Foggy memories
By trace 2 Comments
Let me step aside from the commentary on the site and its issues, and instead talk about the lengths I go to for recalling information on old games.
My memory of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS CLOUDY MOUNTAIN Cartridge (I get a kick out of typing the whole name) is rather foggy, as I haven't played it since my childhood. The Intellivision dominated so much of my early youth, and my father and I would often wake up early in the morning to play games of Lock 'N' Chase or Burgertime. It was the only game console my parents ever used or understood, and they'd play many of the games I played as well.
I was in the midst of writing up some text for the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAyouknowwhat let's just call it AD&D, and I really didn't want to dig out my Intellivision to answer a single measly question.
I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to ask someone with a foggier mind than mine, but I ended up asking my father if the blobs in AD&D were instakill upon contact.
Five minutes later, it's a family conversation. A conversation over the lethality of digital blobs from a 1980s game. I think we concluded that since
Cut to the next day. The AD&D text is submitted and pending. The Intellivision is out of the auto parts crate it's so elegantly stored in, despite my best attempts to resist its pull. I was desperate for screenshots of Diner and Bump 'N' Jump. I wasn't about to grab images from elsewhere on the Internet. No, I was going to do this *right*.
Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that hooking a 29 year old console (in bad condition, no less) through an RF switch to a low-end TV tuner was about the worst possible way to get in-game screenshots, just short of paying a Kindergartner to finger paint what they saw on the screen.
Then again, it is an Intellivision System III. It replaced the original Intellivision we owned, which died when I beat a kid three times my age at BurgerTime and he decided to bash the system in using its own controller.
So I decide to jump into AD&D so I can test the blob deal once and for all. While doing that, I find out that bats, which my submission claims do minimal damage, don't appear to do any damage at all. I even find a second bat and let it hover around me with the first. By modern day terms, I'm herding the cave and tanking these bats hardcore. The Night Stalker bats would be embarrassed to be related to these weak AD&D cave bats.
I also found out spiders aren't really deadly either, but steal arrows pretty well, and rats are more deadly than I thought. Man, do I need to edit that submission if it clears.
The lesson to be learned in this disjointed ramble? Don't assume about old games, play them again before writing something up. Also, don't get into trying to contribute for retro games unless you have a lot of time or patience.
I'm letting the bat hover around my guy in the background still. He's like an adorable pet that might get around to doing something vicious one day.