frogstar_robot
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Posts posted by frogstar_robot
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If the Video Board XE is compatible to existing Atari 8 bit stuff, and if it's price isn't way off the chart, I'll buy one. If the 640 pixels device we are talking about here is simple in design just because somebody says it needs to be simple in design and if it's to slow in my eyes, I'm not gonna buy it. Period.By the way, electron, whom I met at the Głuchołazy meeting this year, has promised a 640-pixel mode for VBXE (with RGB quality).
VBXE also requires getting inside the unit and desoldering and resoldering on unsocketed units. We've also been hearing about VBXE for two years now. I suspect it is somewhat overengineered. Simplicity in installation is a virtue because the need to open the unit up will reduce the potential audience by half or more. It also means you don't pay to have someone else install it for you. A cart/PBI device is "plug-n-play" in a way that VBXE can never be unless redesigned.
Simplicity in implementation is a virtue because it establishes a base for others to hack on and in that way we find out which features are apt to be used by software devs and which are not. A simple implementation also keeps costs down and gives us the potential to have more than one source for the upgrade. I could see a rev 1 device where we learn the best ways in terms of both performance and cost to improve it. Once there is consensus on what the capabilities should be and how much we're willing to pay for them then we can have a rev 2 device that is only as fast and featureful as it needs to be.
I also have doubts about VBXE because it's capabilities seem to be a poor impedance match for the A8. A high bit depth hi res screen is of little use if it takes minutes to draw it. I realize the board itself is a kind of video accellerator but it still has to be fed through the A8's relatively slow buses. How is a 1.79 Mhz machine going to have the processing and IO bandwidth to fully utilize such a device? If it is as expensive as I suspect it's going to be then how many people will buy it? Unless a lot of us buy it then hardly any software will be written for it and without software why buy the hardware?
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Since both the Colecovsion and the SMS use TMS9918 for video, how can the SMS do more more colors per sprite then the Colecovision?Dan
It appears that the SMS uses a chip based on the TMS9918 but isn't the bare TMS9918 in the ColecoVision. Further there is an entire family of graphics chips that are derived for the TMS9918. Trivial googling revealed the following about the SMS Video Display Processor:
- Custom video controller (VDP), derived from the TMS9918/9928 chip made by
Texas Instruments, and providing:
- 256x192 tile-based screen in 16 colours,
- 64 8x8, 8x16 or 16x16 hardware sprites,
- 32 colours on screen (16 for sprites, 16 for background) from a
palette of 64,
- Hardware up/down/left/right scrolling of all or part of screen.
- Video information held in 16k of VRAM, not in the Z80 memory map, but
accessed via input/output ports.
So the chip itself is a bit beefier than the CV's and furthermore has a chunk of memory dedicated to it.
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I assume a game like Ultima would work and be suitable,and maybe a fairly static screen like in many arcade games could do, but could something like Ballblazer be pushed? Could software sprites work, or would there be considerable lag? Or is it even more complicated than that?
Claus can correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect this will update the screen too slowly for that. His proposed device can't help but be faster than an XEP-80 but will still be slow to update compared with the native hardware.
For many applications, a bit of cleverness will mitigate this. The output of the A8's chipset will still be fast as ever and Claus' device will just overlay and enhance that video. So some fast games could use this but it would take planning and design. For instance a hypothetical Yoomp! Advanced could draw/enhance the border with the cartridge but just use regular video for the tunnel. Ballblazer could be enhanced to have a higher res score/status display and so-forth. Depending on the design of the screen, overlays could be put over more frequently updated screens as well. I'm thinking of chroma/luma "zones" with normal graphics underneath virtual tinted acetates on top if you catch my drift. Or to put it another way, the device could provide slower yet more flexible version of VBI color divisions.
Of course, graphicians making static screens can go completely wild.
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A "Super-ANTIC & Super-GTIA" in an FPGA probably wouldn't be unrealistic. (I'm thinking of the Amiga evolutions here, super & fat angus and paula chips).To my way of thinking, the "Super A8" has already been done and that is the original OCS chipset in the Amiga. I'm not sure if the later AGA chipsets were very Miner-style or not. Any significant enhancement to stock A8 capabilities be they 16 bit processors or expanded ANTIC/GTIA capabilities are just going to make it resemble an Amiga 500. And even an Amiga 500 doesn't function well as a "modern PC" so I'm having a hard time seeing the point in doing any such thing.
If were talking about a new A8 that could still be fairly called an A8 then I see several possibilities that vary in realism and appeal.
1. A new motherboard that takes an existing A8 chipset and will go into a modern form factor such as ATX or mini-ITX. This can include out-of-box various enhancements that we've already been doing to A8s like 576K memory, Clearpic, SIO2IDE, 32-in-os, and so-forth.
2. The best possible software emulation on a device dedicated to emulation. The purists won't like it but on the other hand the people who want to make A8s DVD capable and surf the net can go wild. You can already do this with with GPXes, EEE pcs, Mac Mini's, and other such small platforms. I gently suggest that improving emulation quality may be a better than complaining "but it isn't a REAL A8." "Real A8s" are an increasingly threatened species. I also note that very little emulation work is done on the behaivor of old NTSC screens. OGL and hardware scalers still don't truly approximate the TVs and monitors we used and to my mind video behaivor is biggest thing that affects my suspension of disbelief in emulators. This is ESPECIALLY true of vector monitors (off-topic I'll grant.).
3. A modern re-implementation of the A8 chipset in FPGA with currently practiced enhancements like flash roms and the other things mentioned in #1.
I don't see Frankensteins with 16-bit CPUs and wildly enhanced video/audio as either realistic or something you could call an A8 when finished. Such things would be geek fantasties that almost no one will develop software for even if someone just quit talking and actually built one of the things.
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Movie 2 brings back memories. I had that animation on my ST way back when. It's a real trip to see it on an A8.
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There is no hard and fast "number of onscreen colors at once". Depending on the tradeoffs the developer wants to make between CPU time, resolution, and how he/she wants to structure the display, the answer is anywhere between 2 and 256. And that is before talking about "software modes" that interleave or interframe the hardware modes in various ways. To be sure, one cannot arbitrarily write any of the 256 colors to a 320x192 mode but 9 of any hue/luma is available in one 80x192 mode without extensively programming the hardware. If the graphics hardware is programmed in ways common and known in the mid-eighties, it wasn't uncommon to see anywhere from 16 to 32 in extant software of the time.
Current techniques considerably extend on what was done "back in the day". The following Wikipedia article is a fairly broad but incomplete overview of some "software modes":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-driv...8-bit_computers
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You know using a Maria chip probably work better if you totally disabled the Antic/GTIA chip while running the Maria chip. There isn't much need to have both running at the same time since the Maria chip has its own sprites and play field mode. Could be put in the hardware memory area like $D100 or $D5, $D6, OR $D7. For full 7800 emulation and using the zero page locations, it will need a selectable custom OS. Would need to disk load the games because there probably isn't an easy way to add a 2nd 7800 style cartridge port. I think it is a cool ideal agree, it would be more difficult than doing the project people are proposing to build or Videoboard XE.That would entail either an all new A8 motherboard or a spaghetti tangle on an existing one. Full 7800 compatibility would also require glue logic to map the chip into the standard customary locations. But to get full 7800 compatibility, you'd have to add the TIA for sound and that makes a messy idea even worse. What you wind up with is basically a 7800 soldered on top of an A8. You also have the issue of dealing with the cart port. It would just be gross, gross, gross.
If "7800 emulation" is taken out of the picture then this all becomes a bit more doable questionable as to why but doable. If MARIA were added to an A8 along with the ability to switch out ANTIC/GTIA then what you wind up with is a system with the A8's i/o, memory, and sound capability but graphics provided by MARIA. This would be similar to the situation we have between the 5200 and the A8. A 5200 is just a 400 short the PIA chip, keyboard, and the chips wired up to the wrong places with funny cartridge and controller ports. The hybrid wouldn't be directly compatible with a 7800 but 7800 games could be ported to it fairly trivially although all that use the TIA for sound would need that reworked as well. Since the 7800 library is small enough to make porting all of it practical it makes little sense to be able to plug in 7800 carts somehow (tacky) or to be able to run 7800 binary images directly (needs TIA: iffy idea even worse).
Here's what make the whole exercise pointless: very little software will be developed for this system. Since it requires an all new or heavily modified A8 hardly anybody will have one. It helps to stand this one on it's head. You're probably thinking "Wow! The MARIA would be a GREAT addition to the A8's capabilities." To my way of thinking, this is more about bringing the A8's memory, keyboard, and always present POKEY to the 7800. I'm just not seeing a compelling story here. What originally kicked off this thread was an idea for a cartridge (or perhaps cart+ECI thingy) that looped back the A8's composite video and overlayed a simple high-res screen. It's a waaaay better idea because the cart can be plugged into most A8s and is usable by those of us who don't want to take soldering irons to our A8s. If it can be made inexpensively enough then there will be a userbase for homebrews.
Incidentally, moddng a 7800 to be on par with the A8's memory and i/o capabilities makes just as little sense. Too much pain for too little gain.
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Somewhat offtopic, but:would it be possible to combine an Atari 8-bit with a 7800? would you be able to use the features of both, or is there something about them that would make a combination a strictly either-or affair?
The only thing the two machines have in common is the 6502. I suppose if someone wanted to do the engineering it would be possible to frankenstein a MARIA into an A8. The result wouldn't be integrated with the existing chipset although I suppose an overlay like we're discussing is possible. Nor would the result be terribly compatible with the 7800 although 7800 games could be ported to it and all could have POKEY sound. I would imagine that any meaningful combination of the A8 and 7800 graphical abilities wouldn't be easy to accomplish at all. You'd have an 8-bit machine of limited power driving two fairly complex graphical systems. I have to come down on the side of either-or for this one and too much effort for too little gain. This also gets REALLY stupid if we chuck in the TIA as well so scratch any sort of 2600 compatibility.
The device that kicked off this discussion has the virtue of good results with a relative minimum of hardware and engineering. I don't mean to knock the effort it would take to pull it off. I only mean that is doable and desirable compared to something like the VideoBoard XE or jamming in a MARIA. And all it will really be able to do is prettify existing playfields. PM graphics won't detect collisions with the overlay and what we're really talking about is mixing with existing screens at the analog level. But the underlying A8 playfield will suffice for that and this device could still go a long way toward putting a few more tools in the homebrewer's bag of tricks.
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Buenos..Let's see a C64 do that.. HAHAHA... rock on!
We have contingent from lemon64 that can't resist a comment like that. Don't encourage them.........
So this remix entirely POKEY twiddling or was other processing involved?
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GR10 (GTIA $80) mode, with 9 colors, is one of my worst comments on Atari design.At least when they screwed it up, they made the happy mistake of offsetting it half a color clock from the other GTIA modes.
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Could this tech. form the basis of an 'A8 on a chip' similar to devices presently available on the MSX and 8bit NesIt's nothing of the sort but it does appear to have the grunt necessary to run emulators. It's just a general purpose computer in a low power super small form factor.
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This is an embedded device that in and of itself has nothing to do with Atari 8-bits but check out the names they gave the processor architecture and DSP in this thing
:http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8479495970.html
Jason Kridner, principal architect for open platforms at TI, says the Beagle board offers a very user-friendly way to explore the capabilities of the A8 architecture, as well as the C64x DSP, for which a free compiler and open source codecs are available.
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That is a nice bit of POKEY bashing!
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Although, I'm thinking maybe I should have started collecting the American mags instead of the UK ones, since it seems a lot of the great games for the 8-bit only came out in America but not the UK, hence I'm only going to see the reviews for those games in the US magazines.The reverse is also true.
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]I don't know anything about XEP-80 or the R: and X: devices, but when I wrote ACE-80, I hooked it into the OS's S: and E: devices. That is how I plan to support 80-column text with the LEM. Is there anything wrong with that?
Not at all. It is functionality and compatibility that counts. I take it that editors and term programs can typically find those devices so sure. Sounds good to me.
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Why not use "X" like the XEP80 does and have it respond to "X:" and "X2:"? "X2:" because that way, you can use both the LEM and the XEP80 at the same time. One for the "real" output and the other for tracking what you software is doing. It really bugs me when I write some software, want to check how it looks on the screen but the stuff I want to display to see what my software is doing (and why it's doing so) screws up my display.It's been so long since I was deeply into this that I forgot about "X:". In either case, I suppose it is a matter of someone having the gumption to actually write the software. At least things like R and X handlers are in the realm of possibility given this device exists as opposed to the overenthusiasm that comes up anytime there is talk of enhancing the A8.
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No, he isn't experimenting with it yet. My mom says I have to finish my other projects, first. I think it will be internal, anyway.Bob
Go with what you think best of course but the more "plug-n-play" this thing can be, the wider the potential audience for it. Maybe one out of five us here are comfortable opening our Ataris up and soldering things. The cartridge has the virtue that any of us can just take it out of the box and plug it in.
I had another thought occur to me. Is it possible for this device with output it's own video alone? That is if you disable ANTIC with a software command the way some programs do to free up the 6502's processing power can it still get the sync signals it needs to work? If so, the user has three possibilities: stock video, add-on video overlay, add-on video alone. With an R: handler, this has the potential to be what the XEP-80 should have been. The A8 would have a tad more bandwidth for the higher horizontal resolutions if it didn't have to drive it's customary chipset in tandem with this device.
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Hello CarmelIsn't the clock circuitry on the atari mobo itself...or am i thinking of something elseWhy wouldn't it be possible to add clock circuitry outside the computer and somehow sync it with the internal circuitry?
Greetings
Mathy
I'm sure it's possible but the point is to exploit a relatively simple idea. Externally clocking the thing at a faster submultiple and putting in more ram and features will complicate the design and change it from something simple, cheap, and relatively easy to do into something over-engineered and too expensive that won't get built.
Don't forget that the A8 only has so much bandwidth to fill a bitmapped screen. There is very little point in having a 640x400 mode (or more!) if it takes minutes to draw them. And that would just be blasting prerendered stuff directly to the screen.
Anyway, there is a lot to be gained from increasing the horizontal resolution. Overlaying this thing's output on top of the GTIA modes would go a long way to fix the aspect ratio problem of those modes. In light of my bandwidth comment, a horizontal resolution of 640 is just gravy. Overlaying a 320x192 grayscale mode on mode 11 would be a fantastic tool all by itself. I'd think this was a great idea if that was all it did. Being able to do that by just plugging in a cartridge and cable would be fantastic. We might actually see the A8 community adopt the thing and develop software to it. But geeking out and asking too much will make it cost too much in terms of engineering and $ for the final product. We have an elegant idea here that may be doable before the year is out if featuritis is avoided.
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Such games are still made these days but they are marketed differently. Capital G Gamers don't like to bother with "casual gaming" but many get-the-highest-score-you-can-in-an-ever-harder-environment are done under that banner. I recommend checking out Kenta Cho's "abstract shooters" (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html). His games tend to be reminiscent of both Galaxian and Tac-Scan at the same time. Nice nice stuff.
Spheres Of Chaos (http://www.spheresofchaos.com/p/download.php) is a shareware classic that was released as freeware a couple of years back. I've been wasting some hours with it lately. It is basically a super psychedelic version of Asteroids. For you BSD and Linux heads that like old school shoot-em-ups, Word War Vi (http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net) is a tongue-in-cheek cross between Defender and Choplifter. The humor in this one is based on Emacs vs. Vi flamewars. Another one I've enjoyed is Formido (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lsoft/formido/formido.html). Formido is just you, your machine gun, and grenades against giant ticks that just keep on coming ever faster. No levels just more and more bugs until you're overwhelmed. Typhoon 2001 is a redo of Tempest 2000 (http://typhoon.kuto.de/download.html).
What these all have in common is simple old-school gameplay that fairly exemplify the Atari ethic of "easy to learn but difficult to master". None are interactive movies or have an excess of controls or moves to master. Many have no ending as well. There are many many more such games to be found.
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well... it's true...I had upgrade XP dated 2001. so first it took me the afternoon to get this image updated with at least SP2. then I started the installation... and the installation took a looong time (but more than 1 hour). then of course all the updates were downloaded by windows. and again installation took long... then the space on the 4gb flashdrive got more and more full due to the updates.
The following article explains a lot of customary things that many users of the stock Xandros OS do to increase it's usefulness.
http://www.linux.com/feature/141099
TweakEEE in particular will assist you with adding 3rd party software repos that greatly increase the ease of installing many of the things you're going to want. As always that little piece of the Linux community that are A8 enthusiasts will be happy to help you out.
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Some basically by reading his conditions of use it's saying that no matter what the customer is always wrong.Conditions of Use
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEB SITE.
All users of this site agree that access to and use of this site are subject to the following terms and conditions and other applicable law. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use this site.
DISCLAIMER
....
None of which protects this guy if he is doing something fraudulent. Stamping the same info on a bunch of random 40 pin ICs would definitely qualify.
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That's not entirely true, you can start with the original mask and chip designs and go from there. In fact some single chip designs take the original chips and lay them out on a single chip. I.E. you have some of the final generation 2600 JR.'s that have all-in-one chips in them. Or you have the FB2 chip.Regardless, I'm more interested in seeing something along the lines of what Briel has done with his Apple I and Kim reproductions. Real hardware, with modern upgrades where possible, without deviating from the design (I.E. just using modern hardware and throwing an emulator on there).
Most of this talk of a "new A8" fails to account for skills, demographics, and economics. I would love to see a highly open and modifiable A8 on new silicon. It just makes the Atari nerd in me simply drool. But it gets less likely with each passing month and year that we don't see something like the FB3 (which I understood was to be an A8 of some sort). There are many people with the skills to implement such a thing but I suspect the intersection of that set of people and gonzo A8 geeks is very small. You might pay such a one to do an FPGA design but how much financial return is in it?
A new motherboard using surplus old silicon with the easy ability to be mounted in modern cases, use modern power supplies, and be connected to (some) modern peripherals is more doable. Ben Heckendorn does them on a one off basis for a fairly steep price. A few people here seem to have the requisite skills but even modern bank switch cartridge designs take months at least to shake out. Still if you want a "new" custom A8 with all the goody upgrades you can have it today. Just be ready to pay the piper with either time or money.
Lastly, there is the emulation option you dislike. There are enough skilled developers to give us reasonably accurate facsimiles of an A8 on a broad range of hardware. I agree with you that emulation isn't perfect but for quite a few people it is "Good Enough". And if developers improve the accuracy from time to time then so much the better.
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Hi Froggy,Once again, thanks!
I think I understand what you're talking about.
So, are you saying these UNIX systems will still accept a dialed 300 baud call?
I'm actually saying that I tend to doubt that. It's barely possible their modems may still negotiate down that low but the A8 with clever programming can manage 19.2 kbits/s and probably 9600 without breaking a sweat. You'd probably need something like an 850 interface and something like an external US Robotics Sportster to make a real try at it. There are modernized serial interfaces you can use as well but others here can tell you about them. Your term software will also have to send the codes to limit the baud rate to something the A8 can handle. I don't have experience with anything faster than the XM301 I had back in the day. I moved to an ST and a 2400 bps unit in the latter days of my BBSing and spoke with some guys in hushed awe of BBSes that were transferring to each other with 9600 baud modems.
Also this:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/atari-8-bit/faq/
has a good section on using A8 modems, networking and connection options.
And once in, what can one do with such a system?Pardon my ignorance, all I remember is calling up a BBS and downloading some great stuff - ah, the old days...
You can run whatever programs they have made available to the shell. The most relevant ones are text webbrowsers like Lynx and telnet so that you can hit some of the telnet based BBSes that are still around. Unless you use something like FlickerTerm, it will be a bit on the difficult side as nobody assumes the 40 column displays of old 8-bits.
Also, i did some research - it seems that the XM301 requires a floppy disk based program by Russ Wetmore (remember him,he wrote PREPPIE!).
The 835 modem will work with a cart - TELELINK II - but i just gotta find 'em.
I believe you can use any TERM program that can talk to the R: handler (this is the part of the Atari OS that provides access to serial port based services.
i am even considering just coding a mach lang prog to terminal the 301. but that may be way over my head.I doubt that is necessary nor is it a terribly good option. Google for APE and SIO2PC. You can buy or build a simple cable to connect your A8 to a serial port on one of your household PCs. The APE software can mimic A8 terminals and disk drives so your A8 will act as though connected to a stack of floppies and a modem. You can then use the modern peripherals in your PC to put the A8 online or simply transfer information to it.
Some people employ old laptops or PCs for this and you can even case mod them to make them look like the Atari peripherals they have just become.
The following link is to an ATR disk image of Flickerterm 80. It uses a software technique to produce an at least usable 80 column display. It should also be able to connect to your modem.
http://mousenet.radtkes.net/bbs/bbsmenu/so...ickerterm80.atr
You can connect an Atari disk drive with an SIO2PC to your computer and use that to write the image to an Atari floppy.
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Hi everybody,Does anyone know where or can help me obtain an 835 MODEM?
or tell me about it,
thanks,
joe cool
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How many arcades did you have in your town growing up?
in Arcade and Pinball
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There wasn't much on the Ohio side of the river where I grew up apart from the cabs you see here and there in pizza places and the like but Huntington WV had the Scratch 'n' Tilt. This was a brightly lit clean place on 5th ave with some pool tables in the back and about 20-25 cabs in the front. They had over the years Punch-Out!, Star Trek, Tapper (Budweiser), Stun-Runner, Tron, Missile Command, Kangaroo, Kick!, a monster truck racer I don't remember the name of, Bump n Jump, that coast to coast motorcycle racer, and so-forth. They were slow to get in new titles but did a good job maintaining what they had.
The Huntington Mall in Barboursville, WV had a pair of Gold Mines. One was larger than the other and seemed to get all the new titles first. They also had a quite a few vectors including a Quantum. The smaller of the two got really unusual things like Mach 3 and other oddball titles. They even had that "holographic" cowboy shooter. I'd flit between the two.
Later on, Ashland KY got a mall. The arcade there had a decent selection but it also had Claw games and ticket redemption games. This was the late eighties when arcades started going downhill with redemption games and the actual cabs gradually became either shooting, fighting, or MAYBE a racer. Around the same time, the Gold Mines in Barboursville were replaced with brightly lit places cut from the same cloth. Stll, Hard Drivin' was out then and I played the hell out of that and Hard Drivin' 2.
The last real arcade I frequented was a mall arcade in Lancaster from 94 to 96. I played more T-Mek than anything. It too was infested by ticket and fighting games. There were only a few other titles there I dropped quarters in. They had a game called GeoSword (I think) that looked a lot like The Last Starfighter as depicted in the movie. There was also a semi-realistic Atari helicopter flying title.
Everything pretty much dried up after that and life gets in the way of finding whatever may remain in Columbus OH. There's Dave n Busters which just plain costs too much and caters more to the adult with twenty bucks to blow on a half hour of fun as opposed to a kid with five. I did that once in 2000 and that was the last thing I saw that even resembled an arcade.