Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Smurfiest game ever on ColecoVision

The first video game system my family ever had was a ColecoVision, and I can distinctly recall spending a lot of time playing this game in particular on it:



I was nuts about the Smurfs when I was a little kid, to the point where not only did I have Smurf bedsheets and an army of Smurf figurines (which probably lead to my eventual love of collecting action figures) but I also had the walls of my bedroom painted Smurf blue.

Looking back at this game now really makes me marvel at how video games have changed over the years. Not only was this a game that a person could, apparently, beat in less than two minutes (somehow, I always remembered it being much longer) but the point values clearly being a part of the terrain itself and the simplicity of the obstacles in the way, especially the spiders in Gargamel's castle, surprise me now. Though I was very young when I played this, I can still recall the awkwardness of the phone-like controller and the fact that when the Smurf jumped in the cavern it sounded like he was farting. Ah, childhood memories.