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Ah wait, I think this was it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_ game)

http://www.hortonaviation.com/timetrav/ttpics.html

http://www.ggdb.com/GameByName.aspx?vid=3113

http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyer&id=4696&im age=1

Yup, that's the one.

Seems it was '91 not '86 (Junior High and High school were a blur - the key word being high).

See??! Jack Thompson was right.... look what video games are doing to you.

It used to be when a publisher released a product, it was bug-free and of good quality. Nowadays, and this doesn't apply specifically to games -- the same can be said for movies, music and all other "software", you're taking your chances when you purchase something. At least half the products on the market aren't worthy and are just fluff, and the other half are un-original and derivative. And products don't stand on their own any more... they're part of a larger franchised marketing and merchandising plan designed to squeeze as much money from you as possible.

The most notable examples are the hoards of terminally-boring FPS games... Wow, it's just like the last 20 games except now you can sit in a turret or your shots damage texture maps.. oooh.

Your memory is a bit rosy, or perhaps you aren't old enough to remember the Pac-Man product tie-ins (cereal , clothes, etc.) sequels (Ms Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, etc.) and clones (Mousetrap, etc.) ? And let's not even talk about movies based on Space Invaders....

Having some vague memories of this myself, I went hunting. Here's the trivia:

- Photos of one for sale
- The Sub Dragon's Lair gameplay was actually courtesy of Dragon's Lair's creator (Rick Dyer). Go figure.
- Rather wordy essay about the game. Grainy gameplay pictures included.
- Original Arcade Flyer for the machine. (Translation not included)
- Editorial on Rick Dyer, Don Bluth and the history of Laser-Disc-Based Games. Time Traveler is mentioned under an avalanche of other obscure releases. The bottom line: $18M in sales. Now, I wonder if the arcade ops made anything on it.

Man, that game was awesome. When my friends and I found out that you could hit the cow and it would "moo", that's all we wanted to do.

Anyhow, it had both "ghost racers" that represented your best lap, and a replay mode when you cracked up spectacularly.

I remember the system your talking about. I looked around and found the #@#$ed thing. "Itme Traveller,sega 1991. Used a 2d pic mirrored about. http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage= thumbs&id=1213This is a company flyer for the thing

I was thinking the same thing while checking out the top 10 article. I especially liked atari's flyer art. Missle Command, for example. Also, check out the Peter Max-like centipede flyer.

I was thinking the same thing while checking out the top 10 article. I especially liked atari's flyer art. Missle Command, for example. Also, check out the Peter Max-like centipede flyer.

A LOT of these games are 20-25 years old. In the intervening years the original licensor may have gone out of business and determining who has the licensing rights after the business was dissolved requires a lot of legwork... or there may still be pending disputes between former owners of the businesses that tie up doing anything with the game until the dispute is resolved.

Tracking down the person with rights or waiting for a rights dispute to be settled are both reasons I've heard for some classic films languishing in the vault without seeing the light of DVD.

Games disappearing from StaROMs may be ones that were licensed to them in good faith, but were later found out to have a murky provenance where determining, finding contact information for, and coming to an agreement with the party that has licensing rights became difficult.

I'm not going to comment on other aspects, but I wouldn't use the drop from 60 to 51 games as an indicator of imminent failure of the site.

"...the Atari game with the handlebars... It was an Evil Kenevil (sp?) type game."

That would be Stunt Cycle. I'm still looking for one for my collection.

Laser Ghost seems to be encrypted, so it will be added to mame and other emulators at some point, just not quite yet.

Since Sega doesn't offer the less popular titles in its catalog, maybe you could find another way to pay the company - say, purchase a retro title you wouldn't have otherwise.

Sasuke Vs Commander, which was SNK's first color machine.

what about all the coin-ops that had force feedback in the 80's

Sega's Out Run had force feedback in 1986. More importantly, there seems to be a paper by a J. Batter from IFIP 1971 called "GROPE-I: A computer display to the sense of feel." It is referenced on a UNC force feedback research page as well as by a 1985 SIGGRAPH article (paid ACM membership required). This is all well before the Feb., 1990 filing date of Immersion's earliest relevant patent.

The irony is that if J. Batter had filed a patent in 1971, it would have expired before Immersion's patent was filed!