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Arcade Meets LAN party
Rylar writes "California Extreme is holding their annual classic arcade games show at the San Jose Convention Center September 7th and 8th. With paid admission you get free play on all the Pinball machines and old school upright arcade machines like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Centipede and Frogger to name a few. This year LANtrocity has joined the mix for an "old meets new" element. LANtrocity is providing a BYOC area and several free play computers on the 7th, one admission gets you into both the old style arcade free play area and the LAN party. Challenge your friends to a Biathlon; Galaga and SoF2."
I miss Tempest. This is one game that just isn't the same on a PC or console, because it had this bigass heavy flywheel controller knob and there's just no substitute. Hope they have a Tempest machine!
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
California Extreme is also your chance to play this guy's rare Marble Madness II prototype, which he assembled from parts over a period of time.
Why does all the cool stuff happen on the West Coast?
Just get a few of your friends, some good music and some time to kill. Anyone who has played test drive on the ps2 has an idea of what i'm talking about. All of the sudden, those 15-second load times turned into 3+ minutes.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Nothing like short notice. Now I'll be out of town and miss it. Bugger!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Galaxian might have inspired Galaga but Galaga has the better game play. But i would love to play demon attack on the atari 2600 again.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I am thinking about going to this event. How are the lines at it? Must you wait very long to play any old game?
its the sound of geeks everywhere becoming aroused
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Not bad, considering I used to shovel about that much in quarters into the old games.
Come to think of it, I spend more than that now at places like Dave & Buster's but I don't notice it as much since they have the swipe cards.
This game convention is such a great idea. The kind of idea you kick yourself for not coming up with and exploiting yourself.
why are you wasting slashdot bandwidth?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
After heavy Tempest action, I would sometimes have nightmares of being trapped, unable to fire, at the top of a glowing Tempest level, as the red death crabs inexorably slid toward me to slay. The lag of the knob definitely contributed to the feel of Tempest gameplay.
I loved these older games because they were easy for me to play without being too much into games. Things like frogger were basic and adults and kids alike could enjoy them. While I marvel at the newer games I cannot always enjoy them in the short time that I have to devote to such things. Even simple racer games on the Xbox take a few hours to get used to the controls. I think there is still a market for simple fun arcade games.
We mustn't look to the past for happiness. There are new things to fascinate and inspire if we but look and stay ready to accept it. by the way there are things like emulators, man.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Amazing. we were part of Mankinds first wide spread interaction with silicon computing. What a world has been birthed since!
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
That is the game I missed.
My brother and I used to play these games to settle everything from arguments to where to head out on Friday nights...
Ahh, the people at the local grocery knew us well while their Defender and Stargate machines worked....
off topic? or a quick way to play missile comand? in real life?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
www.dreammachineonline.com
:)
Okay, I know it's a crappy site, but we have arcades and LANs (in the same building!) in four different cities: Portland, ME, Danvers, MA (near Boston), Burlington, VT, and Dartmouth, MA.
Come check it out!
And whats really cool is that they networked the old pinball machines together so that you can play head to head.
hee hee
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
Atari gave us some much of joy! Too bad it's dead now
If Atari is so dead, then who published Neverwinter Nights? At least one of the two Atari companies is alive and kicking as part of Infogrames. (The other got bought by a hard drive maker.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
I miss the flying games. I recently visited an arcade attached to the local cinema and there were car races, bike races, skiing, fishing!, air hockey, grab the teddy bear, basketball and lots of kickem boxing fight kind of games. Not a single flight/spaceship, shoot and bomb game in the whole arcade. What are we? Grounded speed machines? How can a car simulator possibly be better than an aeroplane simulator?? I like a game I can learn in 30 seconds with one joystick and two buttons. I hate having to learn a manual the size of a phone book and then learn fifty different command sequences. I don't know how the rest of you do it but I die really quickly in the quake/doom games. still playing minesweeper and 50 varieties of solitaire - cos I don't die when I get distracted and have to start again from the beginning/bottom level. Is there a combination puzzle and co-ordination game out there?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
They should have MAME setup with Kaillera on the LAN if they really want to bring the old and new together. Nothing like classic Gauntlet with each player on their own PC...
We are Setting up LaserMAME, on a 30 foot screen at CA Extreme... to save money we are using a Control panel that's already on the West Coast, I hope they have a Heavy Spinner on it... excuse the bad pic, it was taken during setup on a 40' x 60' Screen, before we tuned the projector.. at Six Flags Darien Lake, Buffalo http://download.lasers.org/tempest_masterof.jpg or Asteroids http://download.lasers.org/lasermamedusk.jpg
I meant to paste this URL. Sorry about that. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Back a long time ago when we all hung at the mall and ruled the arcade everyone would have their b-day party there and the main machines would be turned to free-play.
It was awsome because we could eat and drink inside the arcade (for once, even though we hung with the workers they enforced this with a passion) and mortal kombat and street fighter after hours, for hours!
Get your Unix fortune now!
I will try to attend mainly for the pinball clinics. It'll be nice to see just how poorly I've been playing all these years.
I've looked at wishlists of games on hand so far and one game I wouldn't mind seeing is Paperboy. Sure its been released on many classic formats one way or another but it isn't the same without the Bicycle controls (Complete with bike grips). Oh and hopefully a look at the fabled Marble Madness II machine!
What a cool idea. I'd love to have a go at Missile Command again. I can't even begin to imagine how many rolls of quarters I burned through at our local, small-town bowling alley on Friday's after school. That heavy, smooth-rolling trackball was JUST the greatest for both feel and accuracy. Playing PC ports of the game just doesn't come close to the original arcade version.
As for modern-day games that I "miss," Descent 1 still ranks as my all-time favourite game. I used to play that for so many hours that I'd get vertigo when I went to bed. And once Kali came out and head-to-head was possible over the 'net, sleepless nights became the norm.
Unfortunately for Descent 1, much of the joy of playing the game ended when my CH Flightstick Pro died an untimely death. The MS Sidewinder Precision 2 that replaced it just didn't offer the same feel and response.
I've never been much of a gamer, but those two really were it for me. *sigh*
this seems like _VERY_ cool. this is enough cool to be a slashdot article of it's own...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just because you don't live in CA doesn't mean that you can't make it to a show like this. Somewhere near you there's _probably_ a pinball/arcade game trade show. No, not an industry trade show, but a gathering of folks with their own machines who are looking to buy or sell. Usually some giant warehouse is rented out for this event. Free play? You bet. Every machine that's in working order will be playable for free. Hell, you might even decide you want to buy a machine, if the price is right.
These shows are a _lot_ of fun and I highly encourage everyone who wish they could go to CA Extreme to look around and find one of these trade shows.
this ain't a dream (at least I hope not)
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes