classic retrogaming history: Before Gauntlet, There Was...

[Darren Dirt]

..."Dandy Dungeon" aka "Dark Chambers"

http://www.dadgum.com/giantlist/older-news.html
"Jack Palevich, who wrote the Gauntlet-inspiring Dandy for the Atari 800 over twenty years ago..."

http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/50

http://www.atariprotos.com/7800/software/darkchambers/darkchambers.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_%28computer_game%29

http://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=detail&id=938



I am almost ashamed; I was/am a *huge* fan of the original arcade classic (and both of the arcade sequels, even though they were so difficult compared to #1 that you could no longer consistently play forever on one quarter ) and I had NO IDEA of its inspiration... Almost want to find Dark Chambers now (or even "Dandy") and give it a try




- - - - - - -

and btw, another interesting tidbit from this fantastic, and important* site: Gauntlet guy Ed Logg's excellent "Xybots" game was, indeed, a semi-sequel to Guantlet. And Wolfenstein!
http://www.dadgum.com/giantlist/index.html

Quote
December 15, 2004
While updating Ed Logg's entry, I came across an interesting quote from an interview with him in Game Design: Theory & Practice. The 1992 PC game Wolfenstein 3D was obviously inspired by Silas Warner's Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II. That's a given. Tracing backward from the 3D version, searching for games with similar technology, Logg's Xybots coin-op from five years earlier is often mentioned. Ed ties all this together nicely:

Xybots came from a challenge by Doug Snyder, a hardware engineer at Atari. We wanted to do a multi-player Castle Wolfenstein-like game that had no 'bit map' hardware. So I created an algorithm based on 8 by 8 stamps and he did the hardware.

and later:

I started the game as a two-player split-screen Gauntlet III. Partway through, marketing said they wanted something other than Gauntlet. So I changed the characters and enemies to be more like Major Havok. I still regret changing the theme and wish I kept my original concept.


No wonder I loved Xybots... I was a huge fan of Major Havok as well (had top 3 scores in the St. Albert Centre arcade for a long time )



*

What sets classic era games apart from later games is that they were most often created by individuals--or sometimes small teams. They have a strong "one person, one vision" flavor which makes them closer to other traditional forms of artistic expression. And that's the point of this site: to comprehensively chronicle the games of the classic era and peer into the minds of the people who created them.

To me, this information is just as important as preserving the games themselves. It bugs me that people spent years working on fantastic--or not so fantastic--games, only to have both their names and games largely forgotten in less than a decade.

Yup, that's why the late70s-mid80s is, and will always be, the "Golden Age" of video games. Sorry, PS3 developers... 

[Darren Dirt]

wow, check this out if you are a programmer...

"Dandy - A 2D game written in F# (by Jack Palevich)"
http://cs.hubfs.net/forums/thread/269.aspx
http://cs.hubfs.net/files/27/codedrops/entry270.aspx

For fun I have recently implemented Dandy in several different computer languages. You might think it?s a little bit obsessive-compulsive to keep writing the same game over again. But I found it helpful for understanding the differences in performance and development time...

Since at the time Palevich was working with the Microsoft XBox team, it's not surprising he offered the above written in "F#". Best, funnest way to learn a language, though: reading through the source of a simple, but working, game. And then changing a few things and seeing what happens.

[Darren Dirt]

"What Happens when a loser, who needs to win,
faces a winner... who refuses to lose?"

A Fistful of Quarters
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/


trailer:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_of_kong/trailers_player.php?IGNMediaID=2024858&playerType=playlist
^ also ^ watch "Meet The Gamers" (aka "Egos On Parade" )