I hadn’t seen ET since I was little (maybe 7 or 8). It was great to see it again.
The extent of my gaming experience is pretty much SNES and N64. I’ve only used other systems on a few rare occasions.
You can play almost all of the Apple IIgs and Apple ][ games at virtualapple.org. I’ve been playing Oregon Trail a lot lately.
Great podcast guys! You’ve proved that you go the extra mile each and every week for us.
Juan, it was GREAT hearing you on the podcast again! The connection was clear and it sounded like you were in the room with Chuck and Audra!
As far as Atari 2600 games, my favorite by far was Space Invaders. I ruined many Atari controllers playing that game. I also loved playing Pole Position and Pacman. The two worst games that I had and can remember now were probably ET and Journey Escape. But at least the Journey Escape game got me into their music, which I like to this day.
Question: Did you guys have Reese’s Pieces in the theater room while you were watching ET? I so want to go out and buy some after watching the movie this week. I’d have to agree with Sean that the peanut butter to chocolate ratio is perfect in the Reese Pieces, but my favorite little candy is still the Peanut M&M’s. Unlike Sean I thoroughly enjoy the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I do require milk to be on hand while eating any of it, though.
Another question: Did you actually watch the VHS taped version that Chuck put a picture up on Twitter earlier this week? I used to own a VHS copy, but ex-Mrs. Shooter either sold it or took it in the divorce. I was lucky enough to DVR an HD version of ET on HBO or Cinemax.
Yet another question: where did you acquire the Nintendo USB controllers?
Sean, as far as the adobe/ceramic tile style roofing goes, I understand that it is big down in your neck of the woods and in California and also possibly in places like Goergia and Florida too. However, where I grew up on the upper midwest lake regions the rage is aluminum roofs now. It fits the wood cabin style better. Allegedly the aluminum roofs last between 50-100 years, which is about the same as the ceramic tile roofs (50-70 years). They are both very expensive, though, from what I hear. All of this does not detract from the statment in the podcast that the ET house was a very expensive house. I always wanted to have a closet playhouse either for myself or my kids with a window in it. It’s like a tree fort in your very own house. And did you notice those heavy duty 2x4 stud and 3/4 inch plywood shelves in the garage? They could have held up the ET spaceship.
As far as what vehicle replaced the Ford Fairmont, didn’t the Ford LTD do that? And speaking of Ford LTD’s isn’t that Col John Casey’s car in the TV Series Chuck as well as Agent Kay’s car in Men in Black?
When the older brother Michael mentioned he had never driven forward before, that wasn’t entirely true. When Elliott is pretending to be sick, Michael backs the car down the driveway, but he backs it up too far and ends up in the street/cul-de-sac. He then puts it in forward and drives partway back up the driveway. It’s not the same as street driving forward, but it was forward nonetheless.
I looked around my house for my ET novel, but couldn’t find it. It’s either still at my parent’s house or it’s been given away by now, but shortly after the movie came out I ordered it through those grade school scholastic book order forms and read it several times. I would have been in 5th grade the fall after the movie was released. This is all going by memory, so I might be totally wrong, but the novel had some answers about what the ET’s were doing.
If I remember correctly (And I’m not saying that I am), the ET’s were part of a peaceful scientific race. ET’s ship was full of botanist. Their chore was to collect flora samples throughout a planet’s history. So they would go 10,000 to 100,000 years apart (yes time traveling) and see how the plant life was progressing. ET was sort of a special curious guy and was interested in this new civilization that had popped up. He knew they had a limited time before they had to leave, but strayed too far and was left behind. I hoped I remembered the novel correctly. Or maybe I am the one smoking the wacky weed. But if I am remembering correctly, hopefully this background is useful to someone.
I’m looking forward to Close Encounters next week!
~Shooter Out
Ooooh, thanks for the info - I just installed NES on my iphone, so am on a bit of a retro game kick right now (yes, I’m fully immersed in playing Burger Time. I love that game. Bite me. 
2 computer tidbits from the days of Yor:
I lived in Australia as a kid, and for a history/computer class we played this game where the whole idea was to look for some dinosaur eggs and assemble, I guess a dinosaur or something. There are some mini games at different points as you navigate around the map like a hangman type game as you sink into quicksand, or having to navigate in a dark cave and not hit the wall (but it’s dark, so you only see a small part of the cave at any given time) to retrieve the egg, and some kind of “science-y” thing where you’d have to find the right formula and mix the different colored dinosaur eggs to get the right ‘egg’. Does anyone know what game this is? I’ve been thinking about it since the podcast, and it’s bugging me that I don’t know what it is. Oh, and it was around '89-'90 when I played this game.
In a different school, they had these classes the kids choose to take during spring break, and I chose computer class. I pretty much learned nothing other than some simple BASIC commands and a whole lot of Prince of Persia, but I do remember feeling fantastic on figuring out how to write up “Losing My Religion” for the computer to play instead of “Happy Birthday” like we were instructed to do.
Shootz,
With Spacin’ Vaders, did you use the hack/glitch with the reset/select button to get the double firepower?
You’re right about the ET culture. You learn a lot more about the sequel novel, which I mentioned earlier in the thread. You might find it worth digging up. When ET gets back to the home planet, he is not regarded well…
Ferris,
Now that you mention it, I do remember the glich in Space Invaders that doubled the firepower. We didn’t know about it up front though, and it took a few months or years even before a friend showed it to me. It was awesome, though. It was like discovering what turbo can do in a car engine.
I never read the sequel novel to ET, but it sounds interesting. Thanks for backing me up. I thought I had strayed too far into fantasy land when I mentioned the time travel part. From what I hear of the sequel, it was written by the same woman that wrote the first one. Do you know if that’s the same woman that wrote the screenplay?
~Shooter Out
pardon the repeat, all, but this is important information that will be covered on the quiz. I don’t know if the screenplay people were involved in the creative direction of the second one, but I’d guess they supplied some of the source material.
I recall it being worth $5 or so, at least.
“Let me do the math here: Nuthin and a nuthin…”
As I said, the cars are different, but the companies are involved with each other. Besides, I’m no VW fan, besides of the Dharma Van. *wonders if he knows/gets the reference *
Ah, the Ford Fairmont! My dad had one for years, but his was silver with red and black fabric interior and an 8 track player. By the time he sold it to one of his co-worker’s kids, the ignition switch was broken and you didn’t need a key to start it. I have fond memories of being a kid in that car.
And Audra brought up the “table” arcade games. I knew what she meant as soon as she started talking! Our local pizza place always had them. The classics: PacMan, Donkey Kong, Centipede… I used to beg to go with my dad to pick up the pizza cause he would always give me a quarter to play.
Growing up, we never had a game console (unless you count the really pathetic games the sales guy threw in for our Commodore 64) until my sister won an original NES in some contest at school. It was the cheapo one that didn’t come with any games, though, and since my parents couldn’t afford to buy us any games, we had to borrow them from family and friends. I remember being ticked that my cousin didn’t give us the gun when he lent us Super Mario and Duck Hunt because I really sucked at Mario, but I could whoop some sorryBarb on Duck Hunt! LOL!
I gotta tell this story you just reminded me of. When my older brother got an NES, we mostly played Mario on it, but occasionally we played Duck Hunt. I don’t remember either of us being good at it. We’d one eye it and try a bunch of other methods, but nothing gave us consistent accuracy from my memory.
Anyway, we gave our mother a try. And, I kid you not when I say this. She shot from the hip and ducks fell all over the place! I was awed, and I’m sure my brother was too. I didn’t even try to replicate her method… No way I could hit them from the hip. d:
Finally, who here never shot at that infernal, laughing dog? d:
I loved the game Zork when I was about ten. My dad and I were huge C64 fans. We had the tape deck to save programs on. I remember spending enormous amounts of time to figure out Zork and ending up getting eaten in shadows about 1000 times. Then my dad brought home a map somebody at work gave him, and I realized I’d spent all that time on about 5% of the map.
I thought the best C64 game was Sid Meier’s Pirates. I was up past my bedtime many nights with that one.
Great podcast as always. When I hear Peter Coyote now, I can’t help but think about this great documentary “Commune”:
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Commune/70075790
Peter belonged to this commune in the 1970s, and all the members had names like John Leaf, Bill Tree, Jill Mountain, etc. Peter ended up with the best one though.
Did anybody else play Lost Vikings on NES? My brother and I used to play together - he’d play Eric, I’d play Olaf, and we’d trade off on Baelog depending on which combo of characters we needed to solve the puzzles.
A few years ago I found an emulator of the game but I really need to get some controllers - keyboarding just doesn’t work!