Shockwave sucks. Well, let's be more specific. Shockwave games suck. The ones that I've seen are quite simple and slow. Probably because it's not an optimized engine and it's designed to be generic. Good looking, although the animation is rather primitive. The reason I'm bringing this up is that The Mummy DVD says that it comes with a cool game. First of all, the game is downloaded over the Internet, which is kind of lazy in my mind. The other thing is that the game was just a simple little thing you'd find in an old electronic game.

This reminds me of the electronic handheld games that I used to play when I was a kid. Before GameBoys, most handhelds were either LED-based (light emitting diodes) or less often, LCD-based (liquid crystal display). LED handhelds were just little red blips, occassionally green blips. Hard to imagine (and not that I ever noticed) that blue LEDs have only within the last couple of years become feasable. LCD games were not like LCDs of today, with hundreds of pixels in each dimension. These were block LCDs, with pregenerated pictures embedded in the screens, that lit up on command. It gave those games a distinctive appearance, as the images only appear in the same places on the screen.

One of my first handhelds was a Battlestar Galactica game. This was an LED game, with the playing field being a rectangle three spaces wide and about twelve deep. A picture of the Galactica is at the bottom, in the middle. I think you're just a gunner, firing a pulse that travels from the bottom to the top. You have a lever control to move the pulse left and right as it travels. And also a fire button to launch the pulse, only one pulse at a time, with a second or two to recharge after the pulse leaves the top of the field.

Cylon fighters travel down at varying speeds, although always much slower down than the pulses up, yet not so slow that you get two shots at any one fighter. The fighters follow a random path, although always going down. If the fighter hits the Galactica -- leaves the bottom of the field from the middle position -- then the game is over. Since the cylons move randomly a missed fighter will only hit the Galactica one out of three times. The game is also over after twenty cylons make their attack runs. Scoring is based on how far up the field you hit the fighter.

The game is very reflex oriented. The only strategy is when to fire. You can try to anticipate the cylons and fire early, hoping that when the fighter appears you have the reflexes to hit the fighter. Or you can be more conservative and wait until a cylon appears before firing, although in this case you won't hit it high enough up to get the maximum points. Simple game but quite addictive.

Another game I had was a football game, also LED based. The field is about 12 wide and 5 high, and you're trying to go left to right (or the opposite way if you're the other player). You only play the quaterback and switch sides when the ball is turned over. You have four downs to score a touchdown, no field goals in this game. Controls are move left, right, or forward. There is also a pass button which can throw the ball over one defender but the second defender will intercept. Once you run all the way to off the field you wrap around and keep going until you score.

Once again, a simple game and quite fun when you're a kid. Passing was hard as your receivers move randomly so you sometimes throw the ball and they move out of the way. The LEDs are only red, with your side being brighter. Running was much easier, and it involved going to one side of the field to draw the defen- ders, then quickly moving to the other side and running around them. Then you wait at the end of the field for them to get closer, so that when you wrap around the defenders are on the opposite end of the playing area.

I remember both games fondly. The only problem was getting batteries for them. Today's handhelds have come a long way since then, just as every other aspect of electronics have advanced. Just goes to show you what kind of things people find fun fifteen years back.