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hepcat

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About hepcat

  • Birthday 05/14/1971

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Fredericksburg, VA
  • Interests
    Bemani games, hiking, photography, Civil War history.
  • Currently Playing
    Beatmania IIDX, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

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  1. Rant incoming about the Arcade 1up Pac-man XL. I wanted to play this machine before buying it. It finally showed up on display at my local Costco and hoo-boy am I glad I held off. My test was with original Pac-man. I scored about 90K and made it to the 2nd galaxian before quitting. I used regular mode, NOT the fast version. Let me start with the good stuff, because this machine does have some things going for it. 1. The screen is pretty good. Going from 17 to 19 inches makes a big difference. I don’t know the dimensions of the original arcade screen, but it seemed comparable. 2. The joystick was actually a bit better than I expected. I prefer a joystick with a shorter throw, but it was decent. I’m not sure if it’s a 4 way or 8 way, but other than the lag (which I’ll get to), Pac-man went where I wanted him to go. I was able to use my patterns without getting thrown off on levels 5-9. 3. Sound. Good. It sounded like Pac-man with no crackling or studdering. Also, the volume was only 1/3 of max and I could still hear it fine in the middle of a crowded store. 4. Emulation. Good. Except for what I mention below, it was the real Pac-man as far as I can tell. Now for the bad. Shorter list, but both of these are deal breakers. 1. Lag. The lag was just awful. I’m guessing it was about a quarter of a second. This is not the kind of thing normies are likely to notice, but if you’re trying to play Pac-man at an intermediate level or higher, it makes the game almost unplayable. I probably only got as far as I did because I was using patterns and inputting directions well in advance. But if you blow a pattern on a key board, the input lag present here will make it much, much harder to survive. I have heard that when emulation is involved, some lag is inevitable. I don’t have the technical knowledge to confirm or refute that claim. However, over the past 25 years I have played Mame Pac-man on dozens of computers with all kinds of screens, using keyboards and multiple different joysticks. In all that time I have never encountered lag anywhere near as bad as what I experienced tonight on this machine. 2. Performance. Astonishingly bad for what is supposed to be the best machine Arcade 1up has yet produced. Pac-man and the ghosts studder and skip as they move as if the game is constantly dropping frames. I have a Miyoo Mini (purchased for $60) that plays arcade games from well into the 90’s perfectly. Does Arcade 1up seriously expect us to believe that in 2023 they can’t put a computer in their machines capable of running Pac-man smoothly? Other stuff, specifically build quality. The machine rocked back and forth at the base and shook during what I would consider normal play. However, the machine was sitting on an uneven pallet in a store and it may have been hastily put together by employees who obviously weren’t prepping it for use in their own homes. I spoke to a guy who was also checking the machine out who told me he has carefully assembled multiple Arcade 1up machines and they didn’t shake like this one did. This is a rant, however I’m still trying to be fair here and I don’t want to blame Arcade 1up for build issues that probably aren’t their fault. Overall, this is a machine I might be willing to pay $200 for. I’ll give it a 4 out of 10 instead of 3 since they FINALLY added dip switches. Sorry I can’t be as forgiving as some of the people in this thread, not when Arcade 1up is asking $600 for this machine.
  2. Thanks. It's expensive and I'm still debating, but having dip switches is a big plus.
  3. I'm sorry if I missed an answer to this, but does any one have this specific Arcade1up Pac-man machine and, if so, can you tell me if it has dip switches for the games? https://www.costco.com/arcade1up-pac-man-xl-arcade-machine-14-games-in-1.product.4000194397.html Many of Q&A questions and answers under the listing for this unit on Arcade 1up's website seem to refer to different models.
  4. Great project! Not exactly sure where I'd be in line, but I'm definitely interested in getting one.
  5. I got it for Switch and overall, it is a good title for the price. The lack of dip switches however is inexcusable. Dip switches have been available in free emulators for over 20 years; there is absolutely no reason beyond laziness that they're not included here. The Steam version of Pac-man excludes you from online ranking if you change the settings from the default. Namco could have done the same thing in this title if they were worried about the leaderboards.
  6. Thanks for your post Atariboy; I did not know that Midway had gone bankrupt. I did some searching after reading your post and found this article which makes AtGames sound like a pretty sleazy operation. It's much clearer to me now why Ms. Pac-man isn't going to be in this collection. Sad but understandable. https://www.polygon.com/2019/9/25/20884111/bandai-namco-atgames-lawsuit-ms-pac-man-pac-man-flashback-blast-copyright-infringement
  7. On the fence about Pac-man Museum+ with the $29.99 asking price (it's out May 27). I understand Pac-man Plus not being in there, that's pretty obscure, but why can't Namco and Midway agree to put Ms. Pac-man and Jr. Pac in a collection like this? Do they really hate money that much?
  8. Update: I tried it with a Hori Fighting Commander gamepad and a small joystick I had custom made a few years ago. Both worked immediately, but control was more smooth with the joystick. Also, the second of the three games was Dig Dug and its leader board was much more interesting. There were a couple of BS scores up there, but the other scores seemed reasonable given that you only get 5 lives (3 to start and bonus men at 20k and 60k. If you change the settings to give you more, you're excluded from the leader board. Props to whoever got the hi-score of 1.1 million under those restrictions.
  9. There's a three-pack of arcade classics including Pac-man on sale for 75% off on Steam. $2.14 total. Out of curiosity, I bought it, mostly for the high score tracker. A couple questions if anyone else has this game. First, is there any way to control it other than the keyboard? Only thing I saw on this issue was a comment from 2017 saying someone was using a Sega Saturn controller of all things, which I don't have. Second, why is the high score on the leader board 1,874,919,423? Even with Level 256 bug turned off (there appears to be an option for this) someone would have to clear over 148,000 boards to achieve that score. Even if that were possible (lol, it isn't) scoring in Pac-man goes by 10s so a score ending in 423 isn't possible. Can Steam high score tracking be hacked? I know none of this matters since I can always go back to playing one of the dozens of Pac-man games on Mame. Just curious!
  10. I got a letter from Paypal today saying a credit was put on my account for the amount I paid. The scammers have the next two billing cycles to provide proof that I actually owe them but there's no way that's happening so it looks like I'm good.
  11. Yep, I'm screwed. Checked history and the site I ordered from was www.arcade1up.vip Maybe it's not to late to get a refund from Paypal.
  12. I kept seeing Arcade1up ads offering crazy discounts last month and finally bit. I ordered the Pac-man cocktail machine linked below on January 15, 2022 and have heard nothing since then. I know shipping is slow atm but I think I should have received some kind of shipping estimate by this time. Did anyone else order one of the older cabinets last month during the sale and if so, have you received your game? https://arcade1up.com/collections/available-direct-from-arcade1up/products/blackseries-pacman
  13. I just got a Nintendo Switch and signed up for 3 months of the NS Online Service. Sorry if I’m missing something obvious, but I can’t find a straight answer to the following scenario after DuckDuckGo-ing and searching this forum. If I buy River City Ransom today, will I still be able to play it when my 3 month subscription runs out? https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/river-city-ransom-switch/ Nintendo’s FAQ says the following: https://www.nintendo.com/switch/online-service/faq/ That sounds at the very least like I’ll lose access to my RCR save data once my subscription runs out, and possibly that I won’t be able to play the game at all unless I resubscribe. How does this work for more recent games like a digital purchase of Mortal Kombat 11 for Switch? Is that data saved in the cloud with an option to save it locally as well? Sorry again if these are noob questions, but I still buy physical games almost exclusively and I don't know how this stuff works on modern consoles.
  14. Perhaps I’m thinking of another 2600 game, but this article contradicts some of the things I thought I knew about 2600 Pac-man. It states that Frye spent 80 hour weeks for 6 months creating the game, but I’d heard that he was given only 6-8 weeks and was stuck with 4K to work with even though 8K carts had recently become available. (Maybe I’m thinking of E.T. re: the time limit?) Anyway, after 2600 Donkey Kong Jr., Pac-man is the game from my childhood I’m most bitter about. I played it, as it was one of only a few carts I owned, but it was such a huge disappointment.
  15. 5200 Pac-man patterns are probably possible, but I don’t see the point. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by being able to play the arcade version of Pac-man at home for 15+ years via Mame, but 5200 Pac-man just isn’t that good a game. It looks fine for the time, and it is certainly better than the original 2600 version, but it still has serious problems. It is extremely difficult to control with the 5200's controllers, which will make any pattern you come up with very difficult to pull off consistently. Also, the game’s squashed screen makes everything move twice as fast horizontally as it does vertically. Because of this, turning quickly actually makes the monsters more likely to catch you even if you’re using a controller that responds accurately. There’s also the infinite blue monster bug. The levels that are supposed to have no blue time (17 and 19+) instead feature energizers that last forever. Thus, even if you don’t agree with me on the quality of the game, why bother with patterns when you’ve got infinite energizers available for most boards?
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