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It's much easier for our government to protect our freedoms if you're willing to give up all but a few, so that they need only concentrate on protecting those few.

Completely unrelated (or is it?) but did anybody else play Missile Command like this?

You know, where you let all but one of the cities die as soon as the game becomes difficult, so that it's easy to keep playing?

I'll let you derive your own thoughts about how this may be happening to us...

I'm with you on him 'doing wrong' and being punished for it, but prosecuting him under the DMCA fucked us all. Now there's a documented case of manufacturer vs. distributor of 'hardware modification' equipment, and the manufacturer winning outright.

I'm starting to fear for my new arcade hobby. What if I get a JAMMA adapter that allows my JAMMA cabinet to play Galaga? Is Namco going to come after me?

Or better, what If I wanted to hook my PC to my JAMMA cabinet with a J-PAC? Sure, a lot of people use it to play MAME (which is illegal if you don't own the board), but you're not restricted to MAME games. Put on a trackball, and it could be a 'web browser arcade cabinet'.

I'll wait for Robotron 2084, where we'll have robots ready to kill you on sight.

You're absolutely right - it's more like Tempest!

Many arcade to console conversion were very successful. I can't think of one where a console game made it into the arcades.

I can think of one

Holy cow! They've got ours! (Definitely not based on an anime. :^)

Lupin III was also used to make the classic 80's videodisc game, Cliff Hanger.

One and two. One could also think of this as a game "in the same line", although they are definitely distinct games.

One and two. One could also think of this as a game "in the same line", although they are definitely distinct games.

One and two. One could also think of this as a game "in the same line", although they are definitely distinct games.

With an up/down/left/right/menu remote, you've got all the controls available, so in theory it should work quite nicely..

(though I'd still prefer a Cliff Hanger game, even if it had 2 buttons...)

...sweet S.T.U.N. Runner... ahead of its time...

the 5 seconds it took to skim that site and decide it was a total waste of time was total worth having to look at that bloody ad that popped up for /. referrers. thanks!

Oh well, here's an interesting tidbit about Q*Bert, from KLOV:

... Q*Bert and Reactor both use the SC-01 speech synthesizer, although in the case of Q*Bert, it is never used for any kind of coherent speech. All the speech is generated by making the chip play random sounds at a specific pitch.

... Part of this game's unique charm is the pure gibberish that comes out of the machine's speech synthesizer.

Snood is just a ripoff of SNK's Bust a Move, which was released in 1994. See here.

KLOV rocks.

KLOV rocks.

KLOV rocks.

Snood is the rip-off of Bust-A-Move (a/k/a Puzzle Bobble, et al.). The fact that so few people seem to recognize this kind of reinforces the original author's point about the recent obscurity of the puzzle-game genre.

How about Namco's PropCycle, where you flew this pedal powered ultra-light thing and popped balloons. It came out circa 1995.

Or Downhill Bikers? I could see a row of these at the gym.

It all depends on what you're trying to emulate. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Sure, you can even get away with a 486 (if you use the right Emulator, such as VAntAGE, but if you're looking to play something like, S.T.U.N. Runner, which isn't exactly young, you can't. I've got an Athlon 1GHz, and barely make full frame rate.

It all depends on what you're trying to emulate. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Sure, you can even get away with a 486 (if you use the right Emulator, such as VAntAGE, but if you're looking to play something like, S.T.U.N. Runner, which isn't exactly young, you can't. I've got an Athlon 1GHz, and barely make full frame rate.

It all depends on what you're trying to emulate. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Sure, you can even get away with a 486 (if you use the right Emulator, such as VAntAGE, but if you're looking to play something like, S.T.U.N. Runner, which isn't exactly young, you can't. I've got an Athlon 1GHz, and barely make full frame rate.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Dumb consumers part with their money more easily than smart ones, and it's profitable to appease the former by letting them pay their way to success instead of earning it. Expect this to happen a lot in future online RPGs: more money gets you a more 1337 character.

Unfair to other players? Sure, but megacorps like Sony aren't in the business of fairness.

Really, you hate that? Do you hate it hate it? Like, when you're lying in bed at night do you stay up cursing "damn those bastards with their irritating abbreviation conventions!"

See, I don't think you hate it. I think you just want something to bitch about. I don't fault you for that; the last twenty years people have done nothing but bitch. Personally, I blame the whole thing on Paperboy, because that game was way too fucking hard, and everyone who played it was sure to walk away pissed off.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed those moments of your life you wasted complaining about a triviality.

I realize the irony of wasting my time to point out that this person is wasting his time, so you needn't bother pointing that out.

A few old video games had good ones, but I don't remember their names ...

Tempest was probably the most well-known.

Here is how to make one. In the Emu/Arcade scene they're called "spinners". Have fun!

See? I can be informative. Creepy.

Midway (who bought Atari arcade) is still guarding the rights to Marble Madness 2, so it seems you won't be seeing ROMs for it anytime soon. Fully designed games that only a lucky few people can play. Sad.

The author conveniently omitted this
1979 technology that has been safely used to defend against both asteroids and alien vessels for 23 years.

Games like Tempest and Asteroids were originally vector as well. Quite interesting, yet different if you're used to only raster games.

Games like Tempest and Asteroids were originally vector as well. Quite interesting, yet different if you're used to only raster games.

AMEN! I used to collect video games, and I know a couple collectors who own a LOT of games. I am talking 300+. These are the enthusiasts who keep these things alive. One of my good friends was involved in scrounging up all the parts and putting together one of the only known working Zektor games at the time. He put it in a standup Eliminator cocktail cabinet, and we used to get drunk as hell and play Zektor and Eliminator until the wee hours of the morning.

I ended up selling my two standup cabinets because they just took up too much room in my apartment. I still have a cocktail game, and a Galaga cabaret. I have a couple of boxes of boardsets in the garage, containing the games I just couldn't bear to sell (Bubble Bobble, New Zealand Story, Rainbow Islands, Pengo, Elevator Action, Gyruss, Galaxian). If it weren't for the enthusiasts, the people who love arcade games, these things would be extinct. Instead, they are kept alive. So what if I have a CDROM set with all the ROMs on them. Some are legal, because I own the boardsets, but most of them are illegal. Oooooo, lock me up, I am breaking the law. I know some guys who were trying to get side art to restore one of their game cabinets, and they couldn't find it. So they went through the trouble to reproduce it. They were shut down when the game company got wind of it. Sad. Technically, that is illegal, but for Jebus' sake, when did we stop using our brains and rely completely on the "law"? I think there are definitely gray areas. Pac-Man is a part of our collective culture, as are many of the old classics (and not-so-classics). Enthusiasts have done some really amazing things out of love for these games. Like MAME.

In fact, someone is doing this very thing.

Me :)

Also, check out Vantris at Emucamp. It's a Tetris clone programmed on Vanguard hardware, and includes the Z80 source code.

http://www.klov.com/D/Dragon's_Lair.html.

MTV Drum Jammer

Battlezone is generally thought of as the first true 3D video game. The hardware consisted of three separate processing units: the main CPU (a 6502), the vector processor (a combination of ICs), and the "Mathbox," which used four- 2901 bit-slice processors for 3D calulations. All previous games we generally illusions of 3D, and in most cases, weren't TRUE 3D (Night Driver and Tailgunner are good examples of this).

Battlezone is generally thought of as the first true 3D video game. The hardware consisted of three separate processing units: the main CPU (a 6502), the vector processor (a combination of ICs), and the "Mathbox," which used four- 2901 bit-slice processors for 3D calulations. All previous games we generally illusions of 3D, and in most cases, weren't TRUE 3D (Night Driver and Tailgunner are good examples of this).

Battlezone is generally thought of as the first true 3D video game. The hardware consisted of three separate processing units: the main CPU (a 6502), the vector processor (a combination of ICs), and the "Mathbox," which used four- 2901 bit-slice processors for 3D calulations. All previous games we generally illusions of 3D, and in most cases, weren't TRUE 3D (Night Driver and Tailgunner are good examples of this).

"Monolith wanted their upcoming TRON 2.0 game to be based off of the sequel, but after waiting so long they gave up "

Kinda like what happened the first time!

Donkey Kong was the first Mario Title and it was released in 1981 according to KLOV. Super Mario Brothers (one of the many Mario titles) was as far as I remember 'only' one of the first or the first scrolling Jump'n Runs.

I'd say it's a tie between Pitfall! and Super Mario Bros. as to which game really invented the platform game genre.

Pitfall was Game of the Year in 1982. Super Mario Brothers came out in 1985 according to KLOV. So, it's obviously not a tie.

http://www.klov.com/D/Dance_Dance_Revolution.html

Great post. You must work for Minitrue.

Just for fun, here's Another prophetic warning about the year 2084.

Time Traveler

I was working for General Computer in 1982, the company that created a hack of Missile Command called "Super Missile Attack". It plugged into Missile Command boxen, replacing the ROM to make the game cooler. Anyhow, Atari sued and we had to build a couple games for Atari as part of the settlement (Quantum and Food Fight [I built the prototype boards for these games]). At the time, I was a huge Devo fan (I mean, what self respecting geek of the time wasn't a Devo fan), and I used to brag to everyone that I was working within the same corporate monolith (Warner Brothers at the time) as Devo.

I was working for General Computer in 1982, the company that created a hack of Missile Command called "Super Missile Attack". It plugged into Missile Command boxen, replacing the ROM to make the game cooler. Anyhow, Atari sued and we had to build a couple games for Atari as part of the settlement (Quantum and Food Fight [I built the prototype boards for these games]). At the time, I was a huge Devo fan (I mean, what self respecting geek of the time wasn't a Devo fan), and I used to brag to everyone that I was working within the same corporate monolith (Warner Brothers at the time) as Devo.