I loved asteroids and missile command. Played the console asteroids at the pizza shop next to work. Would enjoy going back to work leaving a dozen or more bonus lives on the screen for the next guy.
I still have WICO controllers for the Atari 800. Joysticks and trackballs.
What about pinball?
On console I can’t forget Qix – so simple, so difficult.
Yes I think you’re right about Leisure Suits Larry. But soft porn with 8 bit graphics was pretty funny.
Asteroids and Missile Command are definite greats, same with Qix, but they’re also 1983 or earlier … 
I used to enjoy the bug in Defender around extra lives (and the fact you got 25 points per extra life when you died) after 990,000 points. You could rack up a hundred or more of them, leave the game sitting there while you took a break, and still be earning extra lives …
My peak gaming moment was when I broke pinball on our first Macintosh (one of the classic B&W models). The ball hit the exact angle between two bumpers to get stuck bouncing back and forth, racking up unlimited points. I left the game running to see what would happen and went to do other stuff. When I came back, I found a family member had shut off the computer to “save electricity”. Still bitter about that one.
I play on an Arcade1Up Tempest Atari Legacy Edition Home Arcade. I think it was only $200 or something like that (without the riser.) It has 12 games; Asteroids, Centipede, Major Havoc, Missile Command, Akka Arrh, Crystal Castles, Tempest, Millipede, Gravitar, Liberator, Asteroids Deluxe, Space Duel. But, I mainly purchased it for Asteroids. I had tried many times to recreate the magic with clones of Asteroids on PC using a computer keyboard for controls. Fun yes, but that fake stuff never satisfied. The nostalgic feel of playing that old original Asteroids rom using Arcade1Up decent arcade buttons is quite grand. Plus only those genuine Asteroids game sounds can seal the deal.
Indeed. I most often played driving games, Diablo-like RPGs, and “god games” in the SimCity/Populous genre back then. Other than driving these were resolution limited rather than speed/3D limited. FPS and platform games are pumped out in huge numbers…and often awful.
The first half of Half-Life 1 was amazing, then they seemed to run out of ideas.
Quake I was at best a 3D tech demo and alpha release. Nothing was to scale, nothing was finished, and nothing fit together. Blame John Romero – basking in publicity while John Carmack did all the technical work in the back room. Then, think of Daikatana and the rest of Romero’s garbage. Quake II (and also Halo I) were still working out the details. Halo had very slow aiming and tedious movement.
I tried to like Zelda. Nope. If you came from consoles and arcade games it probably was a step up. I never played the others.
My earlier comment was about Sierra’s technology driving sales – adventure games were always placeholders with “the best we can do given the computers available today.” They wanted cinematic rendering (CGI) of movie plotlines before these were possible.
Regarding cinematics: I tried Assassin’s Creed several years ago. It was nothing more than an {easy} interactive film, with auto-scaled difficulty and no sense of challenge or skill. Click the attack button a few times to advance the plot. Move the character around the environment to trigger the next sequence.
The quality depended on the release, with some excellent and others twitchy/tedious. TR1 was astounding when it came out, but horridly crude just a couple years later. I bought it from Fry’s Electronics after they ran TV ads showing its 3D graphics. At checkout the cashier said “I don’t know why, but this is flying off the shelves today.” The ads worked.
They returned to the pay-to-play arcade quarter-muncher model. There is a ton of profit in them. They give you a demo and then charge far, far, far more to buy coins, gems, or tokens to progress. Winning costs way more than just buying an old-school $50 game. Suckers are born every minute. Also, Kim Kardashian made millions selling cartoon images of designer clothing…
Even mainstream Diablo III adapted down to the no-skill market. It had auto-scaled difficulty where boss battles were drug out with abrupt recoveries to simulate a challenge when the outcome was obvious from the start. It was not unlike the rubber-banding of racing games where you can be 1/2 a track ahead and then suddenly have a car on your bumper.
I enjoy it.
I’ll usually play it whenever I come across a table.
It wasn’t a big thing in the arcades I frequented nor, I think, as whole in the UK at that time. I don’t remember ever seeing more than two tables in a single arcade, sometimes not even one.
And I’ve never seen one of the widely-regarded-as-classic tables outside of a museum or other similar exhibit - never “in the wild” as it were.
The 400/800 version of that is a fair bit different to the 5200 version.
Style wise, the 5200 is the better version, but the fill threshold is too low, and you can’t properly see your bonuses at work until between screens, so while it feels more faithful to the original, I prefer playing the 400/800 version.
Oddly, I tend to wind up making a ton of points on the first screen, play safe on the second, and then spend the next six splitting the Qixes (to get to a 6x and 12x multiplier) before starting to play for points again.
I’d add Diablo 2 to my list of “great” games. I played 3 and 4, enjoyed three more than 4, but they were not the same experience at all.
I bought it at launch (I think it was on the 360 first, but could be mistaken). Watched a friend play it a little … and … never wound up opening my copy.
There’s that … and the whole IGC and pay-to-win stuff that they’ve built on top of it, but it’s more, for me at least, that the games are just not fun. Even if they were pay-once, most of them are just boring, me-too, overly-stylized garbage.
It doesn’t help that the control schemes are usually awful, also.
Some of my gaming issues are still me being a bit curmudgeon-y though, I think.
I’ve seen them - CostCo occasionally has them, BestBuy too (or at least did; haven’t been in one in, probably, 5 years). They look the part, even if they’re too small for me to play on comfortably.
I was tempted by their Dragon’s Lair cabinet (which is currently on sale for $499, instead of the usual $649 and then it includes the riser as well) … until I got to try one. The video was lagging the audio to the point it couldn’t be ignored (and totally screwed up some of the audio cues), it was missing at least one scene - right at the start - and I didn’t play far enough into it to see if it was missing more.
But … no question these games are best enjoyed with properly replicated controls, cabinet-styles and artwork. I know Asteroids, Missile Command and Defender are VERY different games if not played with their original control schemes/layouts.
Tempest. Tempest. Tempest. Early simulated 3D and that endless spinning knob that always broke. It was my favorite game upon its release.
Don’t forget goofy Tron either.
As with video games, pinball had a few eras. My favorites are the electro-mechanical ones made in the mid-60s to about 1980. They did make them in the 50s also, but my era was later. OXO, a tic-tac-toe based machine was probably my favorite. Just had the right game play. Fireball was good, Delta Queen, and so many others
In the college town I grew up in, there were two arcades, each with 30 or more machines.
Yes, Tempest. played that a lot. Robotron - very difficult.
Yes, and Tempest!
Spinners are still the biggest pain in the arse when it comes to building arcade controls. Though the good ones are excellent; and the better ones will spin for a minute or two given a good flick.
Controls get overlooked, a lot, especially by those that didn’t play these games on original arcade hardware.
Trackballs and spinners are the most obvious anomalies, but it does go further.
The difference between true 4-way and the more common 8-way sticks is a night and day contrast for games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, BurgerTime and so on.
Unlike, say, the Atari 800 version of Pac-Man … the arcade version simply doesn’t know what to do when it gets a diagonal input (as its not possible on the original machine), so … it tends to do nothing … or the wrong thing.
Then there are things like Sinistar, which uses a 49-way optical joystick, and does not play quite correctly on an 8-way stick.
On my MiSTer and MAME setups, ahead of building a new cabinet, I built two controllers, both wired and wireless, which are identical except that one is setup for pure 4-way input the other 8-way (I’m too lazy to switch the gates between games, easier just to pick up a different controller). Though, if you have the space in the control-deck, you can now get sticks that have an electro-mechanically switchable gate.
If I played more fighting games, I’d do an unrestricted or octagonal gate (or stick-less) also.
Arcade Gorf uses an analog flight-stick (as I recall), Tron - as you say - with a spinner and a flight-stick, anything with paddles (which are, of course, not equivalent to spinners) and every driving game …
The WICO “Command Control” bat joystick and the WICO trackball were by far the best control devices. They used military grade microswitches. While all my 8 bit stuff is gone, I still have two of each of these, as good as the day they came out of the factory.
What I can’t get is something that will adapt them to current inputs on either a PC USB or my MacBook Pro - or for that matter even a current iPad or Samsung tablet. I’d hoped that I could play classic games like Atari Arcade using the proper input controllers.
I’ve bought a couple of hardware adapters, they’re all crap or buggy.
I liked mine.
Though the stick and throw were a bit long on the WICO “Command Control” (mine came with three interchangeable plastic grips).
Several ways to do that … at least for PC and Mac, including:
This, which is purely external, and if you’re willing to do a bit of DIY then either this, and my preferred option (but requires even more work and parts, but is the most reliable and straightforward for macOS), the Polycade NeoArcade board.
Generally you’re going to get X-Input as the control scheme, which will require re-mapping some controls in your emulator.
Thank you - all those are new since the last couple I tried. External works for me, as I don’t have an arcade system, I would just get that anniversary software. I looked at that Atari arcade that @hottyson has, played it in Costco - it was okay.
Your board solution looks very nice. Would certainly try either of the DIY if I had a console I could cut with my trusty Dremel and install the boards.
Where I grew up there was a local amusement center with miniature golf, an arcade, batting cages, go-karts, bumper boats, etc. The arcade would now be considered an excellent gaming museum – they had pinball, early Pong, Space Invaders, and every arcade release from the 1970s through the 1980s. The staff said that the pinball machines routinely broke from aggressive play, ball movement, and shorted actuators. I don’t think many of them sold after the 1970s because of the space requirements and high maintenance costs, plus slot machines became common at Indian casinos nationwide and the market perhaps shifted to slot machines and gambling.
The “Atari 50” collection?
It’s pretty good … the history stuff is nice. Plays very well. At least on Xbox Series X and Switch.
Both the Atari Gamestation Pro ($40-60, depending on where you get it), and the Atari “THE400” Mini, are very good, also. And they both just plug into HDMI, so they work quite nicely on nice big displays. You can add games to them, EASILY, also (directly supported functionality on both).
With a bit of (easy) fiddling, you can enable other platforms on the AGSP, including Arcade. So I have mine setup with ALL of my favorite 2600, 5200 and 7800 games, and my top 50 pre-1983 games.
They’re both a bit weak on the controller front, however, so I’m doing something about that ahead of building (or finishing, at least) my new arcade controller. Namely building a CX40-themed “fight stick” style arcade controller, using actual arcade parts, but the electronics from the AGSP and CXSTICK controllers … so the experience is native (and switchable).
Should have the last parts for that (button plungers) tomorrow, so may finish that build this weekend.
Is this on your boat? Can you navigate the Susquehanna and visit?
No …
I built a MiSTer and a Rpi4 based MAME setup into a controller, that hides in a console under one of the screens for the boat.
Me personally?
…
As to the controller I said I was going to build this weekend … I got a good start on it today.
You’ll have to forgive the poor lighting, cell-phone-quality, quick-and-dirty picture … I’ll take proper ones, form some other angles, with a polarizing filter (etc.) tomorrow when I finish the next part of the build … but this the aesthetic side of it:
I built this, primarily, for “THE400 Mini”, as well as for the “Gamestation Pro”, so some of the styling/graphics are inspired from there. I need to include the 2600 and the 7800 on the “Atari” side of things.
The work, to date, is not very involved. Most of the time was tied up in the graphics, fonts and layout. Nothing you see (so far) can’t be done with a couple of screwdrivers, a laser or inkjet printer that can print on LEGAL size paper (which is pretty much all of them) - as the base is wider/larger than it looks, and a handful of not-very-expensive parts.
The basic stick is a Mayflash F500 V2.
I chose that for this build as a) it is very easy to swap out parts in (standard Sanwa bits fit without issue), b) is designed to allow you to EASILY swap in your own art (Mayflash even provide templates for creating it, and offer inexpensive replacement transparent acrylic covers if you scratch one up) and c) boards and internal connections are so well done, that it is VERY easy to do much more involved (electronic) mods on and d) it is large enough to give you both space to rest your hand on as well as having room for some internal additions.
Oh, yea, and it supports just about EVERYTHING you can think of right out of the box. So the list/icons for all the systems on the bottom of the unit … it handles those all right out of the box (along with X-Input).
I’ll do build notes, circuit board/connection pictures/diagrams, after I add in the CXSTICK board, tomorrow, and will probably revise the artwork a bit. But all in, it was about $80 for the stick, $50 in parts, and a few hours in fiddling with graphics/art and then a 30 minutes putting it all together.
