Blue Sky Rangers blast DP guide!

[SoulBlazer]

Well, not quite.

The Blue Sky Rangers are the name given to the group of original programers for the Intelivision. They got the rights to the games and system a few years ago and opened up a website, and still sell collections with the games.

I've been reading their site on a regular basis for at least a few years now, but I never noticed this until now. :P

They have a FAQ there answering questions (http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bl...askhal.html#A1) Here's one of them:
__________________________________________________ ___________
Dear Hal,
What were the best Intellivision games? What were the worst?

Well, I didn't want to be accused of bias in answering this question, so I turned to the Digital Press Classic Videogames Collector's Guide, which we have absolutely no connection with. The guide recommends playing the following Intellivision games:

ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Cloudy Mountain Cartridge (Mattel Electronics)

Atlantis (Imagic)

B-17 Bomber (Mattel Electronics)

Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling (INTV)

Bump 'N' Jump (Mattel Electronics)

BurgerTime (Mattel Electronics)

Dreadnaught Factor (Activision)

Frog Bog (Mattel Electronics)

Horse Racing (Mattel Electronics)

Microsurgeon (Imagic)

Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing (INTV)

PBA Bowling (Mattel Electronics)

Pinball (Mattel Electronics)

Safecracker (Imagic)

Shark! Shark! (Mattel Electronics)

Slam Dunk: Super Pro Basketball (INTV)

Stadium Mud Buggies (INTV)

Sub Hunt (Mattel Electronics)

Tower of Doom (INTV)

Utopia (Mattel Electronics)

World Series Major League Baseball (Mattel Electronics)

Worm Whomper (Activision)

If I may add just one thought: Are these guys out of their bloody minds!?! I can't imagine any Intellivision fan not listing Astrosmash or Night Stalker or TRON Deadly Discs or Biplanes (in the Triple Action cartridge). These were all programmer favorites.

We also get plenty of e-mail from people listing their favorites. In addition to the games listed above, Sea Battle, Mind Strike and Lock 'N' Chase are most often mentioned.
__________________________________________________ ___________
Heh! Maybe Joe should send them a new guide.

[ManekiNeko]

I always imagined the Blue Sky Rangers to be a bunch of fat programmers in colorful but much too revealing spandex, fighting the forces of evil with a giant robot built from Intellivision components.

JR

[rbudrick]

I always imagined the Blue Sky Rangers to be a bunch of fat programmers in colorful but much too revealing spandex, fighting the forces of evil with a giant robot built from Intellivision components.

Damn...and I thought I was the only one.

Yeah.


-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

Dear SoulBlazer,

When you say "Are these guys out of their bloody minds?" I believe you mean us, as they apparently turned to our guide and copied what we've got verbatim - at least it's worded so it looks that way

[SoulBlazer]

Yes, that's what I mean.

What does indeed look like what happened was this: When they were creating the FAQ, they wanted to look at a non biased source of what people thought the best games for the Intelivsion was. I KNOW that FAQ has been there at LEAST since 2001, perhaps a little older. So they turned to about the only guide they could -- the DP one.

The Blue Sky Rangers copied down what the DP guide gave high marks to, and then added in their own comments about what they thought about that.

That's why I suggsted maybe a free copy of the current DP guide might make a nice gift to them.

[Ed Oscuro]

I see now. It is rather funny

[digitalpress]

The irony!

I haven't met Hal, but I bet he'd be surprised to hear that his boss, Keith Robinson, has sponsored DP events in the past, and will most likely be advertising Intellivision Productions in the very book that is "out of its bloody mind".

Small world, Hal. Small world.

[Ed Oscuro]

The irony!

I haven't met Hal, but I bet he'd be surprised to hear that his boss, Keith Robinson, has sponsored DP events in the past, and will most likely be advertising Intellivision Productions in the very book that is "out of its bloody mind".

The only thing here is that our man Hal (one letter less each than Ibm) never actually said that; SoulBlazer's just saying they copied verbatim from an old guide (I guess?)

[punkoffgirl]

Dear SoulBlazer,

When you say "Are these guys out of their bloody minds?" I believe you mean us, as they apparently turned to our guide and copied what we've got verbatim - at least it's worded so it looks that way

No, I think everything ABOVE the line in Soulblazer's original post is what he copied from what they said; his own comments are included below the line. Hence the "are they out of their bloody minds" comment is not from Soulblazer, but from this Hal guy or whoever..

[TVs Hasselhoff]

Ya know "Hal", programmer favorites aren't always the players favorites

The man with the spinning head has a point.[/quote]

[Ed Oscuro]

No, I think everything ABOVE the line in Soulblazer's original post is what he copied from what they said; his own comments are included below the line.

Yeah, I'm wrong again...don't mind me, over here... :X

[SoulBlazer]

I'm sorry, I thought the post was clear -- the area between the lines is what I cut and paste from the website's FAQ. You can punch in the URL and see it yourself. There's some other good questions answered over there also, like 'Did you guys get royalities?' (Yeah, right!) and 'Will I have a Y2K problem?' (Only if games were still being made!).

I happen to agree with the games they said SHOULD have been given high marks -- I really enjoyed Astrosmash, TRON's Deadly Disks, and Night Stalker. Who did the Intelivision section for the DP book? I need to check my copy and give him some feedback.

DP, I don't know who actually WROTE those editoral comments. The actuall person (Hal) is not named anywhere. ONE of the Blue Sky Rangers wrote it, I know that, maybe more then one -- but I highly doubt it was Keith.

[Ze_ro]

These were all programmer favorites.

Ya know "Hal", programmer favorites aren't always the players favorites

Agreed. Astrosmash, Night Stalker and the rest always seemed rather generic to me. Also, don't original and unique games have a better chance of getting +'s in the guide? The list in the first post would certainly seem to support that. A lot of those were INTV exclusives.

--Zero

[digitalpress]

I think they kinda belong on the "+" side. I'm pretty sure these games made our Top X list on the site.

I'm adding them to the "+" section of the Intellivision database now.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm sorry, I thought the post was clear -- the area between the lines is what I cut and paste from the website's FAQ. You can punch in the URL and see it yourself.

I did before the post where I said I was wrong. Anyhow, I'm used to seeing <quote>tags used</quote> and I guess I automatically filtered out the line

I'm still not convinced he means it in a bad way; it could just look bad but have been an innocuous comment. Who knows...

[SoulBlazer]

No problems. I ment this as kind of a joke thread anyway -- after all, that FAQ by the Blue Sky Rangers where they mention the best games in the system as said by the DP guide has been up there for years. And I was just surprised no one else had ever mentioned it to DP before.

And now it sounds like DP is going to give the suggested games better marks anyway.

Make sure you tell Keith that, Joe.