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What's your fav B/W game?


Keatah

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I recently discovered Atari Sky Raiders in recent times. It's got this weird hardware generated partial 3D perspective. I'm almost certain I'd have liked it back in the day had I known about it. Alas, it's great fun to turn the volume full 10 and just listen to the pounding sound of the bombs. Annoying to everyone else however.

 

When you first start playing it. You'll likely try to slow down and hit all the targets. But the better way to play (which you will soon discover) is to fly normal or fast and simply drift left and right. Not worrying about missing something. You're score will be higher. You'll have fun rhythmically swaying a-left and a-right if you get into it. Like most early games, a simple strategy is all there is to it.

 

post-4806-0-97863900-1508392793.png

Edited by Keatah
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Downwell, if that counts

 

The thread is predominately about the early material. But if it's a fav then it's a fav.. Not going to discount anything recent just because recent. For a while I was into LineRider, but then I got distracted by some other genre. I'll have to see what I still have of it all.

 

It's also amusing that when I got into DOOM the FPS speed wars hadn't quite started just yet. But soon. I always thought that by loading wads that had no color the game would play faster. It did not. It sure was hard on the eyes though.

 

This was back in the days of VESA drivers and making a big stink about Linear Frame Buffer access, Sci-Tech Display Doctor, UniVBE, and other speedup tricks. A time when the CPU was still doing everything. Pre 3Dfx.

Edited by Keatah
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The addition of several levels of grey (has there been one with 50 shades yet?) makes a large difference compared to games that only have black and white to work with, possibly creating moare patterns to simulate grey fields. I feel like greyscale games and B&W games are two different categories, just like colour games that only utilize the main 8 colours (black, bright red, bright green, bright blue, bright purple, bright cyan, bright yellow, white) are a bit different to games that have access to a far larger palette.

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I recently discovered Atari Sky Raiders in recent times. It's got this weird hardware generated partial 3D perspective. I'm almost certain I'd have liked it back in the day had I known about it. Alas, it's great fun to turn the volume full 10 and just listen to the pounding sound of the bombs. Annoying to everyone else however.

 

When you first start playing it. You'll likely try to slow down and hit all the targets. But the better way to play (which you will soon discover) is to fly normal or fast and simply drift left and right. Not worrying about missing something. You're score will be higher. You'll have fun rhythmically swaying a-left and a-right if you get into it. Like most early games, a simple strategy is all there is to it.

 

attachicon.gifsky raid 0006.png

I stumbled across this one via MAME a few years back and completely forgot about it. It's a cool game. Reminds me of a prehistoric Axelay!

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I recently discovered Atari Sky Raiders in recent times. It's got this weird hardware generated partial 3D perspective. I'm almost certain I'd have liked it back in the day had I known about it. Alas, it's great fun to turn the volume full 10 and just listen to the pounding sound of the bombs. Annoying to everyone else however.

 

When you first start playing it. You'll likely try to slow down and hit all the targets. But the better way to play (which you will soon discover) is to fly normal or fast and simply drift left and right. Not worrying about missing something. You're score will be higher. You'll have fun rhythmically swaying a-left and a-right if you get into it. Like most early games, a simple strategy is all there is to it.

 

attachicon.gifsky raid 0006.png

 

That is crazy! It looks like a mechanical conveyer belt (like we saw with several very early electromechanical arcade games), but it's digital. It looks better in motion ... the stills look like an old fashioned sonogram.

 

It reminds me of River Raid, and I wonder if that was an inspiration for the Activision classic.

 

 

Bill Logiduice (a regular here) writes

 

post-2410-0-99833000-1508421158_thumb.png

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Sky Raider looks as if it's projected on a rotating cylinder. Without anything shooting back at you, it's not very challenging. I wonder what the reception was like back in 1978. I only first saw it on Mame.

 

A lot of the early games like Sky Raider were time based. Some had bonus time for excellent game play. Lunar Lander was fuel based so you played longer by conserving fuel or just adding quarters. Somebody came up with the idea of possible unlimited play and limited lives eg. Space Invaders; and then everyone followed. Unfortunately that idea carried over to home video games.

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Sky Raider looks as if it's projected on a rotating cylinder. Without anything shooting back at you, it's not very challenging. I wonder what the reception was like back in 1978. I only first saw it on Mame.

 

I appreciate it for what it is. It's no different than any other timed target shooting game where you try to get the highest score possible. MAME doesn't offer the same experience as playing the cabinet.

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Pinball PA has a Sky Raider. What you're missing by playing it in MAME is the color overlay and the cool monitor bezel found in the arcade game.

 

You always find the best stuff. I found their page. I love the 2pm-10pm hours. Pittsburgh is calling me.

 

IMG_1492.jpg

 

The cabinet looks vaguely familiar but I would have been very young if I saw it even once. https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9573

 

I just love reading operators manuals. The manual for Sky Raider has several pages devoted to the coin assembly.

 

It is hard to communicate how to check for tightness. The only thing we can say is that if the brackets are just a little loose, the Control Yoke will feel sloppy.

Yeah, like your technical writing! :D

 

The game's composite video signal produces four video levels instead of the continuous shades of grey seen on a home TV screen.

Hm, does this still meet the standards for a black and white game? It's really black, white, light grey, and dark grey. Still more monochrome than a "black and white" television.

 

post-2410-0-89283000-1508424388_thumb.png

 

This awesome shop sketch is for troubleshooting the display. Note that everything is upside down and backwards, because in the cabinet, it's projected onto a mirror.

 

The sheer amount of documentation, schematics, parts lists, and other figures are astounding. Taking on one of these things back in the day would have been a major investment and potential liability. Having one today would be ancient-electronics-repair-city.

 

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You always find the best stuff. I found their page. I love the 2pm-10pm hours. Pittsburgh is calling me.

 

IMG_1492.jpg

 

 

I don't know how far you are from Pittsburgh, but you could consider bundling a visit with ReplayFX which is what I did a few years ago. I went to Pinball PA on a Thursday then spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at ReplayFX. Just give yourself a lot of time at Pinball PA cuz they have over 300 machines - some of the arcade games you won't find anywhere else. I pooped my pants when I saw a Tazz-Mania there.

 

Pinball PA is located in a strip mall. There's a pizza shop but if memory serves it's either take out only or they have little seating available. There's also a restaurant that has good food like seafood and steak but it's on the pricey side.

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Okay, so they are adjusting the video with a keystone (trapezoid) effect to squeeze the top (bottom) of the video. That's how they get the perspective view. edit: no, I think just software horizontal scaling.

 

The gameplay is similar to some of the old electro-mechanical games. What other video games were similar at that time; there were first-person space games like Atari Starship and later Exidy Star Fire.

Edited by mr_me
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Okay, so they are adjusting the video with a keystone (trapezoid) effect to squeeze the top (bottom) of the video. That's how they get the perspective view. edit: no, I think just software horizontal scaling.

 

And non-linear at that, consider the rounded inside the wheel shape.

When they first started emulating it in mame, it was initially done with perfectly straight edges.

 

Maybe they got this idea from Larry Niven's Ringworld. As the perspective would be the same, except it'd have to be hella lot smaller. And I wonder if it was done that way on purpose, or because of a limitation on tech at the time?

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I think my favorites have all been mentioned.

 

Asteroids

Sprint N

Space Invaders

Super Breakout (The original had a color overlay right?)

 

I forgot about Atari Video Pinball. It is so hard to emulate this one without the real cab. I got to play it at a pinball festival a number of years ago, and I really liked it.

 

 

Oh and, I immediately made the connection between Sky Raiders and the old conveyor games. I recently got a chance to play one of those old conveyor games at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. It was Bally Target Zero from 1970, and it was a monster. Sky Raiders would have looked pretty awesome next to it in a 70's arcade. I've never made the connection to River Raid from those games however. That seems obvious when seeing them side by side.

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I remember computer class in my freshman year of high school. If you were finished with your work for the week, you could play games. We had TRS-80s back then, and Star Trek was my favorite.

 

 

I thought about mentioning Star Trek, but I don't think that I've ever played a true B&W version. It still deserves to be in the mix.

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I think perhaps there should be a separate topic for favorite B & W vector game, versus raster game, as I feel these are really two different categories...

 

With this in mind:

 

- Raster: Space Invaders

- Vector: Space Wars

 

WOW, I did not know black and white games ever existed.

 

This gives me another opportunity to shamelessly plug my YouTube video...

 

Edited by almightytodd
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My favorites from back in the monochrome era are:

 

Space Invaders

Starship 1

Sea Wolf

 

Oddly enough, all starting with an S. :ponder:

 

 

 

 

 

IMG_1492.jpg

 

The cabinet looks vaguely familiar but I would have been very young if I saw it even once. https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9573

 

 

 

I remember this game. I always thought of it as being in the cockpit of a TIE Fighter. Doesn't really match up well with the scenario but that was the connection I made then.

Edited by darthkur
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Duuuuh I went straight to arcade when it came to the topic. I had not even thought to consider handheld -- GAMEBOY of all things. Tetris is my clear winning answer there thanks to Schizo bringing that up. It was my go-to stay in the GB slot when not in use game up until mario golf came out on GBC. I racked up more hours on that game probably than many others combined over so many years. So simple to start so entirely hard to master.

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