It’s amazing how videogames these days can cost tens of millions of dollars, require large teams of artists and programmers and take years to develop, yet a game like Atari’s Combat, with its simple gameplay and graphics, can be just as fun and competitive when played with a friend, even after all these years.
And just like my alter-ego mentioned in the previous strip, I’m more of an Intellivision guy myself, as that’s the console my parents bought me when I was a kid. But my next door neighbor had an Atari 2600, and I cannot tell you how many hours she and I spent playing Combat, Night Driver, Pitfall!, Superman, River Raid, and yes, even the infamous E.T., among others. I still have all those sounds catalogued in my head, and either hearing those bleeps and bloops or seeing those visuals takes me back to that time instantaneously.
^_^
i think this might be your fastest Firsting yet, AdM! you got this one under a minute, for sure. wow. here are your well-deserved Shades of Firsting: 😎
Boys and their toys ^_^
It’s nice to see a rivalry settled in a nice civilised way.
This is how wars should be fought.
Either that or by building a large wooden rabbit, leaving it at the enemy’s gates as a present so they bring it inside, waiting until nightfall, then Sonitan, ESQ, Pixie & I leap out of the rabbit, taking them completely by surprise; not only by surprise but totally unarmed… I clearly need to watch less Monty Python. -_-
ni Ni NI! I’m practicing!
But if we are talking about nerd boys…It need to be a large wooden console or a set of large wooden boobs. It can’t be both because they would be at odds which on to bring in.
If it’s a giant wooden set of boobs, I want to jump out too! Then my life could be complete and I could die a happy woman.
(What? Doesn’t everyone want to be snuck into a foreign country inside a giant boob, only to jump out and surprise the crap out of a bunch of guys?)
Yay! We can get the whole Harem involved! ^_^
You girls will change your mind when you encounter a killer rabbit or something in there.
We’ll just use the Holy Hand Grenade! ^_^
it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it?
Looks like the boobs get the vote, Pixie – great idea! ^_^ They’ll never stand a chance against the whole Harem hidden inside a huge pair of breasticles!
Construction begins ASAP. Good luck ladies!
yes, if every conflict could be decided via a game of Combat, the world would definitely be a better place, AdM. well, at least there’d be a lot less bloodshed, and the gamer geeks would rule!
and yay for Python! i totally give the thumbs up to your idea for the trojan present and Pixie’s idea for that present to be wooden boobs. boobs just make the world a better place, so even if the plan didn’t work, we’d still have a big, boob, structure to look at. 🙂
Second? I’ve . . .I’ve never been this high up in the comments before!
Nosebleed!
This seems like a lovely bonding moment over common ground . . .
But something tells me that it would be best if jefbot didn’t lose.
I can’t see Wil taking a lose well either though. I wonder which would be worse.
congrats on seconding, Sarah W! you get the InvisoGlasses:
hmMm… and you and shanna raise a good question: does Wil’s geek rage meet or exceed jefbot’s? maybe someday we’ll find out. 😀
it’s all about the simplicity..the game and the strip!
Are you calling Jeff simple? :p
i’m hoping t_d means “simplicity” in a good way, AdM! or maybe my assuming that is evidence of being simple. 😉
after the dialogue-heavy past few strips, i thought it was a great time for a simpler strip that relied more on the visuals, t_d. and yep, just like the simple nature of those old Atari games, it seems to have worked! 😀
nice taste in games 🙂
thanks, Z! i take it you have an appreciation for those classic games, too?
I may have came into gaming a little late (first system was a Dreamcast, I was so sure that was going to beat the playstation 1) but always time to look into the past, classics seem to give that addicting playability that newer games seem to be missing out on.
Aw, how cute! Though a part of me wonders if Bot is just trying to ignore who he’s playing with, and just enjoying the game…hmmm. How’d filming go?
could be, Tiana! bot might just be using the game to distract his Rage. we’ll find out whether or not that’s true as the storyline continues.
filming went great! good times, all around. will be posting about it soon.
I may only be 19 myself, but my brother was adament that I played any classic games he had in his possession, combat being one of them 😀 I remember the first time I beat him too 😛
Keep up the good work 😀
your brother was a wise dude, Stephen K, and the education he provided to you is priceless. also priceless is the fact that you beat him at Combat. awesome. 🙂
I have a sense of foreboding in the back of my lil Pixie Brain. Something big is gonna happen. Smackdown senses are tingling! Or maybe that’s just my Puerto Rican Jungle Goddess screaming for sacrifice…oh look a tangent!
The drawing of Combat is just amazing. If I didn’t know better I’d SWEAR you just copy and pasted that there.
I was ALL about the intellivision. I kicked butt on Burger Time and the ER surgery one. That one was actually pretty hard. Stoopid white blood cells attacking you if you drifted out of the surgical area! While my cousins had Atari, they’d come over and I’d wipe the floor with them cause they had no idea how to use the disk controller. Ahhh early Gamer girl memories!
Jeff dahhhling I do believe the ladies of the Harem think you need a good rest this weekend! Get some sleep! *tucks you in with hot cocoa, comics and video games.* good night!
Hey Pixie, where’d your Pixie pic go?
HEY Where did my pic go?! I might CRY!
Ok Apparently I had a case of “I’m Pretty!” this morning and it over took the brains. I was thinking with the boobies again and was totally thinking about shoes!
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. I’m driving the wooden Boobs. Thank BADNESS for the GPS!
Can I be the Navagatrix? I had that job while we traveled around England, and I only got us lost *mumble mumble* times! No, actually, I’m a great Navagatrix, especially if we have maps!
You are The Navigator!
^_^
…Damn, I want to watch that now.
i’m not gonna say whether or not there will be a smackdown in the future, but i’m glad your Puerto Rican Jungle Goddess senses are tingling since there’s no way to know if bot is being genuine or not at this point.
ha! yes, the Combat screen was just a tad easier to draw than the Modern Warfare 2 and COD: Black Ops boxes.
i loved me some BurgerTime and Microsurgeon! great games. i might hafta hook up my Intellivision just to play a little. yeah, my joystick-wielding Atari neighbor didn’t like those control disks, either. and she was totally confused by the keypad, too. i remember she was like, “Which one’s the fire button?” heheh. good times.
although i was packing and moving boxes to my new place all weekend, i did get a little rest, so thanks “harem”! i feel much better than i did last week, for sure. must’ve been the hot cocoa. 🙂
Geek boy bliss! Atari + Wil Wheaton = Awesome!!
that equation definitely computes, ESQ! and i was in Geek boy bliss just drawing the Atari 2600 and Combat into the strip. 😀
Atlantis
i concur re: Atlantis, Hornet – awesome game. actually, most of those Imagic-developed games were pretty good.
my…
revenge…
will…
be…
BLOODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*swinging doomsday devices*
*diabolical laugh of doom*
Your revenge when you jump out of the giant wooden boob (see above) or your revenge on Jeff for not making the strip more vengeful? 😉
My revenge for the cursed bonding between jefbot and Wil.
…
It’s gonna be bloody, I’m tellin’ ya’!!
AAIIIEEEeeeEE! readying defenses for Sonitan onslaught.
Pitfall! was one that I will always remember fondly. Nothing like that on one of those old wood cased tvs.
yeah, Pitfall! was mind-blowing when it first came out, Kiltorea! i still think it looks cool to see Pitfall Harry swing across those pits on a vine. 🙂
So does anyone here remember the C64 game Dino Eggs? I spent so much time playing that…
Come to think of it, I need to hook up my old C64 to my 46″ flatscreen just for kicks :p
i haven’t thought about Dino Eggs in a looOOong time, Chibby! wow, good call. that was one of my favorite games on the C64. i loved when you’d experience “Devolution” and turn into a spider. heheh. or when the Dino mom’s giant foot would come down the screen to crush you. i might actually have to dig my C64 out to play that game again, too.
I remember having the SEARS version of the Atari 2600 growing up. Lots of bonding, but also crappy quality. We were constantly buying new joysticks to replace the previously broken ones. Although simple, those games made me feel like there was some real skill involved, and we all had the carpal tunnel to prove it!
Oh man! That’s right…I totally forgot there was the Sears version of the 2600! My arm still hurts from Decathalon
Decathlon – for any system – was definitely an arm-killer, John K. 😀
Oh MAN, those joysticks were insanely fragile… the little tic-switches inside just died and died… we got to the point were we could strip down an Atari stick for parts in 45 seconds. But we just ended up buying sturdier third party sticks. I remember one brand being advertised as “The ToughStick!”
Had an 800, then a 1040ST till I came over to the Mac side. ( IIvx, G3 Tower, Ruby iMac, G4 Tower, MacBook, G5 Tower, Intel MacBook Pro over the years ) But there IS an XBox 360 upstairs… my 2 teenage sons’ box!
i remember loving to go to Sears with my parents so i could run over to the electronics section where they had a demo station set up, Stan! and yeah, i agree with you and Samuraiartguy: the joysticks busted all the time. my friend and i must’ve gone through about six of them. at one point, when we were out of ‘sticks, we both disassembled the parts and played with the foil panel on the inside. didn’t work too well for moving and firing at the same time. 😛
I wonder if Wil realizes there is more to this game (at least for Jefbot) than simple bragging rights over winning. I think Jefbot would be pretty darn happy to pwn Wil at Combat since Wil got so many of the things that he (Jefbot) wanted.
heheh. you’re right, shanna – jefbot might not just be playing for nostalgia’s sake, here.
Oh wow, that brings back some memories! Love the drawing of the console and of Combat – although I do remember the invisible tanks being a bit less visible 🙂
yeah, the Atari 2600 was fun to draw, Mick – they just don’t make consoles like that anymore with the wood paneling and such. and while you’re right about being able to see those “invisible” tanks, remember that they become visible for a couple seconds after you fire! 🙂
lol Thats how you do it! Screw new comercialised franchise and go for pure fun.
Speaking of old graphic, have any of you gusy played Darwinia? Retro graphic but so… Beautiful. And gameplay over the roof.
yeah, “pure fun” is definitely where it’s at, Maryz, and those old arcade games and home consoles had it in spades!
i have yet to play Darwinia, ‘tho i’ve heard nothing but praise for it. maybe when i get a little bit of free time over the Christmas break i’ll download the demo.
I wanna play combat now. 🙁
while i’m a big advocate for playing retro games on their original, native systems, i think it’s awesome a lot of these games are available for download on modern consoles. i’d be surprised if Combat isn’t in the XBOX Arcade, TCG. if it is, let me know – maybe there’s a two player mode and we can challenge each other. if that’s the case, i’ll see you online. 😀
Holy crap! Why didn’t I think of that? I have that retro arcade game thing where you can buy games and play them, thus creating your own arcade! I’ll do some sniffing around this week and get back to ya on Facebook or something (twitter perhaps?) and let ya know. I’d be down for some old school action!!
It must be wonderful to have such a feeling for old games but alas! I don’t have it…i was born in the 90’s so i cant understand this.
don’t worry, nicobot – you’ll understand in a few years when PS1, N64 and Saturn games are considered nostalgic and retro. wait, aren’t they already? 😉
Love the nostalgia and especially loved these two geeks moving the ‘Modern’ games out of the way for the classics. You said a lot without saying a lot. The mark of a good cartoonist. Well done, Jeff.
as an aside… I did beat the Raiders of the Lost Ark Atari game (with the help of my brother’s friend Matt G). It was one of my all time gaming highlights.
big thanks, dude! glad you dug the nostalgia and simplicity of this one.
see, now you’ve made me want to get the Raiders game even more! actually, i was dropping some old stuff off at one of my favorite game shops in the Valley (Game Dude) this weekend and scoured their 2600 section for Raiders. if they had it, i probably would’ve bought a copy of it, Star Raiders and Yar’s Revenge along with the 2600 console right there and then. 🙂
That’s what I’m talking about, bot! Go old school, baby. Really old school. I love the simplicity of this strip and how it speaks volumes. Congratulations on yet another amazing comic. 😀
thanks, MC! old school all the way! 😀
XBOX 360. PS3… Who needs that when you’ve got Atari- My grandma sold mine in a garage sale for $0.25! I sure wish I had that thing now… Great strip down memory lane!
aagh! 25 cents!? ouch. if i see one at a garage sale for that price, i’ll pick it up for you, Funnyshaffer. 😉
All this talk about Atari really reminds me of my (much older) brother, who bought one of those first primitive video games when they originally came out in the early 70’s, and later had an Atari brand computer for years, and swore by it! Every time I visited, he would be sitting in his computer room, determinedly joysticking at the screen, pretending to listen to me. Jeff, you would probably make a better brother for him, haha.
ha! yeah, i probably would’ve gotten along with your brother just fine, Kim! as it was, i would try to keep my sister, Laura, and her friends away from my Intellivision, as they’d all spaz out with the controllers while playing games, nearly pulling the wires out of the console. yeesh.
*sigh* Jefbot where’s the villain in you? Please tell me your gonna jab the controller in his eye when he least expects it. J/K J/K I’ve always found my villains and anti-hero’s far more interesting then my hero’s. That’s why I admire Ugo Kier, Willam Dafoe, Anthony Hopkins,Gary Oldman and Cillian Murphy. Still I know what its like to dust off the old ports and get in the game of things with oldies. My old DDR mat still gets used during parties. We even have a old school death match playing old 4 player on screen games like 007 nightfire. Part of the fun is trying to remember the controls before the other guy does. Nothing is more funny and tense then sneaking up on a guy and trying to remember which is the melee button only to have him turn around and forget how to switch weapons cause his current one is empty.
Add Alan Rickman to that list & we’re in agreement. ^_^
agreed, AdM: Rickman’s awesome!!! whether you’re talking Die Hard, Robin Hood: PoT or Harry Potter, he plays some of the best villains of all time!
jefbot could still go villainous on Wheaton, Prophet – we’re not done here, yet! heheh. and i agree: the villain is usually way more interesting than the hero. without the Joker, Doc Ock, Lex Luthor, Magneto, etc. our superheroes would be pretty boring, especially in films, methinks.
and i’ve run into that “remember the controls” problem just recently – i was playing HALO: Reach, having just come off of Mass Effect 2 and kept throwing grenades when trying to pull up my gun sight. was pretty much slaughtered every time. 😛
if i had the choice to play the classics over the new 360/PS3 games i would almost every time pick the classics, its what i grew up on
yep! me too, mrwafflesorig87! while i do love modern games, there’s something timeless about those classics!
I’d call you a dork but I can’t really say anything with my pokemon desktop and an entire shelf of pokeplush.
psshhh what a dork!*looks at plushies Jack Skeleton,detachable zombie,and SMT Jack Frost*….what?! don’t judge me.
*judges! Then hides her stuffed animals and Tinkerbell/Wonder Woman collectables.*
WHAT?!
i’d call you a dork right back but i’d be afraid you’d take back the Pikachu-colored Pichu and Arceus you lent me in SoulSilver, dj. when i get set up in my new place, let’s figure out a time we can trade again, btw. 😀
I forgot you even had those two. XD I’ve been playing Black. I could use them for my Japanese SoulSilver that I just started again
Love the irony, ignoring black ops to play Atari.
My first game console was an intellivision, loved that rig. I brought it to residence in univeristy, and I would end up with most of the floor in my room playing downhill skiing, or biplanes. We even invented drinking games to go with it. We occasionally would drag it out into the common room and use the big TV, but the girls would get upset as they couldn’t watch their soaps. Just for nostagia, I got an emulator for my PC and played some of the old games, still great fun.
glad you enjoyed the irony, Roborat! especially since Black Ops had the biggest entertainment launch in history! heheh.
and i’m happy to see another Intellivision geek here. that biplane game was RAD! my friend and i would play that game for hours; the physics were kind of amazing for the time. we wouldn’t shoot each other, we’d just fly around, stall out our planes and then try and recover before we hit the ground. 😀
-twitch twitch-
Friends in background- Anime! NOOOOOOO
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!
friends- we told you there were only three shells in the tube, now we’ve lost a skeet.
Anime- Bet you thought something else was happening didn’t ya?
i’m just relieved to know you were skeet shooting, Anime fan. 😉
Just watch out for the rogue skeet, it may go about 200000 miles before it hits… nuclear skeet thrower.
-Anouncer voice-
This summer, when all but one have fallen. Only one sociopathic pyromanical phsychopath. Can. Bring. Him. Down. -thunder clap-
SKEET II
Misfires only happen once, because the next time. He won’t miss.
reg. voice- I’ll give you a staring role as friend # two, big favor on my part. Cuz in the fifth movie you steal friend # 4’s girlfriend. lolz (Still working out the names) how do feel about being called Gerrard?
Ah, the good old fashioned way of bonding. GAMING!!!
heh. very true, rinthia! nowadays, kids bond over Facebook? text messaging?
Hm, in my day we bonded by kicking the crap out of eachother.
I had Intellivision! Although I must say, they had some of the weakest controllers of any system ever.
But I agree with your cartoon. Today, the greatest game I ever played (and one that almost caused me to flunk 9th grade) was Phantasy Star for the original Sega Master System. Nothing since has ever come close.
you’re absolutely right: the controllers weren’t exactly the Intellivision’s strong point, Menapace. i had the original console, so the controllers didn’t detach. as i mentioned in an earlier post, my sister and her friends would pull the cords almost out of the machine! and the fire buttons being so tiny and on the side – ugh. the tips of my fingers still hurt. at least the disc and buttons didn’t break like the Atari joystick.
ha! almost flunking 9th grade for Phantasy Star is pretty hardcore. did your parents know about this?
My mother suspected something was wrong when I stopped eating and would lock myself in my room for 6 hours at a time. Of course this was right around puberty so…maybe she was giving me my ‘personal space.’ Little did she know my ‘personal space’ consisted of trying to beat that friggin’ video game!!!
ha! great story, Jeff! well, your mom knew something was being “beat”! heheh. sorry.
good use for those two games: coasters. Can’t stand the new call of duty games, and frankly I couldn’t stand the old ones. My how the times don’t change!
jeeze my first console was a sega. I so despirately wanted an NES for mario and mega man! I eventually did get an n64 and boy did i play the hell out of that.
heh. while i enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, Steve, i’m kind of experiencing “shooter fatigue” at this point. might not even buy Black Ops unless friends force me into it. 🙂
i never had a Sega Master System, but Jeff Menapace (see comment above) sure played the hell out of his! loved my NES, though, and have been somewhat of a Nintendo fanboy ever since. SNES and N64 was awesome, too!
I recall that at some point… 1975? ’76? My parents allowed one of my relatives to give me an Magnavox Odessy 200… played three ridiculously similar games – Tennis, Hockey and Smash… And at 16 I thought it was kind of lame.
But later an Atari 800 – an honest to gods actual graphics capable COMPUTER, got plugged into the den TV.. which swiftly turned into a computer lab for the larval form of a graphic geek. But the machine took amazingly sturdy game cartridges and shipped with the insanely (at the time) immersive Star Raiders… and I played that mother for frakkin’ HOURS at a session.
I recall when Tron and The Last Starfighter came out and seeing CG animation at 100 feet wide by 60 high, and YOU COULDN’T SEE THE PIXELS I wanted to go home and sail the Atari out the window with it’s measley four colors and crude 160 x 96 resolution…
But I was hooked. And eventually (what was I THINKING???) went to Pratt for Graphics Design and Illustration. Still doing this. Egad.
my friend had a Magnavox Odyssey², Samuraiartguy, and had KC Munchkin (a Pac-Man clone) and some form of “snake” game on it. when the Atari and Intellivision came out, he was still playing his Odyssey, trying to convince my friends and i that it was the better machine. which it might have been, but just didn’t have the library of games to back it up.
never had an Atari 800 but almost bought a 5200, which looked pretty cool when it came out. actually saw the system and Star Raiders at a local game shop just this weekend. 🙂
happy to hear your old game systems actually encouraged you to pursue a career in Graphics Design and Illustration. see moms – videogames aren’t entirely evil! 😉
Well, well, well. It seems that Jefbot’s pure hate for Wil melted once they found some common ground. And what’s this?! It was Cel’s plan all along for this to happen!? Didn’t see that one coming, that’s for sure. Next issue to overcome: How long will it be until the two have to separate or Jefbot’s past hate of Wil becomes known to Wil.
yep, if there’s one thing strong enough to extinguish the nerd rage jefbot’s been feeling toward Wil – it’s ’80s videogame nostalgia, Fijiman. and while it wasn’t cel’s plan the entire time (she only devised this scheme after jefbot went off about Wil to her), it sure seems to have worked. 🙂
to answer your last sentence: soon on both counts!
something tells me that this does not go well with Cel.
well, cel might not be happy about Wil and bot messing up the displays, but perhaps the friendship she created will dull her anger, jf#300. 🙂
My friend recently gave me an Atari 2600 still in original box with Ms. pacman and asteroids. Te=hey found it in their stuff and asked if I wanted it. Crazy eh?
I got chills when I read that you played E.T.