I had a friend who did Star wars a lot! he did the trench a few times 'using the force' (not shooting at anything..)
Sinistar: the enemy ships would try to shoot you but they'd also be building a super-ship, the Sinistar. You'd know when that was complete because it announced itself, "Beware - I live!"
No love for Dig Dug? I sucked at video games and my friends never let me forget. It was a tough time to grow up with no arcade skills...
Yeah, addictive game play doesn't require game goals that aren't stupid, quite often just the opposite. Simple and fun was the old standard, the "simple" part being required due to the old computing hardware, the game play therefore being the part that made the game(s) succeed or not. Similarly, the GOOD older scifi movies had to depend far more on a great story than on special effects they couldn't do convincingly versus now where CGI effects and nothing but action scenes sometimes attempt to make up for an uninspired or poorly executed story.I went to a retro video game arcade this weekend (https://www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org/index.html). I was impressed with how stupid some of the old games were. There was one about riding an elevator...
To show the relative power of modern PCs versus the then very expensive custom hardware found in arcade game machines, here's a site where you can play in-browser emulations of actual arcade console ROM code:Defender, then Zaxxon. First 3D game...
The laser disk games like Dragon's Lair were cool too, but I sucked at them.
To show the relative power of modern PCs versus the then very expensive custom hardware found in arcade game machines, here's a site where you can play in-browser emulations of actual arcade console ROM code:
The Internet Archive's Arcade
https://archive.org/details/internetarcade&tab=collection
Quick guide on how to play on the Internet Arcade
https://armchairarcade.com/perspect...-guide-on-how-to-play-on-the-internet-arcade/
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The Internet Archive Arcade
Wlliams Defender
https://archive.org/details/arcade_defender5
When the Defender ROM code "boots up", it's just like the arcade machine's screen looked when the arcade machine was powered on. Press F2 until you get through all of the machine setup settings, then use these keys to play:
5 – Insert virtual coins (press multiple times to insert multiple coins)
1 – Start one player game (after inserting a coin)
UP and DOWN arrows to move your ship up and down the screen
ALT/OPTION to thrust your ship
Z for Reverse
CONTROL to fire
SPACE to fire a "Smart Bomb"
SHIFT to go into Hyperspace
Game play is VASTLY better with the original arcade unit's controls, of course.
Defender arcade machine PC boards:
That was listed as a Defender arcade board set where I found it. I wouldn't doubt there might have been multiple versions over it over time.That bottom board. I had a look inside the Defender game one day. The chips on the board were twice a dense and there were ten boards.....
On reflection that is probably the Defender board but I do remember the stack of them, the tech said there was 10 boards.....
To show the relative power of modern PCs versus the then very expensive custom hardware found in arcade game machines, here's a site where you can play in-browser emulations of actual arcade console ROM code:
Yeah, it's amazing how far the tech has advanced in such a short time. Take a look at how the even the IC masks used to be laid out:I kinda chuckle when I see these old 'computer boards'. massive sheets of green G10 / FR4 with their neat rows of chips, a few caps & resistors and some ribbon cables. I remember seeing some designer's drawing / plansets for boards, where they were laid out by hand, at a 4:1 scale.. stacks of rub-down transfers for pads & crepe tape for their traces..
Now-a-days, all those chips are in one package, and about the size of my pinky nail. And all the other components are SMT, and also microscopic in size, all mounted on a 16 layer board..
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