AtariAge Forums: AtariAge Forums -> Chronogamer

1973 is in our retro-view mirror!

Only four games

W.I.N
Interplanetary Voyage
Brain Wave
Basketball

Something which I forgot to demonstrate about Interplanetary Voyage that I thought was pretty neato.

In the second game in the manual, "University of the Solar System", you draw cards to answer questions about the Solar System. Here is an example:



The interesting thing about this card, is that the answer isn't on it. Anywhere. See the little triangle/arrow in the middle of the right hand side. That points...

Basketball, the game where gravity goes sideways.

This game is, surprisingly, very fun. First you have to turn your gravitational perceptions to the side. See the Überlay? Okay, see the left side of the Überlay? Okay, good. That's the floor. Yeah. No, really! STOP LAUGHING!

So, the two player spots, remember, we call them Player One Spot and Player Two Spot, they start the game off at center court. The reset button is pressed and the basketball comes soaring in from off-screen right. It moves past the players to the Left-positioned Wall ("floor") and rebounds back to the right ("up"). Then and only then, are the players allowed to move their respective Spots to go after the ball, "dribble" it against the "floor" and maneuver it into their respective basket.

The key...

So, why are these two staring so intently at that vase in the middle?

Brain Wave seems like a complicated mess at frist glance. There is a pile of about 90 little cardboard squares to be used (thought tiles), little cardboard holders (memory banks) for the squares (similar to Scrabble™), a gameboard and two little cardboard rectangles (power markers) with holes in them for keeping track of spending Brain Power Points. After a little bit of a learning curve for me, and a little bit of a teaching curve trying to explain it to my son, we found this game to be fun and interesting.

Each player starts off with their Player Spot at the Red Circle in the middle of the appropriate Head on the Überlay. On a player's turn, as a Defender, they roll the dice (two) to determine how many squares they may move their Player Spot through the maze. There's no backtracking and they may never land on the spot from which they started. The other player,...

Isn't that a pretty Überlay? Well, I think so, too.

Sorry, this is a long one! I originally wrote it for a post at Digital Press which had only 49 views and 1 reply before I let it slip in to the oblivion of the archives. *sniff*. I learned my lesson: Forums are for conversation, not essays. Blogs are for long babbling kook-talk and that's the way I like it!

There are two games described by the manual for Interplanetary Voyage. The second game in the manual is called "University of the Solar System" and could be considered "edutainment". The first game, which seems to be the one actually called "Interplanetary Voyage" is what my son, my wife and I played. I was very shocked that my wife played, but that's a rant for a different blog.

The Interplanetary Voyage game pack comes with card #12 and is the only game which uses that card which generates only the two player spots (no ball, no center...

W.I.N. stands for Word, Image, Number. The object of this game is to construct words, images and numbers drawn from a deck of cards using the elements on the Überlay. To claim an element for use in your assembly, you have to move the Spot while it is invisible to an element you can use.

The Player Spot starts out in the blank square at the bottom center of the screen (near the scientist). You hit the reset button on the controller and the Spot dissappears. You then manipulate the controls until you think you've moved the unseen spot to the element you need for your picture. You hit the reset button again, the spot appears and you see how close you got. If it lights a different element, one of your opponents may be able to claim it for use towards their own goal. The first to construct two words, one image and two number sentences W.I.N.s not only the game but possibly control of the entire Universe...