JimmydelaKopin
-
Content Count
539 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by JimmydelaKopin
-
-
Go with older games. PS2==Roadkill, PS1==Space Invaders!
And retro, lots of cheap retro!!!
That'll be money well spent, trust me.
-
That's what I was thinking too. Like I said,here in Louisiana before video poker became legal, such devices were legal--as long as they only awarded game credits and not money.
After all, the one I played was in the local diner. The owners replaced the Super Pac-Man cocktail coin-op with it. I usually spent a dollar on the machine, just like I did with any other game I'd find outside an arcade.
It would make sense that different states would have different regulations concerning such machines, with some being very strict and others being very loose.
Check your state's laws first. If you can get such a device (perhaps with some mods like the one I mentioned), go for it.
-
Maybe if you could get one and remove the payback features and only let it award credits, it might be legal.
At least, here in Louisiana, before video poker was legalized, the machines were legal as long as they paid out in machine credits and not in money, thus making them into videogames with a short amount of gameplay time per credit. I know this because I played such machines before the ban on video poker machines was lifted.
I have no idea how expensive it would be...but, given that it's a Lucasfilm license, expect to pay more than you would if it was a generic machine. Licenses always cost more--and Lucasfilm and SW being so famous, they probably command an even higher price.
But pardon me as I pause in stunned silence for a bit. I remember reading in the early 80's about how Lucas cherry-picked through the licensing offers to only go with the more wholesome product ideas and not those he felt were inappropriate.
Now he's whoring out the franchise to the gambling industry.
Damn...he must really be desperate for money for those documentaries he says he wants to make. Now, if he only hired a good screenwriter for the prequels...he wouldn't have to whore out the franchise for easy big money. Ah, but hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?
...
...
...
...
...
...all right, stunned silence over. It looks like a kick-ass machine. Good luck on getting one!
-
Yeah, my tastes have changed.
I used to like home adaptations of arcade games as well as spinoffs/knockoffs/generics of such games.
This lasted until the advent of SFII: Hyper Fighting.At that point the arcade games became too hard to bother with...until the advent of widespread puzzle games.
So i went from shooters to fighters, to puzzles...and now that I'm into retro-gaming, I'm doping shooters, fighters, and puzzles again--sometimes multiple genres on one disc!
So I guess I really haven't changed my genres as expanded the ones I prefer. Hmmm...
-
Well, even though I'm just a fan and don't deal with vending coin-op videogames...let an amateur take a crack at this.
A SW standard coin-op with working vector monitor, functioning sound chip, and controls that still work...
...I'd say that would cost an arm and two legs.
A SW cockpit coin-op in the same condition...
...that's worth, both arms and legs, your significant other, your firstborn, and your pet.
But those are just rough estimates.
-
I just had to post this...it's so absurd it almost makes sense.
I was in GameStop today to blow some time. As I was looking through the PS1 games I overheard a conversation between a man, his son, and a store clerk. The boy was interested in certain games, but the games were Nintendo games, and they own a PS2.
The father, with all seriousness, turned to the clerk and asked:
"Why won't they make a Mario game for the PlayStation?"
The clerk--and I too--explained that Mario was Nintendo's mascot...and Sony is in competition with Nintendo, so no chance of a PS Mario game.
But...since people want more Mario games...why not? Expand to other consoles! Why should Nintendo keep their mascot for themselves? Let everyone in on the Mario fun! Mario for the XBox and the PS2! I can see it now: Twisted MarioKart: Black!
...well, I'd buy it...
-
Just another update of sorts...
I was in rite-Aid today just to blow some time...they hacve legit Plug-and-Plays...but they also carry a knockoff of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
All right, the knockoff market has officially reached rock bottom.
Anyway, Rite-Aid carries a p&p version of Etch-a-Sketch.
Why?!Goodness, why does this thing exist?! Are people that desperate for a plug-in game that they'll settle for an Etch-a-Sketch?!
What's next, the Chia Tamagochi?
-
Thing is, raindog, ol' pal, is that the vendors I pointed out are the big names--meaning they have their own teams of lawyers to fend off any lawsuits.
Given that the manufacturers for many of these knockoff goods are overseas, where copyright is considered a joke along the lines of Les Nesman's "office" on 'WKRP Cincinatti'...and that the vendors are interstate, even international, chains...well, I'd love to see the lawsuit that could result, but I doubt if it would really change anything.
After all, the importers appear for a season, disappear, and reappear under a new name for the next Christmas selling season. If threatened with a lawsuit, they'll simply shut down and set up somewhere else.
No...knockoffs aren't going back to being restricted to a warehouse district or an ethnic neighborhood ever again.
If Toys-R-Us is going to sell the knockoff Connect Four with the legit Connect Four in the same store...well, someone has money invested in the knockoffs at the vendor level. No way they'll give up knockoffs.
...after all, knockoffs means low low prices for you!
-
My fondest Christmas videogame memory is when we got Space Invaders for the 2600. All that morning my brother, my sister, and I would play the different variants on the cartridge--and man!, does that game have variants!!!
We played--and enjoyed--all of them that morning.
...I guess that's why SI and combat are my favorite 2600 games: I remember having so much family fun playing those games.
-
Howdy, NightSprinter!
Actually, the keychain display (yes, a full display) that I bought for around $10 in "Little Korea" in Dallas had Yu-Gi-Oh cards on it--but they were used as backing boards for the keychain containers. The cards look a bit worn--and they were the cheap ones one can get from a random pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards--so much so that there were at most 6 different cards in all of the packages. Considering that the display had 30 keychains on it...you can tell there were a lot of repeats.
Anyway, my niece and nephew like the keychains, so no complaints.
(I can tell that because I tried getting into the game when it first came out. I later gave my assortment of Yu-Gi-Oh cards--that I hadn't traded for M:tG cards, that is--to my niece and nephew. I recognized the cards used as backing boards as the cheap ones...and I figure no one's going to bother faking cheap cards. To use an M:tG reference, bootleggers are more apt to fake a Black Lotus than they are a Dark Ritual.)
Yeah, knockoffs are very prevalent. I was in Walgreens the other day...and though this one didn't have the Gamestation in it (apparently sold out), it did carry a Connect Four knockoff and an Operation knockoff.
Sheesh, are the legit companies actually asking for too much for stores to carry their products that stores can only afford to carry knockoffs? Don't think so!
I guess the only good thing is that one day some maker of bootleg plug-in game controllers will come out with a knockoff of Gorf, Space Invaders 2, and Baby Pac-Man--y'know, Midway's bootlegs of Namco and Taito games.
-
What should Sony do?
Release the Twisted Metal games on a compilation disc along the lines of Capcom's SF Anniversary disc!
...well, I'd buy it...
-
Just a quick comment:
I mentioned before that Wal-Mart is carrying pirated anime. They are, and it's found in the Toys section.
Today I was in a Dollar General Store just to waste some time. They had a display of DVDs for sale--anime DVDs---all from Geneon!
Pirated anime at Wal-Mart...legit anime at Dollar General!
Next thing you know, those dinky little dollar stores will start carrying namebrand toys on a regular basis...
-
Mindfield, Mindfield, Mindfield...I'd recommend some Vance Packard books in your future.
Seriously, I didn't say there was any obsolescence in function, only in design and quality, concerning the watch.
I'm not saying that it's not better as a watch...but that as a watch it doesn't do anything more than the watches I can get for $5 down at the local Rite-Aid. Heck, my watch has an alarm, stopwatch, and light function as well as the usual amenities of time and date and day of the week. What does the Fossil watch have that mine doesn't? (This is the obsolescence of quality: costs more but the same features at best.)
That's right...the animated background for the watch face. What that has to do with telling time, I don't know. It's no different from gimmick watches that have something like a cat in the center with its paws being the hands. What makes that more desireable than the watch I already have? (And here is the obsolescence of design: cosmetic differences only to declare it more desireable.)
My original point is thatback in the 80's companies made simple watches that not only incorporated the features of a watch along with that of a game, but that they also included controls like a joystick for said games. And they didn't cost that much more than a regular watch--certainly not as much as Fossil is asking for their "neoSwatch"
watches.But if such watches as the Fossil watch are going to be called "novelty"...then let's just be completely honest and call it "gimmickry" instead, since that's all it is: niche gimmickry, no different from those fancy flip-face watches with a dragon on the other side to appeal to fans of dragons or those Star Wars watches being sold at Burger King some time ago to appeal to Warries.
That being said, it's damned expensive gimmickry. Gee, wouldn't it be cheaper to simply get a watchband embroidered with the videogame logo of your choice?
Hey, each to their own. Just voicing my views is all.
-
Ah, "Novelty", that's the handle you're going by these days, hmmm?
Weren't you called "Obsolescense of Design and Quality" back in the 50's?
Back in the day when the idea was first put forth that, to get peopple to replace things that weren't worn down or broken, people can be convinced that a newer version that looks fancier but does less is actually 'better' than the one people already have?
Fossil, meet Vance Packard.
Vance Packard, meet Fossil.
-
So...
"Nintendo needs to make new mario game"...
Dammit, don't give me straight lines like this! It's just too easy!!!
-
So let me get this straight...
In our day of technology more advanced than what it was 20 years ago...
watch companies have actually gone backwards in gamewatch technology by making gamewatches on permanent demo mode at best...when, back when I was a kid, they had freakin' joysticks on watches?!
I didn't think it could be done...but someone actually made a worse watch than those unmarked temporal-relativist swatch "watches"!
I thought there was something wrong when I went to the sporting goods section of the local department store and LEDs were being touted as the technology of tomorrow...
So when exactly did American technology hit a time warp and start regressing?
-
Hey, I'm not typing any of this from the back of a highhorse, pal.
I've bought knockoff changing robots in my day. And I'm still looking for an oversized colorful knockoff of the Gobot Fitor that I saw once as a kid but couldn't get.
I'm more willing to tolerate knockoffs as long as one can get some form of the original. What with legit plug-in game controllers and retro discs or cartridges all around, I'm not all that concerned with knockoff controllers. After all, back in the days of handhelds, a half-dozen or so companies were making legit Pac-Man handhelds, so one could choose from a knockoff or any legit version and still have fun playing some version of that original maze game we all know and love.
I just wish the stores could be a little more subtle.
Go into a Toys-R-Us and go to the game section. You'll see lots of the old standbys like Headache and Connect Four...and you'll also see knockoffs of the games selling for cheaper prices an aisle over. There's no way the store can't know that they're knockoffs.
And that GameStation dedicated system I mentioned that I saw in a knockoff store in Dallas's "Little Korea"? It's now selling in Walgreens. It looks just like a PlayStation, even down to the controllers.
Hey, I wouldn't turn up my nose at such a gift either. After all, I did spend money in "Little Korea" when I went there. (Knockoff YuGiOh keychains as a gift for my niece and nephew, a knockoff changing robot, and a knockoff handheld multigame/calculator/radio/mini organ, all for less than $20--so I'm no saint.
)My only point is that there's really no more worry these days about possessing knockoff goods. Nowadays, one doesn't have to go to the warehouse district or an ethnic neighborhood to buy knockoff goods anymore.
All you have to do is go to Wal-Mart.
-
Whenever I played with my 2600, I used the standard joysticks...but I always wanted an Unroller Controller. Too bad none of the local stores carried it...
-
To quote Daffy Duck:
"Ho ho, very funny; ha ha, it is to laugh."
The magazines I was talking about were what passed for men's magazines in the 50's. Thus, old men's magazines.
As such, even a Tijuana bible was racier than any of them. Their prose fiction contained no foul language or adult situations; their photo arrays only showed women in short shorts and perhaps with a low-cut blouse or a button shirt unbuttoned enough to show cleavage. No sex, no nudity, no swearing--except in the little cartoons here and there.
Like I said, the guy who sold them to me thought he had tricked me into buying non-nudie books I thought were nudie books. But I had actually tricked him into selling rare magazines containing examples of postCode writing and artwork of preCode writers and artists--a transition period for certain artists and writers, if you will. Given that dealers who actually dealth professionally with such magazines usually sold them for about $10 a book, getting them for about $1 a book from the guy was a huge bargain.
There. That should explain everything.
-
Close, jbanes, but a valid point nonetheless.
My point is that legit stores are openly carrying bootleg merchandise nowadays. Be it Walgreens, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or what have you, big-name chains are carrying bootleg merchandise--stuff anyone, even a kid, could tell is bootleg merchandise. This is removing the stigma from owning bootleg merchandise.
Used to be that you'd have to go to places like "Little Korea" on Harry Hines Blvd. in Dallas, to little out-of-the-way stores filled with all sorts of knock-off merchandise--and only knockoff merchandise--to get such goods.
But nowadays, to keep prices low, the big-name stores are ordering knockoff merchandise in large quantities, sometimes selling it right alongside the namebrand items themselves. (For example, Walgreens toy aisles every Christmas usually carry knockoff "scramble-city" Transformer sets--usually next to the legit current Transformer toys.)
People used to think twice about buying knockoff items...but, when you can go to any big-name chain and buy it right out in the open--from stores where everyone goes to buy something...it starts to legitimize knockoffs.
Think about it. Wal-Mart is the oh-so-moral store that wouldn't carry the Al Snow action figure because it supposedly promoted violence against women. It wouldn't carry a doll whose gimmick was pregnancy--that didn't have a wedding ring painted onto its hand. This is because they're a store with "morals".
But this store with "morals" doesn't think twice about carrying merchandise that rips off videogame manufacturers--or cartoons that rip off manga artists, for that matter.
That's my point. People see such merchandise in such stores...and they start assuming that, since it's in such a store, then it must be legit, because such a big-name store wouldn't carry pirated goods. Why, that would be......immoral!
-
1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
3. Children are the primary market for video games.
4. Almost no girls play computer games.
5. Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
7. Video game play is socially isolating.
8. Video game play is desensitizing.
1. This is like saying the availability of Monopoly has led to an epidemic of youth greed. also, most videogames have had nothing to do with violence. Pac-Man and most subsequent maze games aren't violent; neither are puzzle games.
People who propagate this myth are relying on the ignorance of the masses concerning popular videogames.
2.This one is true--but in a symtomatic, not a causative, way. But, given that the propagators of this myth are seeking a causative connection as the basis of this remark, this also must sadly be called a myth.
In other words, yes, violent kids play violent games. That's because the violent games reinforce their own disturbed worldviews, not because said worldviews were created by said videogames. The fact that such kids play such games a lot is ready proof of that: if their worldviews were fully-formed by the videogames, why do they have to frequently return to said "sources" for their worldviews? That would imply a wavering in their views--which is not evident in such people.
3. No, people with money are the target of videogames.
Seriously, they are games. However, as games become more complicsated to play, the learning curve--and thus target age--also rises. Kids understand pretty colors and pushing buttons; they don't understand complex gameplay.
The fact that more graphically-advanced games have more graphic violence is also proof--as the target audience of horror flicks are the older-teen-to-young-adult market. Such videogames are merely catering to that demographic.
4. Well, this has been true for the longest--but because videogames had things that girls didn't like: level markers, easily-remembered score goals, things like that.. In other words, in many games, part of the gameplay is metagaming: getting the extra life, the highest score, the shortest time, and so on.
Girls preferred games where scores, extra lives, and such are de-emphasized and gameplay is promoted. No surprise that the first shooter to de-emphasize the metagame was codesigned BY A WOMAN.
Thanks to retrogaming (which has attracted women as men have moved on to the newer eye candy games for the most part) and touchscreen games with all their puzzle games, girls and women have embraced videogaming.
(Oh, and no offense to the lady gamers who've been gaming since the beginning.)
5. This one is based on two other myths: that kids are the target market for graphically-violent videogames (which I discussed previously), and that kids treat videogames as trainging sessions instead of as games.
Please. Where are the kids running around mazes eating everything? Where are the ones shooting aliens from above? I could go on, but I've made my point. Just because the DoD decided to use videogames as training exercises doesn't mean that videogames ARE training exercises or that all who play them treat them as such.
6. Games aren't a form of expression.
The idea behind Space Invaders is "Breakout as a shooter with a 'wall' made up of aliens based on H. G. Wells's Martians". ...pretty expressive to me, but I am a comics fan.
Do I really need to continue?
7. Well, most people do play games singly. However, people who play videogames are part of a community whose common factor is playing videogames. Thus, videogames is a social uniter: it brings all sorts of people together.
This very threadcity--and others like it--disprove the myth without breaking a metaphorical sweat.
8. Videogames desensitize.
Well, people can forget how much time has passed and put out of their minds bodily functions like food and bathroom while they're playing...but I don't think that's the idea here.
The myth here is that people confuse videogames with reality. Yes, there are such people. Then again, there have always been people who confuse fiction with fact.
Indeed, the propagators of these myths fall into that category.
But why should those of sound mind be punished because of the nutbars in society?This phenomenon is not triggered by fiction; it merely feeds on it. There will always be fiction in one form or another, so blaming fiction on the phenomenon is ridiculous...and a large scapegoat.
There. Can we get back to the important myth in gaming? I want to know where E.T. is buried!!!
-
Yeah, I've been talking about these knockoff plug-in game controllers for some time now.
Most are usually found in a knockoff store or some cheap mall kiosk, though legit stores are starting to openly sell them. (Wal-Mart sells the Polaroid one, a Maxx one, and one under the generic Kid Connection name).
They're usually cheaper and have more games on them--but the games are always knockoffs...which is why they sell so well, of course: pirates target only GOOD games. (Someone should tell the RiverWest people that.
) I once saw such a game controller with a Shrek game on it; it was in fact a Super Mario Bros. game but with Shrek replacing Mario on the game.But yeah, they're knockoffs operating under the copyright radar. I saw in one of the knockoff sotres that line Harry Hines Blvd. in Dallas a dedicated system called a GameStation. Looked just like a PS1 with controllers, except the controllers couldn't be removed nor the console opened.
I've also seen plug-in game controllers that look exactly like Dual Shock controllers, even with the appropriate shapes on the buttons--even with a knockoff PlayStation logo!
From the days of Pakri Monster handhelds...to now with games like "Shrek" and "UFO fight"...knockoffs are an alternative still for those who want lots of games without buying a lot. Hey, why not?, I say. If Wal-Mart says it's okay, then it must be, right?
-
Hey, EA bankrupting itself to buy "rights" that Acclaim no longer possesses might sit quite well with many at AtariAge...me included in that group.
But Ea isn't that stupid.
I mean, they're stupid enough to promote the idea of obsolescence of desire conerning their series games...
...but they're not stupid enough to buy "the rights" to a game that Midway is marketing to home systems on its own, just to use one example.
-
Just so everyone understands my reference here (since Acclaim is technically a comics publisher as well as a game manufacturer and game 'porter for different systems)...
Dean Mullaney and his charming wife catherine yronwode divorced in the early '90's after she caught him cheating with a barmaid. As per California law, they split Eclipse Comics down the middle: cat got the distribution contracts, while Dean got the copyrights, which he later sold to Todd McFarlane for a nice sum.
However, Dean was a little hazy on what Eclipse Comics actually owned. The only copyrights Eclipse owned were the Airboy-related characters and the anthology name "Alien Encounters". (One might claim that Eclipse also owned the name "Tales of Terror"...except that cat explained in the very first issue that two publishers had horror anthologies using that name in decades past...which could render the name public domain, or at least render Eclipse's claim to the name invalid.)
As for "Alien Worlds" and "Twisted Tales", those are owned, story, art, and anthology title, by Bruce Jones Associates, a company consisting of author Bruce Jones and his lovely business partner and wife April Campbell. But Todd didn't find that out until after he announced the new toy line based on thise anthologies...and after Dean was long gone to Florida with the barmaid.
All I'm saying is that whoever owns Acclaim seems to be pulling the same stunt: selling the rights to things they do not own. The only difference is that the ownership of the properties are more well-known in this case.
So I say again: the bidders have to know they're literally bidding on nothing at all.
I'd love to know who has this kind of money to waste on a scam like this. Man, could I use that kind of cash!
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Top Ten Most Important Arcade games
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
Some other ideas...
Gauntlet should have been included as one of the original quarter-suckers. It started the trend, in my opinion, of games where one could continue where one left off simply by adding more money. Also, it was one of the first to offer simultaneous gameplay for multiple players.
SFII deserves credit for being one of the first games which allowed one multiple protagonist choices--a trend that continues in games to this day.
SW was one of the first games to introduce actual speech and high-quality music into the gameplay experience. (Though I still like those catchy Taito tunes...
)
And it popularized the scourge of videogaming: the licensed videogame. Let's face it: if the SW games weren't so good, even for the 2600, no one would have taken a chance on Raiders of the Lost Ark or E.T.
And Pac-Man should have been noted for introducing the concept of merchandising videogame properties. Face it: those Pac-Man puffy stickers led the way for those cool SFII T-shirts and those nifty Activision patches.