Vintage Video Games: The Latest Blip : Computer Game Producers Look Back to the Past for New Hits at Electronics Show

The walls of Annex A at the Las Vegas Convention Center were reverberating with the electronic sounds of software publishers from around the world intensely competing for attention from the nearly 100,000 attendees of the biannual Consumer Electronics Show.

Not even as benign an icon as Mickey Mouse was exempt from the booming hype. The virtues of an upcoming video game, Mickey Mania, declared in huge letters and the ominous tones of an announcer: “NO GOOFY! NO MINNIE! NO MERCY!”

In the midst of all this cacophony, game developer Rawson Stovall sat quietly before a computer screen in the two-story booth erected for the show by his employer, Activision Inc. Stovall, who has tousled blond hair and a cherubic face, is all of 22.

*

But on this rainy afternoon in Vegas, he was feeling nostalgic.

“I’ve been in the business for 12 years,” Stovall said, explaining that he began writing syndicated reviews of video games at age 10. He remembers with fondness those games developed for the pioneering home computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Atari and Commodore, neither of which have been made for years.

But at CES--where there was precious little to be found in the way of innovative or breakthrough software for the home computer arts and entertainment field--there was good news for fans of those vintage computers and the far more gentler games played on them.

Retro was one of the few discernible trends in computer games shown at CES.

Activision--which began distributing games in 1980--has reconfigured 15 of its vintage Atari games for a Windows CD-ROM, the Atari 2600 Action Pack, scheduled for release in March.

In doing so, they have not, Stovall said, done anything to enhance the games technologically to fit in with those that now routinely feature video clips, 3D-rendering, stereo sound and textured backgrounds.

“They are just like we remembered them,” he said with excitement as he navigated a primitively drawn boat up a two-dimensional grid in River Raid, a game originally released in 1982. Then he switched to Kaboom, a classic game in which you have to move the cursor back and forth to catch little bombs as they fall from the sky.

Kaboom might be primitive by today’s standards, but few who played this addictive game back then could put it away after just a couple of rounds.

“I can almost hear my mom say, ‘Are you doing your homework?’ ” he said as he expertly maneuvered the cursor.

No one gets killed in the Atari games he demonstrated--even a chicken that’s run over while trying to cross the road in Freeway was resurrected immediately after getting hit. There were no resounding “splat” sounds as characters got hit, no blood spattered across the screen.

These vintage programs, almost forgotten in this age of virtual reality, are the computer games version of comfort food.

Over in Annex B, which was just as loud and raucous, was the booth inhabited by 7th Level, a Texas company best known for its recent release of “A Complete Waste of Time,” a CD-ROM containing video clips from the Monty Python TV series.

Company officials there were previewing a February release, Take Your Best Shot, which updates what many of us think of as the first video game, Pong.

For those too young to remember, Pong featured a white video blip that would bounce at increasing speeds. Your basic mission was to hit it with your cursor-paddle when it came to your side of the screen.

*

This revamping of the game sticks basically to that regimen, with one major addition--in the middle of the screen are animated heads created by Bill Plympton, best known to the current gaming generation for his work on MTV.

When the bouncing ball hits the head, it contorts in a funny way and sends the ball off in an unpredictable direction.

This witty CD-ROM for Windows also features variations on the classic Breakout game.

There were, of course, numerous high-tech new home computer games on display. Attracting a lot of attention were the long-awaited releases from Rocket Science, a Bay Area company headed by several superstars of the game development world. (Times Mirror, parent company of The Times, is one of the investors in Rocket Science.)

Its first couple of games--Loadstar, designed by Hollywood veteran production designer Ron Cobb, and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, based on a comic book series--are already out for game cartridge machines and will soon be available for home PCs. Judging by the PC prototypes shown at CES, these action games don’t demonstrate the innovation that might have been expected from such a stellar group. It’s too soon, however, to judge how much fun they will be to play.

The folks at Synergy were showing L Zone, from the same Japanese director who created the cult favorite Gadget, but this stylish CD-ROM for a more adult crowd is not really new. L Zone, which sports the same spectacular graphic sensibility as Gadget, actually preceded Gadget in Japan.

Several CD-ROM movie tie-ins were on display. One of the more striking looking was Top Gun, scheduled for release in April, that seems to bring the complex world of flight simulators down to the level of us mere mortals.

*

And finally, the Doom folks were back with their latest release, Heretic, which features the same fast-moving shoot-’em-up action but combined this time with beautifully textured graphics by the Raven Software team. “Doom looked like it took place in a dark, underground sewer,” said Jay Wilbur, CEO of id Software that put out the phenomenally successful game.

“This game,” he said, gesturing toward Heretic, “looks like it’s in an airy, cathedral setting.”

“And,” he added with a laugh, “it’s got a lot of awesome new weapons.”

CES closed Monday, with everyone leaving the sensory overload of the trade show and returning to their places of work.

For anyone driving back to Los Angeles, there was no missing Desperado, advertised miles before its home at the Nevada/California border as the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster.

As you get into the Desperado car, you surrender all carry-on items before ascending 22 stories above the desert.

There is nothing virtual about the screams and peals of laughter that come as you plunge down the first hill at more than 90 miles per hour.

There are no video screens, no electronic soundtracks. In entertainment that goes back long before the first CD-ROM, there is truly no mercy.