Combat was the game cartridge that came with the original Atari 2600. The cartridge had 27 separate video games including Tank in which you drive a tank and try to shoot your opponent, Biplane in which you fly a biplane and try to shoot your opponent, Jet Fighter in which you fly a jet airplane and try to shoot your opponent and Invisible Tank in which you drive an invisible tank and try to shoot your opponent.

Quake it wasn't.

Trivia: Originally, the Combat was supposed to be soldered right into the Atari 2600 instead of a separate cartridge. I don't know why it didn't happen. Probably Atari wanted to eliminate the extra expense to detect and switch between a cartridge and the internal game.

Combat was a classic game. You drove your tank or flew your plane with the joystick, and pressed the button to shoot.

The most amazing part was sheer variety of game types. They had to have a list in the back of the manual so you could pick them out. All the options can be mixed and matched!

Tanks:

Planes:

Combat was fun.
Hand to hand combat is a physical challange that most people never learn to fully appreciate.

The subtle art of thrust and parry combined with the strength, endurance, tactics, and fortitude to see it through, or, as one of my instructors once said "chess with muscles".

It's more than just the act of hurting another person, or even defeating them, as the true aim of combat may even be achieved in defeat, and that is, to satisfy the "lunch hunting" instinct. Our species is predatorial. Modern society eliminates the need for the chase and kill and these urges need to be fullfilled somehow.

Hand to hand combat meets this need, be it any of the martial arts. The physical effort in learning the skills, and the fitness nessesary to use them adequately, equate to learning to hunt. The actual chase, the chance that your lunch may turn on you, evokes the same fight or flight response a worthy opponent does. This all helps the combatant appreciate the fragility of their own life and satisfy their hunting intinct.

Total awareness of your self, and having your body function as if on automatic pilot, is an experience that cannot be duplicated in any other situation with the same degree of intensity. The knowledge that your opponent will hurt you (usualy badly) if your concentration lapses, and the skill to maintain total relaxation (like your not concentrating), is so incredibly uplifting it's nearly religious. I've heard this described as meditation in motion, and the Japanese even have a word for it: satori. This is the ultimate state for any athelete in any endevour. It is what all combatants strive for whether they realise it or not!.

It's also addictive (so is the pain, but that's another story), but not in a detrimantal way. It gives you clarity of mind (through freedom of distractions) in your everyday life but with the anticipation that soon you will be in combat again.

The other main benifit is the self confidence achieved through knowing you can take care of yourself.

Com"bat Combating.] [F. combattre; pref. com- + battre to beat, fr. L. battuere to strike. See Batter.]

To struggle or contend, as with an opposing force; to fight.

To combat with a blind man I disdain. Milton.

After the fall of the republic, the Romans combated only for the choice of masters. Gibbon.

 

© Webster 1913.


Com"bat, v. t.

To fight with; to oppose by force, argument, etc.; to contend against; to resist.

When he the ambitious Norway combated. Shak.

And combated in silence all these reasons. Milton.

Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled. Goldsmith.

Syn. -- To fight against; resist; oppose; withstand; oppugn; antagonize; repel; resent.

 

© Webster 1913.


Com"bat, n. [Cf. F. combat.]

1.

A fight; a contest of violence; a struggle for supremacy.

My courage try by combat, if thou dar'st. Shak.

The noble combat that 'twixt joy and sorrow was fought in Paulina. Shak.

2. Mil.

An engagement of no great magnitude; or one in which the parties engaged are not armies.

Single combat, one in which a single combatant meets a single opponent, as in the case of David and Goliath; also a duel.

Syn. -- A battle; engagement; conflict; contest; contention; struggle; fight, strife. See Battle, Contest.

 

© Webster 1913.

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