ACROSS LITE PUZZLE: [ TRON AND QUARTERED]
PROGRAM: [Across Lite]
PROGRAM: [Java]
PRINTOUT PUZZLE: [ TRON AND QUARTERED]
PROGRAM: [Adobe Acrobat]
Heads up, this might be slightly easier if you were into video games from the early ’80s. If you weren’t, well, this could be a slog. In short, I’m looking at you, Howard Barkin! You’d better post the fastest time on the Leaderboard.
Just throwing it out there: I was completely and utterly convinced I was going to be a designer of video games when I grew up. You could make an argument that I still haven’t grown up so my dream could still be fulfilled. Or, you could make an argument that “puzzlemaker” and “video game designer” aren’t really that far removed from each other. I have, after all, made a few puzzles for a video game. It hasn’t come out yet, in case you were wondering.
So what made me change my mind? I think it was around the mid ’90s when the controls became utterly ludicrous. Not only did you have to navigate 2+ joysticks and an entire arsenal of buttons, but also you had to memorize pages and pages and pages of combinatory moves just to play the fecking things. I guess I just never saw the fun in that at all. Part of the appeal of the golden era of video gaming was the simplicity of the early games. Not that they were simple, far from it. But rather since the technology was so limiting the game play had to more than make up for it. Asteroids? Where was the frills in that? Didn’t matter, cuz you could play the hell out of it. Tetris? Not for me, thank you, but holy God, Liz will kill hours with that one. There was some beauty and art in those very minimalist games.
Anyway, share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
At 7-something, not so bad for this non-gamer. ZAXXON and QIX were new (or dimly known) to me. Found this really enjoyable. Medium-tough and entertaining. Also like that the very middle square was a “Z” is the last letter of the alphabet, and the last letter I put in the grid. SW felt a little wonky, but not in a deal-breaker kind of way.
rp
Seeing as only PONG and PACMAN were familiar to me, I didn’t feel too bad about having SAXXON for ZAXXON (rase/raze are both legit). Not so happy about WALDEN for GOLDEN, but hey, it’s a pond, right? (MALA seemed OK, AWE made no sense — but couldn’t figure it out).
Also, who are NED and MAUDE? Who is DEB? Why is ‘bounding?’ ASEA?
@David L
Ned Flanders is a character on the Simpsons
Deb Amlen is a frequent commenter on Rex Parker’s blog
The bounding main is the ocean
I had to google liam oasis to get the 17d pun.
I liked your write up on video games. It brought back memories of Turbo Pascal, an entire programming environment that shipped on a 5 1/4 floppy disk.
Ouch! Hand up for RASE/SAXXON. But, with no cheater buttons resorted to, and zero gaming experience (55 is too old to start) this is my best performance on a BEQ hard. Okay, bring on the “easiest hard ever” comments…
Thanks! See, I don’t know video games, I don’t watch the Simpsons, and I’m new to BEQ’s puzzles.I like to think I’m learning, tho…
@MitchS
You Young whippersnapper. I’m on Medicare already I still have a working Apple ][e with dual 5¼ floppies and an Apple Colorwriter matrix printer, A TI-99A with a cassette recorder wired as an I/O device, along with a bunch of game cartridges, and the Atari 2600 pictured above with a few dozen games and assorted joysticks. I can also remember when Breakout was state of the art.
@David L
Deb Amlen is also a prolific constructor in an edgy sort of way as well as a humorist and an overall great person.
Stewart
Oh, man. We had to get rid of our CoCo when I was a kid because my mom was too addicted to Zaxxon. (Well, that, and the fact that the neighbor’s kid spilled grape juice on it.) And I ran through a lot of batteries playing Qix on my Game Boy once upon a time. So, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that this puzzle was in my wheelhouse.
I had “help” since we had recently done a Gaffney puzzle and the meta was a 80’s video game, think it was Q*Bert. I had checked out all the games to get the answer and voila QIX and ZAXXON the two I didn’t know were on there. I found this closer to Medium as far as my typical BEQ experiences.
Happy day. I knew those allowance quarters would finally pay off in some small way.
Wonder if FROGGER EBERT would fit in there… probably not close enough phonetically.
Also liked the bonus clue in the center at 28-D, and the extra respect to Deb Amlen. (Hey, Deb!)
Thanks for the mini-shout-out. Hope I did ya proud.
Unfortunately, Game over for now, gotta go. Thanks for that theme!
Awesome puzzle! I enjoyed that one more than just about any other since the Space Invaders diagramless.
i was kinda bummed “berzerk” was included seeing it taught us all robots are incapable of processing diagonals… important shit once those metal bastards turn on us.
i already knew the theme answers because i helped brendan develop this theme, but most of it (and all of the grid) was his, so i can say this with a bit of impartiality: amazing puzzle. one of my favorites of 2010.
and howard, way to step up to the plate!
wasn’t included… sorry.
…and no reference to either buckner or garcia.
Thanks to you too Joon, for your part in this pixelated creation. (The boxes in the puzzle take me back to the days of sprite gfx, ah yes).
QIX is an underrated, deceptively simple and maddeningly frustrating game. Also visually, aesthetically pleasing in a mathematical way, for its time. Less is sometimes more. If you can find a version of it around, try it out. (Never did get the hang of it myself).
I never was into video games (did good on this puzzle except for LASES instead of whatever it turned out to be, and had Galaxy instead of Galaga despite knowing BigD couldn’t)) be otherwise. I did get deeply into Brickbreaker when I first got a Blackberry about eight years ago, and it was a perfect game. Then I got a new Blackberry a few years later and they changed the game from 8 levels to 34 and it sucks (not to mention there’s a glitch in the program that sometimes has the ball or whatever it is break the plane of the game and simply disappear, which happens to me all the time including the time I had 117,000 points and about 30 lives). At eight levels it was a beautiful thing. At 34 it is a slog.