Space Invaders & Qix Twinned For Silver Anniversary Cabinet

Thanks to ClassicGaming for pointing out that Namco is producing a Space Invaders/Qix Silver Anniversary arcade cabinet, combining these two Taito-licensed classics into one arcade machine. The PDF brochure for the machine boasts: "The game that caused a national shortage of coins in Japan is back!", as Namco continues its classic arcade cabinet series that's also spawned Ms. PacMan/Galaga, explaining: "Why bring back these hits from the past? For the past few years, our distributors and we have received comments from operators all over the USA about how well their [classic arcade] games continue to perform, but how beat up the hardware had become." As for Ms. PacMan/Galaga, the info page reveals "the original PacMan is in the game", unlocked by a mutant version of the Konami Code.

Comments

Classic Games

[Justin Ames]

Those are by far my favorite things to play at the arcades.

Re:Classic Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the problem is that big gmes today have big stories and duration... when I go to an arcade I want quick satisfaction and action and to have that sense that a dummy can play the game.

Don't get me wrong I love big story... but I got into video games because of the action and most recently the visuals (because of my artistic nature) which is everything you get out of a good arcade experience.

Pac-Man? Pac-Man? There was Pac-Man on that thing?

[GreenHell]

I was recently trapped on a rather boring boat ride where the ferry had a mini arcade consisting of a bunch of the multi-game cabinets and a pinball machine. (How you're supposed to play pinball on a boat that keeps rocking is beyond me, but it was on there.)

One of the machines was the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga cabinet. I wasted a couple quarters on it, but had I known that Pac-Man was on there I probably would have wasted more.

Instead I spent most of my pocket change in the Missile Command/Centipede/Millipede cabinet.

Hmmmm... I just realised that a truck stop near 15 minutes out of town has that cabinet. Time to go take a look-see!

50 cents a game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah now Arcade managers can continue to charge 50 cents a game for games that are older than 90 percent of their clientele.

I think the sad partt is seeing original Ms. Pac-Man machines that cost 50 cents a play. I almost feel like smacking my local Arcade manager when I see that.

Re:50 cents a game.

[Zathrus]

I looked into these multi-game cabinets recently (as in, the last week) since it might be cool to have one in our newly refinished basement.

The consumer versions start at about $2500, if you find them at a good price -- you can pay another $1000 if you don't do your searching carefully. The commercial versions are an additional $500 (they're slightly larger, have a coin door, and are much, much heavier). The cocktail table version is another $300-500.

There's also some mega-multi game cabinets out there -- with up to 100 classic games ranging from Space Invaders to Street Fighter II. They top out at around $5000 with all the games and controls.

That said, I haven't seen any Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga combo units priced at more than $.25 except in places like Dave & Busters.

Oh, and I'm no longer thinking about getting one of these machines... they're way too expensive.

Re:50 cents a game.

[Firehawke]

Don't give up yet. You can get a single game cabinet relatively cheap if you know the price curve. Extremely old and new stuff is expensive, but it dips towards the center; games of about the SF2 vintage should be cheapest right now.

After that, all you need to do is make a few adjustments to the cabinet and wiring harness; there are converters for old machines to JAMMA out there. In any case, any mods you have to make should be relatively cheap-- it's just a matter of getting any game boards you want, adaptors for those boards, and a switching mechanism.

Re:50 cents a game.

[GwabbaWabba]

Factoring in inflation, $.50 seems pretty reasonable to me.It's not exactly analagous to $.25 twenty years ago but I suspect it's close enough for jazz... and I'd give a lot more than $.50 to sit down in a resaurant and play on a cocktail cabinet. For some reason those things were always up by the bar (where I couldn't go) when I was a kid.

Re:50 cents a game.

[jesse.k]

$2500 would build a very nice MAME cabinet with actual Happ controls and monitor instead.

That would have several thousand games then.

Re:50 cents a game.

[Anonymous Coward]

A very illegal MAME cabinet, too.

Re:50 cents a game.

[stuph]

not if you own the boards.. which ya can often buy really, really cheaply, but don't feel like switching them out over and over again when ya wanna play games..

Re:50 cents a game.

[Firehawke]

I picked up a SF2CE machine for $300. I'm thinking it'd cost me less than $500 to do the rest of the mods I'd mentioned to it, including the cost of obtaining additional boards.

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I love classic games... it's funny, here in Portland OR all but one of the arcades I've found are retrocades.

I was just at this place on SW 12th the other day called Ground Kontrol and some guy was sitting there with a bit over 9,212,000 points on asteroids!!! He said he'd been playing for 19 hours straight and was practicing to beat the 21 year old world record.

Re:Awesome

[FauxReal]

I stopped by Ground Kontrol before work tonight... the high score the guy left on Asteroids is 22,222,220 points! There were also a few other interesting scores in between left by the same guy such as 16,666,660... I think the next closest person to him had somewhere around 160,000 points. Darn I wish I remembered his initials... CEB I think?

And the price for one of these is?

[Anonymous Coward]

I missed the price on this and the Ms. Pac-Man on the web page.
Anyone know what these lovelies sell for?

Re:And the price for one of these is?

[madopal]

You can buy them through Brookstone. Here's the link to the Ms. Pac/Galaga cabaret.

Everyone who's into these things, keep asking locations about them. This is a shameless plug, as I work for the company that did Ms.Pac/Galaga and Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling.

yes

[Anonymous Coward]

QIX = best action/puzzle game ever.

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was a damn shame its sequel "Twin Qix" didn't get released. I've never found the ROM, but it looks like a blast...

The Cabinet

[Saige]

What's really cool about this is that the cabinet is the same as the original Space Invaders cabinet! This is a big difference from the cabinets that we've been used to seeing arcade games in for so long. It will REALLY stand out at an arcade.

You smacktard

[Anonymous Coward]

The original Pac-Man game sold for $900 and charged $.25 per game. These new games Cost around $2500 and they only charge $.50 to play. Do the math. Your getting a bargain.

Ground Kontrol rocks the house

[raygundan]

Great atmosphere, great vintage machines (lots of restored vector cabinets, too!), occasional nuts like that trying to break arcade records, and so forth. Go there and give 'em some quarters-- it's roughly the coolest thing you can do while maintaining your geekdom.

It's cool BUT...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I can see how Ms Pac and Galaga can still make money. They're damn fun for everyone. But Space Invaders and Qix??? I played both as a kid, but neither really evokes any nostalgic fondness to replay them. They're nowhere in the same league as Pac and Gal. So why are they bothering with this??

Re:It's cool BUT...

[madopal]

Very simple...the higher ups at Taito are trying to rekindle some old magic. The Ms.Pac/Galaga combo is selling VERY well, and now everyone is trying to get into that market.

Once again, product-whore that I am, I worked on these. We did the Ms.Pac/Galaga, Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command/Let's Go Bowling, and Robotron/Joust - Defender/Defender 2(don't call me Stargate). I'll tell you this...Ms.Pac/Galaga is outselling those others 10-1.

Qix: so underrated

[GuyMannDude]

Yeah, I always thought Qix rocked and was surprised that it wasn't a bigger hit. Man, the sense of accomplishment you got whenever you finished building your tower of little skinny blocks with the Fast Draw and then finish with an inch worth of Slow Draw and seal off a huge fuckin' chunk of the screen in that wonderful brown color. "Boo-yeah! How do you like 'dat you little twirly motherfuckin' freak?" you'd shout at the top of your lungs, paying no mind to all the other kids staring and laughing at you. They were busy wasting their quarters blowing up a bunch of sorry-assed goofy-lookin' aliens that didn't have the sense to not fly right into your lasers. With Qix you had an adversary who danced around erracticly. You didn't quite understand what the hell it was thinking but as long as it seemed happy and kept out of your hair, you were content to let it do its thing. And then, when you least expected it that pretty, colorful entity would come oughta nowhere and smack your ass down to the pavement. Hmmm, kinda reminds me of this girl I used to date...

Anyhow, the point is that this game was considerably different than everything else in the arcades and I was always surprised that it didn't get more recognition. And why didn't girls play it more? I thought girls liked non-violent crap. I can see them not wanting to have Sinistar screaming "Beware: I live!" at the top of its lungs at them. But they should have gone nuts over Qix.

GMD

Re:Qix: so underrated

[gmhowell]

Qix is definately one of my favorite games to pull up on Mame. Look through the MAME roms, and you'll find tons and tons of variations, many of which reveal pixelated porn.

Ask A Child

[robbway]

My nephews, ages 7 and 3, absolutely love the Namco Museum and Pac Man Collection on Gameboy Advance SP. But when we played other, more modern games, they lost interest quickly. There is something very primal in those original games that tweaks people the right way. The colors are high-contrast. The sounds are brash. The emphasis is on game play, not graphics or quarter-crunching. That probably says a lot.

So the new game sounds great, except Qix didn't seem to be widely distributed in the USA. This cabinet might introduce many of 3 generations to a brand new video game, when abstract games were actually marketed.

I have two other observations. If Namco hid a code on here, it's probably for Space Invaders Deluxe or Super Qix. Cross your fingers for Space Invaders Deluxe because Super Qix was a bastard stepchild of the original game.

The other observation was on our local copy of Ms. Pacman/Galaga. It does really well in our local arcade from all ages of players because Pacman and Ms. Pacman are turbo speed. That makes the game more fun, makes patterns harder to do, and, believe it or not, it makes the maze games easier.

Could someone please show me that Space Invaders "Icing the Cake" secret? I've never been able to pull it off.

Re:Pac-Man? Pac-Man? There was Pac-Man on that thi

[Anonymous Coward]

From the website (for those that don't RTFA):

WANNA PLAY PAC-MAN? At the select screen input up, up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right, left, start. (Please note, this code works ONLY on this arcade model of the game, and does not work on individual Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga machines.)

Sad News - Michael Kamen dead at 55

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Grammy winning and Oscar nominated composer Michael Kamen has died of a heart attack in his London home. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work for Pink Floyd and the "Die Hard" movies, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon. He will be missed :(