Atari Had It Right

Posted Wednesday, January 30, 2008, at 8:25 AM

---------------------Please Insert Coin------------------------

On January 29th, Asteroid TU24, the latest asteroid destined to destroy Earth, passed by without incident, somewhere outside the orbit of the Moon. (Ironically, the Moon is actually the much greater danger, since it makes people crazy. And turns them into wolves.)

But the thing that surprised me is that, based on this radar image taken by the Arecibo Radio Telescope and Byrd Radio Telescope at Green Bank, Virginia, asteroids look exactly as they were portrayed in the video game I used to play back in the 1980s.

What else did they have right, I wonder?

Comments
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Better Asteroids than E.T for the 2600..what a terrible game that was.

-- Posted by EVANJACKSON! on Wed, May 28, 2008, at 2:04 PM

This calls to mind the scene in the Simpsons in which Bart plays a real pinball game for the first time and is amazed by the quality of the graphics.

-- Posted by kenteutsch on Tue, Feb 5, 2008, at 9:55 AM

Atari dates me............ I grew up on pinball machines with mechanical bumpers and flippers and lights and rotating wheels with numbers for scores..... and real bells in the machine........ Pac man was high tech to me...... and here i'm manipulating a mouse............ small world..... the world is flat...............

-- Posted by Johnny Yuma on Mon, Feb 4, 2008, at 11:19 PM

oh man, i cant believe other people aren't popping up with Atari jokes. come on people, if you shoot straight up through your defense you can kill more aliens, if you keep going to the right you will end up on the left side of the screen :)

haven't we learned anything from Atari? i know i learned that ET was a much better movie than video game and that if you can keep swinging from vines, jumping over monkeys and deep sea dive, you can accomplish anything. Except beat my high score at Yars Revenge.

-- Posted by jonboon on Sun, Feb 3, 2008, at 4:55 AM

you can easily pass small ponds by jumping on the heads of alligators.

-- Posted by jonboon on Fri, Feb 1, 2008, at 12:12 AM

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Ken Teutsch

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