![]() ![]() Well done!Ĭolumbia House “Clubs” had everything from LPs & cassettes to video games & a branded Atari 2600 clone This looks like a properly planed holiday release. When I was a kid, Columbia House had a club for every type of media you could imagine. Reel-to-reel, cassettes, 8-tracks, albums, video games, software - they had it all! They went on to have VHS, CD and DVD offerings. The notion of getting 13 albums for a penny seemed like a sweet deal! That initial shipment was a "Christmas morning" sort of event. The Columbia House Brand was started in the early 1970s when Columbia Records organized their various music clubs. The Record Club dated back to 1955 as a direct-mail experiment for music sales. ![]() By 1063 they accounted for 10% of the recorded music retail market. The premise of these clubs were based on a dubious business model called, negative option billing which lets customers agree to automatic delivery of products (music in the case of Columbia House) which they must pay for unless they decline the delivery in advance. I always forgot to send the cards back and wound up shipping all sorts of musical atrocities back to them in Terre Haute, Indiana. I began with the Record Club and still remember the day my buddy & I came home from school to find Van Halen's Fair Warning had arrived - Awesome! I tried again with CDs, but the model was a hassle and I gave up. One of the often forgotten benefits of Columbia House was their commitment to media types. I'm sure this was financially beneficial to them, but they offered various selections on media formats that were no longer commercially available in stores - usually for about 4 or 5 years. To this day, the Columbia House brand is alive and selling DVDs online. Somewhere between LPs and CDs, Columbia House was hawking software and video games via a "club". #ULTIONUS BOOBS SOFTWARE#Īround 1983 Columbia House was offering Atari 2600 games as a video game club and a software club that offered Atari Home Computers, Colecovision & Adam, Apple, and Commodore 64 games. Many of the clubs features mini magazines containing the month's available selections. Often it was produced as a poster that had game selections on one side and a poster featuring a game title on the other They would visually highlight certain offerings, but the Video Game Club was different. Perhaps the demographic of the early 80's was more youth oriented, but the Video Game Club mini magazines were pretty cool. There weren't a lot of selections, so nearly each title had a box-cover photo. The reverse side had a poster featuring a game like Donkey Kong Jr., Q*bert, MoonSweeper, etc. You can view a few issues on the Digital Press site. The idea of Columbia House selling it's own Atari 2600 clone on which to play games from the Columbia House Video Game Club sounds a bit peculiar. I'l going to have to recommend it for anyone who likes old school 2d platformer or Shoot Em Up style games.Why bother? There's a history that brings all these things together, making this console offering more logical. Despite the difficulty, (which I count as a plus for any game) this game is an awesome play, and I'm proud to have it in my collection of 2D games. You could tell that a lot of heart went into the making of this game. I really appreciate a game that makes me earn all that it has to show me. You work so hard making a game, and the player blasts through it like it's nothing, and what took you maybe a year or longer to make gets beaten in a few short hours. People don't make games challenging anymore. Some folks don't like this, but that's because they have been emasculated by playing unchallenging games. The low rate of fire make it hard to take on large groups of bad guys. The game is very challenging, particularly on the platforming levels. ![]() The retro style was adhered to, and fans of old cartridge games should appreciate this. Music is like space opera, but done in a MOD or XM format, as was done back in the old days. The alien worlds are very detailed, and the aliens are unique and creative. There are elements of Shoot Em Up style spaceship combat, as well as side scrolling platform action. All that said, I am really enjoying this game. There are some adult themed jokes, and the artwork is a bit on the grown-up side. The plot involves a female hero who has to get revenge against a space prince. Ultionus is a colorful 2D platformer made in the style of Super Nintendo. Ultionus is a colorful 2D Although I have not yet finished the game, I wanted to get a review out, because I haven't seen any yet. Although I have not yet finished the game, I wanted to get a review out, because I haven't seen any yet. ![]()
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