The M-Files Issue 3: NHL 95, Atari Pac-Man, 12-12-12

The M-Files is a weekly divergence from talking about the Mets.  Even The Mets Police have a life outside of The Mets.  These are the sort of things we talk about.

I thought I’d ease you into the M-Files this week with some baseball.  Jason Fry tweeted this awesome site that has baseball-card Star Wars mash-ups.  Absolutely worth a click.  Verrrrry cool.

 

Back when we were young I would call @mediagoon randomly and challenge him to “One Game, One Game Only.” I’d head on over to his house and we would play one game (one game only) of NHL ’95.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qP-sn8Fkls]

Man that game was awesome. It was still the days of move/pass/shoot/one-timers before EA lost their minds and overthought the physics. Create player, trades, roster moves…I even finished two seasons!

Anyway I’d call Goon..and sometimes show up in half-ass character as The Terminator with some lame glasses. We’d play one game, one game only, then leave. We’ve tried it online but it isn’t the same as showing up at someone’s house.

I kinda dig NHL 13 for the PS3 but haven’t had enough time to really play it.

My all-time fave still has to be Atari Space Invaders. No, no the arcade version..the Atari version.

You kids and your internet you have no idea how awesome Atari was. You could play arcade games AT HOME! You guys don’t remember the days of heading to the pizzeria/candy store/shady bodega to play video games. And you’d have to wait for a machine to free up. You would signal “next” by putting a quarter up on the glass. Just reach in front of the guy playing and stick a quarter o the machine. Weird.

But the Atari..whoooo. At first it was cool enough to play Pong or Combat or Air Sea Battle at home…but Space Invaders??? That was a new level. Then we got Missle Command (one of the best ports ever), a servicable Asteroids…and then this happened. This is the Black Uniforms Of Atari.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2p2ANFlQ4]

Pac-Man was THE GREATEST THING EVER in the arcades. You would wait half an hour for a machine to free up. Then they announced the home version. Oh man the anticipation….

The game was hard to find. We got word that Toy City had some so we rushed to go grab a copy. The game was $50, which would be like a video game costing, I dunno, $109 today. (A typical Atari cart was $30 in 1980’s money).

Rushed home…bought it….and during the first game I knew it sucked beyond belief. Does anything in that video resemble Pac-Man?

What’s even more annoying is that the Atari 2600 was capable of running a proper Pac-Man game. A few years later they’d make a great version of Ms. Pac-Man…and here’s a homebrew hack of a proper Pac-Man

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI49DuOFr-U]

Sigh.

By the way if you are now jazzed for Atari and someone gives you an Amazon Gift Card..consider this.  (Or if you need a present for your 40-soemthing year old dad/uncle/Cousin Shannon)

I wrote the bulk of this post on Thursday, and the Atari section made me dust off my Atari Flashback 2 (sadly no Space Invaders).  Junior was looking to play video games, so I made him play Atari.  I handed him the controller, explained NOTHING, and fired up Combat.  He couldn’t figure out how to move so I won 6-0.  Man did I giggle.  Then more Combat tanks, then the planes (I did the old hide-at-the-top=of-the-screen trick).  Then some Pong.  Space War.

Then he cleaned my clock 17-0 at Madden ’11 (PS3)

…

I got the 12-12-12 album mainly because I wanted the great Rogers Waters set. I’m no Floyd-head but I thought he was really good.

I am a huge Springsteen fan but I thought he looked like David Cone in his final year…getting by on memories. Sorry Bruce but Land of Hopes and Dreams in the song during which we used to leave the concert to catch a bus.

One thing caught my ear – on Wrecking Ball he did the “hear your voices call” move. If you have the concert on your DVR go back and listen to the non-Bruce crowd not react. Seems to me someone added in some cheering on the album version.

To my ears the CD has plenty of added in crowd. It just doesn’t sound like a real crowd…it has that “live album crowd” sound where the crowd is really super loud and then all gets quiet at once.

I’m going to have to make a playlist to eliminate the mood-killing Adam Sandler song…and I find it interesting they left Kanye West off the album entirely.