Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

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VideoGameCritic
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Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 12th, 2020, 11:29 am

Coming off the 4th of July thread I was looking at tracking down a few of American History style games. One mentioned was Gettysburg: The Turning Point for the Atari 8-bit computers. I was looking at some of these on Ebay and the game looks pretty elaborate. It got rave reviews back in the day. But watching it being played on YouTube however kind of turned me off to it.

It seems like ever round the game is prompting the player to "insert front side of disc" or "insert back side of disc" and I think that would drive me crazy. I guess it's possible that that playthrough was done on a 16K machine which couldn't fit the entire game in memory, but who knows? I was going to get this but now feeling kind of gunshy.

Thoughts? Anybody played this??

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » July 20th, 2020, 8:13 pm

It allows simultaneous two disc drive play, doesn't it?

I don't know what kind of set-up that would require, or the price involved, but I can't imagine tackling a game like that any other way.

Not without another game to play while it's loading.

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Re: Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby VideoGameCritic » July 20th, 2020, 8:29 pm

Nah that's not how it works. We're talking about two sides of the same disk!

Actually it wasn't unusual for games back then to ask you to flip the disk at some point during a game. However, not after every move!

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » July 27th, 2020, 5:34 am

VideoGameCritic wrote:Nah that's not how it works. We're talking about two sides of the same disk!

Actually it wasn't unusual for games back then to ask you to flip the disk at some point during a game. However, not after every move!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yk_V7KWk7U

Double disk drive is one of the menu selections. I think you're expected to buy two copies of the game? Or simply perform some computer magic and find a back-up?

Unless there's actually a two disc version, somewhere?

newmodelarmy
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Re: Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby newmodelarmy » July 27th, 2020, 5:55 am

Ya I played this game back in the day on my C-64. I loved these style of games when I was a kid. SSI made a lot of great strategy games back then. This is definitely a good one but you need a bit of patience to truly enjoy it. I would recommend it.

LuckyWDFN
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Re: Gettysburg: The Turning Point (Atari)

Postby LuckyWDFN » July 28th, 2020, 11:10 am

I'd like to see a review of this if you get a copy. I was big into my Atari 800xl and don't remember this game. I enjoy strategy games like Seven Cities of Gold or any of the Ultimas released during the 8-bit series but this game, if this youtube video is any indicator, seems extremely laborious even by other strategy games standards. It also looks very dated even for 1986. The concept seems interesting though


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