Shaggy the Atarian

I was 4 or 5, I might have read it in the manual, but I also might have not...t'was so long ago now 🧙‍♂️

It's a stretch, but it kind of was in arcades. YR started off as a port of Cinematronics' Star Castle, but when HSW couldn't get that concept to work right on the 2600, he retooled it and gave us YR.

To be fair, they mentioned that this was one of the two ways to get the Zorlon cannon in the original game's manual. I know most games have no manual anymore, but back in the day, you couldn't have a tutorial to explain things, so relied on the manual. I would say it's not a design flaw for two reasons: 1) What happens if a player just sprays and prays the shield away with their normal shot? How are they supposed to get the ZC? The shield doesn't regenerate, so some way was needed to accomplish this. 2) This becomes a high risk, high reward feature that builds the tension I grew up playing games like YR, and I think I just discovered this trick on accident. I didn't think "that's stupid!," it taught me to use strategy. If the shields were gone and I'd used, but missed, with the ZC, then I learned to wait for the Qotile to fire, hope it missed me, then immediately go and touch it to get the ZC. Otherwise, it's a tension building risk...will it kill me when I'm right there, or will it not. Still, it never fires immediately after it already has fired, so that's always your chance. As for this new take in the form of Yars' Rising, I'll wait to play it and see. I am glad they are looking to bring it back, but when I first watched the trailer, it seemed to me like they just had some other Metroidvania in development, Atari asked if they wanted to do a Yars game, then slapped that license on to it. I could be wrong. Still, from the trailer, I am disappointed that it doesn't appear to follow the original game's lore (from the manual and comic book) at all, but we'll see if their surprise somehow ties it all together.

Technically, the arcade Mario Karts are exclusives, in terms of tracks, items, some unique characters and some other subtle features (I can't recall if DX has the "live commentary" that Mario Kart GP1 and GP2 had). The Japanese version is superior though, as they received several years worth of content updates, while the US one stopped after two 😕 Here's one of the tracks that's an exclusive - the game is also supposed to have a lot more items, but IIRC there aren't any that do something different, they just look different:

Probably is this one, which has been on the market since 2013. I'd guess that the game hasn't been maintained recently if the speakers sound like that.

It helps that I'm practically the only one out there talking about any new arcades Or at least ones that have no license/name attached to them. The germ thing doesn't bug me either, but wearing a headset that some other sweaty dude just wore does slightly...and those little pointless face masks (those will not prevent transmission of something like pink eye) ruin any immersion you might feel otherwise. The main problem for me is that I can't use most VR without experiencing a migraine for hours afterwards, even if it was just for a few minutes. I don't have migraines in normal life, so it's enough to make me only use this stuff on rare occasion at tradeshows.

If it did well enough, I would prefer the 2p version of the game, just because it's half the size. Most of us ops would prefer smaller games too - aside from costing less, it lets me pack in more games. It's nice to have a spectacle game or two, but not for the entire arcade. Unfortunately, most stuff being made right now is all about being spectacle games. Here's yet another that Raw Thrills recently rolled out Yeah, once they implement waves and leaderboards, I'll be paying more attention to repeat plays. That's always the best tell

Aside from the one dude who spends hours on it, most have played for several minutes, then walk away. New weekend and new people though, so we'll see

. .. ... .... For its first week in operation, it made $14. Slow week, as mentioned, but also the coin glitch. The Alan-1 guys did drop by yesterday to do some troubleshooting & debugging, so the amount of free coins its spitting out have diminished a bit, but it's still doing it. They do hope to have it fixed soon (next week, perhaps?). Then we'll get a much better idea (also assuming that things pick up)

A lot of people are surprised when they discover the arcade version of that, but then a little shocked by how balls-to-the-wall difficult (and different from the 2600 version) it is. I couldn't really pass it up when I found it a decade ago though.

You're welcome How long you hold onto a game does depend on the game and the location - I still have a few games that I opened with 16 years ago as they still earn consistently. But when it comes time to say goodbye, yeah, there is a decent used market out there. Many locations just focus on new stuff because that's what makes money, but for those who don't have unlimited budgets like Dave & Busters or Round1, they'll tend to look for some good deals on used. You have to have a really old game with a name for collectors to be interested in it. I probably should put my prototype Hydra up for sale here soon or sell off my Pitfall II...pretty sure those would go to a collection and not an arcade, unless a game museum wanted them. Once in a while, there is something that you can't seem to move at all. It sucks, but that's where you just end up scraping or selling the cab off for super cheap. I've only done that with things that aren't special - generic cabinets or a weird indie game that was too custom to do anything with on something else (a tank game from a now defunct manufacturer I had to junk as I couldn't get parts for it anymore). I have a racer I might have to do that with, as every time I've listed it for sale, no one bites, no matter what the price (well, I haven't listed anything for free...would be nice to recoup a few bucks from it, at least for the cabinet).

I've seen it happen before - my Cruis'n Blasts for example, paid themselves off in 5 1/2 months (were about $14k). But I've not seen anything that was a joystick or similar game do that before, with one exception, Super Street Fighter IV AE. That one feels like a unique case. If something like Asteroids can perform like either of those at my place, then I would be impressed.

Not yet, they are saying probably next week at this point, although disconnecting the knocker did dramatically cut down on the number credits the game gives itself. Still, if there was a way to look at how much time its been played vs. coin drop, they would be wildly different. From Thursday-Monday, the game pulled in 43 coins, so $10.75. Not bad given the nature of the glitch. But if you start comparing to other new games - a single Maximum Tune driver did $74.25 over the weekend - then not so much. But, it did do better than some of the classics like Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga which didn't manage $5, so that's a win, I guess. Just as long as its not making $15/wk when its fixed. What are my fellow operators going to want to see out of a brand new game at its price point? Minimum $250/wk or higher (which would mean it pays itself off in a year or less). You could get away with a little less, but more than 2 years ROI will be a tough sell since the market isn't a vacuum. To be fair, it was one of the slowest weekends we've seen all year. April/May tends to be my slow season, excepting anything like Spring Break or some other time off of school. In a way its good, since the glitch isn't going to produce correct results anyways. So, if there's any time for it to have problems like this, now is better than when more eyes would be on it. I will also be recommending that they add under the control panel lighting. As weird as it might sound, the game is too dark in my arcade, so I think that is keeping some from noticing it.

This gentleman has been playing the game for 3 hours straight. He did put tokens in it at first... until realizing that it was basically on free play What was kind of odd is that he came in and asked if we had Asteroids - without noticing the game. I haven't had anyone ask me if we have that in quite a long time. So I guess it was drawing him in with its mere presence, haha.

I've only played two of those (Dirty Larry and Batman) and would agree that they are just not very fun to play. At least they look great But to be fair, I had Batman on the Gameboy and would rather play the Lynx game, if I had no other choices. For some reason, most Batman games from the late 80s/early 90s just sucked, as they dialed the difficulty up to 11. I remember reading a review of Krazy Ace in Gamepro where it sounded like they enjoyed the game...but I should fire it up on my LynXGD to see what it's all about. Hard Drivin' is only good in the arcade, where it doesn't have the frame rate of a snail running through molasses. It is surprising that something as vastly low powered to that arcade hardware could even manage it in some degree though. I've not played Lynx Casino but did play Viking Child quite a bit. I liked it and wouldn't put it in my bottom 5, but it did need some extra polish and for the love of MIKEY, some music. The main thing that bugs me about it though are the attacks. The coder should've been forced to play some sword swinging platformers like Strider for a week straight, then gone and worked on VC. That's the main element that should be satisfying in a game like this. I can't agree with Basketbrawl, but maybe its because I'm not a fan of sports games. Whether its on the Lynx or 7800, BB is only fun to me when its played against a human opponent, but good luck finding someone who wants to spend time on it. My bottom five but in no particular order of suckiness Hard Drivin - For the reasons stated above Steel Talons - If you're going to hate on Hard Drivin' then you gotta hate on this one. It's a nice technical achievement but its not very fun. Basketbrawl - If I want to play a beat 'em up, I'll play Double Dragon, not this thing where you're fighting over a ball most of the time. Block Out - Never cared for this one in any version. If I'm going to play Tetris, then I'd rather play Tetris. In the case of the Lynx, play KLAX instead Ishido - If I'm going to play a tile puzzle game, Shanghai. This game just isn't fun, even if you know what you're doing Batman might be #6 for me To each their own, but hearing this is like hearing about a person without an inner monologue - I just don't get how it doesn't bother you. Maybe its because I'm around arcade games every day, where they set a standard for smooth frame rates and quick responsiveness. Switching to something janky & choppy (particular when it comes to ports) is hard to be happy with, for me.