China Syndrome

[Discoalucard]

hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/chinasyndrome/chinasyndrome.htm

Not too familiar with this game, but I've heard the name before. I always thought it was tied in with the late 70s movie but I guess I was wrong.

This game was actually mentioned in that Lucky Wander Book I made a post about a few days ago. The examinations of the games are tongue-in-cheek, but the author wrote it off as one of the many poor quality titles that led to the console crash. Obviously Jave thinks much more highly of it.

[zzz]

Bad-fucking-ass.

This is the kinda shit I like to see here.

[ReyVGM]

BTW, you see those short horizontal lines on all the pics?
That is an emulator issue, it shouldn't be showing that.

The emulator that does that to the images is Stella. The other 2600 emus I've tried don't do that to the games.
I'm not sure if it's because those lines are a part of the overscan in the real game and the other emus hide it or if it's because of the emu itself.

It would be best if they are cropped out or colored as the background to hide them.

[conn]

China Syndrome is the best title ever.

[Jave]

A lot of people seem to think the game is tied in to the movie. I think it's because a lot of movie tie-in games on the 2600 are only very vaguely related to the films, and with this one, you really need to see the instruction booklet in order to know otherwise. The first time I played it, I thought it had something to do with a disease, and those particles were supposed to be germs.

I really like the way you used all the meltdown pics in succession like that, really gives a taste of what I mean when I talk about how slow it is.

Oh, and ReyVGM, I honestly didn't notice those lines when going through my snapshots, but I definitely want to do some more write-ups for 2600 games, so I'll photoshop them out in the future.

[onoff456]

Wow I never thought HG101 would go that far back. Amazing this game had more content written about it than the recent Pro Wrestling article.

The phrase was then brought into pop culture through a 1979 movie of the same name, which had something to do with a nuclear plant covering up the fact that the facility was not quite up to code

Wasn't that movie inspired on a nuclear plant accident at the time?

[zzz]

Jul 31, 2008 20:26:39 GMT -5 Jave said:

... I definitely want to do some more write-ups for 2600 games...

This is awesome.

Aug 1, 2008 0:38:30 GMT -5 onoff456 said:

Wow I never thought HG101 would go that far back.

It's gone farther back twice before.

[Jave]

Jul 28, 2008 17:19:49 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

... the author wrote it off as one of the many poor quality titles that led to the console crash.

Technically speaking, it is a budget title, and the flooding of cheap games did oversaturate the market... so I've read anyway.

Aug 1, 2008 0:38:30 GMT -5 onoff456 said:

Wasn't that movie inspired on a nuclear plant accident at the time?

The Three Mile Island disaster happened shortly after the release of the movie, and actually hurt the movie's popularity. Sort of a "too soon" kind of thing.

[Jave]

...which isn't much nowadays, but on the 1982, the ability to put an Atari game on pause was very forward thinking.

Should say "but back in 1982..."

A normal more, two hard modes, one of which starts off on level 1, the other on level 5 (for score lowering purposes) and an easy mode, which is essentially normal mode, except the game loops on level 4 instead of progressing.

A normal more should be a normal mode.