Word: players
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tournament practice," the sixth of ten levels, the Challenger is supposed to average three minutes of thought for each move, but in dodgy situations it will brood for 15 minutes or so, and the human player may well choose to spend his time worming the dog or writing a threatening letter to the telephone company. The machine itself does not yet have a dog or a typewriter, and it becomes impatient within a couple of minutes when its opponent is thinking. Then it says, gruffly, "Enter-your-move." There is a useful voice turn-off button for such moments. Except...
Superstar 3000 is a not-so-cheap ($39.95) toy electric guitar with a sound synthesizer instead of strings and the ability to remember and play back tunes. The player presses touch-sensitive colored panels instead of frets; pressure at the top of the guitar neck produces a wah-wah or vibrato effect. But Superstar 3000 looks and feels like junk, and doesn't sound like much. Toy musical instruments have always been disappointing, and computer chips haven't changed things...
Bernie De Koven, 38, is the game designer for Ideal Toys, makers of last year's big-selling Electronic Detective-similar to Stop Thief, this year's Parker Bros, entry. His office is cluttered-a creative mulch of dolls' heads, car wheels, batteries, record-player motors, computer entrails, synthesizers and oscilloscopes-but he knows where the action is. "Try an experiment," says De Koven. "Bring in 30 of your most beautiful mechanical games and two cruddy electronic games to a group of kids, and see what happens...
...chips and lighted readouts to create melodrama. The best example now in production is a brilliant quarter-arcade game called Space Invaders. It is a reaction-time contest: shoot down the massed, marching aliens shown on the big TV screen before they shoot you. The refinements are satanic. The player has four blockhouses behind which to hide his man, but as the blockhouses catch fire under attack, they crumble. As the 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...
Crimson coach Jack Barnaby said he recommended the change early last week. "There's a certain level of player Lisa will not be able to beat consistenly without a new grip," he said...