About that time we decided that if we could get realistic ball motion, we could build multiple-participant hockey games with joystick control over the players. We figured that sitting in a bar, and using the TV set which is usually perched on a shelf above the booze, we could get a hell of game going if the action were challenging enough. Out of that idea came circuitry that moved the ball in a realistic fashion; that is, the ball moved in the direction into which it was hit by the puck-spots and with a velocity proportional to how hard it was hit. To this we added 4-wall-bounce and presto, we had ourselves a fantastic hockey game. We could dribble the ball, glove it, shoot it across the ice, hand it off to other players; and an adjustment changed the ice conditions from fast to sloppy to give beginners a chance.
How did we do it? Basically, what we did was to take the derivative of the paddle speed in two coordinates, i. e. , the rate-of-change of paddle motion in the horizontal and in the vertical direction. Then, we stored these values of dedt in a sample-and-hold circuit at the moment of paddle-and-ball intercept and used this voltage to drive the puck generator circuits. All this has long since become a part of our extensive patent portfolio, which by now adds up to well over fifty U. S. and world wide patents, so you can read all about it if you like. I might add that we built a similar Hockey Game a couple of years ago in T2L which also plays a terrific game. It still occupies the coffee break periods of a new generation of TV game engineers at Sanders, because it plays about 5 times as well as anything out there so far; only GI's brand new ball game LSI chip which was shown for the first time just last week at the CES Show, comes close to the action of our Skate-N-Score Hockey Game. I might also add that Skate-N-Score is strictly a competition piece–you either play someone who is your peer or you wind up with a lopsided score. For that reason I never play against the guys in my TV Game lab who are addicted to the game. There is no point in volunteering to take a 12 to 2 shellacking.
This brings up another point: in the past, manufacturers of TV Games have paid close attention to a rule that says: "You shall design games such that almost anyone can play almost immediately without reading instructions and such that he can score points right away." These guidelines are normally adhered to by designers of coin-operated TV Games for all the obvious reasons. As a result, when you first expose someone to a game of the Skate-N-Score variety, the initial reactions generally are often negative. If your participant is over 35 years old, his first comment will almost invariably be: "How do you score with this damn thing?"–Younger people generally get the hang of it in a few minutes and then proceed to have a hell of a good time.
Now, this presents a real problem in the sense that judgment on new home TV games is generally passed prior to their public sale by such people as department store buyers, mail order buyers, and management people of prospective TV Game manufacturers who depend on GI, MOS Technology, National Semiconductor, T. I., or other IC manufacturers to provide the LSI devices for their TV Game products.
Jerry Eimbinder opens activities at Gametronics.
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