Geek Alert

The Fates smiled upon me. I managed to replace a couple of long lost games this week; Security Station & Car Wars. Some of the regulars may recall a series of "microgames" that were published back in the late 70's early 80's. They were produced by startup gaming companies and sold in small hand sized cardboard or plastic boxes (sometimes ziplock bags) to keep the packaging costs down and sold for around $5. The contents were usually just a fine-print rulebook, some cardboard chits to represent players of adversaries, and a fold-out hex or grid paper playing board. But despite the meager physical contents, a lot of these games had fantastic gameplay. Usually designed and published by people who where avid gamers themselves.

Metagaming Concepts, based in Austin Texas, launched the first line of micrograms. They produced a long list of titles like Melee, Advanced Melee and Wizard as part of what they called The Fantasy Trip line that used the core rules from the initial Melee system. One of these Fantasy Trip games was called Security Station: a post nuclear game (1-6 players) where you explore a deadly abandoned automated...Security Station.



Being a child of the Cold War and brought up on all sorts of Post Holocaust SciFi stories and movies I immediately gravitated to this one. No idea what happened to the original one, missing some 25-30 years now. Its very hard to find one these days in good condition with all parts, so I was thrilled to stumble across on in Very Fine condition. I look forward to trying it out.

One of Metagaming's best designers (Steve Jackson, creator of Metagaming's hit OGRE) left to start his own company, Steve Jackson Games. Metagaming folded but SJ continues on today.


One of his first biggest hits was Car Wars, best described as automotive gladiatorial games with machine guns, missiles, grenade launchers, etc. Jar(egg)head was actually the person to first turn me on to Car Wars. I lost my original 1983 microgame copy (the one that came in the hardshell black plastic box) in one of my moves but managed to find well maintained replacement (with 4 supplements). I'm giving serious consideration to taking it to ComicPalooza this year to get Steve Jackson to sign it.

Cogs

A rather addictive little puzzle game with a steampunk angle. Download the demo today. By Friday you'll want get the full version.



Enjoy

Nostalgia Overdose

Be warned...the following post may be completely lost on you unless you are an old school gamer geek, a GenXer from Pasadena Texas, or both.

Reading through my fellow Pasadenian blogger Jar(Egg)head's site today it turns out he stumbled onto a website dedicated to many things "kitschy" and nostalgic from the 70s. (Site link here) As it happens their page on "Vintage Toy Stores" from around the country included some pics of our old game store haunts in Pasadena/Houston. It was amazing how much came back to me, things I hadn't thought about in decades. They just don't have game stores like this anymore sadly. These days "game stores" in the mall are just a place to pick up the latest XBox / Wii / PS2-3 game. Maybe a some PSP stuff.

Game Player

Inaccurately identified as being in Houston, this place was my main destination (second to SoundWarehouse & Waldenbooks) in going to the Pasadena Town Square Mall. I remember it well, down at the end of the mall near the Foley's anchor store and across from B-Dalton Books. I could have almost been in this store when the this pic was taken. At the entrance you'll note the Dungeons & Dragons stuff was on the right side display case. The boxed sets and books that I still have today came out of this store. I can identify what appears to be a boxed Basic D&D on the bottom, probably a couple of modules on either side. Second shelf from the bottom are the easily recognizable (ok...easy to geezer gamers) the original Monster Manual, a boxed D&D Expert Rules, and the Players Handbook. Next shelf up is a Fiend Folio...and two smaller items I don't recognize. Left side case was where they had the video games. An Intellivision and some games are visible in the bottom half of the case, and in the top half you can see the original entry level Atari computer, the Atari400 with the flat membrane keyboard. Looks cool...great color graphics (for the time)...great games...and damn impossible to type on with any speed at all. I really wanted one of these thing bad. I got a TRS-80 Color Computer instead. Probably the better choice for where it lead me onto the path the brought me to my career since it didn't have shit for games (unlike the Atari400) and I had write all my own programs. But I manage to scratch that particular itch decades later when I bought a nice Atari800 on eBay for a steal! :)



Just inside the store entrance here you see all the variety of electronic games that were the rage in the early 80s. Electronic Battleship, Air Traffic Control, Stop Thief, Merlin, Chess, Simon, Super Simon, possibly even a non-electronic set of Tri-Ominoes...hard to tell. How many old games can you spot? To the lower left of the picture of you see the red and black tubes of the Pente games that NEVER EVER sold. Never saw anyone buy one, never saw an empty gap in the display indicating some had bought one. Visible only in shadows seen at the top left of the picture is where the Role Playing Games (D&D, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, etc) were found, along modules, DM screens, and the Holy of Holies...the plexiglass display case of all those varieties of game dice. Still have the crystal set of dice I got here, along with the Traveller hardcover and Star Frontiers (I blame Jar(Egg)head for turning me on to that game) boxed set. Of my original Gamma World set all that remains is the crappiest, cheapest, most irregularly shaped set of game dice ever created. I think I'm still keeping them around just to show as an example to young padawan gamers of just how shitty a set of dice can be made and still...barely...be called dice. What you can't see in this picture was the back of the store (pan the camera left 15 degrees) which was an elevated area where all the "Serious Wargames" were kept. Basically the Avalon Hill section of the store. My original boxed edition for Third Reich (yes, still have it) came out of this store...a real MONSTER game for me at the time...it required a good portion of a pool table to have all the map and counter boards setup. Only played once...I just didn't have the endurance/patience to play it twice at that point in my gaming life. But a few years (and more patience) later I picked up the wargame NATO at Nan's Games and soundly kicked Jar(egg)head's Commie Warsaw Pact ass as I recall. Muhahaha!


Not alot to say on this pic. This was the opposite side of the store where the computer/video games were on display. You could come in and play the newest Atari 2600, Intellivision or (if you road to school on the short bus) Odyssey games. The Odyssey, for those that don't remember it, was such a piece of shit of a game system that it was physically & painful to even watch someone else try to play it. The very fact that this game exists is sufficient reason to me that there should be a Hell, just so the designers and engineers of this atrocity should spend their eternity there. They also had an Atari400 (and later 800) computer out that you could tinker on. Guys at the store were cool and people started bringing their games (think floppy disks & cassettes) up to the store to show them off to other "Atarians" and whoever was in the store (no doubt this helped sales of systems)...and of course this is where I was first introduced to the world of computer software piracy. 'Nuff said about that. :)

The Game Peddler

Jar(egg)head was thinking this might have been a picture from Almeda Mall, but I'm thinking it was the store at Baybrook Mall. I specifically remember the window display of really cool chess sets. But I didn't make it down that far south too often so my memories are not as clear. Oh well....