yet another updated version of AoI2 capsule

More things were added, I adopted the capsule layout style of "A Head in the Polls", and so on.

Unresolved questions: 1. Amy Wong has a Nobel Prize. - I don't think she does and I took the line out, but it's up to the group to come to consensus.

2. Was one of the robot characters from game Frenzy or Beserk? - I think it's Beserk, but it's been a while since I've seen either. I think Beserk came first, though.

• What is the title of the opening sequence cartoon?

• Who wrote "Christine"?

5. Where are Katrina & Xanthos (sp?) from? (meaning, where were these characters taken from? I like Jym's idea that they were gratuitously added, just like Scruffy was last AoI)

6. Was the picture of the guy in Dinkin Donuts logo a reference to Mayor Dinkins? Is there actually a mayor by that name? I can't remember.

7. Can you shoot more that one shot at a time in the original Space Invaders? I don't think you can, but I want input on this.

• What game is the blue key from?

9. Was the gross, neon-ish colors in Wizzen a knock on the technicolor of the Oz portion of the movie? I seem to recall my mother telling me something along these lines: color film was introduced during the middle of the filming the Wizard of Oz and they opted to use it to make the world seem "magical." Or maybe they went back and added color to a B&W film and that's why it looks the way it does.

As before, find errors, add comments, etc.
--Tom
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Episode Capsule Submission
Official Title: Anthology of Interest II
Episode Number: 3ACV18
First Airdate : Sunday January 6, 2002
Written by    : "I, Meatbag" by Lewis Morton
                "Raiders of the Lost Arcade" by David X. Cohen
                "Wizzen" by Jason Gorbett & Scott Kirby

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Opening theme promotion : Hey TiVo, Suggest This! Opening theme cartoon : <some Mickey Mouse bit?>

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Three stories unfold when Professor Farnsworth fine-tunes his "What If" machine. Bender discovers that if he were human, it would only take him a week to over-indulge and kill himself. Fry learns that his video game skills wouldn't be good enough to protect earth from Space Invaders if life were more like a video game. Leela wonders what would happen if she found her true home... but gets knocked out before she can see what the machine answers and dreams that her space ship crash lands on Planet Ozz and crushes an evil witch with ruby red boots.

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• The professor fine tunes his "What If?" machine with a hammer?

- The sign at Dinkin Donuts went from "Closed" to "Open" when human Bender entered, then back to "Closed" when he left?

- The glassware used for drinks at each table in the Academy of Science were beakers and Erlenmeyer & Florence flasks?

- The professor was able to determine the time of human Bender's death by taking only his pulse?

- As Donkey Kong jumps across the roof of the UN building, the floors underneath drop at an angle to form slopes just like the beginning of the first level of Donkey Kong?

- All of the "wakka wakka wakka" sounds the characters made when moving about were the same as those made by a moving Pac-Man who is eating dots?

- Three new ways to start the "What If?" machine: (1) Pulling a string like a speaking doll (2) Lighting incense and paying homage( 3) Pulling a large lever like a poker machine.

- The Centipede game screens in the war room background? Each screen was from a different zoom view of the same game.

- Zoidberg vomits a pixelated pretzel, key, and cherry after leaving the escape tunnel.

- The ship Fry was piloting was able to fire multiple shots at the Space Invaders. (see comment)

- The space invaders video game characters that descended from the ship were Donkey Kong, Brain Wave from Robotron: 2084, <Beserk or Frenzy> robot, Burger Time egg, and Q-bert.

• Scruffy the Janitor was the Man-Witch of the West?

_ The creatures who "resembled, but are legally distinct from the Lollypop Guild" consisted of Tiny Timbot, a Grunka Lunka, a mutant child, Cubert, the Neptunian couple from "A Tale of Two Santas", and a baby slug from Wormulon.

- Scarecrow Fry never complained that he wanted a brain, but everyone suggested that the Professor could give him one?

- Scarecrow Fry gently patted out the fire on his arm caused by Tin Man Bender's whiskey induced burp, instead of freaking out?

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- I, Robot by Issac Asimov First story title

- T.G.I. Friday's D.U.I. Friday's

- Raiders of the Lost Ark Second story title

- Asteroids Deluxe Blue Vector Planet Express spaceship

- Battlezone Green Vector Tank

- Colin Powell, Pac-Man video game Colin Pac-Man, escape tunnels

- Super Mario Bros. video game Exit tunnel from Pac-Man escape tunnel

- Space Invaders Space Fight between Fry and Nintendoians

- Q-Bert, Donkey Kong, Burger Time, <Frenzy or Beserk>, Robotron Nintendians include characters from these games

- Zero Wing "All your bases are belong to us" (see comments)

- The Wizard of Oz Third story plot

- NBC Peacock in Oz world

- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory One of the Munchkins is an Oompa Loompa (or Grunka Lunka, as they are called in Futurama)

- Christine by <Stephen King or Stephen Kong> The book Fry reads from to try to scare a crow

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"Hey TiVo, Suggest This!"

O'ZORGNAX'S PUB Well Drinks $5 Sewer Drinks $2

MILATARI HQ

Signs on doors in Milatari HQ MISSLE COMMAND SECRETARY OF DEFENDER MOON PATROL

Logo on ProfessorLand Fun Bucks: "In Fun We Trust"

FAL1 (Futurama Alien Language #1) references:

1) TALE OF INTEREST (really nice graphics of the letters in this one, too)

• in the upper right hand corner of the Professorland Fun Bucks: TOXIC INK

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Okay, here's something about [3ACV18] that's really silly, but it has bugged me: Human Bender says "butt" instead of "ass." Why? Note that "ass" is his favorite word, followed by "daffodil," "metal," "shiny," etc. He couldn't really make his customary use of "shiny" and "metal," but what stopped him from saying "ass?"

It wasn't an ass-less episode though. We got some A-S-S from Fry when he got the high score.

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Katrina, Xanthor - Like Scruffy, these are characters who gratuitously became sudden additions in an Anthology of Interest.

The toaster's third appearance as a character: s02e19 Mother's Day: "The toaster's not working right either" s02e08 Raging Bender: "I've taught the toaster to feel love"

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TiVo is one of many TV set recorders available in the market. These devices allow you to record programs on television without the confusion of programming a VCR. Among the features on these devices includes one where the recorder would automatically record your favorite shows as well as record shows that the device feels you may like.

Zero Wing is a mediocre shooter video game that was released for the Sega Genesis in Japan and Europe, yet never arrived on American shores. However, it was able to receive some popularity in America thanks to one thing: the Europeon version of the game, thanks to some awful translating to English, has some of the funniest examples of bad translation. Among them is a simple quote going, "All Your Bases Are Belong To Us." That line has quickly become a recurring joke on the Internet, even inspiring a song about it. http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/index.shtml

The original version of Space Invaders would only allow the player to have one shot active at a time on screen, probably due to processing requirements for the CPU to keep up with multiple projectiles from the same shooter.

When Q-bert steps off the ship, he says one line in his characteristic backwards fashion. Thanks to miraculous PC technology, reversed wav & mp3 files were created to unravel Q-berts line: "Where can a guy get some pants around here?" Fitting indeed, since Q-bert only wears a shirt! http://www.nnyconline.de/media/sounds/gamechara.mp3

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Joe Klemm Tom Georgoulias Ken Lilly Jym Dyer Boldra Luther Miller Robert J. Muldoon Michael Herzog various posts from alt.tv.futurama

Bezerk - 1980 by Stern Frenzy - 1982 by Stern The robot was in the style of Bezerk, plus Frenzy had a more limited release.

Stephen King I think.

Yes, David Dinkins was mayor of "old" New York from 1990 to 1993, his term was between those of Ed Koch and Rudy Guiliani.

Nope, just played the emulated version and you can't

Like some of the other posts, I think this was more of a general reference to the old games that required a key of some sorts.

Tom Georgoulias schrieb:

just >>like Scruffy was last AoI)

The second guy looked very much like a Romulan to me, and I think his name was Zenn-Vorr (or at least I think that is how you would write a Romulan name, I'm not much of a Trekkie myself)

Well in the Atari 2600 version the default was one shot, but not because of the CPU. There is a cheat to allow 2 shots, see http://www.atariage.com/software_hints.html?SoftwareLabelID=462

-locat

Totally doesn't. She was being singled out in particular for not having one.

Yeah, just one at a time. A lot of clones behave differently though, and I think some even had powerups and such to give multiple shots.

First game I remember playing that had that was Wolfenstein 3D. But there was probably something earlier.

I always thought that the movie was colorized sometime later, but I did a web search and it turns out your mother was basically right -- it was made right when color was becoming possible, and the studio wanted it to be in color as a kind of showpiece for how cool they were. Apparently this is why there are silver slippers in the book and colorful ruby ones in the movie.

Alright, that's all I wanted to know about that movie. Moving on....

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:00:23 GMT, Tom Georgoulias wrote:

Color started being used in the 1920s, a limited two-color system with red and blue-green prints. The full three-color system was used starting in 1932. Disney was one of the first to use it, for cartoons including "The Three Little Pigs".

Technicolor was much more expensive than b&w (remember, not just the negatives but all the prints sent to each theater had to be in color as well), but it was popular so the studios used it more and more in the late 30s, including in the 1939 "Wizard of Oz". I think the b&w to color transition, plus the garish Oz, was a way of saying, "Hey, everybody! COLOR!"

"Oz" was not colorized, and despite jokes about it, the Kansas segments are still in b&w.

"Silly Symphonies" was the official term for the series of color shorts :)

I doubt it. More likely it was to make an extreme contrast between reality/Kansas and dreamworld/Oz both symbolically and literally.

That is, we have Dorothy living in her drab little B&W reality back in Kansas, who is transported to the mystical, magical (and colorful) world of Oz. It makes the two worlds contrast with one another far more effectively. And think if it had been reversed, Kansas in color and Oz in B&W. Despite being more accurate (in that dreams tend to be in B&W), would the shift have made as much sense? I mean, would we want our dreamworlds to be MORE drab than reality?

Basically, I think its use was a little more deliberate and planned w/in the context of the story than to say 'Hey, look at what we can do with technoology'. That would describe Star Wars Episode 1 much more effectively.

&c &c.

Lyle

Tom Georgoulias wrote in message news:...

Thanks to miraculous PC technology, reversed wav & mp3

Q-bert doesn't even wear a shirt! He's completly naked, save for some fur all over him. I don't really think they make shirts that go over a big nose like that.

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:00:23 GMT, Tom Georgoulias wrote:

No she doesn't. The professor says "Take that everyone who doesn't have a Nobel prize and that includes you Amy". Amy then cries because her parent's money couldn't buy her a Nobel prize. Unlike the Golden Globe that Pia Zadora's parent's bought for her.

Like the dictionary, it was written by Stephen King.

Yes, it's a single shot at a time. If you missed, you were helpless until it hit the top of the screen.

Another point on the Space Invaders sequence. Shooting through your own defenses so you could shoot back in safety was a strategy generally used by beginners. Better players realized that it only provided limited protection for a very short time and you were trapped in one place while you used it.

Doom, Doom 2, Quake II and many other games used various keys. I have seen blue keys in a bunch of games.

--Larry

Larry wrote:

Me too, but I was wondering if there was one in particular that fit the time frame in which they drew material from.

OK, I took the input on Q-bert, Berserk, Stephen King, Space Invader shots, and Amy Wong's lack of a Nobel Prize and modified the capsule. You can see the pseudo-HTML version here:

http://www.io.com/~tomg/3ACV18.html

or I can post it again to the newsgroup. Whatever works for everyone else.

I haven't added anything about the Wizard of Oz color scheme yet, but there are some good comments made by Mathew Miller, Alan Hamilton, and Lyle McDonald that need to go in. I guess I can summarize those, unless someone else wants to do it. ;)

someone already mentioned Wolfenstein 3d (which was the proto first person shooter from Id, that ultimately beget Doom, Quake and a billion others). Probably one of the earlier, if not the earliest, games to use the idea of colored keys/doors to make progress. But it came far later (well, a few years anyhow, which is a long time so to speak) in video game history than any of the other games referenced.

Lyle

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002 04:45:44 GMT, Lyle McDonald wrote:

Just a historical point: Castle Wolfenstein was a 2D-monochrome maze game. It's "Graphics" were mostly alphanumeric characters and lines/corners. I played it on an Apple ][ in about 1977-79. Wolfenstein 3D came later.

--Larry

So, no blue keys?

Everyone:

I think I'm going to leave the blue key reference off of the capsule. It's probably just a generic video game joke so we won't nit-pick it to death.

Did find a nice tidbit elsewhere. One of the Lollypop Guild members that I described as a mutant child is actually Hermes' son Dwight. D'oh, what a mistake!

My count reveals there are still two outstanding questions:

• What is the title of the opening sequence cartoon?

5. Where are Katrina & Xanthos (sp?) from? (meaning, where were these characters taken from?

Anyone want to take a stab at researching these?

I plan to integrate the Wizard of Oz color comments into the capsule tonight and post the updated version on my homepage later. I guess I can maintain it and host it for the indefinate future, unless someone else wants to take it.

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 01:31:19 GMT, Tom Georgoulias wrote:

Hi, I'm a lurker here.. I just wanted to say that the blue key reference is actually from the old Atari 2600 game "Adventure" it was one of the items you picked up to get around in the game... ^^ hope this helps.

Lurk better, we already went through this. Adventure had a black,white and yellow key (I have an emulated version on my 'puter as well as a walkthrough someone did). There was no blue key.

Lyle

Zubatto wrote:

As someone else pointed out, Adventure didn't have a blue key. Since I was intrigued about why everyone (including myself) has made this assumption, I dug up some stuff on Adventure. Here goes: The 3 colored keys (gold, white, black) corresponded to similarly colored castles. There is a blue labyrinth, but it does not have its own key. I think that's what is causing the confusion.

Man, it's been a long time since I've seen some of those screenshots! Check em out for a reality check:

http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1

Castle Wolfenstein and Return to Castle Wolfenstein were both very graphically based games where you as BJ Blaskowicz invade a series of connected rooms in a Nazi bunker to kill Hitler. You collect bullets, grenades and passes to get further into the game. But it wasn't text/ASCII based. If there was an earlier ASCII Wolfenstein game, I don't recall it (you may be confusing it with a dungeon crawl game that was, an is, still popular that was ASCII based, the name of which I can't rememeber now).

And nerd trivia, there was an unauthorized 'remake' (a hack basically) of Castle Wolfenstein called 'Return to Castle Smurfenstein' where the nazis were replaced by blue smurfs, along with a few other changes.

http://evlweb.eecs.uic.edu/aej/smurf.html

This page also has some pics of the original Wolfenstein game.

Lyle old-skool nerd

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:24:21 GMT, Lyle McDonald wrote:

It's the same game. The walls of the maze were extended ASCII characters (as I recall). There were some graphics, but "mostly" alphanumerics were used to draw things where possible. Since it ran on a 1.4 Mhz 8 bit (6502) machine with up to 48K of RAM, they had to conserve memory and clock time to make the game run in "real time".

I only played it a few times, and it was a current game at the time, so I cannot vouch for too many details. I do remember that if you found a trunk with medals in it, you could keep taking more no matter how many you took. I never found a use for them, or any way to tell how many you had.

--Larry

--Larry

Hmm, very odd. I fired up my Apple II emulator (Catakig) and took a screenshot of the game I'm thinking of. Beyond Castle Wolfenstein by Muse software, has a 1984 date on it. Didn't have medals as far as I know, but did have chests that took time to search but you'd get keys, grenades, bullets and stuff.

http://www.onr.com/user/lylemcd/wolf.html

Definitely not ASCII. Cruddy graphics (about par for the time) but not ASCII.

All I can figure is that Muse might have done an earlier, pure ASCII game that you're thinking of. This wasn't uncommon during that time period. For example, the most annoying game every written (the Prisoner 2, based on the tv show of the same name) had an earlier pure ASCII version (that was nearly identical, just with text characters instead of poorly drawn graphics).

Other than that, we're thinking of different games.

Lyle

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 21:48:05 GMT, Lyle McDonald wrote:

I never heard of this one, it must be another intermediate game in the long linage. Most of the chests had bullets and grenades etc. But, the medals came up from time to time.

I know that I played it on my friends Apple ][ before (or just after) I went to college in 1979.

This one is in glorious color. The first one I played was in monochrome, like the Apple ][ itself.

So it's (at least): Castle Wolfenstein Beyond Castle Wolfenstein Wolfenstein 3D Doom Doom II Quake Quake II Quake III Arena

Quite a lineage for a video game. Perhaps the longest, and it's still going after 23+ years.

It may not have been all ASCII, but it was cruder than the screen shot you showed. The handgun was the letter 'L'.

--Larry

Larry wrote:

Is this what you're thinking of ? :

http://www.ufpel.tche.br/~snoopy/jogos/wolfen_e.htm

Similar (but more primitive) graphics, 1981 release.

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 00:59:22 -0500, Suzanne Archibald wrote:

That looks a lot like it. My friends Apple was monochrome though. I guess it could have been as late as 1981 that he got it.

Thanks, --Larry

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 05:23:39 GMT, [email] (Larry) spewed forth:

You forgot last year's "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", which I'm halfway through and disappointed to not see any giant blue "GUTEN TAG!" guy yet.

Oh, and Doom III is due soon. Like WarCraft III. Heh.

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 05:23:39 GMT, [email] (Larry) spewed forth:

Oh, and in the previous reply I forgot all about "Spear of Destiny"

It must have been an earlier game then.

Well, Doom, etc weren't really in a direct line from the first Wolfenstein games.

Wolf 3d was the proto first person shooter, and essentially invented the genre (although pundits could argue that some of the early dungeon crawls like Akalabeth or the early Ultima Dungeons predated even that as they involved a first person view down 3-d ish corriders). There is also a recent Return to CAstle Wolfenstein which just came out. BJ is back and he's kickin some Nazi ass.

Had to have been an earlier game, then, all I can figure.

Lyle

Ok, this was bugging the crap out of me. But I am easily bugged. ;)

So I downloaded the rom for the original Wolfenstein game and screenshotted it for comparison to the Beyond. Both are here:

http://www.onr.com/user/lylemcd/wolf.html

The 1984 version had slightly better graphics (esp. note differences between the main character). In monochrome (my emulator is color, actually emulating an Apple IIe) I can see how the original would have looked like text.

Lyle can finally rest <G>

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 15:55:20 GMT, Lyle McDonald wrote:

Yeah, me too.

That does look familiar. Less ASCII based than my memory of it. Then again, I haven't seen it in 20 years.

--Larry

I vaguely recall having to crankstart my Apple IIc so memory can be misleading.

It ran on ethanol, right?

Lyle kids today

Perhaps you saw Rogue around the same time?

<http://www.wichman.org/roguehistory.html> <http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/01/27/nethack/print.html>

Ooohh! Commander Keen!!! Not 3D, but you defintely needed to find keys.