Pong & Pacman are games everybody remembers as being the archetypes of video-games. Even kids who grew up without Pacman!
I did a little review on KC Munchkin and Pong a little while back:
Way back in 1982 (I was 12) pacman was a big hit in the arcades, that success resulted in quite a number of pacman versions on the various consoles that were out there at the time. And magnavox / philips created KcMunchkin. It was quite a controversial title bacause it closely resembled Namco's Pacman. It was actually pulled of the shelves because of a lawsuit. Still it remained on sale in Germany if I remember correctly. I remember I felt quite proud to own it back then - still do!
In the Netherlands, most of my friends that owned a console had a 2600 in those days. When my birthday came up my parents decided to get a console for me and my brother. They got me a g7000 philips videopac sysem together with KCMunching - Videopac no 38 and No 39 Freedom fighters. At first I was disappointed because it wasn't the 2600 I was hoping for. But later I learned to appreciate the blocky graphics.
In time I even preferred it over the 2600's pacman - because of the fast pace and the fact that all those pills moved around the screen! The cart had some nifty options like:
1. program your own maze - without a grid it's too hard let me tell you.
2. play with an invisible maze
3. play with a forever changing maze
This game get's me in 'the zone' (if that exists at all) when the scores comes to 240, by then it's all reflexes and neurons firing in your cerebellum & spinal cord. My mom always got very nervous when she saw the muncher speeding around the screen and me controlling it together with that super nerve wrecking blip blip blip tweet tweet tweet sound that kept on going faster and higher. Even today (on the g7400 (videopac+ system) all my reflexes still work and I get pretty decent high scores.
Graphics: 5/5 (nothing more is needed for a good pacman game if you like lots of square pixels like I do) Gameplay: 4/5 (when you reach a certain level the game becomes virtually unplayble because the ghosts become much faster than you and all the 'patterns' in the world will not help you). Sound/Music: 5/5(It's no music actually, more some sort of blipping drone that gets higher & faster time after time. Either you like it or you absolutely hate it)
I have the boxed version, in mint condition even though it is played to bits! Anyways, this is the game that got me hooked to anything that looks and plays like this: PAC MAN. :)
Title:Pong / 2 player Tennis / single player tennis / Soccer slash Hokey licensed by Magnavox Year:1976 Available platform:Magnavox / Tokyo 4 colour
The system:
I played the the bright orange PAL version (everything plastic that's grey on this machine was bright orange in ours). It was a cold day in the beginning of march 1976, we were supposed to visit our grandparents. I was 6 and my brother was 4. We arrived early and it turned out that they weren't home yet. So we decided to visit my favourite comic book collecting uncle that lived close by. My uncle showed us a queer little bright-orange machine that you had to connect to the television set. It turned out to be some sort of game that you could play on your tv. Both me and my brother were handed a little orange control box with a turning knob that was connected to the machine with a small jack plug. The machine had a square blue and a square white knob with rounded edges with a texture that somehow intrigued me (even reminded me of chocolate for some reason I can't explain and only now remember whilst typing this text).
Then my uncle turned it on and the screen came alive: two zeroes in the middle on top and two bats on either side of the screen and a square blip that moved around diagonally. The score was already adding up for one of us and we didn't even know which bat was ours. It was my first experience with a video-game. Me and my brother were amazed and we even got to take it home with us!!! We played it for hours if we got the chance to! (now it seems weird that such simple game-play held our attention for so long) It even had sound: 2 different blip sounds coming from a small speaker on the device itself. Know we all know it as PONG or variants of that. I remember that all my friends wanted to play the television game (as we called it back then) when they came over to play.
Rating back then in 1976: Graphics: 5/5 (how realistically the ballmovements were and how it brought out competitiveness in my brother and me) Gameplay: 2/5 single player (even back then it was very boring playing by yourself) Gameplay: 5/5 two players (interact with an unpredictable smart fellow human on the screen. We always won from our parents and they didn't let us win - we slaughtered them) Sound: 4/5 (quite annoying blips, but at the time perceived as realistic 'ping pong'- sounds)
Nowadays I am not able to rate the game any higher than 1 on all items. It is sad but true. I guess I got spoiled by all games that came later.... ;)
Pong & Pacman are games everybody remembers as being the archetypes of video-games. Even kids who grew up without Pacman!
I did a little review on KC Munchkin and Pong a little while back:
Title: Munchkin / Videopac 38
Maker: Philips / Magnavox
Year: 1982
Available platform: Philips Videopac / Odessy2
Screenshot:
Way back in 1982 (I was 12) pacman was a big hit in the arcades, that success resulted in quite a number of pacman versions on the various consoles that were out there at the time. And magnavox / philips created KcMunchkin. It was quite a controversial title bacause it closely resembled Namco's Pacman. It was actually pulled of the shelves because of a lawsuit. Still it remained on sale in Germany if I remember correctly. I remember I felt quite proud to own it back then - still do!
In the Netherlands, most of my friends that owned a console had a 2600 in those days. When my birthday came up my parents decided to get a console for me and my brother. They got me a g7000 philips videopac sysem together with KCMunching - Videopac no 38 and No 39 Freedom fighters. At first I was disappointed because it wasn't the 2600 I was hoping for. But later I learned to appreciate the blocky graphics.
In time I even preferred it over the 2600's pacman - because of the fast pace and the fact that all those pills moved around the screen! The cart had some nifty options like:
1. program your own maze - without a grid it's too hard let me tell you.
2. play with an invisible maze
3. play with a forever changing maze
This game get's me in 'the zone' (if that exists at all) when the scores comes to 240, by then it's all reflexes and neurons firing in your cerebellum & spinal cord. My mom always got very nervous when she saw the muncher speeding around the screen and me controlling it together with that super nerve wrecking blip blip blip tweet tweet tweet sound that kept on going faster and higher. Even today (on the g7400 (videopac+ system) all my reflexes still work and I get pretty decent high scores.
Graphics: 5/5 (nothing more is needed for a good pacman game if you like lots of square pixels like I do)
Gameplay: 4/5 (when you reach a certain level the game becomes virtually unplayble because the ghosts become much faster than you and all the 'patterns' in the world will not help you).
Sound/Music: 5/5(It's no music actually, more some sort of blipping drone that gets higher & faster time after time. Either you like it or you absolutely hate it)
I have the boxed version, in mint condition even though it is played to bits! Anyways, this is the game that got me hooked to anything that looks and plays like this: PAC MAN. :)
Title:Pong / 2 player Tennis / single player tennis / Soccer slash Hokey licensed by Magnavox
Year:1976
Available platform:Magnavox / Tokyo 4 colour
The system:
I played the the bright orange PAL version (everything plastic that's grey on this machine was bright orange in ours). It was a cold day in the beginning of march 1976, we were supposed to visit our grandparents. I was 6 and my brother was 4. We arrived early and it turned out that they weren't home yet. So we decided to visit my favourite comic book collecting uncle that lived close by. My uncle showed us a queer little bright-orange machine that you had to connect to the television set. It turned out to be some sort of game that you could play on your tv. Both me and my brother were handed a little orange control box with a turning knob that was connected to the machine with a small jack plug. The machine had a square blue and a square white knob with rounded edges with a texture that somehow intrigued me (even reminded me of chocolate for some reason I can't explain and only now remember whilst typing this text).
Then my uncle turned it on and the screen came alive: two zeroes in the middle on top and two bats on either side of the screen and a square blip that moved around diagonally. The score was already adding up for one of us and we didn't even know which bat was ours. It was my first experience with a video-game. Me and my brother were amazed and we even got to take it home with us!!! We played it for hours if we got the chance to! (now it seems weird that such simple game-play held our attention for so long) It even had sound: 2 different blip sounds coming from a small speaker on the device itself. Know we all know it as PONG or variants of that. I remember that all my friends wanted to play the television game (as we called it back then) when they came over to play.
Rating back then in 1976:
Graphics: 5/5 (how realistically the ballmovements were and how it brought out competitiveness in my brother and me)
Gameplay: 2/5 single player (even back then it was very boring playing by yourself)
Gameplay: 5/5 two players (interact with an unpredictable smart fellow human on the screen. We always won from our parents and they didn't let us win - we slaughtered them)
Sound: 4/5 (quite annoying blips, but at the time perceived as realistic 'ping pong'- sounds)
Nowadays I am not able to rate the game any higher than 1 on all items. It is sad but true. I guess I got spoiled by all games that came later.... ;)
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl
Armchair Arcade Editor