[Matt Barton]Fascinating stuff! That old unit is truly eye-catching. The boxing game is hilarious! It's hard to believe that people paid top dollar for that kind of thing and thought it was realistic. Be nice to sneak in a clip of it somewhere in the movie. It's also interesting to think of the possibilities of the stereo tape with the separate audio and data channels. Seems like, though, this unit was just too eccentric. There's definitely an article or perhaps a video mini-series about these console/computer Frankensteins. :P[/Matt Barton]
Yeah, the boxing game is pretty hilarious. There's pretty much block, punch, and move left and right. The "art" makes the boxers look like they have pretzel limbs. I'll try to capture some stuff for the documentary, but the RF output is truly a mess, so even if it capture perfectly it will still look like ass. Like I say in the video, all of the APF games were pretty awful to mediocre. The highlight was "Space Destroyers", and even that's not that impressive all things considered:
The tape intro:
The game itself (tape and cartridge) [and you can see this person has trouble with the RF output too]:
I believe the thing has a microphone and you can record your own stuff onto tape when you save stuff, like an annotation of what's on there. I'll have to double-check to verify. Of course it wasn't the only system with this "multi-track" tape capability. Other systems like the Atari 8-bit and Exidy Sorcerer also had forms of it. The Atari 8-bit probably used it to best effect with its language learning series, with tons of voice synced to the onscreen "action".
As for an examination of all these console/computer hybrids, I'd love to at some point. I pretty much have them all from all territories prior to the PS1's Net Yaroze, save for the Mattel Keyboard Component (and at $4,000, I doubt I ever will).
[Matt Barton]Fascinating stuff! That old unit is truly eye-catching. The boxing game is hilarious! It's hard to believe that people paid top dollar for that kind of thing and thought it was realistic. Be nice to sneak in a clip of it somewhere in the movie. It's also interesting to think of the possibilities of the stereo tape with the separate audio and data channels. Seems like, though, this unit was just too eccentric. There's definitely an article or perhaps a video mini-series about these console/computer Frankensteins. :P[/Matt Barton]
Yeah, the boxing game is pretty hilarious. There's pretty much block, punch, and move left and right. The "art" makes the boxers look like they have pretzel limbs. I'll try to capture some stuff for the documentary, but the RF output is truly a mess, so even if it capture perfectly it will still look like ass. Like I say in the video, all of the APF games were pretty awful to mediocre. The highlight was "Space Destroyers", and even that's not that impressive all things considered:
The tape intro:
The game itself (tape and cartridge) [and you can see this person has trouble with the RF output too]:
I believe the thing has a microphone and you can record your own stuff onto tape when you save stuff, like an annotation of what's on there. I'll have to double-check to verify. Of course it wasn't the only system with this "multi-track" tape capability. Other systems like the Atari 8-bit and Exidy Sorcerer also had forms of it. The Atari 8-bit probably used it to best effect with its language learning series, with tons of voice synced to the onscreen "action".
As for an examination of all these console/computer hybrids, I'd love to at some point. I pretty much have them all from all territories prior to the PS1's Net Yaroze, save for the Mattel Keyboard Component (and at $4,000, I doubt I ever will).
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.