Pilgramage to Videotopia - April 11, 1998, Washington D.C. ---------------------------------------------------------- This Saturday Alan Hoyle (my old roomate), James Ervin (friend of Alan's and an old TA of mine), and myself made the road trip up to Videotopia, a travelling exhibition about the history of videogames. We left Chapel Hill at about 7 a.m. that morning, armed with breakfast from Bojangles and several books about classic gaming, which provided entertainment on the way up. Five hours later we arrived in D.C. About an hour later, we had managed to find parking. After eating bad, overpriced fast-food at an evil food court/tourist trap called The Pavillion, we managed to find where Videotopia was currently set up, inside of the National Press Building, where there was also a mall and a children's museum inside the mall. So, we went in and paid our $3 to get in, which also provided 4 tokens, with additional tokens available 4 for a dollar. Several seconds after getting his tokens, Alan had already started playing Gauntlet, which was right next to the check in area, along with various other machines such as Berzerk, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong, and more. There was also a cocktail Gyruss machine that I was compelled to put the high score on. From there we went into the heart of the exhibition. Right up front, there were the first two arcade games ever: Computer Space and Pong. Computer Space has the distinction of a) being the first coin-op game ever made and b) sucking uncontrollably. It's basically a really horrific version of Spacewar, with hideous control and painful graphics. You piloted a small array of dots in the shape of a rocket while other dots shaped like flying saucers attacked you. There were a ton of stars in the background, which were exactly the same size as the dots that made up the ships, which was confusing. The bullets you shot were also the same as everything else on the screen, which was even more confusing. Lame, lame, lame. The only good thing about Computer Space is the way it looks: It's this massive fiberglass cabinet, with a big, bulbous shape around the monitor, which is attached off-center to the base of the machine via a smaller "neck". It's also a bright, sparkly red color. Oh well, at least it had some redeeming features. The Pong machine next to it demonstrated why it was the first _successful_ coin-op video game in existence. Pong is in a bright yellow cabinet, with "PONG" in huge letters at the top. The controls of the game are basically stereo knobs stuck in the front of the machine. One quarter let both players play the game up to 15 points. We held the World Pong Championships, where I hammered both James and Alan without much difficulty. James and Allen then played each other, resulting in a game where Alan briefly held a 14-8 lead before choking horribly allowing James to win. We have photographic evidence of his shame; I'll try to get the pics we took scanned in and put on my web page soon. From there, we got to just wander around and geek out. There were roughly 70 games at the exhibition, representing an excellent cross-section of the history of arcade games, with most of the machines being pre-Crash. There were, however, a few of the newer games to provide contrast, including a 4 player Daytona USA set up and an Alpine Racer. One particuarly amusing juxtaposition involved placing Atari's Tank (a black and white arcade game that the first half of Combat for the 2600 was based on) right next to Namco's Tokyo Wars (a massive, two-player tank sim) and explaining that these were basically the same game. There was also a noticible lack of any fighting games whatsoever, including classics like Double Dragon and Karate Champ. I don't know if this was due to the host of the exhibition not wanting the games there, the space being too small, the games nto being in their collection, or what. Ah well...no great loss. There were a variety of exhibits explaining things like how joysticks worked, how games were made, etc., including a Pole Position with clear panels so you could see the inside of the machine. Neat stuff, and fairly informative. They also had every major home machine under glass, ranging from the original Magnavox Oddessy to the N64. Unfortunatly, these weren't available to play (with the exception of a 2600 playing Freeway set up in one corner), so we had to be content with staring and drooling at the Vectrex that was on display. Also, many of the machines had notes about the history of the game, its significance, and whatnot. Most of the classic arcade games were on exhibit, such as Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Centipede, Q-bert (both stand up and cocktail), Joust, etc. We couldn't think of many games that we were particularly fond of that didn't make it into the exhibit; Spy Hunter came to mind, and that was about it. A lot of the old black and white "bronze age" games that were there were interesting. This included Gunfighter (which Alan whupped my ass at), cockpit Night Driver (the first 1st-person racing game), Breakout (written by Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple), Sprint, and more. Some of the most interesting games included: - A 4-player cocktail Warlords machine which was a lot of fun, even while kneeling on the floor. - The original Space Invaders, which I was compelled to play. - Fire Truck, a bizzare cockpit driving game where one player sat down and drove, and a second player could stand behind the machine and manuver the back of the truck. Not especially fun; just bizzare. - Football, a very popular Atari cocktail sports game. It was the first game to feature a scrolling screen. The odd thing about this game is that to make the players run, you had to spin the trackball controller as fast as you could, which required quite a bit of effort. Think of a cross between Track and Field and the over-sized trackball in Missle Command. Two guys in their early-30s spent quite a bit of time playing the hell out of that machine. A slew of laserdisc games were there as well, including Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Super Don Quiote (a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair, and an inferior one at that), Firefox, M.A.C.H. III (a god awful game I played because I vaguely remembered; if only I had remembered how much it sucked I would have saved my token), Star Rider (a laserdisc motorcycle space racing game, with impressive graphics), and even a Time Traveller. Even with Time Traveller priced at one token, I couldn't bring myself to play it. Of all the "golden age" classics that were there, higlights included: - Joust 2, which is a horrible sequel but was redeemed by the person who put in their high score name as "I Don't Like Joust 2". - Cockpit Missle Command, which was simply awesome. The sound of bombs going off constantly was loud as hell, and even though the game is dated it's still very creepy to see 'THE END' in huge red letters at the end of the game. We loved it. - Cockpit Sinistar. Not as cool as the MC, but it was still great to hear "BEWARE! I LIVE!" comming at you from all directions. - Crystal Castles - 'Nuff said. - An Environmental Discs of Tron machine, which we duly worshiped. Gotta love the guy who decided to make a stand-up cockpit machine. I would have loved to have had the time to play the game enough to get good at it. It's great standing in a small enclosed space, bathed in red and blue neon lights, and hearing Sark laugh at you when you fuck up and die. One of the highlights of the exhbiition. - And plenty more. One of the rarest games in the exhibition was I, Robot, which was the first polygon game ever made. 1,000 units were made, 500 of which went to Japan. The game itself was kinda strange and difficult to get into, but still rather fun. Since polygons were so new, the game also featured a "non-game" that was essentially a drawing program using polygon graphics. The most impressive display at the exhibition, however was the row of Atari vector graphics games. With the exception of Lunar Lander and Major Havoc, all of Atari's vector games, which were made between 1979 and 1985, were on display. They were placed in the back where things were fairly dark, which really showed off the stark beauty of the graphics. Also, all of these machines were in exceptionally attractive cabinets; the marquee art for these games, which often featured intricate detail and vivid colors, was simply gorgeous. And the games themselves were all great in and of themselves. Here's the list: - Asteroids - The original classic. 70,000 of these machines were made. - Asteroids Deluxe - An update that prevented people from playing Asteroids into infinity. - Battlezone - The classic tank game. The U.S. military contracted Atari to make a deluxe update of this machine to be used in army training; Videotopia now has one in their collection and will soon have it on display. - Red Baron - Flying Battlezone. Quite a good game, actually. - Tempest - The first color vector game. Since this used to be at the Starcade in Raleigh, and there are a million variations on home consoles, I didn't bother playing it. - Space Duel - A color update of Asteroids, which allowed two-player simultaenous play and some weird options. This was one of the most colorful games on display; simply beautiful. - Gravitar - A bent variation of Lunar Lander. Hard as hell, with way too many buttons, but it certianly had potential to be fun. - Black Widow - A variation of Robotron, this game turned out to be James' calling. Alan and I each scored less than 50,000 on average. On his first game, James scored 170,000; he's now trying to find one. Great game. - Star Wars - An upright version of everybody's favorite game. Two of the vector games proved to be the highlight of the exhibit, and were worth the trip to Washington alone: - Empire Strikes Back - This was a conversion kit for Star Wars that was released in 1985, and was the last mass-produced vector graphics game ever made. Their incarnation of the game was a drop-dead gorgeous cockpit game, which I played the hell out of. I personally liked the gameplay better than Star Wars: There was a probe droid stage, which is mostly target practice, a Hoth battle stage, where you got to take out AT-ATs and chicken walkers with either lasers or a limited number of tow cables, a stage where the Falcon gets to blast away at TIE fighters before going into the asteroid field, and the asteriod stage itself. The asteroid filed stage is hard as hell to play, and is the only draw back of the game; otherwise, I worshiped it. Owning this game is now my goal. - Quantum - An incredible, and rare, vector game loosely based on quantum physics. You control a spark with a trackball, which leaves a trailing line behind it. On the screen are various particles, which you must encircle completely to make them vanish and score points. Later, enemies are added, which can also be encircled and can get in the way. Great looking game, fantastic game play, and rare as hell. This is probably the most sought after game by collectors. Quantum was undoubtably the best game at the exhibit, and all three of us who went now desperatly want one for ourselves. It's a dperessing thought that we may never have an opportunity to play it again. The only way we were able to survive the trip with our wallets intact was the Magical Money Machine. There were information plaques all over the place, that either told you about a type of game, or sometimes gave info on a specific game, that were rather informative and the basis of a triva machine. You went up to this machine and were asked a series of questions, all from the exhibits. If you got all 7 questions right, you got 3 tokens; if you got 6 and missed 1, 2 tokens; 5 and missed 2, 1 token; and otherwise zilch. The database of questions was fairly small, the questions weren't overly difficult, and there weren't too many people there. As a result, we just stood there and stocked up on tokens every few minutes. "Let's see, it says let the next person in line play. Okay, that would be you James! I'll just get in line behind you." Without this wonderous device, I would be dead broke by now. After playing games for six hours, we staggered off to retrieve our car at around 7. The most exciting thing that happened to us on the trip back ws paying 79 cents a gallon for gas somewhere in Virginia. That night, I'm sure I dreamed about some of the vector games. Videotopia will be at it's current location until April 30th, which leaves two weekends for all of you that couldn't go to make it up there. It will be in Tampa later this summer, and in Maryland in 1999. Also, at their web page you can lobby for a particular choice of locations they are considering travelling to next, or learn how to get information about Videotopia to a local museum. All in all, it was a damn near religious experience, and quite appropriate for Easter weekend. We're already discussing making the pilgramage to Maryland next year.