its no big deal since generally the images are in the download files with the records anyway. And all of the actual downloads are still working (except baby pac man because it was provided by someone else and they put it on rapidshare which often randomly removes stuff, without warning and with glee.)

At any rate it would be more productive of you to tell someone when something isn't working rather than calling them stupid and accusing them (with ignorant spelling, no less) of not having any common SENSE.

Hope you enjoyed the records aside from whatever problem you had with images.

-AZ.

Tenzhi # 8. November 2009, 09:00

I believe the problem is that many of the images in the post are being cut off on the right side. They should be resized to fit more properly within the blog format. The blog should do that automatically, but que sera.

Of course, common sense tells me that anyone in dire need of seeing the entire pic can right click the pic in question, copy the address out of properties, and bring up the whole pic in a new window. But to be smart enough to figure that out one would also be able to properly use the SHIFT key and distinguish "your" from "you're."

Azathoth # 8. November 2009, 11:51

If that's the case I can't tell because they arn't cut off in any of my browsers (and I do check the page in several) because they do things properly. I'm reasonably certain sizing the pics to fit the blog post area is specified in the javascript laden style sheet entrenched convoluted mass 'o doom that is opera's page code (seriously - have you looked at it? I've modified it a bit before and its like staring into a plate full of spaghetti looking for the last bit of meatball trying to find something specific in there.) and amazingly enough (said with sarcasm in case it wasn't apparent) they obey the code. Can't speak for IE users though because I refuse to use that buggy malware POS.

Like you said though all anyone would have to do is right click - wouldn't even have to copy the address, just select view image or load image in new tab or whatever equivalent thing is there depending on browser flavor. Or they could even save the image and view it locally if they like it enough

All the image links on this post are loading now btw, I redid them for whatever that's worth.

Tenzhi # 11. November 2009, 10:20

"Can't speak for IE users though because I refuse to use that buggy malware POS."

Which is kind of like testing visuals to make sure they work for the colour blind and then being shocked to discover someone with normal vision has issues with it.

But in this case it *may* not be IE's fault specifically. This computer is using a horribly outdated (and proprietary) version of JAVA. I'll have to check it from home at some point and see if it's the JAVA or the browser.

Azathoth # 11. November 2009, 11:42

IE users are the blind ones

I have noticed tho on a couple of the very largest images (not the ones in this post but much larger ones) that a tiny bit of the right side is cut off for me but never more than the very right edge of something, not enough to make a diff (unlike on the blogspot blog where almost anything including half the youtube vids I embed jump way over its stupidly small post width unless I go in and reduce the player size which blows if its a widescreen movie so I often leave them hanging over even though they cover up some of the mostly pointless extra junk in the right sidebar sometimes.)

I'd rather have the best quality image possible than a shitty downsized one and I always appreciate and prefer the blogs where they actually provide the full album sized scan - I hate when I can only find little crappy covers for things which is unfortunately most of the time.

I spend a lot of time trying to get good images to provide as well as to provide background info and everything else like properly naming and labeling the audio files and just bloody uploading everything and making these posts takes forever so sometimes I don't make a thumbnail and all that rot or go in to the html code and specifically define the display area for each link when maybe I should - particularly now that I started linking directly to images in the photo gallery because I'm sick of re-upping things to image hosts that keep losing them. The pics are already starting to fill up my allotted storage space on opera (I think just fixing a couple of missing pics in about 3 old posts plus the last couple new ones has filled up another 5% of my storage) and if I put the high quality image up as well as a reduced size one just for the purpose of thumbnailing and all that its just going to run out of space faster.

And all in all sometimes its just easier and faster to use the add image button in post editor and leave things the way it makes them you know rather than dicking around micro managing the way shit displays or doing the whole thumbnail thing. Besides even going to all that trouble won't guarantee the page to look the same for everyone anyway because people browse in diff resolutions and have diff dimensioned display screens.

Basically I don't see a major problem if a bit of the right edge is cut off on display as long as the image is actually intact and can be easily viewed or saved by anyone that wants it anyway. Its a more or less sort of thing - I'd rather get more posts done and have more good content and less anal-perfect looking posts than the other way around. If someone feels the other way, well nobody's holding a gun to their head forcing them to look at it

Azathoth # 11. November 2009, 19:47

OK, I loaded the sucker up in IE just to see and GOOD LORD it doesn't even look like the same blog! Big time 1/3 of image cut off shit going on there! There's even stuff that I did specifically size to fit the blog width that doesn't display correctly and is cut way off. It is DEFINITELY an IE thing and not an old version of java or whatever kinda thing. Looks nothing like it does in Firefox, Opera, Chrome, SeaMonkey or even old Mozilla/Nscape.

That being the case, there's really little I can practically do about it - designing things to display correctly in the one browser that has intentionally for years failed to properly implement the html/xhtml/css standards agreed upon by the World Wide Web Consortium - [you know the group of all major industry leaders and tech experts who develop the bloody web technology to begin with that got together and agreed upon, in a more or less civil, non-violent and democratic process, what the various commands and parameters were and how they would work as a STANDARD that should act the same regardless of what proprietary software is used] - just to force people to design their web sites using frontpage and other MS tech because it gets along with their shitty browser better and causes every other browser not to work right on those pages... well that would be the same folly as a sheep blindly following the shepherd leading it to slaughter. I prefer the goat who is going to ram that bastard in the ass and send him flying off the hillside.