Great Games Company (aka GameTek) article from 1983

[DoorNumberFour]

Video Games magazine, volume 1 number 9. Featuring the only screen grab (clearly a mock-up) and gameplay description I’ve seen/read thus far for the cancelled line of game show games due out for the Atari 2600 later that year.

[JakeT]

As much as many of us were dying for these games to be released back in the day, can you begin to imagine just how awful they would have been?

May well have made "E.T." for the 2600 look like the Mona Lisa...

JakeT

[clemon79]

can you begin to imagine just how awful they would have been?

Since I would only have history to that point in the industry as a frame of reference and it's only fair to compare it with products of its time, no, I couldn't.

[Jeremy Nelson]

As much as many of us were dying for these games to be released back in the day, can you begin to imagine just how awful they would have been?

May well have made "E.T." for the 2600 look like the Mona Lisa...

JakeT

Primitive? Yes. Awful? Not really. I'm envisioning the Tiger handheld game shows with slightly better graphics.

Also, considering the company's eventual track record with game shows, I don't really sense that these would be bad. Just because a game was released in '83 doesn't mean it was bad. The kinds of games that crashed the industry were shoddily programmed with no intent but to profit off a licensed brand. It sounds like GameTek put some thought into these.

[Adam Nedeff]

Primitive? Yes. Awful? Not really. I'm envisioning the Tiger handheld game shows with slightly better graphics.

Also, considering the company's eventual track record with game shows, I don't really sense that these would be bad. Just because a game was released in '83 doesn't mean it was bad. The kinds of games that crashed the industry were shoddily programmed with no intent but to profit off a licensed brand. It sounds like GameTek put some thought into these.

I'm curious about the data capacity on those Atari cartridges. For a game like "Joker's Wild," of course you can easily program the spinning wheel graphics, but how many questions could a game like that hold? Or perhaps, would they have had to do like some of the Tiger handheld games of the 90s did and packaged a question book with the games?

[Joe Mello]

I'm curious about the data capacity on those Atari cartridges.

Cursory research says that the biggest cartridges were up to 16KB, but a lot were 4KB

[JasonA1]

I only recently learned about this, Atari's take on a Concentration/Memory style game, c. 1978. Even with the 5-year difference, the limitations on display gave me loads of pause on whether or not they were ready to do game shows on the home consoles of the time.



-Jason

[clemon79]

I'm curious about the data capacity on those Atari cartridges. For a game like "Joker's Wild," of course you can easily program the spinning wheel graphics, but how many questions could a game like that hold? Or perhaps, would they have had to do like some of the Tiger handheld games of the 90s did and packaged a question book with the games?

16K on the absolute high end. I'd think they would need to include a question book and all questions would need to be multiple choice.

[jcs290]

According the article, the cartridge had enough memory for 60 modified Family Feud games. The modified rules being 1) show a category like “Dangerous Fish” 2) show seven answers of just the first letter shown 3) pick the top 3 answers in under 3 seconds.

First, that doesn’t sound like Family Fued. Second, if that’s one game, then one question per game is the order of business here. Third, three seconds?!?!

[Allstar87]

According the article, the cartridge had enough memory for 60 modified Family Feud games. The modified rules being 1) show a category like “Dangerous Fish” 2) show seven answers of just the first letter shown 3) pick the top 3 answers in under 3 seconds.

Drop the third rule, and you basically have America Says.

[Jeremy Nelson]

I only recently learned about this, Atari's take on a Concentration/Memory style game, c. 1978. Even with the 5-year difference, the limitations on display gave me loads of pause on whether or not they were ready to do game shows on the home consoles of the time.



-Jason

Seeing this makes me wonder how they would have even programmed a cartoon host to kiss the screen/contestants. Then again, my first console was an NES, so I didn't grow up in a time when 2600 developers were the ones doing"cutting edge" things.