英国新闻听力 第一代游戏(在线收听

我们纵览世界游戏史的步伐就从这里开始。现在,我们正舒适地坐在伦敦科技博物馆里,面对着操纵杆前40年的电脑游戏史,找寻着开始的按钮。我们现在正在游戏展览的大厅里,而最有资格带领我们参观所有展示的莫过于大卫·布瑞拜了

注释:

joystick n. 操纵杆

rectangle n. 长方形,矩形

novelty n. 新颖,新奇,新鲜,新奇的事物

addiction n. 沉溺,上瘾

arcade n. 游乐中心以一排排投币式游戏机为特征的商业机构

plugged adj. 塞紧的

rip v. 撕,剥,裂开,撕裂

jelly n. 果子冻,一种果冻甜品

enthralling adj. 迷人的

First Generation Gaming

Announcer: So our walk through the world of gaming starts here. We are sitting comfortably and reaching for the start button here at London's Science Museum where 40 years of computer game history is laid out before our very joysticks. We're at the Game On Exhibition here and who better to dive into it all with than David Braeburn. Now David, you are a game designer of 25 years standing and hard core gamers will know your name. You're the person, or one of the people, behind the Elite game which was a massive hit in the mid-1980s. But we are going to roll the story back even before then back to the days of Pong which is what we are standing in front of here, isn't it?

David: Many of you will have seen the Pong game where essentially a single rectangle moves up and down where a ball bounces off it, or a pair of them so two people can play against each other.

Announcer: But it's special really because I suppose … would you say it was the first ever computer game?

David: It's certainly the one that went out to more than a few dozen people. I think the novelty factor was what drove it a lot. And I think there was an addiction. It was very different to what people had played before. Shortly after the Pong which is literally an arcade game, there were many other games like it that actually went into the home and plugged into TV sets. It fathered a whole generation of those, games like Pong, Break out, and then not long after Space Invaders which is probably the one that popularised it a lot more than Pong.

Announcer: Speaking of which, let's go and see Space Invaders and for me this is like revisiting an old friend, David. We're walking through the Game On Exhibition here through a kind of arcade that they have created for this exhibition and here we are at one of the kind of early, not earliest by a long way … but early arcade game and here it is Space Invaders. It's so good to see it again.

David: It's amazing. I remember first seeing it and being very excited by it. It was also the first time they had colour and they managed to do that by having coloured overlays over parts of the screen. So although the game was essentially black and white, you had this sort of colour film across the top on some of the cabinets, not all of them. So it looked colourful. It really is a very, very simple game but I think to be honest this is the first of the more addictive games, the more compelling games because you had the progression, it was quite hard when they started moving quite quickly.

Announcer: So Space Invaders the game whose sound defined a thousand bars and pubs around the world. But where you find space invaders, surely David we're going to find Pac Man as well.

David: Yeah, shortly after Space Invaders, at least for me, there was then quite a proliferation, Pac Man was probably the most obvious, Asteroids, Galaxian, and, you know, you'd go to any fish 'n' chips shop and there would be an arcade cabinet.

Announcer: And seeing Pac Man which for the purposes of this exhibition they've projected onto one of the walls here and it reminds me of those, if you like, Pac Man rip offs that used to be around at the time. I had a Komodor Vic 20 in the early '80s and I think the Pac Man equivalent of that computer was jelly monsters and we got that because we couldn't afford the proper Pac Man. It was just as enthralling.

David: Yes, there was an astonishing range of that. Similarly in the arcades there were all sorts of spin offs. I remember Snapper on the BBC Micro which was great and very, very similar to the original.

第一代游戏

播音员:我们纵览世界游戏史的步伐就从这里开始。现在,我们正舒适地坐在伦敦科技博物馆里,面对着操纵杆前40年的电脑游戏史,找寻着开始的按钮。我们现在正在游戏展览的大厅里,而最有资格带领我们参观所有展示的莫过于大卫·布瑞拜了。大卫,你已经做了25年的游戏设计了,只要是铁杆游戏迷就一定会知道你的名字。在20世纪80年代中期,精英游戏公司最辉煌的时期,你可是公司的顶梁柱,或者说顶梁柱之一。但我们现在要回顾的是更早的历史,那就要回到弹球游戏的时代了。现在在我们面前的就是一台街头弹球游戏机,是吗?

大卫:你们中的许多人都曾玩过弹球游戏,这个游戏就只有一个方块上下移动,接住反弹来的球。如果两人玩时,就会出现一对方块,可以进行对抗赛。

播音员:但它还是很特殊的,我猜是因为……你们把它称作第一个电脑游戏吗?

大卫:对很大部分人来说,确实如此。我想,其中最新奇的部分就是,是什么使它变得如此流行--我认为是一种让人上瘾的能力,因为它与人们以前所玩的东西都不同。弹球游戏是大型台机游戏,而不久以后,有许多类似的游戏都走进了家庭,安装在电视上。这种成瘾性使得弹球、突破之类的一整代游戏都大受欢迎,而不久之后,太空入侵者游戏的受欢迎程度甚至大大超过了弹球游戏。

播音员:既然说到了太空入侵者,我们就来看看它吧。大卫,对我来说,这更像是重新拜访我的老朋友。现在我们穿过游戏展览大厅,这里有一个大型台机,是他们专为这次展览而建造的。现在在我们面前的是一种早期的,但又不是非常久远的早期……但属于早期的大型游戏机,太空入侵者。再次看到它的感觉真好。

大卫:真是神奇呀。我还记得自己第一次看到它时十分激动。当时,它也是第一个带彩色的游戏,游戏设计人员是用色彩覆盖了屏幕的某些部分才达到了这个效果。虽然游戏的基本色调还是黑和白,但你可以让这种彩色胶片通过某些游戏机的屏幕--当然不是所有的游戏机--这样游戏就变成彩色的了。这其实是一款非常、非常简单的游戏,但老实说,我觉得这才是第一款比较让人上瘾,比较吸引人的游戏,因为你有了进步--在它们开始迅速向前发展时,要做到这一点是相当困难的。

播音员:所以太空入侵者的音乐在当时成了世界上数千家酒吧和酒店的主旋律。既然我们已经找到了太空入侵者,大卫,我们肯定也要来找找小精灵吧。

大卫:是的,就在太空入侵者出现之后不久--至少对我来说不久后,就出现了许许多多类似的游戏,小精灵可能就是其中最引人注目的游戏了,另外还有爆破彗星,小蜜蜂等等--当时每个卖薯条的店里都放着一台大型游戏机。

播音员:让我们来看看小精灵吧,为了这次展会,工作人员还专门把它贴在了一堵墙上,这让我想起了--如果你也喜欢那些海报的话--当时极其盛行的小精灵海报偷窃事件。我有一个80年代早期的Komodor Vic 20的模型,我觉得与这个电脑游戏同样价格的小精灵只有果冻怪物,但我们实在买不起那些严格意义上的小精灵--它们是如此的迷人。

大卫:是的,小精灵的周边产品范围大得令人惊奇。同样的,大型街机游戏也有各种各样的周边产品。我还记得微型BBC游戏里的斯内普玩具棒极了,而且与原型非常、非常像。

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/ygxwtl/509312.html