The Eidolon

My parents are soon to get rid of a box of old console stuff, and offered me to pick over if I wanted anything. There were 2 large arcade stick fighting game controllers for a Playstation 2. Do any of you know if a modern, reliable adapter exists so I could use these on a Mac or PC (or another console)? They look pretty nice, but I have a low tolerance for headaches trying to get things to work, so I'm trying to figure out if they are worth saving. Thanks in advance!

Probably Shiren the Wanderer for the Nintendo DS. There's so much you can do and so many tricks and secrets. The best Roguelike game I've ever tried, surely.

I don't know if it's actually one of the worst, but I certainly regretted putting a quarter in Targ way back when. I think we were on a boat (!) ride and it was the only game they had. The high difficulty, bad graphics (for 1980) and general lack of fun turned me off pretty quickly.

I recommend "One Button Bob" if you don't mind browser games. http://armorgames.com/play/5286/one-button-bob It >only< has one button for input, no direction controls.

You're right! I'm not sure what I was thinking. I guess all those low-rez polygons reminded me of vector graphics.

Went to California Extreme just over a week ago, where they had hundreds of classic arcade cabinets on free play. If you had a wide variety of games available to play once a year, but limited time, what would you seek out? For me, it would be games which would offer an experience which can't be easily replicated on an emulator or with a home collection. That would include: Games with unusual control schemes. Vector games. Laserdisc games. Multiplayer competitive games. Light gun games. Pinball. Plus a few others just for nostalgia. Some of the cabinets I got to try this year: Laserdiscs: Super Don Quixote Dragon's Lair Space Ace Vector: Tempest Major Havoc I Robot Star Wars (Cockpit) The Empire Strikes Back Black Widow Quantum Spinners, Dual Sticks, Trackball or other unusual controls: Forgotten Worlds Tron Assault Point Blank 2 Arkanoid Robotron Reactor Definitely a convention worth checking out if you're in California in July.

Hard to decide. Either Major Havoc, Red Baron, or Quantum would all be good.

1) M.U.L.E. 2) Alternate Reality - The City 3) Ultima IV 4) Spelunker 5) Boulder Dash Also had a lot of fun with: Infocom games (but better on other systems) Pitfall 2 (though I played it on a 5200 with a grumpy analog stick) 7 Cities of Gold Bruce Lee The Eidolon Rescue on Fractalus Koronis Rift Jumpman/Jr. Archon 1-2 AR: The Dungeon Ultima II-III Montezuma's Revenge Journey to the Planets Shamus Zorro Pinball Construction Set Gyruss Robotron 2084 Joust Ghostbusters Mario Bros. I'm sure there are many others I would have liked if I had played them on that platform at the time.

Gunbird II: I've heard that serious players consider this much improved over the original. It's a great-looking game, but the punishing difficulty makes it too frustrating for me to play compared to the early Psikyo shooters. Mr. Do's Castle: Doesn't quite have the charm of Mr. Do. None of the Bubble Bobble sequels captured that crazy chaotic fun of the original. Raiden II or II DX are the high point of that series to me. The Raiden Fighters series are OK, but you can tell they were a renamed game from a different series. The style is very different. Super Cobra: Like Scramble, but you spend much more time ramming into walls.

Raiden II DX Bubble Bobble Strider My top games are all probably shmups, but it's nice to have some variety. Runner ups might be: R-Type Dragon's Lair ESP Ra.De. Star Wars Area 88 Puzzle Bobble 2 Mr. Do Forgotten Worlds Sky Soldiers That should keep me going for a long time...

If you go to a coin shop, many will have a "junk bin" for of low value coins for about 10~25 cents each. Many have tokens carelessly mixed in, which is where I got most of these. I can usually get Chuck E Cheese tokens for less than it would cost me there if I'm willing to get my fingers dirty. Anyway, most of these are from coin shops. I didn't save much from back in the day. By the way, my kid just went to a party at Sunnyvale (CA) Golfland, and they don't even use tokens any more. It's all swipe cards and redemption machines. They have some big machines based on smartphone games (Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, etc.), but it's $1.00 per play, so it's more than cost of the entire app on a smart phone. Interesting business model...

A little larger image because the other one is almost too small to read. I'm not very good at embedding images...

I don't actually collect arcade tokens, but when I see some mixed in with the junk bin at coin stores, I buy them and give them to my youngest daughter. Over the years, she's accumulated a modest collection. I've tried to weed out duplicates with the same design and other types of tokens like parking, bathroom, souvenir, telephone tokens etc. How many of these do you know? For me, I've personally been to: Starcade (Century Theaters) Aladdin's Castle Chuck E. Cheese Keystone Tilt Central Park Santa Cruz Boardwalk plus a bunch of arcades which used generic, unbranded tokens. Any others you can identify or good ones that I missed? Most of these were found in Northern California.