Posts about Classic Arcade Machines, Discussion, Trivia and Retro Gaming Nostalgia
Joined November 2023
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Japan has an arcade game where the whole challenge is stopping a commuter train on time to the second. It’s called Densha de Go. The U.K. is yet to clear level one.
Not going to lie, that Tesla roadster demo is right up my alley! I WANT ONE! Maybe by the time I retire I could afford one second hand
The N64 came out after the PlayStation, yet the PlayStation was the one full of pre rendered video and cinematic intros while the N64 had next to none. It came down to storage. A PlayStation CD held around 650MB and was cheap to press. N64 cartridges ranged from 4MB to 64MB and cost far more to make.
A few minutes of video could be bigger than an entire N64 game, so developers built their cutscenes inside the game engine instead. Ocarina of Time did it brilliantly. A few N64 games did manage proper video, like Resident Evil 2, which squeezed a two disc PlayStation game onto a single 64MB cart via brutal compression and some clever hardware tricks. Carts did load in a flash though, which the PlayStation never managed. Which would you rather have had, the video clips or no loading screens?
Frogger dies the moment he touches water. He is a frog. It’s 1981, the whole game is built around this and nobody at Konami puts a hand up.
Sir Arthur’s armour in Ghosts ’n Goblins falls off after one hit and leaves him fighting the undead in his underpants. Whoever sold him that armour has questions to answer.
Mad Dog McCree arrived in arcades in 1990 running off Amiga based hardware and a laserdisc. It really stood out next to the usual cabs. It looked like a proper western playing out on the screen and put a revolver in your hand. It was one of the first light gun games to use real filmed actors, all shot in New Mexico by a company that had started out making police training simulators. (American Laser Games)
Get shot and the undertaker turns up to give you some stern words of warning 😂 Was it a great game? Probably not. Did I want a go on it more than anything else in the arcade? Definitely! Especially as it was featured as a challenge in the first episode of UK TV show “GamesMaster”. Who else remembers this one?
I am nowhere near a competitive high score on @biglipradio streets of rage high score challenge this week but I’m joining in anyway! 😂 #SSHighScoreChallenge
Streets of Rage!
#SSHighScoreChallenge
@sincespacies
@The_Top_Loader
@VGMHero
@UnpluggedRetro
@SuperSisi
Please share and tag some friends!
In 1981 SNK’s Fantasy introduced what Guinness recognises as the first videogame continue screen. After losing your final life, players were given 10 seconds to insert another coin and press Start, allowing them to extend their game rather than begin again.
It was a tiny change with a huge implication for arcades. GAME OVER no longer necessarily meant game over, if you were willing to pay. Continues would eventually become one of coin-op gaming’s most familiar features. How many times did “INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE” convince you to reach for another coin?
So today I learnt that one of my favourite racing games as a teenager (Hi Octane) was built on the Magic Carpet game engine. Never noticed at the time but when you look at them both side by side it’s pretty clear! Loved this game but I remember it became unplayable after I finally upgraded my PC as the game had no proper frame rate limiter and ran so fast it was uncontrollable
Bullfrog was one of the best game development studios (show love in the comments, will you?). One example of how everything they touched turned to gold was Hi-Octane, released in 1995 by Electronic Arts.
But why, you might ask?
One of the most remarkable facts about Hi-Octane is how quickly it was created. According to Bullfrog developers, the game went from concept to store shelves in approximately seven to eight weeks, with the core development reportedly completed in around six and a half weeks.
This was not a normal development cycle. Bullfrog was already working on other major projects, including Dungeon Keeper and Magic Carpet 2, when Electronic Arts needed another game to help fill an upcoming release window. Instead of waiting years for a new project, Bullfrog decided to create a futuristic racing game using the existing Magic Carpet engine.
That compressed production schedule gives Hi-Octane an unusual place in Bullfrog’s history. The studio was famous for ambitious games such as Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, and Magic Carpet, but Hi-Octane was created almost like an emergency project - an idea rapidly assembled from existing technology and pushed toward release at incredible speed.
And yet, that limitation became part of the game’s identity. Hi-Octane feels raw, direct, and arcade-focused. It does not waste time with complicated story elements or lengthy tutorials. The game immediately puts the player into a fast hovercraft, gives them weapons, and sends them into a dangerous futuristic race.
Impressive, isn't it?
There’s a theme emerged from my last post and Fridays ‘name that cab’ challenge.
After the golden age, it was often the cabs that made you look ridiculous that survived. Cabs like “final Furlong” weren’t designed just for the person playing them. They were designed for everyone else in the room too. The player became part of the cabs attract mode and the sillier you looked the better 😎 Namcos Prop Cycle (pictured), Alpine Racer and Final Furlong all spring to mind. What was your favourite cab that made people look ridiculous?
Yes, this was a real arcade game. And yes, that is a giant plastic finger. Boong-Ga Boong-Ga turned the Korean/Japanese prank ddongchim/kanchō into a videogame. Players grabbed the oversized finger and jabbed it into the backside of the mannequin protruding from the cab, with the machine measuring the strength of the thrust and reacting on screen.
Arcades gave us steering wheels, light guns, dance mats and plastic horses. Boong-Ga Boong-Ga decided what they were really missing was a giant finger and a pair of buttocks 😂
Its that time of week again, name that Cab! You are all far too good at this game so i have cranked up the difficulty a notch. Answer posted in the comments tomorrow. good luck!
Sometimes a hifi, a cantankerous vintage PC and a CRT ready to play NES games is all you need on a Friday night. Have a great one all!
The only computer in my retro collection that is older than me. It was ordered by my dad direct from Science of Cambridge. Receipt says ordered on 8th April 1980, 10 weeks after release. Arrival was delayed as demand outstripped supply. The invoice came with a photocopied apology letter from Clive Sinclair (pictured) explaining how surprised they were at the level of demand they had seen.
So called “cheats” were the olden days save games! Mario’s warp zones, Mega man and Punch out’s passcodes. if you are not good enough to get through the game properly but want to experience the later part of the game you paid for, we got you. If you have already done the whole game but don’t want to start from the very beginning, we got you too!
Gutted I missed the @BigLipRadio operation wolf high score challenge last week. What I liked about the arcade version was the screen wasn’t where you might think it is. It looks like you are aiming the Uzi straight at a CRT. But the monitor is hidden inside the cab, facing upwards. You’re shooting at its image reflected in an angled mirror.
CRTs were enormous and a mirror let designers fold the viewing path through the cabinet instead of putting all that depth directly behind the display. It also made the screen appear further away than it physically was, giving the game a nice deep view and a more natural aiming distance for its gun.
Two more arcade games that really didn’t like you taking your time.. In Williams’ Joust (1982) if you take too long clearing a wave a Pterodactyl comes to hunt you down. It looks like the games way of saying “time’s up”, but there’s a twist: it isn’t invincible. Get your lance lined up precisely with its mouth and you can actually kill it for 1,000 points.
Berzerk (1980) had an even more memorable enforcer. Evil Otto. Hang around too long in a maze and the bouncing, smiling face comes after you. He can pass straight through walls and, unlike Joust’s Pterodactyl, you can’t kill him so your only sensible option is to get out.
