retrorussell

Next: The classic CENTIPEDE (1980/81 Atari). Classic fixed-screen shooter, but with freedom of movement along the bottom 1/3 of the screen. Rotate the trakball to move a cannon and fire upwards at the titular creature, plus spiders, fleas, scorpions and the mushrooms that litter the playfield. The centipede breaks up into smaller (and faster) pieces when shot, and descends upon the player. It moves back up towards the top of the bottom 1/3 and back down again. A full centipede plunges down quickly at the player if it touches a mushroom a scorpion made contact with ("poisoned" mushroom), and a delay in destroying the last few segments or so causes more to spawn. Holding down the fire button causes rapid fire (though still just one shot at a time) and bonus points are given after a death for each mushroom shot and not destroyed. I'm thinking I first saw this at Malibu Gran Prix when it was new. The extra life noise (at 10,000 points) is recognizable as one of the most famous arcade sound effects of all time!

SPACE PANIC GORF COSMIC AVENGER all Colecovision

Happy 30th, NEO GEO! 2 of my favorite NEO soundtracks: TERRY BOGARD FF2/Special theme: RAIDEN/BIG BEAR theme: More great FF2/Special themes: MAI SHIRANUI ANDY BOGARD CHENG

Just wanted to at least finish the pages on code-making/changing for the Genesis.

I have a few books; I could probably make some scans and post them.

Oh, and a little history: The unauthorized enhancement kit SUPER MISSILE ATTACK (a more difficult version of MC) by General Computing Corp. ruffled Atari's feathers. They took them to court but proposed that GCC work for Atari, making games for them. They made two-- FOOD FIGHT and QUANTUM.

New game for the week: MISSILE COMMAND (1980, Atari) The classic Cold War game. I was never any good at this. My earliest memories of this are at the Washington Square Cinemas, Big Tomato Pizza, and Shakey's Pizza (all are long gone). I loved the big THE END screen in lieu of 'game over'.

I lump the porn games into one for one of the 10 worst. Custer's Revenge is arguably the worst of all of them but they all deserve to swim in the same cesspool together. There was a game called "Pac-Kong" that is also bash-your-head-against-the-wall bad. I would include ET, and Laser Blast would at least be close to my 10 worst list. Star Ship, even if it is a launch title, is pretty bad.

If you were unaware of this awesome virtual arcade video (with a great Journey song-- Journey themselves were arcade fans), this faithfully captures not only the look of an arcade back then but has a whole lot of arcade game noises blended together.

Demon I had not seen in the wild but I did play it in MAME-- okay Armor Attack type of vector game. QB-3 I believe was a prototype. I'd seen almost all the officially released games with the Rock-Ola license in arcades, save for probably Demon and Mermaid.

I did Arabian a long time ago. I made a list of the ones done up to the 15th page on page 15. But of course, memories of long-documented games can continue to be shared presently.