Home Leaves

In January 1979 my family moved from Montgomery Village, Maryland (next to Gaithersburg) to Paris, France.  My father was posted at the US Embassy, with the Dept. of Commerce.  It was an indefinite posting with no known ending, unlike many DOD “tours” or State Dept. assignments. 

 As a 10 year old, I was too young to appreciate the “magic” of Paris.  Even Owen Wilson, as standard issue non-pretentious American actor as you can find (short of boobs like Jonah Hill or Larry the Cable Guy), comes off at pretentious in “Midnight in Paris”.  To me, it was a strange, new world where the native language was French, not English, and my familiar landmarks and TV were completely absent.  Even McDonald’s was only sparsely represented in Paris with a few very substandard locations – greasy, green French fries and persistent flies.  Tacos and Roy Rogers were unknown; even Chicago Pizza Pie Factory and Pizza Hut were years away.  School supplies consisted of “cahiers” and fountain pens.  But we did get to go up the real Eiffel Tower (not the replica at King’s Dominion) and went on trips to London, Belgium, and the beaches of the south of France.

 At some point, my father revealed that we would be able to return to the US on leave (a month vacation), starting August 1980.  To say this excited my brother and I, would be a huge understatement (my sister was too young to remember the US to be excited).  The night before leaving, on the first trip in 1980, was like trying to sleep the night before Christmas.

 Although we owned a house in Gaithersburg, which we did not sell but simply rented while we were gone, the logistics of rentals were such that kicking out the tenants for one month really didn’t make much sense.  We could go by the house and take a look at it (see my Aberdeen Proving Ground pics on Facebook), and I recall on at least one occasion being permitted to go inside by the current tenants.  But each time we needed to find alternate housing.  1990 probably can’t count as “home leave” as we were actually moving back.

 1980.  Our first stop was the Dulles Airport Marriott – not much in the way of fun, but we did get to see American TV again.  Aside from AFN TV at the Raymond Hotel up in Mons Belgium, American TV was practically nonexistent in Paris.  Occasionally they would show US movies or shows, overdubbed into French, but the French were very touchy about “cultural imperialism” and most of the French TV programming was French.  Although the US summer programming was all re-runs (except the Olympics) it was better than anything on French TV.  Fall 1986 at UMCP was the first time since January 1979 I was able to watch live US TV again.

 The highlight of the trip was purchasing the Intellivision video game system and we started this campaign of aggressively seeking out as many games as we possibly find.  We stayed most of the time with my relatives in Alexandria, Virginia (just off Route 1 north of Fort Belvoir).  Although all my cousins are now married, with children, long out of the nest, my aunt and uncle still live in that same house.  For a brief time we stayed across the street in a house of neighbors who had gone on vacation.  At the end we stayed in a Ramada Inn on 270.  Returning to Paris was a major bummer.

 1982.  We started this one out at the Marriott in Montgomery Village (now a Hilton).  Unfortunately that exhausted our budget fairly rapidly, and my parents found more affordable accommodations at the Colonial Manor motel on 355, right across the street from White Flint Mall; the motel is long gone.  It had a kitchenette in the room, and a small pool in the central parking lot.  We continued our diligent search for Intellivision games.

            In addition to seeing “Young Doctors In Love” at the movie theater at White Flint, we also saw the most heavily hyped film of the summer there, “E.T.”, which did not impress me, and “Tron”, which we did like.  “Tron” was notable because several Intellivision games tied into the film appeared in the game catalog long before the movie itself came out, although the games themselves came out after the movie.

 1984.  I already  reviewed this in my Summer of 1984 blog.  We switched houses with a Foreign Service family who lived off McArthur Blvd.  We watched “Mork and Mindy” and the 1984 L.A. Olympics.

 I now recall, which I had left out of that blog, that our family drove up to Boston, Massachusetts that summer during the home leave.  I have vague memories of my brother and I walking around downtown Boston in the heat, but not much more than that for Boston itself.  From Boston we drove west to Worcester, which is where my mom’s family comes from – and most still are.  At Worcester there was a gaming convention, Massconfusion.  We got there too late to actually register for any games, but stayed for a while and enjoyed this.  I know my brother and I had bought Stormbringer, the Elric of Melnibone roleplaying game from Chaosium, the same summer I was reading the Elric books.  Sad Wings of Destiny (Judas Priest) and Master of Reality (Black Sabbath) were the “soundtrack” for that summer, purchased from the PXs of SHAPE and Henderson Hall, respectively.

            We actually met up with Phil, my best friend from high school.  His family had moved back to the US that summer, and was living in temporary housing in Beltsville, MD waiting for their sea shipment to arrive. The TV in that house was an old black and white – more like brown and yellow – with a distorted picture tube.  His mom took us to Laurel Mall, but accidentally took us south on Route 1 instead of north, giving me an early view of College Park.

 1986.  This was the summer I graduated from the American School of Paris, and in fall I was due to start college at the University of Maryland, College Park.  Soon after graduation, but before home leave, I had to go up to SHAPE to get my wisdom teeth removed.  This dentist believed in tackling the issue one side at a time, to allow me to chew food with the other side.  I recall on the second trip, a week later, I listened to Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits) on the car tape deck on the way home.

            My parents had bought an efficiency in Rosslyn, Virginia, in 1984, which is where we stayed this time.  5 people, in TWO sofa-beds and one cot = claustrophobia, so we stayed out as often as possible.  I managed to hang out with Phil, who had moved back to the US in summer 1984 and finished high school at Park View in Sterling, due to start at George Mason University in the fall.  In July I did a two day orientation program at UMCP, which not only familiarized me with the campus, registered me for fall semester classes, and got me to memorize my SSN for the first time, but I also made a few friends who I was able to hang out with in the fall; this was especially important because NO ONE from my high school was going to this college.  We also started learning to drive; unfortunately the car we had been borrowing from my relatives was a stick shift, which didn’t help, but by the end of the summer we had our provisional MD drivers’ licenses.  The coursework was completed at the Sears at Montgomery Mall, the real driving on the streets of Silver Spring, miraculously without any accident; the driver’s ed car was a Chevrolet Cavalier with two sets of steering, accelerators and brakes.

 1988.  I already reviewed this in my Summer of 1988 blog.  My parents avoided the 1984 mistake and got a huge apartment in upper Manhattan (96^th Street & 5^th Avenue, overlooking Central Park).  I spent most of the summer down at College Park, taking summer classes, without ever actually going back to Paris.  It was a great summer for concerts:  Pink Floyd, Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock (both at RFK), Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, (both at the Cap Center) and AC/DC (5^th row at Madison Square Garden).  I got my first car: a 1984 Chevrolet Cavalier, instead of the late 70’s Pontiac Trans Am I’d wanted (and still don’t have) and managed to have my first accident, which luckily enough was with a UMCP utility truck they didn’t care about.  My brother came down to stay with me, then my dad, and we all took the train up to NYC when my second session was over.

 1990.  This summer I graduated from UMCP after taking only the first of two summer sessions to finish off with the last two dead end classes (not required for subsequent classes), Money & Banking and COBOL.  The next day, 7/14, I went back to Paris for the last time – and I haven’t been back since.  On August 1, I returned to the US and with help from Phil, got our home ready for the rest of my family who were moving back permanently after 11 years in Paris.  It was full of cobwebs, mysterious rug stains, filthy kitchen, overgrown back yard, barely functioning swimming pool, a whole host of problems which would easily have exhausted the security deposit which the inept property manager cluelessly returned to the tenants.   So, for over two weeks, I was alone in a huge single family home with no furniture, but it had electricity and phone service.  I had a small TV and a VCR, and rented Pink Floyd, Live at Pompeii on VHS, for the first time.  I had no idea I would like it so much, but I did.

            By August 19 my family had come back, but the sea shipment didn’t arrive until September.  In late August I started classes at George Mason University School of Law, at their campus on Fairfax Drive in Arlington, and I wound up moving into that same Rosslyn efficiency in September…AND lived there throughout law school and 11 years past.

Intellivision

 

My Tron blog led me to this one, as seems logical.  These days we’ve got Nintendo Wii, the Xbox, and Playstation, with their super-sophisticated graphics and plotlines.  I’m old enough to remember the Olde Days, when we had much cruder games to play with.

Pong.  WAYYY back.  I remember playing this in the basement of my friend Paul, who was also our next-door neighbor.  Tennis, hockey, and squash, with big or small paddles, was about the range of games in this thing.  Black and white.  That was it.  Pretty crude, but very simple and very playable, especially if you didn’t even have an Atari to compare it with.

Odyssey.  My relatives in Long Island had this thing.   It was a modest improvement over Pong, using overlays on the TV screen but still having crude graphics.  We couldn’t get it to work.  I remember it had a haunted house game I would have liked to have played….

Atari 2600.  This was the first game to really have any impact, and certainly had by far the most games.  Back in 1980 we had the choice of this or an Intellivision.  Going with quality over quantity, we picked the Intellivision, though we had no shortage of friends who had made the opposite decision and were happy to play their games with us.  The graphics were crude but viewable, but the play was fairly simple, with a simple joystick with one button.  In retrospect, though, despite the wide variety of games available for this system, the only Atari games which were really decent were “Combat” (the stock cartridge which came with the system, and curiously absent from the recent standalone Atari units you can get at Toys R Us these days) and “Adventure” with its dragons which looked more like ducks.  Activision actually made better games, and probably saved Atari’s butt from an earlier extinction.

Intellivision.  We loved this.  From 1980-84 we were relentless in trying to collect literally every single game they made, even boring ones like Reversi which we played once and never again.  Although the disc-based controller wasn’t nearly as easy to get used to as the Atari’s joystick, the keypad and side buttons dramatically enhanced the range of options available, making the games considerably more sophisticated without necessarily (!) compromising their playability. The graphics were 10x better than Atari’s.  The voice cabability – with the IntelliVoice module and the games Bomb Squad, B-17 Bomber, Space Spartans and Tron: Solar Sailor – wasn’t nearly as remarkable as the games which featured them weren’t that great.  Here are some of the highlights.  Relax, I won’t name them all, but the games tended to be fairly high quality, so even picking the highlights means picking a fairly high percentage of them.  Although the sports games were “officially licensed” by the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, NASL, PGA, etc. none of them were nearly advanced enough to allow you to actually select real teams.

            Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  The earlier Cloudy Mountain game was cruder, but far more playable and enjoyable than the later, more ambitious and complex (and boring) Treasure of Tarmin game.  We were huge gamers when the first cartridge came out, only to have our Intellivision unit fry on us shortly before getting the game. 

            Astrosmash.  Clearly cool with huge scores available and varying color backgrounds, but after a certain point it got dull and repetitive.  It’s like Asteroids but oriented left-to-right across the bottom of the screen.

            NFL Football.  You could program plays, offense and defense, and could actually complete passes.  This game actually scrolled left and right, rather than up and down the screen.

            MLB Baseball.  One of the best, EVER, and had crude voice ability (the umpire) long before IntelliVoice.  The keypad allowed complete control over all players on the field, yet the game was very playable.  I’m not a fan of baseball, but I loved this game. 

            Bump & Jump.  How can a dump truck go at 200 mph?  Who knows.  This game was cool, especially with the changing seasons, but you got 50,000 points for completing a segment without crashing anyone, far higher than you ever would by crashing as many cars as you could.    The Death Skull car was cool.

            Lock & Chase.  Like Pac-Man but better (I always thought Pac-Man was dull, as the maze never changed, whereas Ms Pac-Man had changing mazes which made it more worthwhile to advance, beyond simply ramping up the score for its own sake).  The original arcade version was at the arcade in the Jardin where we used to go as kids.  You’re a thief who steals coins in a bank, avoiding the Keystone cops and picking up bonus items along the way.  Instead of an energizer pill, you can lock doors behind you.

            Burger Time.  I brought my Intellivision to college with me during sophomore year and my roommates got addicted to this one.  I’d come back from class and find them doing marathon sessions of this (“screw class, I’m getting a high score!”).  I got pretty good at it myself.  Your little chef makes giant burgers by walking across the buns and patties, avoiding animated evil hot dogs, a fried egg, and a pickle.  Cute but compelling.

            Frog Bog.  Childish, but still cool.  Two frogs jump from pad to pad trying to catch bugs with their tongues.  The frog with the most points after a time period wins.  At night the bugs are fireflies.  The frogs could actually miss the pad, splash into the water, and swim back onto the pads.

            Mission X.  A scrolling bombing mission in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with strafing and bombing.  It was unclear whether the targets were German or Japanese.

            Night Stalker.  One of my favorites: you’re hunted down by killer robots in a dark maze, and you have to keep getting new guns as each only has 6 shots.  Bats and a spider lurk around to paralyze you.  The robots get progressively more dangerous (aggressive and intelligent) as your score increases, up to the invisible robot who was by far the most difficult to kill.

            Sea Battle.  I loved this one.   You have a whole fleet, including a sub, two PT boats, an aircraft carrier (minus aircraft??), destroyers, a battleship, a troop transport and a mine layer and mine sweeper.   Mines were so damn annoying we generally agreed to ban them. If you were really cocky, arrogant and good at the game you’d try and wipe out your opponent’s whole fleet using only your mine layer or mine sweeper.

            Snafu.  Killer funky disco music!  Simple but effective, reminiscent of the light cycle phase of Tron.

            Triple Action.  Race cars, tanks – with ricochet effect! – and biplanes (with stall) brought Intellivision up to Atari’s Combat credentials, with better graphics and few wrinkles.

            Shark! Shark!  More groovy music, adding bubble effects too.  You’re a fish eating other fish, avoiding a shark and jellyfish, gradually getting larger and larger as you successfully devour smaller fish and avoid the larger ones.  You can eat your opponent, which is pretty funny.

            Star Strike.  We got this one at Hamleys, the toy store in London.  They ripped off “Star Wars” for this one.  You have to kill aliens swooping over their space station channel or they’ll destroy the Earth.  Whether you defeated the alien death star or let them blow up the Earth, the finale was impressive either way.

            Vectron.  This was more my favorite than my brother’s.  Abstract puzzle kind of shoot-em-up, very challenging and thought-provoking, but with fantastic graphics and sound effects.

            Utopia.  Long before Civilization and SimCity, there was Utopia.  Two islands, two competing societies, with housing, schools, hospitals, hurricanes, rain, rebels, and crops, etc.  Well before its time.

            Space Armada, Space Battle, and Space Hawk.  Armada was nothing more than Space Invaders.  Space Battle was pretty good (a fairly originally done shoot-em-up) and Hawk was OK as long as you didn’t set it on the realistic but unplayable drift mode.

            Pitfall.  One of the Activision games.  My brother loved this one.  Any of you Atari fans will probably recognize this one.

            Tron Deadly Discs, Maze-A-Tron, and Solar Sailor.  I mentioned these in the last blog.

            Skiing.  We could do the downhill, even to the point of mastering the fastest speed, but the slalom was well beyond our capability.

            Imagic.  This was by far the most impressive of the aftermarket suppliers.  Their games were ….original.  Microsurgeon, Beauty and the Beast, Demon Attack, Atlantis, Safe Cracker, Dracula, White Water, and Dragon Fire were the ones I’ve played.  The games weren’t always impressive, but they were certainly imaginative.

            Lame-O’s.  ANY of the gaming ones (Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Horse Racing, Roulette, Royal Dealer), the strategy games (reversi, backgammon, checkers, or chess, although the chess game played “The Ride of the Valkyries” when you won); or the Electric Company Word and Math fun games.  Sports: Boxing & tennis.  The golf, auto racing and basketball games were mediocre.  The hockey game was cool that you could trip the opposing players and get sent to the penalty box, but the team colors were brown and green, which made it hard to see which was which.  

Colecovision.  I have to mention this in fairness, as it rivalled the Intellivision in graphics quality at that time, and had a similar controller.  The Zaxxon and Smurf games were the best.  It could also play the Atari 2600 games (with a special module), something the Intellivision could never do.

After Intellivision and Colecovision came the first generation Nintendo and Sega Genesis, which lead us up to the present day.