Slashdot Mirror

No, Elvin is right. So, stay a while...

Use AppleWin to emulate an Apple 2 Game. Download the Oregon Trail images from Here. After getting both pieces of software, load each disk image into a separate emulated drive in the emulator, then press run. Enjoy!

...did Hayabusa get his revenge?

My keyboard doesn't even have a scroll lock light though it has the key. It has an "Office Lock" light in its place (but hey, it has like, two dozen hotkeys which I can use in media players. t'least in Windows)

But anyways, I can only recall ONE program that used scroll lock. If I'm not mistaken, it was the key to exit Sopwith. :D

Other than a single old DOS game, I can't think of anything..

Are they kidding? such a system was already implemented in Bozo's Night out, a commodore 64 game where a drunk guy see pink elephants and other strange stuff depending on the number of beer pints he consumed. The higher the pints, the lower the control and strangeness will pop up more frequently.

just a link to remember this great game

http://www.classicgaming.com/area64/games/images/b /bozos_night_out_1.gif

The situation with Star Control is really weird. Accolade, now part of Infogrames, owned the name Star Control but nothing else. Toys for Bob, the developer and just recently bought by Activision, owned everything else.

There are two possible things that could happen. The first is that a Star Control 4 from Infogrames is made but won't feature anything from the other games except the new stuff from SC3. Odds are that it'll be terrible. The second possibility is that Activision publishes a sequel to SC2, but with a completely different name and never mentioning the others by name. The non-SC fan will be completely confused causing the game to sell terribly.

There was a Star Control 4 in developement under the name StarCon. It was supposed to be released on the PC and PSX, but not much was shown before it was canceled. Link

Yes I will take a sequel to one of the best games of all time: http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/custer.shtml Custers Revenge

That's just too much for a game system. I usually buy the new consoles when they come out (proud owner of a PS2, XBox, and Atari 2600), but these prices have pushed them out of the realm of game system and into the realm of major electronics investment.

You claim that the Xbox 360 at $299 or $399 is too expensive (I don't think the EB Games preorder ripoff is a proper basis of comparison), yet the Atari 2600 was introduced in 1977 for the low low price of $200. Using the consumer price index as a guide, $200 in 1977 * (188.9/60.6) = $623 in today's dollars [based on the whole year average]. Furthermore, the price of the Atari 2600 didn't drop significantly until the introduction of the Atari 5200 in 1982.

It seems odd that you were willing to buy a gaming system for ~$600 almost 25-30 years ago, when you presumably had less disposable income, to watch poorly rendered aliens march back and forth across your standard definition television through a composite/RF connection, but you aren't willing to buy a vastly superior system for a similar fraction of your earning capacity.

I don't agree. While I am not inclined to pay more than the MSRP for the console, an enthusiast will apparently have no problem giving up that much of their hard earned cash.

So what about the Vectrex? This was a home gaming console that sold for a reasonable amount of money in the early eighties that used a vector display. And yes, if you tap a Vectrex' PCB in the correct places you can play Minestorm on an o-scope.

Baer says that only his games are valid "first games" because they were the first to utilize a regular television set. I call bullshit. Baer's notable work in no way invalidates the true videogames that came before his.

Incidentally, I liked the look of vector games. I especially liked color vector games like Tac-Scan. Sega made a ton of good ones and so did Atari. I'd definitely be a novelty, but I'd love to see a vector game done with the computing power we have now. It seems that money was getting to be a real problem throwing polygons around back then.....

It had colored sheets to tape (!) to your TV to play different games. It didn't come with all the cards, but as far as I could tell it didn't have many features.

We'd play pong with manual scoring, roulette where you twiddle the dials and argue over which color the dot was on.

Amazingly enough, I look back fondly on this.

I'm not going to look for an emulator though.

...

OK, Here

R A L P H H. B A E R

I had an Odyssey, and let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool back in the day. I especially liked K. C. Munchkin, a superior home version of Pacman that had several improvements over the original game (you could create your own mazes, pretty advanced for those days). Of course, it had to be pulled because Atari or someone sued.

Another game that was cool was the Quest for the Rings, which had really great packaging. I also liked it as a game.

Oh, and there was some really bizarre game with monkeys that I liked, and a pretty good Donkey Kong knockoff.

Now I'm nostalgic... I wish they'd release one of those multi-game machines with Odyssey games in it.... I sold the whole kit for $25 to a guy who ran some kind of game store. Sob, I'll never be able to get Quest for the Rings back now...

R A L P H H. B A E R

I had an Odyssey, and let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool back in the day. I especially liked K. C. Munchkin, a superior home version of Pacman that had several improvements over the original game (you could create your own mazes, pretty advanced for those days). Of course, it had to be pulled because Atari or someone sued.

Another game that was cool was the Quest for the Rings, which had really great packaging. I also liked it as a game.

Oh, and there was some really bizarre game with monkeys that I liked, and a pretty good Donkey Kong knockoff.

Now I'm nostalgic... I wish they'd release one of those multi-game machines with Odyssey games in it.... I sold the whole kit for $25 to a guy who ran some kind of game store. Sob, I'll never be able to get Quest for the Rings back now...

R A L P H H. B A E R

I had an Odyssey, and let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool back in the day. I especially liked K. C. Munchkin, a superior home version of Pacman that had several improvements over the original game (you could create your own mazes, pretty advanced for those days). Of course, it had to be pulled because Atari or someone sued.

Another game that was cool was the Quest for the Rings, which had really great packaging. I also liked it as a game.

Oh, and there was some really bizarre game with monkeys that I liked, and a pretty good Donkey Kong knockoff.

Now I'm nostalgic... I wish they'd release one of those multi-game machines with Odyssey games in it.... I sold the whole kit for $25 to a guy who ran some kind of game store. Sob, I'll never be able to get Quest for the Rings back now...

What Would Jesus Play?

This.

Whatever you do, don't hold DOWN, RIGHT, START, A, B, & C buttons on controller 2 while resetting Rings of Power on the Genesis! http://www.classicgaming.com/thedump/genesis/secre ts.htm

There are actually five endings to Metroid- the "normal" ending, special endings for coming in under 5 hours, 3 hours, and 1 hour, and one special ending for failing to clear 5 hours with the secret character Armorless Samus.

It always facinates me how much the geek community reveres Steve Jobs and distains Bill Gates. It's got to be the alpha male/Jock factor, because if you look at how they've treated people around them you realize they're both bastards.

Jobs was a wannabe hippie colledge drop out who, through screwed over his best friend to the tune of $5000
tried to screw over almost everyone who worked on the original macintosh on their stock options, and is generally regarded as a horrible, abusive boss.

Bill Gates is a guy with actual geek cred, and everyone who was around him during the first couple years at microsoft got a piece of the action.( Although I hear he was a horrible, abusive boss as well ) Paul Allen fared pretty well, and BillG promoted his college buddy to CEO.

Now ask yourself who would you have wanted as your boss/friend

Did somebody command the author to rise from his grave?

"I was on a plane going to a user group club in Fort Lauderdale to promote the Mac.... Andy Hertzfeld [another Apple developer] had just read 'Zap!,' a book about Atari which said that Steve Jobs designed 'Breakout.' I explained to him that we both worked on it and got paid $700. Andy corrected me, 'No, it says here it was $5,000.' When I read in the book how Nolan Bushnell had actually paid Steve $5,000, I just cried."
-Steve Wozniak

No No NO! Don't you get it?! Nintendo needs to stop investing all their time in creating new gameplay, and instead use it creating new characters. I want nineteen separate 3rd person shooters that are different only in their artwork. I want to play lots of hallow games, each one in a completely new and under developed universe. I want so many unknown characters flying across my screen that I'll never develop any sort of emotional connection with them.

I don't know why Nintendo wasted two decades carefully creating a huge, detailed, and vibrant universe .http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mariopedia/...th at couldn't possibly be an asset when making games. Maybe they should hire some more marketing people, so they can get an appropriate number of young female characters with huge breasts and large anime eyes. I mean...an overweight italian plumber? Are we supposed to take this stuff seriously? How about something believable like a genetically engineered super soldier that runs around outer space and shoots stuff. Now that's a character for the ages.

Now, my 3000 is relegated to playing Settlers once in a while.

I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of games out there that have similarly-locked features.

Like the one in Rings of Power for the Sega Genesis. To see a topless chick in the game hold down the DOWN, RIGHT, START, A, B, & C buttons on controller 2 and restart the Genesis. I remember reading this is a game mag back in the day and was able to find it searching on google.

http://www.classicgaming.com/thedump/genesis/secre ts.htm

Holy crap. I've got that issue sitting on my desk. For some reason that issue of EGM has been sitting on my desk for years and I don't know why.

it's weird to see it on-screen.

Shooting and killing people in order to steal their stuff is good?
And some skin is bad?

George Carlin said it best when he said, "I'd rather watch two people making love than two people trying to kill one another."

I'm just confused as to why parents are appauled that their children might watch porn in THIS game. If porn showed up in a game like "Sesame Street: Count with the Count" then I could understand the upset, but Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas? I wonder what would happen if porn showed up in some older game?

There was a concert in Tokyo performed by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring themes from Super Smash Brothers, including Yoshi's Story, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and a couple of others. Mario themes appear in the medleys, I think. See http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mania/ssbmsl.shtm l and http://www.gametrax.net/albums/084846/. Unfortunately, it looks like the cd isn't for sale, but look around for it.

Also of interest may be Mario and Zelda Big Band. The name should be all you need to know. http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mania/m&zbblcd.sh tml

It would be nice if there were concerts like these out of japan...
-ReK

There was a concert in Tokyo performed by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring themes from Super Smash Brothers, including Yoshi's Story, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and a couple of others. Mario themes appear in the medleys, I think. See http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mania/ssbmsl.shtm l and http://www.gametrax.net/albums/084846/. Unfortunately, it looks like the cd isn't for sale, but look around for it.

Also of interest may be Mario and Zelda Big Band. The name should be all you need to know. http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mania/m&zbblcd.sh tml

It would be nice if there were concerts like these out of japan...
-ReK

"This site has been around for at least 6-7 years."

Seriously, why doesn't Slashdot post a link to Zophar's Domain while we're on the subject of old video game sites.

However, as long as we're talking about sites hosting on classicgaming.com, I'll throw in my two cents and say I prefer the Metroid Database myself...

The classicgaming site is kind of old, the only really interesting link one would find on it would be the emulation one.

I love the little disclaimer they have regarding the "24 hour rule" about downloading roms. It's about as good as the whole Bill Clinton Privacy Act of 1995 I see on every other irc channel.

I wish stuff like that actually worked - I'd warn all the cops that walking up to my window automatically disqualifies me from any speeding tickets.

This article is worthless without mention of the Intellivision controller. Especially as they slam the old Atari one some much. Where the Atari's was simple, the Intellivision's was a complicated affair with a weird disk and a keybad that you could attach overlays too. Check out In Defense of the Intellivision Hand Controller for an interesting look at this oddball of a controller.
Also worthy of retro note is the bizarro Bally Astrocade gun grip controller which could function as both joystick and paddle.

Bah, tell me when the arm extends twenty feet and I can swing across buildings.

But I agree, there's no reason for the lack of context in the blurb, since the Swordquest games are kinda esoteric to people who aren't into classic video games. They're pretty awful games, and the little prominence they have is almost entirely due to their comic-book/contest tie-ins, combined with the rarity of the third game in the series. And they aren't really sequels to Adventure -- the first game in the series was named Adventure II early in development, but quickly evolved (many would say devolved) into something else entirely.

Drat, so the Flashback 2 won't have the long-awaited 16-bit addressing enhancement? I guess we'll just be stuck with 12 bits for another 30 years.

I've been looking foorward to this for some time now. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence for the PS2 was a very good transition from the 2D-with RPGish elements of Symphony of the Night + the GBA games to a 3D environment (I never tried the N64 games though I heard they were awful).

The artwork and the music were both top of the line. My only gripes were the repetition in the areas (lots of rooms looked exactly the same), and the amount of backtracking required to grab some of the loot (this was also an issue in the 2D games though). The camera was also a little troublesome, it could have used the L button to center the camera behind your character feature we all love from Sega games.

It also takes place before all the other games and so you learn the origin of the Belmonts feud with Dracula and how the whip gained it's vampire slaying powers.

You can see some scans from Play Magazine here, which includes an interview with the producer and composer and a really awesome piece of artwork:
http://www.classicgaming.com/castlevania/new.htm

Be sure to pick up Castlevania Symphony of the Night then, widely regarded as the best in the series.

Sure, it's a 2D platform, but you won't be disappointed by the beautiful bitmap graphics, the impressive soundtrack by Akira "Silent Hill" Yamaoka and the unbeatable playability (only Super Metroid comes close).

"The console also will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo® 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System® (NES)."

Hmm. Let me download Snake, Rattle n' Roll and The Guardian Legend for $.99 (or whatever's fair... that means LESS than $19.99) and you've got yourself a loyal customer again.

Nintendo... the next iTunes Music Store-like experience?

For those who ain't hip check out http://www.classicgaming.com/o2home/db/cart.asp?ma sterid=24&cartid=24. This game and the outcome of the legal actions set precedents for software copyright law.

It's funnier if you've played Metroid.

Woz has said that Jobs never treated him badly

That's not the case. Jobs screwed Wozniac when they created Breakout for Atari. Jobs pocketed the entire $5,000 bonus and half the $700 he was offered. Woz got $350 and none of the design bonus for the work he alone did.

Imagine if the PSP was big enough to accomodate the PS2 discs. Ugh.

It is. Ooga booga.

but... i realize this is a pipe dream. EA will milk us for all we're worth, hoping we'll buy both games.

I have a copy of Super Mario Adventures (http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/mania/images/mag /np_smadventures.jpg)
but no way of getting it online. Here is the info from the back page for those interested

Super Mario Adventures

The first 12 comic episodes presented in this book originally ran as a series in Nintendo Power magazine, beginning in January, 1992, (Volume 32) and running though December, 1992. The final episode, which was printed in the first issue of 1993, introduced Mario's alter ego and tormented childhood playmate, Wario. The comics didn't follow the story line of any particular game; however they do incorporate many characters from the games and even introduce some new ones.

Charlie Nozawa, the artist who created the comics, is known in Japan by the pen name Tamakichi Sakura. His most notable works include "Shiawase No Katachi" (Shapes of Happiness) and "Oyaji NO Wakusei" (Dad's Planet). Kentaro Takekuma dreamed up the scenario. He is known in Japan for co-authoring "Comic Lesson: Even an Ape Can Draw a Comic"

someone obviously hasn't played Barker Bill's Trick shooting. there's a mode in that game where the dog from duck hunt floats baloons from behind a barricade. if the dog pops out and you shoot him, instead, you do get penalized, but it is soooo worth it just to see the dog shot in the face.

You don't need a big budget for a good story line. My favorite game in the old dos days was Star Control II. At the time, there was no voice, simple tracked-music, and graphics that were nothing special. But the game was *fun*, and had a great plot.

One person in the article mentioned that you shouldn't stereotype characters. Perhaps, but then again, if you start with a general stereotype and then run in wild tangents from there, you can end up with great results. Case and point: the spathi. My favorite alien race from any game I've ever played.

Small groups can make great games. The key is utilizing tools made by others. For example, check out UFO: Alien Invasion. A couple of quake-modders who liked X-com is making a stunningly beautiful freeware version of the old X-com games. Great music, eye candy, and fun gameplay.

Corporation (1990) for the Amiga allowed you to put your face on the main character. You had to send a floppy disk and a photograph to Core Design.

Yeah, like Talana!

Oh darn... the editors cut out my link to the Wikipedia article on von Neumann's Universal Constructor (i.e. clanking replicator). Here it is:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Constructor

From the article:

A clanking replicator is an artificial self-replicating system that relies on conventional large-scale technology and automation. The term evolved to distinguish such systems from the microscopic "assemblers" that nanotechnology may make possible. ...

Such a machine violates no physical laws, and we already possess the basic technologies necessary for some of the more detailed proposed designs.

A self-replicating machine would need to have the capacity to gather energy and raw materials, process the raw materials into finished components, and then assemble them into a copy of itself. It is unlikely that this would all be contained within a single monolithic structure, but would rather be a group of cooperating machines or an automated factory that is capable of manufacturing all of the machines that make it up. The factory could produce mining robots to collect raw materials, construction robots to put new machines together, and repair robots to maintain itself against wear and tear, all without human intervention or direction. The advantage of such a system lies in its ability to expand its own capacity rapidly and without additional human effort; in essence, the initial investment required to construct the first clanking replicator would have an arbitrarily large payoff with no additional cost.

On a completely different note, does anyone else remember the Slylandro probes from Star Control 2?

Buy a copy of Peopleware instead. It's full of good stuff, most of which is backed up by hard data from the authors' studies, and not just some "Hey, why don't we make work like a game?" nonsense. Plus, trying to implement the advice in that book will keep most companies busy for a few years yet.

This book sounds like a crock. I mean, encouraging managers to tell their team:

"open all the doors, run into the walls, find a way to succeed."

That doesn't sound patronising at all. I can see all these employees running around the office bumping into walls and grunting, trying to find the chainsaw. Or maybe their competitors left a blue key around the office or something.

As someone else said, I'm amazed this got published.

Anyone else irresistibly reminded of the classic Far Side cartoon? :-)

Pacman only has center{default}, up, down, left, and right as inputs. Space Invaders has a simple command set of just left, right and shoot. I wish I could tell you how to map these commands to your headmouse. The MAME project might be of use to you: http://www.classicgaming.com/mame32qa/

The legend goes that Atari buried five million E.T. cartridges in the New Mexico desert. This /. reader believes that the following link offers conclusive evidence.... http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/etf ound/

The Atari 5200 Supersystem was named for its part number in the Atari catalog, CX5200. Following this trend, Atari renamed the VCS the 2600.

It was called the Atari VCS until the 5200 came out...and the 7800 is just a continuation of the 2600 mulitples