Saturday, August 25, 2012

It was the 80's, of course I played Dungeons and Dragons



My First D&D Manual.


You know how they say one event can change your life forever. Looking back at my childhood I think I can pinpoint a single moment that created a widespread butterfly effect that rippled throughout my years.

On my seventh birthday, back in 1981, my friend Matt, who was a few years older than me, gave me my first Dungeons and Dragons book. It was the OFFICIAL ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS MONSTER MANUAL by Gary Gygax and it had the most amazing painting of a bunch of pegasi fighting a big red dragon on the cover. The book was hardbound and large, unlike all my other little children’s books. Holding it here in my hands now, I recall those very happy days.

Of all the gifts I got from my friends and family that birthday the Monster Manual is the only one I remember, and still own to this day. Yes, I’m sure I got a football, some Star Wars action figures, maybe even some Batman Underoos, but those items did not make a lasting impression on me. (Underoos were boys underwear that looked like a superhero costume and were quite the trendy fashion statement of their day).

I vividly remember feeling that Matt had given me a very special gift. At the same time I was curious and excited; what was this book and what secrets did it hold inside?

I admit at seven years old I probably did not comprehend half of what I was reading, but the pen and ink pictures hypnotized me. Massive snarling dragons, swirling wind elementals, giants as big as trees, squid-headed mind flayers and even shambling zombies; these 112 pages kept my attention for hundreds of hours. I wanted to draw everything I saw, and tried my best to copy my favorite pages.

My parents must have wondered if this book was secretly enchanted with kid-tranquilizing magic due to the simple fact that, short of cartoons, nothing quite held my attention so solidly. Thinking back all those years I cannot remember if I begged my mother to take me to the hobby store in the Village Mall that week to buy more books like this one, or if she raced me over there just to find more of these “hardbound baby sitters”. Either way, it worked out nicely and I added MONSTER MANUAL 2, FIEND FOLIO and DEITIES AND DEMI-GODS to my collection.

Seeing my excitement over his gift, Matt wanted to teach me how to play the game behind the “cool drawings”. He and his friends were just learning it too and they needed one more player. I’ll never forget the feeling of amazement that washed over me when I saw all the little metal knights and wizards used to play D&D. Unlike the plastic army men I had buckets of, each of these metal soldiers and monsters seemed to have a story about them, and the way Matt explained it those tales were yet to be told. Yeah, I was instantly hooked, time to play.

You know how kids play; they kinda make things up as they go along. Did I know all the D&D rules back then? NO WAY! I probably knew 5% of them, if even that. Basically, I understood how to make and equip my character and when to roll my dice, other than that I just followed the leader. I had a good imagination and was easily amused, the best I can explain it is that the game of D&D was all just one big puppet show, and from time to time I was allowed to dance my very own puppet.

It’s hard not to credit D&D for the onslaught of fantasy related things my parents put in front of me from that day forward. Toys like the LEGO Castle and movies such as Excalibur and Hawk the Slayer; it all shaped me as a future writer in the genre. After years of enjoying other people’s creations I realized I could make my own. It wasn’t until recent years that I realized it was not the act of playing games like D&D, Ultima: Exodus, Final Fantasy or even World of Warcraft (I miss you WoW) that I truly enjoyed, it was actually the process of character creation that excited me.


Still wishing I could play RPG games with my high school buddies.

Kevin James Breaux
www.kevinbreaux.com
 

Sunday, July 22, 2012

In the 80s there was VHS - actually it was the 70s…


a very old VCR

Can you remember your first VCR?

I remember mine, well my parent's first VCR. BUT when my dad actually bought it is kinda fuzzy. I know we were very late to the VCR owning party. I feel like our first VCR was not until maybe 1985-1986. I know for a fact it was maybe a year or two before the G.I. JOE cartoon movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093066/, which came out in April 1987. Being a huge G.I. JOE fan I remember this very well because I recorded the movie by sheer luck. The more and more I think of it, that might have been one of the very first things I recorded.
You know, when I think of it, all those years ago my family really only used the VCR for movies we rented. We did not record much on it… well… not until around 1990…


Can you remember your first VHS movie purchase?

My first VHS movie purchase was Excalibur. It was my favorite movie as a child (often tied with Ghostbusters). It came in a huge plastic clam shell box, which I kept for years and years. Before writing this I tried my hardest to date my purchase, the best I could come up with was… maybe in 1986. BUT what I do know, and with 100% accuracy is where I got it.  It was inside a video/music store in the Village Mall. (back before Acme consumed 1/3 of the mall)(the store was on the Acme side).

Behold, Excalibur! This is exactly what my copy looked like.


You know, if I was to list the top 25 things that remind me of the 80s, the Village Mall would be there. What was this place? The Village Mall was a tiny, indoor mall in Hatboro, PA, the town where I grew up. In the 70s and 80s it was a busy spot. With a good assortment of shops from clothing to jewelry, a bank, book store, a pet shop, a drug store; the place even had a small arcade and a two screen movie theater. Many of my first movies were seen there: Indiana Jones, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, Jaws 3, even E.T.


This is the only picture I could find of the original Village Mall.

My favorite spot in this tiny mall was a hobby store where my parents purchased most of my early Dungeons and Dragons books and figures. Ah… the Village Mall… Anyone who lived in the area has a story or two about the place through the years…

Anyway, my fondest memories of owning a VCR come from the fact that I started taping all my shows around 1992. I was kinda OCD about it. A crazy hoarder of shows. This was back in the day that they did not release TV shows in box sets, so I lived with the fear that if I did not tape my favorite shows they would one day vanish from TV and my life. (OH NO!)
This stems from losing shows like Matt Houston, I bet, and a ton of great Saturday Morning cartoons like Spiderman and his Amazing Friends and Thundarr the Barbarian. (I own the latter on DVD now)



Yep, I started recording all my favorites. Starting with super hero shows... The Flash (live action) and Batman the Animated Series. I quickly learned to record my shows on LP, the middle grade of quality, so I could fit 5-6 hours on a tape, but inevitably I ran out of tapes quick. This is when my dad started a new family tradition that lasted until maybe 5 years ago.
Every X-Mas my dad gave me and my two cousins a 8-10 pack of VHS tapes. I used between 20-40 tapes a year. So I was normally in need of a new stock.



Remember these?


Yeah, you really know where your problems lie as a collector when you move homes. My first move from my parent's house to a townhouse in Bucks County, PA I realized I had a lot of comics and they were a real pain in the ass to carry up and down stairs. But worse than that were my VHS tapes. At this point in my life I had a pretty substantial VHS tape collection too. I would estimate I had about 6 of those UHAUL standard boxes filled.
Since it was the late 1990s I had my own massive line of recorded shows like Star Trek: TNG, Quantum Leap, Forever Knight, Batman - TAS, X-Men (90s), Star Trek: DS9, and many others. BUT I was also building a pretty hefty purchased movie collection too. I owned Anime, fantasy movies, and yes, finally shows like Twin Peaks collected in box sets.

Oh, did I forget to mention I worked in a video store in a big mall for about 6 months… um… yeah…. and I spent a lot of my paycheck on movies all in VHS format.

Like my father before me, I drug my feet when new technology arrived. I had a collection of over 600-700 VHS tapes! I did NOT want to switch to DVD!!! That meant having to re-purchase all my movies. (I wrote an article about that before, here is  the link) (nothing worse than having to buy something you already bought before)
So, it must've been 2002 before I started renting and buying DVDs. And in 2004 I moved houses again.
Moving all my VHS tapes AGAIN, this time in Rubbermaid bins, made it all too clear I had too many of them. But hey, things like THE TICK were not on DVD…. but I had all the eps. on VHS tape! YAY! I could watch them whenever I wanted!!! Same with Buffy, Angel and Mutant-X! 

…but slowly those shows started getting released in awesome DVD box set collections. Slowly, my closet full of VHS tapes, my awesome collection, was becoming antiquated. No one wanted to borrow VHS tapes. And Blockbuster… you were phasing out tapes before my very eyes…

*cry* ...be kind, rewind…. *cry*

The first DVDs I bought were of my favorite movies, ones I had, admittedly, already bought 2-3 times before on VHS. Once in original plain old VHS, then later in VHS... but glorious letterbox and rarely a third time for anniversary editions. So there I was buying a movie like JAWS a fourth time. What the hell! 

In 2009 I moved homes again. This time from PA to Oregon. It was a big move, a costly move, and the hard reality was… some things were not coming with me. I remember the day I sat on the floor next to the closet with all my VHS tapes. I had a box of "keep" and a box of "throw out" and a box of "give away".  I meticulously went through all my movies and when I was done I had a large pile of things to get rid of and two smaller ones to keep and give to my dad.
A day or two passed and when I returned to the organized tapes I made a command decision… heartbreaking in some ways. I must have had 700 tapes and I tossed most of them out into the trash.
Out went my Twin Peaks box set, which I bought when I was working at Sun Coast Video for 50% off (still costing me over $100). Out went all my X-Men cartoons, probably 20+ tapes. My original copies of Star Wars. My letterbox copies of Star Wars. My copies of extended Star Wars…. ug…. And yes, in the trash was the first anime movie I ever bought, something I shared the cost of with an old friend, AKIRA. (I need that DVD still)

To be honest I threw out my VCRS too… well, two of the three. I kept one. It's in a box in storage now. Why did I keep it? I kept it for a few home movies I have on VHS. A few videos I made with my friends, all of us dressed as super heroes, some wearing costumes made of card board. (you know who you are)
Funny story, my dad only ever bought one VCR. I kinda remember it being a Sanyo brand, but he used that thing for many years, probably almost 20... until I bought him a VCR/DVD combo.  He now owns a good Sony DVD player. My dad loves movies. :)
Do I regret my old VHS ways? Yes and no. I mean how was I to know the day would come where TV show box sets would be released? How was I to know DVDs would be invented? That all being said, I will admit, I have nightmares of a future media change… and yeah, you guessed it… I have a large DVD collection now. No, I never went to Blu-Ray and I never will.



Kevin James Breaux
Thinking I could have bought a Ferrari like Magnum's with all the money I spent on VHS tapes.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

80’s television. Oh how I love you. Or at least remember loving you…

I have been having the strangest phenomenon.
Ever since re-watching Star Trek Deep Nine I started thinking about the ages of the characters and the actors in shows I used to love.  For example: I watched DS9 back when it originally aired in 1993-1999.  I was in my late teens-early twenties at the time, so I was nowhere near the age of any of the actors or characters in the show… now suddenly I am.
When I was re-watching DS9 I started having these nagging thoughts. How old is Sisko? How old is Dr. Bashir? I never thought or worried about that stuff before. I think it was during season 2, that I actually came to the realization, holy crap… I might be the same age as Dax’s character now! Hold on, how old was Terry Farrell when that show was on? She couldn’t have been my age, could she?
Well, as it turns out, the youngest of the main group of actors was born a good 10-11 years before me. OK, but what about the ages of their characters? How old was Sisko? I never got a good answer for that, but in one ep. during one of the later seasons, they mention Chief O’Brien as just having his 40th birthday.  WHOA!  I’m 38, now, and looking at him…. hey, I think I look a good twenty years younger than O’Brien. 
Anyway, something strange had happened. I love Deep Space Nine. I have seen it over and over again, but now I was seeing it through different eyes. The characters and the stories were more relatable and I noticed things I never had before.  To top it off, I found myself attracted to different characters. Back in the 90’s I was in love with Terry Farrell’s Dax, but now… my tastes changed and I felt more attracted to Major Kira (after she loosens up some, or when she is playing the Russian spy, lol).
So with this new way of thinking I realized it was time to go back to my roots. What other shows will look and feel different?
There were several shows I loved as a kid that featured male main characters in their mid to late thirties (right where I am). How would I feel about these shows now? Would I relate more, would I understand the stories better, be more touched by the drama or would I only care about the action and comedy? It’s time to find out.
Last week I watched the first two episodes of Matt Houston and Magnum P.I. , both were two part story arcs that introduced their characters and some history. Let me start off with the facts of both shows.

Magnum P.I aired from 1980 to 1988. It premiered December of 1980 on CBS, I think its entire run was at 8PM. Created by Glen Larson and Donald P. Bellisario, (as a kid of the 80’s you will recognize these names,  they were attached to half the TV programming you watched) the show actually filled the spot that Hawaii Five-O left, using its sets and production team that was already in place on HI. 
I always got a sense that he really enjoyed driving that car.

Played by Tom Selleck, Magnum was a Vietnam Vet turned Private Eye.  As I remember the show, he never had much, was often struggling to make ends meet and forced to take on odd jobs. He drove a kick-ass Ferrari, but that belonged to his boss. The ladies loved him; it must have been the mustache.
In comparison… 

Matt Houston aired from 1982 to 1985 on ABC. It premiered September 1982, and was designed by Aaron Spelling to take Magnum’s ratings away (you know Spelling created the other half of shows on during the 80's…). It was a smash hit… but was destroyed by Miami Vice in 1985.
Look at that suit, all class.

Played by Lee Horsely, Houston was… big shocker… a Vietnam Vet turned Private Eye.  As I remember the show, he had everything a man could wish for: money, tons of killer sports cars, nice clothes, and his own helicopter. (Magnum borrowed his friend, T.C’s). Houston even had a super computer called “Baby”, which was an APPLE III brand. Weird, right? Matt Houston got all the ladies too; probably because he was a rich, muscular Texan, but the mustache didn’t hurt.
Yes, it was the 80’s and TV shows were exciting! They were filled with action and adventure, hot girls and I admit it, maybe a little over the top drama, but we loved them.
Here are the links for both shows intros. See all the explosions while listening to some of the best 80's theme music! (Both are A+, but I have to give Houston the win.)

and

I was super young when Magnum P.I. debuted.  I would have been in first grade and probably not allowed to stay up past 7-8PM, but I am sure I was watching the show by fourth grade because I went out for Halloween dressed as Magnum that year. Basically the costume was a big fake moustache and a Hawaiian shirt, but I promise I rocked it.  
So while I am sure I missed the original airing of the first several seasons of Magnum, I know I caught many of those eps. in rerun or syndication. Now, Matt Houston… my memory gets a little blurry as to whether I saw the second season in its original airing or not, but I am sure I saw all the third and final season which aired through 1985.  It’s funny what you remember, and I totally remember Matt Houston airing at 10pm, which was super late for me, but there was also a time, around then, that I used to stay up late and watch Love Boat and Fantasy Island. I wondered if they were on the same night, but with some research I found that Houston was on Friday and the Love Boat/Fantasy Island pairing was on Saturday. 
8pm? That's a west coast channel... hmm...

10pm, right! and I think that's from my hometown network in Philly!

Back then I had no concept of how TV ratings worked and that shows could just get cancelled… Matt Houston was on one year, and then gone the next. I know I asked my mother where my show was, and I remember checking the TV GUIDE every week for it for months… I was crushed when it never returned. Where did my favorite show go?
Yes, for many years I referred to Matt Houston as my favorite show of the 80's. So how do I feel now that I watched it in 2012?
Watching the first two-part episodes of both Matt Houston and Magnum P.I. was a fun experience.  Netflix provided Magnum and a DVD set Houston.  I had almost forgot how great 80's actions shows were, that and just how open and big the worlds felt. The cinematography for both shows… just wow… HUGE outdoor shots encompassing entire buildings, homes, businesses. So many great aerial shots, following cars on highways… YES, back then the actor’s drove the cars for real, not dumb green screen fake driving.  I have to admit, I love the shots of the cities from way above… you just don’t get that anymore. Today TV shows can make you feel claustrophobic at times now, the air so stale in these tiny Hollywood sets.  Go outside, the real outside, and shoot!!! Show us the setting and how people interact with it.
Watching Magnum P.I.’s first eps., called “Don’t Eat the Snow in Hawaii” I felt like I was watching something nearly on the scale of a movie. The flashbacks to Vietnam were good and well timed. Lots of explosions and gunfire, bullets striking and splashing in the water... Stallone would have been proud!
Matt Houston’s first eps., simply called “Pilot”, to my surprise had more of a comical side than I remembered. There was even some weird, circus-like music they played from time to time as Matt was doing his leg-work research on the job. It did not fit right to me, unless they wanted you to have a tongue in cheek response. But hey, maybe this is why I preferred Houston to Magnum as a child. Maybe it was the humor.  I forget.
FYI—In the first ep., Matt is driving a Delorean, which predates Back to the Future. So let’s give him some credit.
Both shows had the following: hot girls in bikinis, gun fire, helicopter rides, awesome cars, a car chase resulting in said car going off a ledge/mountain side and blowing up (an 80's staple) and an ending that made me ask, “hey, where are the cops during this mess?”
Wait-Why? Well, in Magnum he took his gun into the airport and shot someone in the bathroom, yes, he was shot too, but it felt sorta like murder to me, and this was after he impersonated an Naval officer and broke into a base.  Some serious stuff, which as a kid, I probably did not realize would have got him hung or shot.
Awesome TV Guide write up. Fun internet find.

Matt Houston on the other hand carried a baseball bat to a fight he picked. He had a policeman buddy to help him “bend laws” if needed.  He also seemingly slept with one of the ladies he suspected for murder. Poor Magnum fought off the advances of the sister of his friend who was killed, regardless of the fact that she seemed nice and was pretty.  (is Houston the Anti-Magnum?)
This brings me back to how do I relate to this shows now that I am the age of the characters. Magnum was in his mid to late thirties, and so was Tom Selleck.  Matt Houston, I’m not entirely sure, but I think was supposed to be in his mid thirties, whereas Lee Horsely was a few years younger starting the show at 30.
It’s hard to make a full judgment based on two eps., but I’m thinking I would actually enjoy watching Magnum P.I. more now for several reasons. One of the most important would be the fact that the show seemed more real. Magnum himself was a more believable character. In the second episode he says he retired from the Navy because he was 23 years old and one day woke up 33, but forgot what it was like to be 23. I took that as he was forced to grow up too quickly and was now trying to recapture his youth. This makes total sense to me, I understand that feeling too, and Magnum portrayed it well. He sorta was a beach bum living off Robin Masters and the kindness of his friends. They were good friends, he was always indebted to them, and sure they ribbed him for it, but it seemed like they loved him regardless.
Magnum P.I. just seemed better written and better acted too. Tom Selleck gave Magnum a wide range of emotions and he was very comfortable in the character, not rushing his lines or looking nervous at all. This helped the show feel genuine, and gave me more room to connect to him. In the first ep. he is calling his friend and at the same time juggling the phone and his binoculars because two super hot, foreign, airline stewardesses are skinny dipping on the beach. Sure, the act seems immature, but at the same time, it’s exactly what I would be doing if I was him, well, I would want to run down and join them, but you know…
So yeah, watching Matt Houston I spent most of the time thinking, damn, I want to be him. Look at all the kick ass sports cars. Matt never seems to have to worry about things, he has the money to answer all his problems, and those not answerable… hey, he has an in house lawyer and a beautiful assistant who used to be Princess Ardala. That’s hard to beat, but at the same time impossible to relate to.  I also did not like the goofy comedy side of the show. I felt like, wait, this guy was my childhood hero and I remember him being the coolest of cool, why are they cheapening him. Maybe it was different in the last season, I may never know, unless Netflix hooks me up!
As a kid I had a "Knight Rider" style watch, and yes, I talked to it...
When I stop and think about all the shows that were on back then, at the same time as these, my head begins to swell and nearly explodes!  I mean Knight Rider was on back then too! I loved Knight Rider… and A-Team and… MacGyver. Holy crap, they were all so great. But when I think of watching Knight Rider or MacGyver now I kinda cringe… if Matt Houston is this cheesy when I re-watch it, oh, dare I tempt those beloved shows? (probably at some point, yes.)


In the end, I have decided to continue watching Magnum P.I. In fact, I hope to watch all eight seasons and no doubt catch a bunch of hours I forgot or never saw. I do expect to cross paths with some moments I will never forget too, like when Magnum was treading water in the open ocean, when he was mimicking Indiana Jones, and when he was shot and “killed.”
What about my old favorite, Matt Houston,  a show I had nothing but the highest respect for… for many many years… I may watch a few more eps. on my DVD set of season one, but no serious plans.  I just think watching it now will leave me obsessing/wishing I had his awesome life and at the same time not quite understanding it.

Kevin James Breaux
Wishing I was a cool 80's Private Investigator
  

Friday, May 18, 2012

I played a lot of Atari 2600...


I played a lot of Atari 2600. I mean it was the only system out there for a while. That and without the internet and video game magazines like EGM… there was no place to read about other games or platforms that may have existed or where coming. In my world there was only Atari 2600 and I was loyal to that system all the way into the NES and later GENESIS ages. 
So back in the early 80's, most of the time I was playing Atari 2600 was with Matt Zelesko or my dad.  I enjoyed playing the co-op and versus games the most, so of course I played a lot of Combat! and Air and Sea Battle. I still can still hear the sound of those Combat! tanks, that weird vibrating…. grinding noise.
I admit, I recently played through all of my favorite Atari 2600 games on an emulator on my PC. I even tried some of the games I never played before all those years ago. I did this to relive those glory days, and also to find out if any of these games still hold up.  Amazingly so they do.  Atari 2600 games are still fun! Even after like 30 years!

Wizard of Wor is still one of the best Atari 2600 games I have ever played!


My favorite Atari 2600 games when I was a kid were:
3.       Wizard of Wor -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Wor
4.       Frogs and Flies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogs_and_flies
5.       River Raid - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Raid
6.       Vanguard -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_(video_game)   
8.       Chopper Command - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopper_Command
20.   Riddle of the Sphinx - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagic


Everyone had and loved Pitfall!

 It was hard not to love EVERY single Activision game. Those programers just knew the right recipe for a great time, but other companies had some winners too and Imagine was one of them.  I played Atlantis for hundreds of hours. It had excellent replayablity due to its increasing challenge. I also loved the sounds this game made.
So what made a good game for me as a kid? Looking at this list, I guess I liked games with speed, but I also liked games with a good challenge.  For example, I loved Pitfall!, but I sucked at it.  I played it for days on end, and never got far.  I also loved a game I could sit with for a few hours and actually finish, like Gyruss and Vanguard.  Adventure, being one of my all time favorite Atari 2600 games ever, had endless replay value, even when the maps were tiny. It was always a new game because of that damn bat. If you have played Adventure, you probably hate that bat as much as I did and still do. It always seemed to appear right when you had finally found a pivotal item.  Going to slay the dragon that ate you last, finally found the sword… yep, bat out of nowhere comes and grabs your sword and leaves you with the bridge.  Finally got the chalice(or grail, or goblet)? YOU KNOW that damn bat is coming, and when you’re making a mad dash to your home you panic each time you see a flicker on your screen.  I played Adventure just last week, and I still jump when I am going between screens and suddenly get attacked and swallowed by one of the dragons. Freaking hilarious.
Who's laughing now...


For as great as Adventure was… for as many hours as I played Wizards of Wor with Matt Zelesko, for every after dinner round of Frogs and Flies I played with my dad… still nothing compared to Activision Decathlon.  I played that game from the day I bought it in the early eighties all the way up and through 1998 when I moved out of my parents house, and finally disconnected the Atari from a tiny TV in their basement where it always remained connected.
Back when we first got Decathlon, Matt and I played it and played it thinking it was impossible to even complete many of the events. In time, as we got better, we thought, it was too hard to rank at Bronze. And to be honest, we never did. I remember Matt coming up with a solution to the 1500 meter dash. Which consisted of a good 5-10 minutes of you jerking on your Atari joystick until your muscles burned. His idea was to sit under the computer desk, not looking at the screen, and your teammate would tell you when to sprint. This worked marvels. We actually started doing well enough to score and it became our best event. Yes, from our most dreaded one to the one we scored highest at.

Just look at it. Look at the perfection. I love you Decathlon. I always will.

Years went by with us playing this game. The Coleco came out… the NES came out… with each new system and new group of friends I had… I returned to Decathlon. I introduced that game to so many people, pretty much anyone who came to my house. Chris Straup, one of my lifelong buddies, also became obsessed with it, but it was another friend of mine one I will refer to just as BOB that actually decided we should start training for it. It was the first Summer after high school and we played the game almost daily.  Bob actually got blisters, so we started wearing fingerless weightlifting gloves to play and on one sunny afternoon… in my parent's freezing-cold basement, I scored a Bronze Medal.
It was doable! We were finally strong enough to play this game designed by adults for kids. We had the skills, the stamina and the talent.
I reached a Silver Medal score not long after… but we were always just short of the Gold.
One day, I marched down to the basement in my pajamas and just went for it. It was probably my third or fourth year of college. I was easily 20-21 years old… and I finally beat this game which I had owned for close to twelve years. I broke records on nearly every event, scoring extremely high of High Jump and Pole Vault and I brought home the GOLD!!!
I took a picture of the screen, just like in the old days, and mailed it off to Activision for my patch. They were nice enough to send me a letter back, congratulating me, but telling me there were no more Gold patches… so they sent me a Bronze one.
  


When playing a lot of these Atari 2600 games now, in 2012, I found that my favorites changed only slightly. I still love Atlantis, but now I enjoy Cosmic Ark more. I played a few hours of Wizard of Wor, but alone it’s not as much fun… that being said I only played a minute of Frogs and Flies, which made me sad. I really enjoyed playing that one with my dad. River Raid is more fun than ever. No idea why, but it is.  Night Driver was a game I liked as a kid, but now just plain love. As a kid I remember complaining it was too hard and the crashes were so sudden.  Now I love it just for those reasons. OH… the honking and crashing… it’s magical.
Not to mention, cool Atari cover art...

I forgot how much fun Keystone Kapers was… and equally I don’t enjoy HERO as much as I did. That one was one of my friend Andy’s favorites. Maybe his end all be all favorite, in fact.  Not sure, he and I both loved Berserk, and THAT game still delivers.  Which reminds me of the day I saw Matt Zelesko hold still and let a laser beam pass through the space between the character’s body and head. Once I saw that, I had to master it… yeah, I can’t do that now.

 Kevin James Breaux
Still playing Atari games 30 years later
 

Saturday, May 12, 2012

In the beginning I played Atari...

My name is Kevin James Breaux and I was born Jan 25th 1974… and by 1981 my father had bought me my first video game system, the Atari 2600
Man, that thing was glorious. The games were so much fun and I can’t recall many that I played that I did not enjoy. In fact, some of them I still enjoy to this day. You have to give a game credit when you can pick it up, turn it on and start playing it in a matter of seconds: no save data to manage, no loading screen, no mulling over where you left off and what you still had to do. Just flip a switch and start having fun. Back then I was too young to know about “replayability”, I don’t even know if the word existed. BUT thinking back that was one of the strongest points of all Atari 2600 games, replay value. With no saves, you always started from the beginning, and always had fun.

1983 - Matt Zelesko and I playing Atari 2600. I think the game is Indiana Jones.

I truly loved my Atari 2600. It was originally installed on this tiny TV with maybe a nine or ten inch screen, but it was color. It sat in the corner of the rec-room, next to my dad’s giant TV… and I vividly remember playing as much as my parents would allow me.
I kept my Atari installed for many years, all the way up and through the early Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) days. In fact, I would still own my original Atari 2600 if my dad did not lend it to the destructive kids of some family friend. Oh, that’s another day I will never forget… my dad shows up one afternoon with a new Atari 2600 he bought from Kiddie City or the likes. It was the newer “sleeker” design, not the old 70s wood grain version that was just too rad to even believe.  So he handed me the new Atari 2600 and with it tells me my old one got broken. I might have been 12-13 at the time, but I was pretty darn upset.
Side note, four or five years ago I bought a replacement wood grain Atari 2600 off of eBay and packed it with my old games, which I still had a few of… I imagined one day I would reconnect it. This winter I nearly did. I actually unpacked it all and cleaned it off. It was right after my b-day.... You see, every year around my b-day I get extra retrospective. In fact, the past has been on my mind heavily for the last several months.
For about two months I left my Atari 2600 unpacked and ready to connect, sitting in my garage.  I was really ready to hook it up... it was almost a FIELD OF DREAMS moment where my subconscious was saying, “If you plug in the Atari they will come.”
But who will come? Aliens? Not Aliens, I hope. The original Activision programmers?  Now that would be totally cool. I would love to meet David Crane, he designed many of my favorite games, and yes, I would totally challenge that guy to a game of Decathlon


Still my favorite game

I recall many times that my friend, Matt and I, at the tender ages of 8-11, asked my dad to play Decathlon with us because our theory was only an adult could be strong enough to break the high scores… Growing up, my friends and I played that game all the way through high school and I did not reach the GOLD MEDAL score until college. (FYI – I took a picture of the score on the screen and mailed it to Activison.)

David Crane - you rock!

For years, and years, Mr. David Crane, my friends and I thought you must be some sort of super strong, genetically engineered, Übermensch, all because your high scores seemed unbeatable.  If I do finally connect my Atari 2600 in my garage, and you do come over to play, we can test that theory once and for all.


Kevin James Breaux
Gold Medal Winner
http://www.kevinbreaux.com/

Friday, May 11, 2012

Retro-Grades begins now.

Welcome to Retro-Grades!


In the past two years I have rebooted this blog a few times. It started off as a place for me to review NES games during a summer when I was playing and replaying a bunch of them. (great times, BTW) Then this blog transformed became a place for me to talk about all the systems beginning with my first one, the Atari 2600. 

Lately, I realized just what this blog really should be. It should be about my childhood, which was mainly spent in the 1980s. OK, I was born 1974, but in the 80s I became a gamer, a TV show enthusiast and a RPG game player. I consider myself luck to be a kid during the best years for toys and actions figures: G.I. JOE, Star Wars, Transformers, He-Man, Robotics, Megos... etc. You just can't beat those.

I often find my mind drifting to the past. I think those shows I enjoyed most, and the video games which filled my hours. Often I come to the question, would those things I loved back then still be cool now? Would I enjoy playing The Legend of Zelda now that I have spent 150 hours in SKYRIM?  Is StarBlazers still cool after watching things like High School of the Dead?

I guess I'm retrospective... So it dawned on me... I should start an autobiographical blog where I just post my thoughts about all the cool things from the 80s that I enjoyed.

So here we go.

Retro-Grades begins now.


Kevin James Breaux
Child of the 80's.
http://www.kevinbreaux.com/