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MiniFoo
Dec 25, 2006

METHAMPHETAMINE

Alright, so I'm not going crazy.

As soon as I clicked the video in your first update, and saw the graphics and heard the sound effects, I had a ridiculously quick onset of nostalgia harkening back to when I played our 2600 as a kid (before we inherited our uncle's NES... towards the end of the 16-bit era... we were somewhat poor). Here's the thing, though: I've never played Solaris. What I did play, and actually still have the cartridge of, is Radar Lock.



I had a difficult time even remembering the name because I couldn't find it on Wikipedia and instead had to scour archive.org's Atari 2600 page until I saw a screenshot. Here's the Giant Bomb page listing for Radar Lock, though, which gives a pretty good synopsis: it came out three years after Solaris in 1989, and Doug Neubauer used the same engine with some tweaks (hence why I got a huge dose of deja vu after hearing the "blast off" sound effect in the video). The game is less graphically "complicated" (har har) than Solaris, as it doesn't have any fancy warp maps or planets to crash into, but it's technically ambitious in other ways, such as requiring the use of two joysticks in order to fully utilize the control scheme. (The "two player" mode is even analogous to an F-14 pilot/copilot setup!)

There seems to be literally only one video on YouTube showing this game, which is kinda funny, but the player doesn't show off any of the missiles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RguF-vcg4

Anyway, didn't mean to hijack the thread, but I figure it's pretty relevant and thought I should share in case you haven't heard of it.

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MiniFoo
Dec 25, 2006

METHAMPHETAMINE

The last three posts have been phenomenal, and I can't wait to read more.

MiniFoo
Dec 25, 2006

METHAMPHETAMINE

I'm merely echoing what others have said, but I'll say it anyway: this has been an absolutely fascinating LP, and thank you for making it.

By the way, that last post reminded me to recommend Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software to anybody in the thread who wants to learn more about the beginnings and inner workings of computer hardware and how machine code interacts with it. I'm not a programmer by any means (I can look at C# source and kinda get what's happening before my brain starts to hurt), but that's exactly who the book is written for.

Code starts with the very basics of what, well, "code" actually is and accomplishes (using examples like Morse and Braille), segues into cleverly teaching the most common counting systems in order (binary, octal, decimal, hex), then takes a detour to explain how telegrams and the first cross-continental phone systems worked using electrical/mechanical switches and repeaters. It's only until halfway through the book that the author feels the audience is ready to cover transistors/memory/ICs using plenty of color schematics, and at least 2/3 of the way through before the topic of assembly is even brought up! It's extremely well-paced and designed, and written in a way that never left me bored. Check it out if you get a chance.

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