Shaggy the Atarian

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind, glad my dire mistake could entertain!

Looks great, can't wait to get this. I did a brief comparison between the above and the original, trying to promote this as best I can within my little realm:

I'd love to see some digital distribution or SD card options for the JagGD as Sauron mentioned above but I'm happy to support this one regardless the price (I guess running an arcade has made me a little bit of a snob in that regard). I still need to grab a few of the other more recent releases though.

Guess it sounds like I somehow missed the "regular" way to get to lvl 11. I'll wait until the remaster comes along to discover how it's supposed to be

Dug out my cart and checked the save...it's level 11, lower right hand corner. Granted it's been about 25 years since I studiously played the game but I recall exploring all of level 10 and 12 and being perplexed/frustrated that it seemed like you couldn't access most of 11. Of course, I might have still missed something...perhaps a puzzle I skipped or NPC I killed. Otherwise, seemed like the level might not have been finished so they just did that corridor instead. 🤷‍♂️

I'll have to dig up my cart and look at the save. Pretty sure there's one level that was mostly blocked off near the end of the game, excepting that small hallway I mentioned. Remember checking it for secrets all the time but looking at the map, you couldn't go into 95% of the level.

As someone who picked up T2 on cart back in the day and finished the game, I'm super stoked about this - also a little bit relieved as I had forgot about the blue orb being a spell in the game and was thinking it was going to be a remaster of Bubsy One thing I also look forward to is playing through the unfinished level (it was 10 or 11) that was blocked off except for a small hallway between stairs. It always bugged me that you couldn't get that spell that must have been in there...

Ah,I just posted a video about this but I guess I got beat to the punch (took too long to edit video). No worries. But yes, all Stern, no Exidy. It was produced but it apparently bombed so hard it's the game that took Stern Electronics down. I doubt many units were produced but the production costs on LD games was so high at the time that it did them (and several others) in.

I was wondering the same thing about what the other games are...sent an email to their PR firm and will report back if I hear anything

As I've had a few people asking when this is going to be available, the game just started shipping out yesterday. I've played it a few times and it's spot on to the OG game, but it is $5499 plus freight...probably more for locations at the moment than collectors. But they will have Zeke's Peak out by the Summer time

I'm not in the area but where I cover new arcade openings, do you know when these guys opened their doors?

Depends on the level - the sky missions are just a blue gradient background but there are missions with ground. Can't remember which ones as it's been 15+ years since I played the game (as you could probably tell!). Otherwise, game looks the same as I remember it on real hardware.

Out of curiosity, I fired it up and here are the results. The music glitches out as soon as I start firing but no buggy graphics. Yeah, it's not 100% perfect and I don't think Rich ever claimed it was but I'm not seeing quite the same results as you are describing.

Ryzen 7/Win 11 laptop here. Runs fine for me so far - only had one tiny issue while recording some AvP yesterday with OBS but it was a very short audio stutter almost 8 min in. Otherwise I've played several other games and not seen issues with 1.0.5. Really impressed with the CD emulation too

The Japanese arcade industry is still trying to recover but from the looks of the JAEPO show (Japan Amusement Expo, a tradeshow where brand new arcade games are shown off), it's off to a solid restart. I compiled tons of tweets and YouTube videos into one post since the news being all over Twitter is a bit chaotic. Sadly, Sega's output isn't anything special but it does show that they're still around (apart from Sega Amusements, which is very busy launching brand new games for Western shores). Konami as usual isn't making anything outside of Japan but all of the games mentioned at the exA-Arcadia booth will be available in US, Europe, etc. Taito...not sure. They have Music Diver which is a Round1USA exclusive but any of the other things they showed off might pop up over here or it might not, they're kind of a wildcard. Bonus: Here's a video from IGN Japan about the event (all in Japanese, of course)

Hmm, what mysterious reason could that possibly be? Oh, right

I do have to feel bad for some of the SLC staff (not sure if any of them were devs or just QA) - some of them came from another tech gaming flop called The Void. Guess they just couldn't catch a break when it came to gaming start-ups. I was surprised when I played Moon Patrol and it had "filler text" from Starfox in there. It should not have been hard to already have come up with a paragraph for a story and wedge that in there prior to going public but I guess they figured no one would notice. The game was playable at least but lots did not add up in general when it came to what they did show vs. how long it had supposedly been in development for.

Yeah, this is one reason the arcade biz is still obsessed with racing and light-gun games - they earn well because just the design of a machine teaches the player how to play. Steering wheel? Just drive. Gun? Shoot whatever you see. Even if you have never played a video game before or don't speak English, you instantly get the basics of what to do. Joysticks or buttons though can be just about anything so it becomes harder to teach people how to play when they are often judging whether or not they will play a game within a matter of seconds. Even pinball which has been around for longer than most of us have been alive often gets people (kids and adults) who have no idea what it is they're doing. They approach it because the theme appeals to them, then many are utterly confused as pinball just assumes that everyone playing a machine is Roger Sharpe. It's always fun when I have to try and teach someone who doesn't speak English how to play pinball. It can be done - Gauntlet Legends with its narration on the first level & play is a good example, but I don't see anyone using that style at all these days. I'd prefer it too as I've mentioned, very few people have the patience to read. Me telling them real quick what to do usually works - the games should be doing that since it's rare you'll go to an arcade where someone is there who can help you figure out how to play. Modern arcade games, like pinball above, need to stop assuming that everyone who approaches the machine is literate or a pro gamer. If you're here on AA, then chances are you know how to play Asteroids or Galaga or whatever, maybe even with your eyes closed. Talk to "most people" born in the past 20 years though, and they might not even know what Asteroids is, much less know how to play it. This is probably why the new Asteroids arcade game that was on test bombed - same thing happened with Tetris just a few years ago. The same guys who made Centipede Chaos were trying to turn Tetris into a video redemption game and it bombed hard. They observed a bunch of players trying to make towers with the blocks instead of fitting pieces together to clear lines. If the general, modern public can't figure a dumbed down version of Tetris for tickets out, there's no way they figure out a bunch of esoteric vector games. It reminds me of Jeff Minter's frustration about how a Frogger remake outsold Space Giraffe. It really sucks but it seems to be the state of modern gaming 😕

That is a good point and I meant to emphasize that market a bit more. Galloping Ghost Arcade certainly is a great example too, although some of their appeal now comes from the sheer size of of it all (I don't envy all the tech work they have to do). Admittedly, I'm sort of jaded as I've seen my retro stuff just stand in as filler for the most part while it's new stuff that pays my bills. Any time a movie hyping up retro hits though (Wreck-It Ralph or Pixels come to mind), I did see a slight bump for a few weeks on my old stuff. Wednesday's popularity on Netflix has also caused my Addams Family pin to suddenly double or triple in earnings. But that stuff is all inconsistent and unreliable...and it's a tangent One issue I've noticed is that the market for "indie" retro stuff is extremely small - not necessarily due to lack of locations (which most would assume but if we add bars which are also arcades, the number is huge) but due to interest. Many current retro arcades tend to draw an arbitrary line-in-the-sand about what video games they'll have on hand. Some it can only be stuff up to '89 or '95 or whatever the owner feels is "classic." They never have that qualm with pinball, as they'll grab the latest Stern's but video, they just won't touch it either due to those principles or because it costs 3-8 times as much as some retro games. Of course your original point was bar/arcades and they can be less picky in that regard but still, I have seen many over the years as that market has blown up who will say "why should I spend $5k on a new Pac-Man game when I could get a bunch of classics for that same cost?" (granted, I heard that more pre-inflation). There are some out there who will invest into something new like Golden Tee/Big Buck Hunter/Pac-Man Battle Royale but otherwise it is pinball; they just don't consider new retro stuff much(there's also the factor of distributors who barely pay attention to new retro stuff as well - if they pushed harder you'd see more out there but they don't because in most places, those games don't earn as well as something else like a light-gun or racing game). As it is, most indie guys I've talked to have sold under 100 units of their game. The only exception to that has been Killer Queen, which last I heard has sold well over 120 units but that's still a drop in the bucket compared to the likes of Golden Tee, Big Buck Hunter or Cruis'n Blast which have each broken 10,000 sales. As I see it, the best appeal from the new games on the Atari 50th for being turned into arcade games would be: Neo Breakout (with a knob controller)/Battle Breakout (standalone on a cocktail) > Quadratank (do it in an 8-player cocktail cab like the ol' Tank 8 )> Yars' Revenge Reloaded > Vctr Sctr. SwordQuest and Haunted Houses don't really count Here's a game I played recently which is kind of like Battle Breakout: I wouldn't be against DE releasing VS in the arcade cab that they took to CAX. I would just be very surprised if they managed to sell more than 25-50 cabs (which might not be profitable for them to do) and I would personally pass on it just due to how my customers are. Neo/Battle Breakout in a cab like Bumper though, I could be quite tempted.

In watching people play video games every day, I can guarantee that the moment the Lunar Lander sequence pops up, they'd all die and walk away, if they could even get that far. I get people who regularly: -Can't figure out how tokens work without help (had one just yesterday) -Can't figure out how to start a pinball machine and accuse it of being broken or stealing from them (all I do is go and push the blinking START button, then they feel dumb. Doesn't matter the age either - I helped a guy in his 50s/60s the other day who didn't notice it at first) -Lose all three lives within 20 seconds of starting a shoot 'em up game like Dariusburst, even though it starts out super nice and easy -Can't push the pedal to start a game like Hydra, even though is says on the screen that's what you're supposed to do to start. This past Sunday there were 4 credits on the game because no one pushed the pedal. -Often get stuck in games that are very clear about what to do so I have to help them (Big Buck Hunter is the worst on this; it'll happen often on The Walking Dead too, which doesn't have much text yet people still get confused and angry because they're too lazy/impatient to take a second to read and navigate simple menus) -Can't figure out selecting their game on something like the Neo Geo MVS (not too frequent on this one, fortunately) -As mentioned, few people "got" Cosmotrons and that didn't involve landing at all - just gravity and avoiding the walls/ground. Last year, the guys who made Centipede Chaos had created a new Asteroids. I couldn't get good pics from the location test but it was a cocktail style for 4 players. Unfortunately that bombed...as did their attempt to bring a new Tetris to arcades a few years ago. Today's gaming public is so dumbed down by mobile gaming that if the game doesn't practically play itself for them, they get mad and walk away. This is sadly why redemption gaming is such a money maker - it requires very little brain power to play but it gives a quick dopamine hit that keeps people shoving coins into them. Anything from 40~ years is too complicated for your average consumer (which I hate to say but I've been watching people for 15 years now and skilled gamers are exceptions, not the rule). Vctr Sctr would probably do fine in any retro focused place where they do free play on the games but anywhere you'd see the general public and games like Centipede Chaos, it'd bomb. 😕

and yet it doesn't matter what's seared into your brain or that of the guy next door, that still doesn't make them Atari IPs. Mortal Kombat isn't a Sega IP just because you might have only played the game on a Genesis. Stop acting all surprised when you say something that people respond to instead of the thoughts in your head that you didn't share with the rest of the class.

This is probably something that an IP lawyer would need to sort out but I can't imagine that given the original Breakout copyright + the fact that Atari Corp did pay for the game's development back in '95 with the intent to publish, can't be figured out as Telegames would have had to license it from Atari. It's a weird mess in that case but perhaps it wasn't worth it do figure out in court for an "ok" grade remake. On that catalog, Atari had a few unreleased games on there, which was kind of weird as they have many more prototypes/unreleased games that were worked on than what they list, but have been maintaining the copyright on them for these recent years (in the hopes of making something like the new Akka Arrh, I suppose). I don't mind barcades, they've basically saved the arcade industry...they just aren't as huge a thing in dry Utah as they are in other places I wouldn't mind seeing them test it out but a location test would be the best way to see if something like that would really work or not. One company did take Atari's iPad version of breakout and turn it into an arcade game for tickets a few years back but it's rare to find it. It probably would perform much better with something like Neo Breakout though. In regards to Vctr Sctr, it is cool but it might be too esoteric for the general public. I used to own a game which was basically Gravitar 2 called Cosmotrons. It was a multiplayer (up to 4) game focused more on battles than landing but it still had the gravity at play. It looked almost exactly like Gravitar, just on a 4K screen; The button layout was the same as Asteroids. It completely bombed at my place, making $5-$10/wk on average; $20 on a good week (on a $3500~ game, not nearly good enough). I had it near new games, placed it near my retro games, it did about the same regardless where I placed it. It's currently at a bar/arcade in a different city where from what I hear, it's definitely doing a little better there (although I sold it and the guy hasn't told me exactly how much it's raking in yet, it's not the worst one there though). But still, it's not strong. Part of that is certainly from Gravitar since that's just not a good game for casuals to jump into but the issue I've noticed with that and any other "new retro" game is that most people visiting an arcade think that it's an old game inside of a new cabinet, but maybe some obscure one they never heard of back in the day so they just keep walking past. 😕 I'm afraid that Vctr Sctr would suffer a similar fate...the whole thing of indie games doing well on Steam just doesn't translate in arcades, at least in my case.