Slashdot Mirror

It looks a LOT like a slightly more modern version of Area 51 (Prerendered backdrops, badly integrated bad guys pasted over the top), and that ran on the CoJag hardware back in 1995.

Please Eugine, give it up - leave your record with some of the best Coin-Op games ever, and dont do a Lucas...

these titles show how little detail is needed in a 3D game for basic enjoyable gameplay

Reminds me of Hard Drivin', although the Genesis port was pretty bad. They used to have one of these arcade machines (the full cabinet one, mind you) at the Franklin Institute in Philly, where you could play for free. I think it was in the technology section, and is was supposed to demonstrate VR, and how, by 2000, we would all have VR suits and do everything virtually. Anyway, I mostly remember it for running over the cow, and falling off the loop at the top of it. Ouch.

Another blast from the early-3D-past (for PC gamers) is Corncob 3D, a kind of bizzaro combat flight sim for DOS, which is now available as Open Source.

First, please take five minutes to go and read the patent. It covers "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device."

A game console is a limited resource computing device.

"The longer you hold down the fire button, the stronger your shot will be." R-Type, 1987.

"double-tapping the joystick right or left will cause the player to charge and smash into opponents.", Golden Axe, 1989.

All done now?

First, please take five minutes to go and read the patent. It covers "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device."

A game console is a limited resource computing device.

"The longer you hold down the fire button, the stronger your shot will be." R-Type, 1987.

"double-tapping the joystick right or left will cause the player to charge and smash into opponents.", Golden Axe, 1989.

All done now?

Vector graphics, decent force-feedback and an operable clutch, which can really show you who knows how to drive. The physics were pretty realistic, even allowing for throttle steering.

Of course, it only came with a four-speed transmission, but it's better than the contemporaries, which had no clutch and paddle shifters, with laughable physics.

Vector graphics, decent force-feedback and an operable clutch, which can really show you who knows how to drive. The physics were pretty realistic, even allowing for throttle steering.

Of course, it only came with a four-speed transmission, but it's better than the contemporaries, which had no clutch and paddle shifters, with laughable physics.

For every one "Deus Ex" (Not TIW), "Beyond Good & Evil", or "Castlevania: SotN", they bury us in steaming, greasy piles of rehashed "Starwars: Episode 3.14159 Racer", "Final Fantasy 34", "Super Mario Strip Poker", and the "[sport name] [year]" EA crap.

Super Mario Strip Poker? With Princess Toadstool? I think you're on to something! Donkey Kong came out in 1981, which makes our sweet "Peach" at least 23 -- plenty old enough to take out for a beer or two.

(/me decides "Post Anonymously" might be a good idea...)

I've never understoood the appeal of standing in front of a video poker terminal*, feeding in cash and pushing the little buttons, when I know that the odds are against me. But I have spent many unproductive hours with handheld poker games, and was inspired to come up with a system to lose less often. At the risk of slashdotting my new host, here's my geeky take on How to Lose Less at Video Poker.

It got mixed reviews a year or so ago when the topic came up in a previous Slashdot story, but it still seems to hold up for me -- at least, when there's no real money involved. The main criticism, IIRC, was that my method is very conservative, reducing the chances of a Big Win. Since I'm not the type to plug fifty bucks into a machine in hopes of a Big Win, I'm still happy with the method as it stands, but I'm receptive to comments.

I was hoping to try it out on a trip to Oklahoma, but when I stopped in the so-called Indian Casino in Okmulgee, I found nothing but a bingo parlor (with touch-screen monitors in place of ink daubers) and a couple hundred video 8-liners. Not one real video poker machine to try my luck. I'll have to hit the truck stop in Louisiana again... last time I was there, I played two 25c hands, lost one, won 50c on the other, and cashed out.

* Spending several hours plugging quarters into Pac-Man, however, is another thing entirely.

I just want a game like propcycle at home that will give me interesting in game rewards/explanation for improving my physical performance. Just rig up a sensor thing for an exercise bike than comission a decent "Pilot Wings 64" like game, and as I improve, make me work harder and harder to stay aloft.

And are you saying you want to see a movie with a Hasselhoff soundtrack??

Yup. Mainly the coin-op, and also an Atari 2600 game.

According to the group of ball male honorary professors same university Noguchi, you say that the globefish eats the living thing which has poison such as asteroid and the shellfish which are in the seabed accumulates that poison to internal.

Poisonous Asteroids?

What's next? DDR with DDT?

they never show the poor truck driver, driving for 20 hours straight just to earn a living, fighting exhaustion but alert enough to avoid swerving his big white truck into oncoming traffic

That one was called Night Driver.

When I was writing video games for a living, Hecker's physics articles in Game Developer magazine really helped me out. He knows what he's doing when it comes to this stuff. And, at least as important, he knows how to teach others to do it too.

kind of reminds me of You are full of bombs and/or keys from that old game Gauntlet. Now your computer really can be full of bombs!

Funny Elevator Action should be mentioned. It was one of a number of "spy runs around a building with elevators" games that were independently developed and all released around the same time. If the first one had some IP lock on this obvious idea, perhaps it wouldn't have been Elevator Action you played. But then again, I played a lot of Intrepid, so that may have warped my view. :^)

Funny Elevator Action should be mentioned. It was one of a number of "spy runs around a building with elevators" games that were independently developed and all released around the same time. If the first one had some IP lock on this obvious idea, perhaps it wouldn't have been Elevator Action you played. But then again, I played a lot of Intrepid, so that may have warped my view. :^)

For those who didnt play it, imagine Running Man crossed with Robotron - with rather (for the time) gory graphics, complete with an over the top host.

"BINGO! TOTAL CARNAGE! IIII-LOVE-IT! YEAAA!"

What's the big deal? I can recall feeding quarters to a similar machine that did this, like, twenty years ago!

Missile Command

I can see some fun being had

That fun has been had, at your local arcade.

You can still enjoy it, as a matter of fact.

Bah, who needs Smash TV? I'm down with Karate Champ!

(Man, that thing was a beast...I dumped many pocketfuls of quarters into it, and, despite being one of the best players in town, I still don't think I had all the moves down pat.)

When I saw the name Vanguard, it sounded really famaliar. When I googled for it, I realized that it was my all-time favorite arcade scroller. No wonder I was excited at first.

I remember playing this game bak in '84. From the trailer it seems that the "Fresh prince of Belaire" will be playing the part of the little guy jumping around in a crudly rendered, polygon filled world, shooting pixels at a massive eye! Fun for all the family!!

For a web database of video games, check out KLOV, Killer List Of Video games.

The page for Pac-Man is here.

For a web database of video games, check out KLOV, Killer List Of Video games.

The page for Pac-Man is here.

Compared to games like Adventure or Pitfall today's electronic entertainment is a veritable pornography of violence, where vile acts are rendered in detail to a young audience.

I'm sure pinball enthusiasts were saying all the same things about Death Race 25 years ago...

Anyway, who do these people think they are? Acclaim ?!?

Good point. Now, if Gamespy could record and make the age breakdown of the voting block publicly available, there'd be a lot of fun statisticking to be done.

"Looking at the data here, it's no surprise at all that so few voted for Missile Command, only such-and-such percent of the voters were even *alive*, let alone of gaming age, when that was in popular circulation!"

Continuing the uber-Scrabble theme, I'd like the nominate Zzyzx as the new name. Sure, it isn't in any way mythological, but it has nice legends attached to it. And it's halfway to Vegas from here, so what more do you want? ;)

A few more letters so I can hit the triple word score square: Zzyzzyxx

I understand Val Kilmer is still pissed off about this.

Said he wasn't even asked.

I work for the McDonalds Corporation Advanced Modelling and Simulations Department, where we constantly plan and game against foodstuff revolt by playing BurgerTime. It's been a great success, I'm proud to report we haven't lost a single team member to eggs or sausage in 2004.

I'm waiting for the Burgertime concert.

You mean this? The rom is out there, though it's not fully emulated yet. That would account for so few places having it.

I have a restored Asteroids Deluxe machine, bought it for a song, reworked the power supplies, and bango, instant early 80s nostalgia trip. Asteroids wasn't my game back then, but the Deluxe version is much more refined -- cooler graphics, better sound, fluorescent backdrop lit by a blacklight, and "killer satellites" that are a real pain.

Why not just play the MAME version? Well, it's not bad, and a gamepad helps, but... there's something about the sound of a quarter dropping through the chute, clinking into the coinbox, the corresponding click of the mechanical coin counter, that just says "okay, this is for real!"...

It irks me too that the combination Ms. Pac Man/Galaga machines now charge .50 per play - why is it double the price to play an old game??

I don't know; maybe inflation? Ms. Pac-Man came out in 1981, over 20 years ago. With inflation, 50 cents is nearly spot on the same price.

If you have to ask, you just don't get it.

Seriously. I was born in '69, so I was there when all of the classic games came out. Maybe I am just being nostalgic, but it was an awesome time. Take your $5 that you saved and go to the arcade. You could play 20 games, if you didn't buy any chips or Coke. You could watch other people play. I remember when Pac Man came out. I bought the damn "Pac Man Fever" 45. I remember playing Moon Patrol and Joust at the Pizza Hut. I always went for the 5x in Lunar Lander instead of playing it safe with the 2x. Sinistar still scares the crap out of me. I spent many many hours playing Star Wars. Games like Gauntlet let you play alongside other people. I could go on and on. Check out Video Arcade Preservation Society (VAPS) or the Killer List of Video games (KLOV) if you want to go back in time a little. And there is always MAME for a more hands-on approach.

It isn't like home systems weren't fun, I broke countless Atari 2600 joysticks. But you just can't compare the classic arcade scene to home gaming or arcades of today. It just doesn't work.

I think Pajitnov definitely didn't help his cause of only being known for a certain product by producing a lot of other '...tris' games - I particularly remember Hatris, which is a pretty wacky idea conceptually.

However, he did design Pandora's Box for Microsoft, which is a wonderful example of a classical puzzle game (not Tetris-like, more jigsaw-like, but with much more complexity and 3D puzzles of many kinds), which is, imho, very under-rated.

1. Book series
2. Wire mesh manufacturer
3. Movie with Clint Eastwood
4. Atari game
5. Web design company specializing in horses
6. A game controller
7. A safety technology company
8. An all-girl hard rockin' poppin' pounding band from Tacoma, Washingto
9. A model airplane
10. A slashdot user who posted twice in 1999

The good things about the name:

1. It doesn't sound like another similar product (eg Lindows)
2. It doesn't have the name of the OS it was originally designed to run on in it. (eg WinZip)
3. It doesn't have the name of the programming language used to create it in it (eg JavaInvaders)
4. It is unlikely to cause confusion with another software product (except maybe the video game), unlike Firebird.
5. It doesn't use a famous trademark (at least they didn't name it Nike)

I've said this in the past, and I will say it again. If you are naming your open source software, make it something unique. Why would you want to compete for search terms with all these other people, products, corporations, and organizations. If your product has merit, then people will recognize the name that you give it and you will get brand loyalty. There is no need show your similarity to other products or your system requirements in your name.

I've seen a number of games that cut loose all ties of "reminiscent of the real world". Even Tetris is pretty close - it has gravity, but not much else from the real world. Neither do solitaire card games, or some arcade and home computer games I recall from the 1980s. The Atari coinop vector graphics game Quantum is a good example. But as for defying logic, well, most videogames and computer games stick very strongly to whatever the principles of their internally defined reality are. Programming itself is sometimes referred to as "logic", making a game work consistently is kind of like "carving with the grain of the wood". I know some card games and party games that are about changing the rules of the game as you go, but even those involve following the rules about how to change the rules (even if those change over the course of the game), strictly adhering to what the rules are at any given time, etc. I guess the most willfully and deliberately illogical game I can think of is the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, by Douglas Adams. At least in the early parts (I never got far), you had to perform actions that would, after you try them, happen to trigger lucky side effects you couldn't possibly have predicted from anything you were told before, you just had to try things until some combination of actions worked out for you. Though there was the internal logic of being able to try the first three steps and fail on the fourth, then try again knowing that the first three steps would lead to the same result again (even if you had to go back to a saved game to do so). I think the main purpose of having game controls, physics, etc. not behave in any kind of consistent way that you could learn or deduce and then use to try to play the game better would be in a gag game made to frustrate or annoy people until they realize it's a "joke" and give up. Even then, certain kinds of formalized behavior produce better humor and practical jokes than total randomness and total unpredictability, I would say.

Is this question for real? It sounds like the writer grew up playing too many FPSes. There are plenty of games which have little realism.

Examples:

Super Monkey Ball - Sure, we have monkeys and bananas in the "real world" and I suppose we could seal these monkeys in giant plastic balls but after that it just gets wierd. Hmmm... realistic? Well, I could point out that gravity still points down. That's realistic, right?

Amidar - Alright, get this one. On odd stages, you play a monkey (back with the monkey theme I see) and on even stages, you play a paint roller. Enemies that chase you will be savages for the monkey and... what would be chasing after a paint roller? Pigs! This goes to show that the programmers at Stern didn't have a drug problem. They could get all the drugs that they wanted. Here's a link to prove I'm not making this up.

There's many more that have very little to do with reality. Bomberman, Frequency, Tempest, er never mind. I'll stop while I can still think properly.

Well, if its not, whats the bet it'll be a hack of Metal Slug 2? Hey, you already have the bad guys apparently in some middle eastern country...

As another fellow said, Sundog was awesome. Also, Autoduel.

I'd also love to see someone remake Ikari Warriors with the Crimsonland engine.

Elevator Action already got an update in '94 as Elevator Action Returns . Unfortunately, it felt more like Rolling Thunder than Elevator Action.

My all-time favourite arcade game would have to be Vanguard from 1981. A multi-directional scrolling shoot-em-up game with four fire buttons (up, down, left, right), an inventive development on Scramble. The game featured synthesized speech which in 1981 was way out. Another great idea was where you flew through a sprite labelled ENERGY and were then indestructible for a few seconds, much like the Berserker in Doom. My favourite bit was when you approached a dangerous section and it warned you to "Be careful!". Rocking music too. A sequel was made, but the graphics are lame compared to the cool and simple style of the original.

My all-time favourite arcade game would have to be Vanguard from 1981. A multi-directional scrolling shoot-em-up game with four fire buttons (up, down, left, right), an inventive development on Scramble. The game featured synthesized speech which in 1981 was way out. Another great idea was where you flew through a sprite labelled ENERGY and were then indestructible for a few seconds, much like the Berserker in Doom. My favourite bit was when you approached a dangerous section and it warned you to "Be careful!". Rocking music too. A sequel was made, but the graphics are lame compared to the cool and simple style of the original.

I loved the championship boxing in the article. Does that bring back memories. Xenophobe is a great game. I lost a lot of quarters to that one.

Road Blaster should be on the list, too.

I loved the championship boxing in the article. Does that bring back memories. Xenophobe is a great game. I lost a lot of quarters to that one.

Road Blaster should be on the list, too.

I loved the championship boxing in the article. Does that bring back memories. Xenophobe is a great game. I lost a lot of quarters to that one.

Road Blaster should be on the list, too.

I think you mean Hard Drivin'. Yeah, that was cool :)