Tanrunomad

I was finally able to track down the man behind the game: Kelly Jones! He was the vice president of the entertainment division at Synapse and worked closely with Ihor Wolosenko, the co-founder of the company. I just finished a 6809 port of the game and wanted to get the okay from Kelly to use the name (even though it's free and I did it just for fun). He was fine with it, even though technically the rights to that IP are now in someone else's hands I assume. He agreed to a 1 hour interview talking about his background and the great programmers at Synapse who made those classic games we enjoy. Some really cool stories. We also learn where the word "Drelbs" comes from. Here is a link: https://youtu.be/Vsq3Iz0hzFE

Yes, you should absolutely check it out. Synapse deserves more attention and Kelly shared some awesome stories relating to their success and ultimately how Atari forced them out of business. He also talks about the techniques they used to develop their games. Super cool and fascinating stuff!

As the author of my favorite 8-bit computer game, Drelbs, I was super excited to get a chance to sit down with Kelly Jones and learn about how Drelbs was created and the behind-the-scenes stories of Synapse, in general. The game just celebrated its 40th birthday, too! I hope you all enjoy it.

Thank you so much for doing this! I'm looking forward to checking this out soon.

It certainly will!

I finally got a working SWTPC 6809 Computer awhile back and decided to write something fun to play on it. It was a nice excuse to learn 6809 Assembly, as well as a language called PL/9. I also made a lot of the game in C, as there were some decent compilers for it. These old SWTPC computers were text-only systems that require a terminal. Many companies made clones of them, such as Smoke Signal Broadcasting and Gimix. The Gimix Ghost 6809 was used by Eugene Jarvis to produce Defender, and with Vid Kidz they made other classics like Robotron and Joust. I decided to write a version of Cribbage for it, since I love the game and there was no version available for FLEX. It is appropriately called 6809 Cribbage. FLEX is an early OS that runs very fast, uses only 8K of RAM and has tons of commands and utilities for it. The game should also run on the systems mentioned above, as well as other systems that run 6809 FLEX and have 40K of RAM. The game also takes advantage of terminals with cursor addressing facilities with some cool animations and other features. This advanced mode requires 48K. I wrote the game mostly for myself, since there are probably only 50 or so owners of these machines left in the world and who knows how many of them are Cribbage fans! There's also some good emulators out there. Link here: http://tanrunomad.com/swtpc-flex-games/ Enjoy!

After cleaning the machine I discovered 51 cents located in various areas inside it, so I guess technically I paid $199.49 . The non-working coin mech had a quarter, a penny and some gum stuck near the end of it and cleaning that up resolved the issue. I also cleaned and greased the spinners and now they're running like new. Here's a video I made reviewing the game and cabinet:

You may have noticed from the title screen that this is actually "Tournament Arkanoid". I'm not sure what the big differences are from the original Arkanoid.

$200 plus an extra $20 because they drove an hour and delivered it to my door. They just happened to be driving to my area today. I call that fate. It needed a good cleaning so I took care of that including removing the glass to clean both sides of it. The spinners could use some grease, what do you all use? One of the coin mechs is no good. Even after making some adjustments to the different sections, the coins just don't go through. I'll need to completely remove it to get a better view, but it doesn't come off easy like my Galaga, so I'll do that later. The screen has a very subtle wobble on the sides which usually means some cold solder joints could be present around the flyback. At least that has been my experience with that behavior on some old monitors I had. It's barely noticeable as it stands, but I'll bust out the old soldering iron if it becomes more apparent in the future. The overall condition is near perfect. I'm honestly surprised since it has been in a restaurant for the past decade.

Picked her up today. Other than a few minor details, she is beautiful! It looks like it was originally a Donkey Kong Jr machine. Time to go play!

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I will probably go check out the machine and buy it assuming it does indeed work as described. I didn't realize location made such a huge difference, but based on the price guide you shared, California definitely ups the price on most of the machines I saw there compared to those listed for sale in my area.

I'm tempted to buy it. It is in working condition, but the seller says the 2nd player coin mech doesn't recognize credits or something. $200 would be the most I was going to offer. Does that sound reasonable?

Really enjoyed reading through that. Thanks for the link.

Does anyone know what the title screen image is supposed to be?

That sounds like me. I remember playing this game a lot as a kid and couldn't get past level 3 or so. I still enjoyed it, but it wasn't until much later in life that I had the patience to work out a strategy and finally beat it. No end screen, by the way, it just starts over at level 2. Maybe you have to beat it twice. There's also a Windows 95 remake that looks really bad. I haven't tried it, but it just doesn't look like it carries the spirit of the original at all. Fire Hawk was very enjoyable. Bigger levels, special weapons, smart bosses, 20 different musical tracks. The IBM PC supported the Roland MT-32 which sounds amazing. It doesn't have the same pureness or simplicity of the original, but still a really great game.

The 1985 robot game that was one of the earliest action side-scrollers that had many elements later included in Metroid and Turrican. I recently discovered and reviewed a sequel called Fire Hawk: Thexder the Second Contact. It was a surprisingly excellent game given its relative obscurity. Wikipedia lists Commander Keen as the first smooth side scroller for the IBM PC, but this was released before that, so.... Going back to the original, it seems to be all but forgotten these days, with nobody under the age of 30 even hearing about it and the only review on YouTube by one of the big reviewers is from Mark of CGR, who loves the game probably as much as I do. What is your personal experience with it? Which of the numerous available platforms did you play it on? Why do you think it's not as talked about as other classic 80's games?

I stumbled on a really old Christmas game called "Santa's Sleigh Ride" from 1981. According to Moby Games, the oldest game of this genre is 1984's "Special Delivery: Santa's Christmas Chaos". I did a review of this old title if you want to see it, but I was wondering if there are other obscure Christmas titles missing from the list. 1985's Ho! Ho! Ho! is also missing from there.

There is a program called Double Vision which added double hi-res capability to Applesoft. The disk image includes the actual source code to examples. I used this to create the DHR BASIC game Double Deadly Orbs a few years back. Here's the link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/95695620/doublevision.do

I have about 300-400 Apple II floppy disks. All, but a handful of them work. A much higher percentage of my 3.5" disks do not work. As Kronos from Highlander said, "I do love the old ways best."

On June 10, 1977, the Apple II first made its way into the hands of customers. It was one of the first computers to come in a plastic case, have standard video support and produce hi-res and lo-res color graphics. The Apple II series stayed in production until 1993, selling at least 5 million units. Here is a video I did awhile back if you are interested in the history of this great machine. It was a revolutionary computer for many reasons, but I think one overlooked aspect of the platform is its impact on the gaming world. Over 3,000 commercial games were produced for it (not including 16-bit IIGS games) and many were among the firsts of their kind such as: Akalabeth (RPG), The Bilestoad (Extreme Blood & Guts), Mystery House (Graphic Adventure), Castle Wolfenstein (Stealth), Lode Runner (Customizable Levels), Karateka (Realistic Animation) and also Interlude: The Ultimate Experience (Adult Entertainment). Who can forget this lovely ad:

Do you think there's a peak though? There will come a time not too many decades from now when nobody will have any direct connections to the Commodore 64 age or Apple II age. Will they still be willing to pay huge sums for something they have zero nostalgia for?

One of the few computers to appreciate in value rather than depreciate. Early ventless Apple IIs like this one also crack the $20,000 mark.

Thanks. Pretty crazy, right? Regarding narration, I have to narrate and do a lot of public speaking for my day job.

Yes, it does exist and it's not a spoof game or anything, it was made by Broderbund in 1989. Here's my review of this very obscure title:

Where the other players play as the ghosts? That would be awesome!