General gaming

General gaming

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 11:04 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 24 | 35 YEARS OF ATARI 2600

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Cover Story: How a secret message in an Atari game unlocked a world of discovery.

I

n the summer of '82, my family took a trip from our home in Iowa to central Arizona for a visit with our extended family. My dad was going to drive our AMC Hornet the whole way, with planned stops at the Petrified Forest, Mesa Verde National Monument, and The Grand Canyon. He draped maps marked with red pen over the dining room table and showed my sister, mother and I the different routes we would take. Touching the map, we followed his finger as it twisted over the flatlands of Kansas, climbed up and over the Rockies and then meandered through miles of cactus-strewn Arizona desert. My dad was overjoyed. My mother was excited. My sister was enthralled.

And me? I was sad.

The Console That Wouldn't Die

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 07:23 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 24 | 35 YEARS OF ATARI 2600

The Console That Wouldn't Die

Cover Story: Fans and enthusiasts have added decades to the Atari 2600's 15-year lifespan.

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ake a look at that game console perched under your television set, and consider its future. It may have been state-of-the-art when you first purchased it five years ago, but will it still be there five years from now? How about in the near future, after the next generation of consoles has launched? If you're like many gamers, you may have already retired your Nintendo Wii to the closet, where it will spend the rest of its life buried under last year's fashions.

Here one day and gone the next: That's the fate of modern game consoles in this age of rapidly evolving technology and planned obsolescence. However, one system has managed to buck that trend, bearing fruit for more than three decades. The Atari 2600 was the uncontested leader of the video game industry throughout the late '70s and early '80s, but when Atari planned to phase out the aging machine in 1982, a funny thing happened. Its successor, the questionably designed Atari 5200, floundered next to its rival, the ColecoVision. One year later, the entire video game industry was snuffed out, the victim of Atari's hubris and an overcrowded market.

Cover Story: A Stella Anniversary: 35 Years of Atari 2600

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 01:25 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 24 | 35 YEARS OF ATARI 2600

A Stella Anniversary: 35 Years of Atari 2600

This week, 1UP commemorates the console that took video games into prime time.

Not long ago, I put out a call for feedback from 1UP readers: What memories do you have of the Atari 2600? As you've seen from our recent "oral history" features, when we ask the 1UP community for feedback, we get it in abundance. Except... that wasn't the case with the Atari 2600. On the contrary, your responses were few and far between; we saw more apologies than reminiscences.

And then it struck me: We're celebrating the 35th anniversary of the 2600 -- it launched in the U.S. in October 1977 -- and 35 years is a long, long time. Longer than most of our readers have been alive. And while Atari supported the 2600 into the '90s, if you can believe that, for most consumers the system's life effectively crashed to an anticlimactic end in 1983 when Warner (who owned Atari at the time) reported that its games division had overextended itself and lost billions of dollars. The U.S. video game industry reeled from those losses and didn't recover until Nintendo performed triage a few years later with the NES -- the system that a large percentage of 1UP readers regard as their entry into the medium.

Atari's Immortal Legacy

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 01:07 PM PDT

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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 24 | 35 YEARS OF ATARI 2600

Atari's Immortal Legacy

Cover Story: Though its time in the limelight is long over, the 2600 left an indelible mark on the game industry and gaming culture.

H

indsight has a way of making landmark designs seem inevitable. We look at the Atari 2600, and it seems to tick all of the "console" checkmarks like interchangeable cartridges, replaceable controllers, and a slick appearance. Yet it's easy to lose sight of the fact that no system had ever done all these things at once before. The minds behind the 2600 didn't know what they were doing would define a multi-billion-dollar industry for decades to come. They didn't even know if it would survive on store shelves past its first Christmas.

It wasn't even called the 2600, originally. Its initial christening was as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), a Trojan Horse of a name designed to make parents think it might be good for more than playing games (and to steal attention from the recent release of the VCR). The system's aesthetics followed suit: Black with metal switches, radiator-like fins, and a wood veneer that made it seem more like a piece of high-end electronics than previous, more toy-like home game systems. A later revision of the system would abandon the wood veneer for solid matte black throughout, and a third revision (the 2600 Jr) reduced its size, traded the matte finish for a glossy one, and added chrome accents and aggressive angles.

A Revolutionary Walkabout in Assassin's Creed III's Impressive World

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 09:00 AM PDT

ACIII

There was something initially unnerving about being given permission to roam around the world of Assassin's Creed III at my leisure. No one from Ubisoft was looking over my shoulder, ushering me on to the next objective. There was no timer hanging in the air to warn me of when my play session was coming to an end. In an era rife with handholding and tutorials, I was free to pick up one of 2012's most anticipated titles and simply indulge in the act of playing. Ubisoft awarded me with a wealth of freedom, leaving me to explore the world of colonial New England on my own accord. After a few hours, I realized that this freedom to take on the world as you see fit is exactly what ACIII is all about.

For the past few months, it's been common knowledge that the historical franchise has now moved forward in time to the American Revolution. Our demo began just past the halfway point in the game at the Homestead of Connor, ACIII's new protagonist. The Homestead acts as an analogue to Assassin's Creed II's Villa system, in that the player's actions can help forge and ultimately grow a sort of home base for your hero. From here, we were given the freedom to venture forth into the world and do whatever we desired. As I ran forward into the lush greenery of the frontier, an absolute truth dawned on me -- ACIII once again reaffirms the series status as the king of video game movement.

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation's Reach Might Exceed Its Grasp

Posted: 24 Sep 2012 08:58 AM PDT

ACL

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation is a wildly impressive feat; there's honestly no other way I could possibly begin this preview. The Vita title, launching on October 30 alongside Assassin's Creed III, isn't some shoddy port or strange offshoot -- it's an original title featuring a new story, protagonist, and location. You simply have to be impressed by Ubisoft Sofia's ability to cram true Assassin's Creed game onto the portable platform. But with that being said, I can't help but feel like the Vita and 3DS excel when developers create with mobility in mind, and not try to emulate experiences that you can have in front of your television.

Set during the French and Indian War, Liberation places you in the role of Aveline, a former slave in New Orleans who finds herself in the middle of a simmering revolution. Desmond isn't featured in the game, the developers were coy in mentioning how Liberation fits in with the rest of the series. Regardless, New Orleans is vast, the mechanics and systems all work as they do on console, and Aveline's athletic prowess matches any of her previous assassin brethren.

Posted by Shri Krishna

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