Bountybob

Absolutely compare Defender and Robotron to Maketrax and Moon Patrol they are in a different league.

Isn't this kind of like saying how many sports cars do you own ? I mean owning just one would be a big deal for most people ? Maybe a better question might be what Pinball games would like to own ?

Yeah good choice you do realise that Williams didn't create Make Trax it was a Third Party development like Moon Patrol.Apparently a Korean company Kural Samno created it.Williams just had the license for it.

I never played #1 or #9. Since I owned Robotron it was not too bad. Defender is pretty much impossible. Joust very easy to get 200k Qix is a tough one, but did not play it enough to give an honest opinion. Phoenix was pretty easy for the first few rounds of completion. I forgot how hard P.P. was I very rarely made to the end (after 3 or 4 races?). Defender was far from impossible you just needed to learn how to play it.Tip Landers are the primary objective and reduce the number of humanoids to a managable level.It's very important to learn how to use Hyperspace correctly.

I was thinking it might be possible to port all the early simple arcade games homebrew onto the 2600. Even obscure games like Uniwars and Mayday ?

I don't know how anybody could be bothered watching cassette recordings of video game high scores all day. There must be a better way of verifying high scores maybe a software solution ?

You could make money with classic video games but maybe a better way might be to charge per hour for free play You would need a lot of games and would need a decent location I reckon you could do well at the seaside during the fine weather season. The other way is combine video games with a food experience like Chuck E Cheese or maybe a Bar full of Classic Video games. I wonder how many Hotels have classic video games in their games lobbies ? Seems like a no brainer to me.If I went to a nice hotel I would love it if they had some classic arcade games.Maybe that could be your route call up Hotels and tell them you will let them have your game on loan for a share of the profits.It might be hard to sell the experience to kids though as they undoubtly have their Sony PSP's and Nintendo DS's.A lot of Hotels could have games consoles on site too.I wonder if there is a pay per play XBOX 360 or PS2 ?

Well it's not a Horror story but back in the day around 1980 to 1982 we used to go to these arcades in this little town in Ireland where I grew up.After school there was always a couple of tough kids from the bad part of town who would try and get money of us to play games If you didn't have any money then they wanted your last man so there was no getting out of it.Actually the funny thing is that most of these tough kids turned out to be nice guys today. I guess back then they didn't have a lot of money and having to watch us prob pissed them off so I can sympathise but at the time it could be a nightmare. If you want a real horror story then what about the arcade game Berzerk. From Wiki. Berzerk was the first video game known to have been involved in the death of a player. In January 1981, 19-year-old Jeff Dailey died of a heart attack soon after posting a score of 16,660 on Berzerk.[8] In October of the following year, Peter Burkowski made the Berzerk top-ten list twice in fifteen minutes, just a few seconds before also dying of a heart attack at the age of 18.[9]

Check this out man I grew up in a small town in Ireland and by a stroke of luck I became friends with a kid called Scott. I was only about 10 years old must have been 1980 1981.Anyway this tiny little arcade opened at the top of the town out the back of a video cassete rental shop.To start of with They had a Cosmic Monsters then a Uniwars then a Phoenix / Cosmic Birds. I didn't work it out for a while but it turned out that Scott's dad Bill owned these machines and was hiring them out to the arcade.So one day Scott invited me around to his garage where his dad was setting up a new game called Sega Monaco GP.The coin part was opened up and myself and Scott where playing it for free all evening a couple of days later it ended up in the arcade and was an instant hit with all the kids who went in there.In truth I wasn't a huge fan I loved shootem ups too much.About a year later this little arcade was really popular but then a larger arcade opened which had a Gorf a Berzerk and a Missile Command along with a lot of other cool games.My friend Scott said he would never play them because they belonged to the competition. Sega Monaco GP was one of the only games I got to play in Scotts garage.I remember one other time he had a Moon Cresta cocktail in his living room I begged him and begged him but he wasn't able to bring me into his house LOL.They where a private kind of family Nice people actually.

What was the last proper Cocktail Game that was made discounting any recent aniversary Cocktail Cabs etc.

No this game is 2 Dimensional I will knock up some artwork of what I remember

Actually, Exidy's Star Fire has it beat. It has multi-colored sprite explosions, and scaling. Was released in March/April of '79. Galaxian was released in Japan in September. The Sprites of the ships in Starfire are just one colour

First game to feature multi-colored animated sprites and explosions was Galaxian 1979

I never came across it either.I presume the point of the game was to progress through the space invaders game in order to see what happened in the cartoon, bit of a cheap gimmick.Well it was an experimental time and not every game was fantastic.

Came across this weird arcade game in 1983.I don't remember much It was like a giant Rubix Cube or maybe a grid with different characters or and objects on each of the tiles inside the grid You could only see one side of it at a time.Think the characters where animated or maybe moved across the tiles or the tiles rotated ? Think it might have been like a puzzle.Sorry thats all I remember.One other thing maybe, I'm thinking one of the characters was a policeman animorph and maybe another a convict animorph maybe a dog.

Looks like a Dragons Lair Cabinet with a Gorf Joystick.

Yeah Kicker/Shaolins Road was easy once you got the hang of it BombJack also. Pleiads was quite easy too I could go through quite a few rounds.Phoenix was tougher.

Space Pilot Karate Champ Radar Scope Exerion

The one in my arcade looked just like this one the left slot would have been 1 play 2x10p the right 3 plays 1x50p It's a nice little cab although when I played it at age 10 or 11 it was taller than I was Ha. http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242060137.jpg

Asteroids Deluxe looked nicer than Asteroids but it didn't play nicer The Hyperspace was much preferable to the shield and the Unknown was a big pain in the butt.

Came across an Exidy Venture Once (Weird game), Crazy Climber in a cocktail cabinet once, Crazy Climber upright once late on in 1987(Nice cabinet).Came across Exidy Pepper 2 a few times don't know if that was rare ? Exidy Cheyenne Exidy Bandido (bootleg of Sheriff)

It seems easy to pick up this stuff if you live in the USA I live in the UK so there must be quite a bit of it lying around in Garages etc.It's just a matter of getting out there and looking for it. A lot of people will let you have it for free just to get rid of it as they don't have space for it. Sadly a lot of it ends up in the tip. I don't know if you have anything like Craigslist in the UK, but that is where alot of stuff like that ends up here. I have a few machines that I have gotten in this way, some were compltely fine (Space Invaders). We do have Craigs List in London and Freecycle but the other thing is you would need space for it also in your own place I live in London and my place isn't exactly big but prob could fit in a few standard uprights.If I was going to start a collection it would be Golden era stuff like Space Invaders and Defender.I wouldn't be so interested in the later games or the really large Cabinets but I know some of you guys living in the States have houses that are Huge so you can do it.

It seems easy to pick up this stuff if you live in the USA I live in the UK so there must be quite a bit of it lying around in Garages etc.It's just a matter of getting out there and looking for it. A lot of people will let you have it for free just to get rid of it as they don't have space for it. Sadly a lot of it ends up in the tip.

Just had a few games on MAME It's better than I remember sort of a cross between Tempest and Crystal Castles.Quite an advanced game for it's time.Maybe it's sophistication put a lot of people off.To get good at this game required lateral thinking but then so did Tempest also.Changing the camera viewpoint with the start buttons would have been an added overhead also that arcade gamers maybe wouldn't have catched on to.Maybe I Robot would have been better suited for the Home Computer.It wasn't a very successfull arcade game but then Atari only ran a low production run of I Robot It was after all the era of the Great Video Game Crash.Maybe it's release was badly timed.The technology wasn't wasted though Atari would take the Polygon system to a higher level still with Hard Drivin and S.T.U.N Runner.

I came aross it once in Ireland.It was an unsual game and apparently rare.The gameplay was kind of like Crystal Castles. The Cabinet was like Atari Return Of The Jedi.I wouldn't say it was one of my Atari favourite games.It had another game built in Doodle City.