![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bandsiusetalike.com\/biul\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/barnstorming1.jpg\")
<\/a>Signed by programmer Steve Cartwright!<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Activision was a\u00a0major player<\/em> in the early Cartridge Wars. Look at the box above; every one was a different color, with an illustration that aggrandized the boring game graphics with rainbows and clean lines. With the rounded-corner frame, it looks like a futurist reinterpretation of Art Nouveau. I’m being completely serious; Atari 2600 cartridges were, in general, things of beauty in their packaging. Both Atari and Activision utilized rainbow motifs, as did Imagic, with their gorgeous chrome boxes. Shoplifting wasn’t an issue yet, so the boxes were small and easy to open.<\/p>\n Another, more well-known beaut from Activision, still in the shrink wrap:<\/p>\n If you expected visuals like that from the game, you wouldn’t be disappointed. This was a very canny design decision by Activision, which at the time, was extremely people-oriented; programmers were rewarded with a credit on the packaging. That’s how we knew at nine years old that\u00a0River Raid,\u00a0<\/em>one the best and most brutal games for the 2600, was created by a woman.\u00a0A woman!!\u00a0<\/em>Them feminists don’t tell you about\u00a0that<\/em>, do they? That’s because\u00a0feminists hate video games by nature!!!<\/em><\/p>\n “Conceived and designed by Carol Shaw”. Right there on the cartridge.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n There were Activision games I was a wizard at, and there were games that pushed me into a joystick-smashing tantrum. It wasn’t autism. I’m not autistic, as far as I know. No medical professional has ever mentioned it. I probably have a summer home somewhere on that particular spectrum, however.<\/p>\n As kids, we all loved\u00a0Frogger,\u00a0<\/em>placing it alongside\u00a0Pac-Man\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Donkey Kong<\/em> as a sort of early holy trinity. Many fledging game companies (including Parker Brothers) raced to port versions of\u00a0Frogger\u00a0<\/em>for the various home game systems, which had come to include ColecoVision by this point. Before that, we had\u00a0Freeway<\/em>, a\u00a0Frogger<\/em> clone with a chicken instead of a frog. I mean, that makes more sense, right? A chicken crossing a road?<\/p>\n The rounded corners evoke the corners of the average person’s TV set. Right-angle corners are a 21st-century deal.<\/p><\/div>\n However,\u00a0Freeway<\/em> had a crippling handicap; the chicken could only move up and down. Not sideways. This was okay… once you got used to it. If you went from\u00a0Frogger\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0Freeway<\/em>, you might think your joystick was busted. You might whip the family into confusion and hooting apoplexy. There might be red-faced drives through the sleet to Crazy Eddie, a hasty purchase of a replacement controller that isn’t quite the same, and then more<\/em> hooting confusion when the goddamn chicken still only goes up and down.\u00a0That’s enough! We’re not going out again tonight! Off to bed with you!!!<\/em><\/p>\n Atari 2600 paddle controllers were notoriously fragile, so of course I broke more than one. Eventually my dad worked out how to fix them, like you would a guitar pedal. Same thing, different package. But two games spelled doom for many a paddle (and they only came in pairs, and you needed them to play\u00a0PONG<\/em>, for god’s sake); Atari’s\u00a0Super Breakout,\u00a0<\/em>and Activision’s\u00a0Kaboom.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I killed at\u00a0Kaboom.\u00a0<\/em>A game where you foil a masked madman who drops bombs off a building.<\/p>\n Is this not aesthetically pleasing and beautiful? Are these covers not art?<\/p><\/div>\n You moved the paddle to control a stack of buckets and douse the falling bombs. The iconography is clean and looked terrific on any TV. Eventually the bombs fall so fast they’re impossible to catch, and you lose a bucket for every miss. Miss three bombs, and KABOOM!<\/p>\n That’s how “MAD” this Bomber is. He’s on the roof of the building, bombing the street below with increasing saturation, thwarting the efforts of those trying to rescue him. Either his explosives are too weak to damage the building, or he just doesn’t give a fuck. As a child, I hated him with such intensity that my face turned the color of his game box, and I saw silvery curlicues when I closed my eyes. This was around 1981- no one understood the possibility of\u00a0unwinnable<\/em> yet. Conceivably,\u00a0someone\u00a0<\/em>could beat the game; there were\u00a0patches\u00a0<\/em>rewarding it.<\/p>\n These aren’t mine. I lost mine long ago. I try not to think about it.<\/p><\/div>\n Again-\u00a0how cool are those patches?\u00a0<\/em>To get one, you had to photograph your TV screen with your high score displayed. Your best bet was to use a Polaroid, if you had one, and you had to fiddle with the curtains and lights until nothing reflected on the screen, and take your best shot. If you managed to capture the score, you sent it off to Activision headquarters, and some months later you got a patch, right around the time you’re too chicken to iron it onto your school clothes.<\/p>\n I got one for\u00a0Frostbite,\u00a0<\/em>which was a personal favorite of mine for years. It was kind of like\u00a0Q*Bert,\u00a0<\/em>but with an arctic motif, where you hopped on moving ice floes. It was soothing in a way that other games weren’t, and you could “English” Frostbite Bailey’s movement in a way that was new for the time. You could “bend” his jumps from place to place with the joystick, while he hung in the air. It was\u00a0amazing<\/em> to experience firsthand. If you remember the literal leap in technology that Luigi innovated in\u00a0Super Mario Bros. 2,\u00a0<\/em>you know what I mean. And look at this box!<\/p>\n “When I bite into a York Peppermint Patty, I…”<\/p><\/div>\n I got the patch for\u00a0Laser Blast<\/em>, a monotonous saucer-to-tank shooter that everyone but me hated, and a friend got the one for\u00a0Chopper Command<\/em>, a decent and tough-as-nuts\u00a0Defender\u00a0<\/em>reskin. I think I got the patch for\u00a0Keystone Kapers,\u00a0<\/em>which was a fun cops-and-robbers game set in an old, multi-level department store. The graphics were a step up from Activision’s typical excellence; really pretty. (Of course, my favorite racing game was Activision’s\u00a0Enduro<\/em>, where you drive for so long the weather changes in the background. They knew how to decorate a cake back then.)<\/p>\n You know what? That is<\/i> Art Nouveau.<\/p><\/div>\n Here’s the game itself, showing Kop, robber, shopping carts, store merchandise like “cathedral radios” and toy planes, and a lovely sunset, indicating that the store is closed. At bottom is the “mallmanac”; a map displaying the locations of the player and opponent. It seriously reminds me of Chris Ware’s\u00a0Jimmy Corrigan\u00a0<\/em>art.<\/p>\n Am I wrong?<\/p><\/div>\n Anyway…\u00a0Barnstorming.\u00a0<\/em>It was hard to get, because it was early, like\u00a0Freeway.\u00a0<\/em>As I later found out, it was kind of dull as a game. But something about it was intriguing. Maybe it was the terrific title. Maybe because it was a digital version of an actual pastime<\/a>, from a century ago. A black lady did it and everything.<\/p>\n You can kind of do it in\u00a0GTAV<\/em>‘s flight school, but you only\u00a0land\u00a0<\/em>planes in barns, and never actually\u00a0storm\u00a0<\/em>them. Activision was there to cover all our flying-planes-through-buildings needs, back in 1982.<\/p>\n 1. Take off. 2. Avoid birds. 3. Dive through barn. 4. Go to 2.<\/p><\/div>\n The sunrise in the distance made it feel like you were doing something dangerous early in the morning, and getting away with it. The windmills, birds and “spinning” propeller enhanced the sensation of flight and movement; the pilot’s scarf, a mere three pixels, flapped in the cold air current. Look how the barn’s roof and the fence are simply designed, but still convey basic depth. This was Steve Cartwright’s first game. He went on to program\u00a0Frostbite<\/em>, and my favorite shooter other than\u00a0Galaga ’88; Megamania.\u00a0<\/em>That was the one where the star pilot ate too much ice cream and had a nightmare where he was attacked by tires, giant dice and cheeseburgers. Meaning, you fired upward at descending teams of enemies. Still, an extremely fun game.<\/p>\n I had too many games like this. I had Worm War I<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n I left out\u00a0Stampede.\u00a0<\/em>I have no idea what my point was in this article, other than retro nostalgia. I mourn the loss of aesthetic cohesion in consumer culture. Everything successful in the early 1980s had this outsize sense of color to it; a sort of joy in the presentation of a product. You could recognize an Activision game at a distance, and get excited about what it might be. Look- a brown one on the shelf at Two Guys! Brown means cowboys!<\/p>\n Towards 1985, Activision capitulated to standard video game box art, with lush paintings and non-uniform type. Their original catalog became associated by proxy with the Great Videogame Crash of 1983, and they changed their aesthetics to compete with more companies on the shelves. Eventually home video games became realistic enough to make art like I’ve shown you look reductive as a representation. Remember how the\u00a0Orange Box\u00a0<\/em>was received? That’s the closest you’ll get, and that was a long time ago, in technology years.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the early 1980s, video games were simple in concept, much like the “game apps” on phones nowadays. At heart, they were demonstrations of your skills with a joystick, paddle, or “track-ball” controller, performing one or more challenges. Eating all … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n