S.A.M.I.:
This week we go WAY back in video game history to 1970 when old fashioned mechanical games were first starting to evolve into video games. S.A.M.I. or Surface to Air Missile Interceptor utilized a relatively simple system of lights and mirrors to create it's video effects.

Using a joystick, the player would launch "missiles" from a small plastic tank contained behind the game's screen. The tank was housed on a 3D plastic landscape and the "missiles" were projected on to the game glass from below using a mirror and so gave them a holographic look. You tracked the projectiles using a cross-hair which was just little light that blipped across the screen. Your points were kept by a pinball like scoring system of rotating number wheels. The sales sheet that came with the game pointed out amazing features such as: Realistic Video Targets, Solid State Sound, Adjustable Hit Zone and Precision Projection System.

It doesn't sound like it was loads of fun, but Midway did everything they could to sell this game, even resorting to the sexually suggestive headline "Ohh...that S.A.M.I. He just never stops putting out." Just to push the point even more, we are treated to an ejaculatory pile of coins that seems to be spewing forth forth from S.A.M.I.'s general "crotch" area and it looks like that lovely lady is giving him a little hand help.

It's amazing that in the 60's and 70's all one needed to do to suggest "future" and "space age" was to throw a silver lame' catsuit on someone. It's a fashion trend that sadly didn't catch on. Flynn De Marco