Word: screening
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...plastic box he held in one hand-"is crazy. It just doesn't make any sense that I've spent all morning twiddling this knob." Then his expression changed to a high-voltage gloat: "But look at that score!" The readout on the small, gray, liquid crystal screen said 542, which is middling-titanic for Blockbuster, the best of several mind-destroying games that can be played on the midget console. Blockbuster is a test of reflexes and anticipation; twiddling the machine's knob moves an electronic paddle back and forth across the bottom...
...Fight, as in Boxing, two tiny figures -moving pictographs about ¾ in. high that can crouch, jump and do battle-face each other and fight. The miniaturization is astonishing. Sound effects are imaginative and frequent; when a spaceman gets zapped (a pictograph showing smashed robot parts flashes on the screen), a descending scale of cheerful beeps is heard. The trouble with Bambino's products is that while the gadgetry is brilliant, the games themselves are not very interesting. The problem is not restricted to Bambino; an observer suspects that in many cases (Microvision and Speak & Spell are notable exceptions...
...games that succeed will work because they use their memory chips and lighted readouts to create melodrama. The best example now in production is a brilliant quarter-arcade game called Space Invaders. It is a reaction-time contest: shoot down the massed, marching aliens shown on the big TV screen before they shoot you. The refinements are satanic. The player has four blockhouses behind which to hide his man, but as the blockhouses catch fire under attack, they crumble. As the sound effects become more ominous, the aliens begin to shoot faster and more accurately. Blast them all -whew...
Meryl Streep is America's finest movie actress, and Dustin Hoffman gives his best performance since The Graduate, but the kid, Justin Henry, steals the screen...
...million other Sesame Street products. Oh boy! And then we can watch Captain Kangaroo. And Mr. Rogers. And watch the picture on the screen fade into a little tiny dot and then linger on forever before finally dying. And dull. So we'll watch the Christmas tree lights until TV comes on again in the morning. Merry Christmas