Giant Bomb Holiday Nostalgiafest 2011 - Part 01

Wooh i love atari

Awesome

Oh shit that was an amazing first 2 shots.

"I brought some old-ass games"

Yeah!

sixth

Some weird cracky audio sounds up in dis.

Gonna put this out there: E.T. - not the worst game out there. Not even the worst Atari 5200 game.

Edit: Or 2600, whatever.

Was this live? I scoured the site for it all week and never saw a notice or anything.

Happy Holidays

@Darth_Furder: Totally waited all Thursday for it. I guess it must have been an EST issue.

And holy shit, I totally kept my old Atari games in the same brown leather case that Jeff has.

Fuck Patrick's young.

Totally Awesome.

BTW

PS, a major selling point for the original Nintendo Entertainment System was its arcade perfect version of Super Mario Bros.

"I am about as old as video games"

Jeff Gerstmann IS video games

ET didn't look that much worse than anything else at that time.

Atari cartridges went for $25 - $30 at the time, and that seemed like a lot of money. I remember

by parents getting Defender and Pac Man for $28 each.

Atari cartridges went for $25 - $30 at the time, and that seemed like a lot of money. I remember

by parents getting Defender and Pac Man for $28 each.

Nice!

@Geoborealis said:

Atari cartridges went for $25 - $30 at the time, and that seemed like a lot of money. I remember

by parents getting Defender and Pac Man for $28 each.

Interesting fact, 30 US Dollars in 1981 is comparatively about $75 today.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+1981+us+dollars

That's a lot of money to play Space Invaders.

@AndrewB said:

Was this live? I scoured the site for it all week and never saw a notice or anything.

Yes it was this week's replacement for TNT.

@AndrewB said:

Was this live? I scoured the site for it all week and never saw a notice or anything.

They mentioned it on I Love Mondays

Them even streaming out video from and ancient machine like the Atari 2600 is crazy.

Ba na na na na na na na BATSWORD!!

@Jeff Hey I'm watching the part where you think about whether these old games are worth going back to or not.

I started making web games a few years ago and I've just graduated to selling stand-alone Steam type games now. Seeing Game-Room games is always interesting because they're designed from a different starting point. Like- nobody would ever come up with Dig Dug in 2011 because people start designing games now around "Who do you play as?" and "What's the mechanic?" and "Which genre is this in?" while the backbone of what defines Dig Dug or Pacman isn't any of those things.

Atari 2600 games are designed from questions like "What's onscreen?" and "What ends the game?" and "How do you get more time?" so they come out as really abstract toys. Nobody at any point says "this game is set in the future", but in a 2011 game that might be the FIRST thing you say.

And that way, some of the stuff in Game Room looked like "new" ideas to me, because I'd never come up with anything like Warlords or Keystone Capers. I don't know what goes on in Game Design schools (I think they're usually dumb as hell) but yeah I think they could benefit from talking about Atari games for a couple hours.

@SlickWillyJJ said:

Fuck Patrick's young.

If you think that, hit the forums and ask people for their age/year of birth. Eerie.

I'm an early 1987 model myself.

@fr0y0 said:

@SlickWillyJJ said:

Fuck Patrick's young.

If you think that, hit the forums and ask people for their age/year of birth. Eerie.

I'm an early 1987 model myself.

1993, and I'm old enough to drink, vote, and create multi-car pile-ups (in the UK, at least).

You guys all ooooooold.

Eh, I hate to say it because it's kind of a cheesy way to do things but pointing a camera at the TV might be a better way of capturing footage for these old systems. With this set up we always get a bunch of invisible stuff.

@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.

I love the fact that Pac-Man 2600 is /the/ sound of video games for most television.

@chilibean_3: I agree. This technology solution doesn't work particularly well, and hasn't for any old system yet.

@AndrewB: I'd suggest you follow some of the GB guys and WhiskeyLive on twitter as well to get the lowdown on when stuff is going down live.

Reese's Pieces are the bane of my existence.

I love how it's weird notion that arcade machines were better than home consoles back in the day. As a kid I probably put hundred bucks in quarters into TMNT, Final Fight and Golden Axe at the 7-11 by my house. Not to mention the arcade in the mall that I'd go to when my mom would go shopping.

And yes, as a kid I never figured out how Raiders of the Lost Ark on the 2600 worked.

@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!

My Dad still plays games and he is 50. Beat that!

@Cheesebob said:

My Dad still plays games and he is 50. Beat that!

My mom is 54 and still plays game. BEATEN!

As a general rule, I try not to speak or interact with people born in the 90s.

My baby sitter broke my dedicated pong machine when I was 5, blamed it on me and I got in trouble for it. To this day it still makes me angry when I think about it. Curse you lying baby sitter.

YES, THANKS GIANT BOMB!

@rjayb89 said:

Some weird cracky audio sounds up in dis.

Glad you posted this. I thought my laptop speakers were going.

I love that kind of rattling sound when Jeff is browsing through the games.

NOTHING STOPS THE GAME ROOM QUICK LOOK!

You guys are great. I played ET after I (actually, my Dad) bought it at a flea market in the 1980s - Jeff is awesome at getting out of those holes. I only remember sitting on my cold basement floor, playing ET for the 2600, and thinking I should probably do something else.

@gormers: yeah, you just don't hear that rattling sound anymore with everything coming on discs in DVD/Bluray cases and being stood on media racks. brings back memories of many, may years ago when playing games all day long with my brother in the early-to-mid 80s.

@KamikazeCaterpillar said:

NOTHING STOPS THE GAME ROOM QUICK LOOK!

You sir, you made my day.

@Linkster7 said:

@Cheesebob said:

My Dad still plays games and he is 50. Beat that!

My mom is 54 and still plays game. BEATEN!

My Dad is 55 and he still plays, although it's mostly older RPGs. I think the newest console he has is a PS2.

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

@gormers said:

I love that kind of rattling sound when Jeff is browsing through the games.

Yeah, nothing beats sifting through stacks of cartridges.

This was some awesome content. Couldn't care less about these platforms (so shoot me, I was a commodore kid) but this was great all the same.