3-D Tic-Tac-Toe: Atari Archive Episode 35

[@briantedford655]

The king is back. I have an immense amount of respect for the detail you are able to dig into for what superficially appears to be incredibly simple games. You give gaming history life through exploring what most other people would write off entirely.

[@beedwarf]

I do remember playing 3D Tic Tac Toe at the time of its release; I enjoy the game more and more today than at the time of its release b/c as a young teen was fascinated by fast kinetic gameplay, blowing things up on-screen. As a older person, marvel at its simplicity, and credit 3D Tic Tac Toe for its sharp AI; 3D Tic Tac Toe is a rare gem.

[@chriscorsello]

As a kid, I never knew anyone with this game and it had no appeal to me. I added this game to my collection in the early 90s when I found it in a thrift store for 25 cents. In those days I was collecting the cartridges for the collectability and don't ever recall having played it... until last night. Inspired by watching this series in order, I have been trying out games I overlooked. Having got the Atari in 1981, I was spoiled with games like Adventure, Asteroids and Superman. Knowing the context has really made me appreciate these earlier games.... and even though I was only on level one, I can proudly say I beat the computer player on my first try! It was actually pretty fun. I may have to try again on another rainy night. If I can use the same strategy to beat it a few more times, I may have to try level 2!

[@GTV-Japan]

This was really well done. I appreciate the effort you put into it! ❌　⭕️

[@atarikid282]

Great video! I've always liked this game (very challenging), reminding me of something out of Star Trek.

[@Phediuk]

Phenomenal work once again. These videos blow away all other coverage of 2600 games that I've ever seen.

[@beedwarf]

The Polo game Carol Shaw wrote for Atari displays that 'Venetian Blind' technique in its player models; Interesting that there was a Atari 400/800 version of 3D Tic Tac Toe featuring an extra gameplay option_AND_multi-colored board pieces.

[@RT55J]

The playfield rendering in this looks pretty impressive imo. I wonder how she did it.

[@AtariArchive]

Legally I wasn't able to include it visually, but the Strong Museum of Play has some of her playfield design docs in their Carol Shaw papers! Nothing that explains specifically how she reached her final design, though they do suggest she settled on this particular look pretty early.

[@MattMcIrvin]

The debug colors in Stella reveal that, as far as I can tell, the columns in each horizontal board level are drawn using player 1 and player 2 in alternation. So it looks like she's using the Space Invaders technique for drawing a horizontal row of invaders, but with tic-tac-toe squares (including whatever symbol might be drawn in them). It is pretty sophisticated--you don't expect this kind of high-resolution line art to show up on a 2600. The 8-bit computer version would have made it much easier--you can just draw a bitmap...

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

Quite in awe of the technical work Shaw did with this - especially for the time it came out, I don't think there'd been many games with kernel's developed to seriously work that nicely. It's one which hasn't really to mind as an essential 2600 release, but in the right setup would be interesting fun for sure.

[@chriscorsello]

Also, can't understand why they never released Pollo. Maybe they didn't think the sport had wide appeal, but the game looks at least as fun as Ice Hockey by Activision.

[@MattMcIrvin]

The players look quite a lot like the Ralph Lauren Polo logo, so when the sponsorship deal fell through they might have figured releasing it was risky.

[@beedwarf]

Disappointed by the inappropriate comment Ray Kassar made that contradict Carol Show's amazing game programming skills shown in 3D Tic Tac Toe & Activision's River Raid.

[@sandal_thong]

I'm not surprised this happened around 1980 as the boss situation shown in the movie _9 to 5_ wasn't far from the norm, although the situation became absurd. What is surprising is these kind of comments as well as harassment continued into the 1990s, the 00s and 2010s.

[@sharkofjoy]

INTERESTING ABOUT THE DECISION TREE. You cited some papers....I should dig them up.

[@AtariArchive]

Patashnik's paper was published in Mathematics back in 1980 (though as the snippet from Scientific American shows, he'd had his results for a couple years by that point).

[@adamking6645]

What emulator did you use to record some of the footage, if I may ask?

[@AtariArchive]

I use Stella! Works very happily with OBS and isn't too tricky to set up.

[@sandal_thong]

Blue Atari Logbook challenge: try to win at the highest level. Pro (1 Star): Win level 3, Master (2 Stars): Win level 5, Wizard (3 Stars): Win level 7. I didn't play this as a kid. I liked some strategy games like Nine Men Morris and Connect-4, then as a teen Othello and chess, but didn't get any of them on computer/console cart. I picked up a copy of 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe on the cheap two years ago from someone selling games I wanted, including Grand Prix, so didn't have to pay extra for postage. I played it to see if it worked, but haven't felt like racking my brain to learn strategy. If I ever do, I'll try the Logbook challenge.

[@josepha3805]

Aw Dood woah

[@Musicradio77Network]

All I can say is, I like “Pink Tac Toe” a lot better than “3D Tic Tac Toe”. “Pink Tac Toe is the game that features Pinkie Pie from “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” where you can play against Pinkie Pie.