retrorussell

I suppose I should probably post a pic with each game from here on out. WARRIOR

Yeah, the original Crush Roller apparently got an upgrade. I'll have to check out the Neo Pocket one.

Next game: WARRIOR, 1979 Vectorbeam I first saw this, I believe, at Malibu Gran Prix in Tigard, OR.. this wasn't nearly as popular as other games at the time (Video Pinball, Asteroids, Galaxian). I think I also saw this at the Electric Palace in Beaverton Mall. I guess it's the first one-on-one fighting game. Just 2 knights fighting with swords on a high stairwell, with deadly pits surrounding you.

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I never thought of frying back when I had my 2600. But upon reading about the frying tricks, one of the best is for HERO.. you can get 250 lives!

Taurus- The bull in BULL FIGHT (1984, Sega) or the power-up bull in ALTERED BEAST (1988, Sega) I'll call SINISTAR a Leo, because.. well, he roars! And the hero in GUZZLER (1983, Centuri/Tehkan) is Aquarius, because he splashes enemies with water.

One other tip, in case you don't know.. after shooting the yellow Galaxian in mid-flight (as long as there are 8 or more aliens left) you will have 5 seconds or so where the aliens will not attack. Take this time to mow down as many as you can.

Sounds like it never even made it to the production stage. KLOV has no mention of it at all that I can see.

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27,040 God, this game is hard.. and the high score table is ridiculously high at the lowest default score.

Next game: MAKE TRAX, 1981 Williams/Kural Samno At first appearance this game seemed like a cheap knock-off of Pac-Man, but the enemy (2 goldfish!) was smart enough to make things challenging. One of the better Pac-Man knockoffs (though I liked Lock 'N Chase better). I first saw this, I think, at either Electric Castle's Wunderland in NE Portland or Chuck E. Cheese in either Beaverton or Vancouver. This game was also called Crush Roller (usually licensed to Exidy) and as Magic Brush.

Sometime around 1996 or so I think, I used Nesticle. Pretty decent for the time but I've since moved onto FCEUX.

Next game: VENTURE (1981), Exidy I think I first saw this at the Beaverton roller skating rink by the Beaverton Mall shortly after it first came out.. either there or Chuck E. Cheese, or maybe the Electric Palace in the mall. God, this is one of the hardest I've ever played! The troll room REALLY pisses me off to this day.

Kaboom is a great paddle game. I actually liked Casino with the paddles as well.. getting the highest score on the poker 5x5 grid was a fun challenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icUK2hlfCW8

Renegade is notorious for being so damn hard.. the enemies swing their weapons so quick, and the controls/game mechanics are screwy. Throw in the fact you have ONE life (apart from getting one at 30K points) and no continues, and you're in for a world of hurt. The NES version is so much easier.

Thanx dood!!! Bagman was definitely too hard for many gamers. I got to Act 2 without cheating ONCE. I, too, loved Pooyan. It was one of the few arcade games I was REALLY good at.

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New one for this week: Bagman, 1982 Valadon Automation/Stern I'm pretty sure I first saw this at the Avalaon Theater in SE Portland.. I had just got done seeing an incredibly boring film called "Timerider". I needed to get some sort of positive out of the day by playing a lot of Bagman and Rally-X. This was either in 1982 or 1983, making me 11 or 12.

The cabinet? Cool! Actually, it looks like this. DAMN YOU AND YOUR MIXED SIGNALS!!!

That's a pretty good score w/o doing the trick... I gave my arcade cabinet the finger about 15 times before I nailed it. It's tough to do and you'll notice that my score in the pic was 208K and the high score listed was 206K which was the only other time I was able to do it. I've been trying lately on MAME to do it.. I have the cabinet too, and perhaps I have better luck with it (haven't pulled it off in a LONG time) but I don't have a camera. So MAME it is. My score without the 200K trick was achieved via letting the mothership come down ALL the way before destroying it. When it COMPLETELY stops moving downwards it will yield the most points, somewhere between 8,000 to 9,999.

Guh! Still can't get the 200K trick to work.. will keep trying. 24,490

The cabinet? Cool!

Ick.. I can do much better than this (I have the cabinet in my living room). I'll try again soon. 14,220

My first arcade game was probably Sprint2. First home game.. Probably some sort of Pong clone, as they were red-hot in the mid seventies.