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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.
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!
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
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.
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
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