Giant Bomb Holiday Nostalgiafest 2011 - Part 01

I'm 22 and I had an atari 2600 when I was little because it was really cheap and I have a nostalgia that I shouldn't have, this was happening when I was like 4-5 in 1993-1994 but then my dad sold it and bought a NES which was cheap in 1996-1998 so I had a weird gaming childhood, I can't remember a lot of the atari games, I do remember combat and that game where you're a cop and running after some prison dude.

I was little so I thought those games looked amazing then I played the NES and thought that was amazing then I saw on TV people were playing amazing looking games and I thought I had to get the right cartridge I thought the NES was current but it wasn't I only realized that when I was like 12 and got a computer and played cool games :D.

@Spatulalad said:

@ApolloBob said:

@fr0y0: @Lightningproof:

Born in 1969, my fine young gentlemen! Atari 2600 was my first game console, unless you count a machine that played 6 variations of pong (well 5 pong games and a light gun game which you could get perfect scores on by pointing the gun out the window and firing into the daylight).

Alive in 6 separate decades - check that shit out! But don't fear getting old, fresh faced duders, you can still play videogames and maybe even work at a place that makes them. Keeps me young, or possibly in a state of denial about my arrested development.

God bless you, you old bastard!

lol - thanks man! God bless us everyone!

@Ninja: You are welcome. I was disappointed no one had said it until I did.

Acclaim... RE-VOLT was sooo great!!!

Why do things break half the time I try to watch them in HD? The rest of the time it works fine.

Old games are really interesting. I miss the Game Room quick looks.

Fresh sneaks, Patrick!

Jeff's knowledge of the mechanics of E.T. are incredible and alarming.

This is an insane piece of history, and it's awesome.

I'm 19 and I'm not going to lie: I find anything pre-NES to be stupefyingly boring. That being said, I just watched all 4 hours of this and was still plenty entertained.

I wish I didn't miss so much of this live, but this is fucking fantastic.

@Ghostmut said:

Jesus, Patrick's voice and everything about him is so fucking annoying.

no douchebag.

"When the FBI man touches me, he puts it in a different hole."

@ArbitraryWater said:

I'm 19 and I'm not going to lie: I find anything pre-NES to be stupefyingly boring. That being said, I just watched all 4 hours of this and was still plenty entertained.

Well, good on you for sitting through this anyway. I like to think you are a more well-rounded gamer for it.

@rjayb89 said:

Some weird cracky audio sounds up in dis.

thank god, i was worried it was my tv. Puts my mind to rest that it is the old games clashing with the capture hardware.

28 year old gamer here.

The Atari 2600 was a little before my time since I didn't get into gaming at all until I was about 6 or 7, well after Nintendo and Sega had pushed a dying Atari into the background. I guess I can appreciate games from before the NES and Genesis for what they were, but actually playing them? No way. I can play Mega Man 1-6 or Sonic 3&K all damn day and I love a good, faithfully recreated retro 8-bit/16-bit aesthetic (Wizorb and Dark Void Zero are both good examples), but anything before that can't hold my attention for very long. Yeah, a lot of that has to do with nostalgia, but it's also because I honestly find games from the time I was growing up to be a lot more playable now than stuff from before then.

EDIT: Also, holy shit is Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game bringing back some memories. I can remember renting this at Blockbuster (remember that? When you actually went into a place and rented games and movies?) as a kid and staying over at a friend's house for the weekend. I think all we did for the entire first night we had the game was do Sawada's hilarious bro chest bump super over and over again and laugh our asses off.

Is this the same CyberSurfer?

I would hope.

Also, that kid is Brad.

There was a Ghostbusters game for the 2600. I had it when I was a kid. It was made by Activision and was roughly smilar to the NES version. The Ghostbusters theme music was surprisingly good for a 2600 game, but it was on loop throughout the entire time you played it and it got real annoying after about 10 minutes of playing it.

Like everything else which was dumped in the landfill, the game cartridges were crushed. On top of that, the landfill was then capped with cement so I doubt anyone actually found any surviving copies of that crappy game afterwards. But, as this article relates, there apparently were some people who recovered cartridges before they were destroyed including an 18-wheeler which was hijacked to Mexico.

Is this dump ow the Area 51 of video game lore?

really wish this had better notification, was keeping my eyes open but saw nothing until this went up.

guess I need to get on twitter more >.0

Someone needs to feed Patrick.

@SaturdayNightSpecials said:

Is this the same CyberSurfer?

I would hope.

Also, that kid is Brad.

*dramatically removes glasses* Oh. My. God.

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Jeff I want to thank you for showing me how to play ET for Atari. I had it when I was 3 and could never figure out what to do. As I got older and better at games I would go back to it and still have no frickin idea what to do. I can now rest easy.

I like Patrick and all, but it seems sometimes he's just talking to try and impress everyone with his knowledge which is a bit ridiculous if you are trying to keep up with Jeff who is a goddamn encyclopedia of gaming lore. It is kind of getting on my nerves.

@McGhee said:

I like Patrick and all, but it seems sometimes he's just talking to try and impress everyone with his knowledge which is a bit ridiculous if you are trying to keep up with Jeff who is a goddamn encyclopedia of gaming lore. It is kind of getting on my nerves.

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, if this was just Jeff it may have been better. Still, this was awesome and I'm really happy they did it.

That Patrick Klepek is one sorta decent looking chick.

@PimblyCharles said:

@McGhee said:

I like Patrick and all, but it seems sometimes he's just talking to try and impress everyone with his knowledge which is a bit ridiculous if you are trying to keep up with Jeff who is a goddamn encyclopedia of gaming lore. It is kind of getting on my nerves.

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, if this was just Jeff it may have been better. Still, this was awesome and I'm really happy they did it.

I couldn't disagree more. I think Patrick and Jeff's personalities bounce off of each other really well, as both people are extraordinarily observant about gaming mechanics.

That being said, I was a big fan of Patrick back at G4 so I'm used to his mannerisms. Solid feature!

It's the day after boxing day I have a broken leg and Im on my couch with my iPad and I find this.My day just got a whole lot better.

What the fuck--something about how that Pacman game looks is making something go really wrong with my eyes. Edit: It's like when you watch a 3D movie that uses the blue-red glasses without glasses or something.

In response to the conversation ~48 minutes in about if old game design is relevant to modern game designers -- no, to designers. But to engineers (programmers, coders, etc) a lot of the concepts are still relevant, especially with the advent of mobile phone gaming. iPhones and so on may have OpenGL support, HD audio and all these things an Atari 2600 can only dream about, but in a 30/60 fps world, knowing limitations of the hardware is still very important in modern game development.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFuck that stack of Saturn games makes me jealous. Is that Shining Force III?!

I'm 16 and I think this stuff is awesome. I wish I had grown up in a time where arcades were 'mainstream' and popular, or at least existed in England.

I'm nearly 30 and and the family had a 2600 during my youth and I still think theses games are kinda shit.

The reason the Dreamcast had no support from EA was because EA, as a term of supporting the Dreamcast, wanted to be the only producer of sports games on the system. Meanwhile, Visual Concepts had already been hard at work on NFL2k and were really excited about what they were doing. SEGA refused to just stop production on their own own games, so EA made good on its threat and gave the Dreamcast zero support. Things like this is why EA used to get so much hate back in the day. I mean, can you imagine any company doing this today? Not even Activision would do this. I believe the whole story is detailed by Peter Moore in an interview somewhere.

Roles and ghouls.

I just realized the pitfall swing sound was an attempted tarzan yell.

Wow.

Wow, I just looked up how much that Pacman game would have been after adjusting for inflation...

$178.33

Also, $25.75 in 1982 is equal to $60 today. That's pretty crazy.

Holy shit! was the movie battleship announced already when this was recorded?

If not then this is pretty great.

Jeff: "Yeah, its like making a movie and basing it on the board game battleship, you know its like such a thin thing that when you make it into a modern product it's not the same thing anymore."

@DoctorWelch said:

Wow, I just looked up how much that Pacman game would have been after adjusting for inflation...

$178.33

Also, $25.75 in 1982 is equal to $60 today. That's pretty crazy.

Yeah games were kinda crazy back then, now I understand why my parents were always just like no when they saw the prices.

@GenocidalKitten: Yes, it was announced. He was very clearly referencing it.

From the ashes of the past remembrance surges brightly.

Patrick without a goatee is weird. Also, I have always been grateful Patrick was only a year older than me so he could ask the encyclopedia that is Jeff the same things I wouldn't know just because I didn't have any experience with this era.

Maybe I'm weird but it totally looks like ET has a little green penis between his legs.

Christmas bump!

Jeff totally predicted that there would be a Battleship movie...

@shami_sansi: omg he does, at 0:14:50 to be exact