Word: one
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spaceman doll whose computer memory gives it a disappointingly narrow range of behavior. It breathes heavily (one of its better effects), buzzes, twitters and flashes its lighted eyes, and sounds ominous gongs, one for good and two for evil. The trouble with this Parker Bros, homunculus is that it looks as if it should be able to use its arms and legs like a true robot, and it can't. Rom will end up among the dust balls under the playroom sofa...
Simon, an appealing plate-shaped puzzle that flashes sequences of colored lights and accompanying musical notes, challenges players to repeat the sequences and gives losers the raspberry, began to change that. Adults, suffering from what one industry thinker called "play deprivation," have not only bought Simon and the competing computer toys like this year's play-alike Computer Perfection, but also are more or less cheerfully paying $40 to $50 for them. That shattered forever the $15 to $20 level the industry had considered its average. Now more than 100 different hand-held computer toys crowd store shelves...
...chips and voice synthesizers has not calmed things down. The designers of Simon, Marvin Glass & Associates of Chicago, refuse categorically to deal with the press. At the design department of Mattel, in California, "you knock on the door and they look at you through a little hole," according to one industry executive who has visited there. Inside, "these guys are all sitting around, and they've got little computers, and'they're writing down figures and leafing through little books, and they scratch their heads, and then they say, 'Unh-unh, that's not right...
...visual qualities of the games will improve quickly. Bambino has a two-color display system in the works that would allow one football team to wear blue uniforms and one to wear red, for instance. TV games, overshadowed this year, should attract more interest when Mattel Electronics introduces Intellivision, a game system with realistic, multicolored graphic displays. Learning capability can be built into small computers. The costs will be higher, but if customers will pay $40 this year, they may pay $75 next year...
...sound effects become more ominous, the aliens begin to shoot faster and more accurately. Blast them all -whew!-and another phalanx appears, nearer and more menacing. The action is jitteringly fast, and the tension is worsened by a sense of foreboding: as in life itself, there can be only one end to the struggle. At last the heroic player dies, overwhelmed. He is limp, drained, defeated, and his only satisfaction is the knowledge that he has offed a lot of aliens. Current hard-to-believe heroic high scores: by a Chicago player, 187,520, and a 257,000 claimed...