onmode-ky

I think the most important question we should be asking is whether a good home was ever found for the Gauntlet cabinet. With it being a pre-production test machine that's even still in working order, it would be awful if the machine ended up going to the dump. I really hope it found a lovely place for its second retirement. onmode-ky

82,300. I'm sure I can do better, but I don't have time. No bonus attempt for me. onmode-ky

Thanks for the tip! An extra life is always useful. About your other tip, though, I think it's simpler to earn that 5000 points from the time bonus you get if you go full speed through the whole level and hit the platform ASAP. If you alter your jumping so that you can pick up the ring, the ring bonus only makes up for the 5000 points that the course change lost you from the time bonus. Here's a tip for some more points: on, I think, the 30-meter mark in the first level, if you jump over the fire pot and then jump backwards over it, a coin worth something like 2000 points is tossed up for you to catch. At any rate, I can't get anywhere with the trapeze level, so this seems to be as good as it gets for me: 103,160 onmode-ky

72,980. I had an unexpectedly good run. onmode-ky

Some corrections: Kaz Hirai was not moved to a position away from decision-making; he is the CEO of all of Sony now, having replaced Howard Stringer. Hirai's former position as head of Sony Computer Entertainment is now held by Andrew House, the British guy who announced the PS4's price. Shuhei Yoshida is the head of Sony Worldwide Studios (i.e., first-party development). If you ask me, the change in Sony PlayStation's attitude over the past generation is not so much due to specific personnel being moved around as much as the overall company culture evolving in the face of losing their lead position from the PS2 days. In terms of developer and publisher relationships, they went from being very selective during earlier generations to being extremely open in recent years. In terms of consumer relations, well, Reaperman is evidence that they won't win everyone over, but Sony does listen better now than in earlier days. I think the unpopular decisions made during the PS3 era have been largely the result of company panic ("if we don't lower the cost to make the PS3, we're doomed"; "if we don't remove OtherOS and frequently update the firmware, we're hacked wide open"), not the arrogance the firm exhibited in previous generations. They'll never admit to panic, of course, being a public company. It's good to keep in mind, though, that Sony will not necessarily continue forever to act in ways that attract the goodwill they have managed to generate this week. Corporations constantly react to their performance and the business environment. Things could always happen in the future to make the company follow policies even worse than Reaperman's predictions--or things could get even better for the consumer. I don't think it's healthy to be overly paranoid, but it helps to be aware that things can always change. onmode-ky

58,580. This seems like the kind of game that would get a mobile port these days. I wonder why it hasn't. Or has it, and I've simply not heard of it? onmode-ky

Heh, I'm too chicken to play either of those games, especially given the 3D audio mix. If you look carefully at the T.A.C. Heroes screenshots, you'll notice there's a mouse cursor on a specific area of the screen. That's the clue--that part of the screen was the DS' touchscreen, and I think it's the same exact size as the 256 x192 resolution of the DS screen. The other parts of the PSP screen were what was displayed on the DS' top screen, just split up. So as far as ports go, this one was pretty direct, as it doesn't even use a larger screen area for gameplay. A weird bit of trivia: the head of the game's developer, according to his LinkedIn page, was previously a director of development at Sega of America during the Saturn years. Before Black Rock Shooter released, I had assumed I wouldn't be getting it for a while because I figured it would be $30. So, it releasing at just $20 (along with my having $10 of credit from the March PSN promo) came across to me as sort of an immediate discount. Especially considering how much the game cost in Japan. If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to go into the PS3's PS Store and take a look at Class of Heroes 2's splash image on the front page of the PSP channel. It is, shall we say, unique in the history of the channel's splash imagery. onmode-ky

114,100. The influx of high scores pressured me to try again. Improved a little, at least. onmode-ky

I wasn't a backer of the game during the failed Kickstarter, but I did preorder a UMD (with the non-backer's cover) + download copy during the period Gaijinworks was taking orders in early May. The ~2700 of us who did so got our PSN download voucher codes e-mailed to us Monday night; it was one of the few times I've gotten a video game before official release. Although I installed it that night, I didn't actually try it out until a day or two later, and then not for very long. Didn't really know what I was doing. . . . A party member got killed in my very first battle, and he wasn't even a weak guy. No, and the labyrinth maps are in fact available from this page at Gaijinworks.com. A PDF file of the manual is also there, which answers a question I had, "Is there really no software manual?" The game download itself does not include a software manual, so anyone getting just the download version will need this PDF (the game isn't much of a hand-holder at all, kind of just tossing you in at the start). I've never even heard of them, sorry. If you're talking about the Amazon Payments e-mail that said your order shipped, that's not really true. What "shipped" was your lock for getting a physical and download copy of the game. The UMDs won't be shipped for several more weeks, and I don't think they're even ready for pressing yet, based on some comments by Monkey Paw Games' Twitter user. While we're talking about recent PSP releases, did you get Black Rock Shooter? That really lit up the PSP charts when it hit the North American PS Store, and it was still the #5 PSP seller in the Store for May, according to a recent PS Blog post. I bought it, after clearing out the massive amount of required space on a Memory Stick, shortly after release and played through the very beginning. Looks like fun! Pretty good graphics, too, I think. There was also an anomaly of a release for the PSP recently, the first Western-developed non-Minis PSP release in a very, very long time: T.A.C. Heroes: Big Red One, a port from a 2010 DS WWII strategy game. Did anyone get that? It's a hard sell, $20 for a ~20-MB, nearly straight port of a DS cartridge that was $20 when it released 3 years ago. I didn't bite, and the 0 ratings 1.5 months later seems to say very few people did. onmode-ky

I saw this announced on the PlayStation Blog and was ecstatic and surprised. Sega did have a Facebook "Like" campaign about the game's localization (I didn't participate since I'm not on Facebook, but I made sure to tweet my support at Sega's Twitter account), but that was a while ago and had no follow-up comment from Sega. I'd assumed it had shown insufficient interest for their green light. Guess not, thankfully! The only DIVA game I've played is the original (I also have a Japanese info/art book for it), but I played the heck out of it and unlocked every single thing except most of the swimsuits (made sure to get Luka's ) and two room items. Stupid random unlocks never being cooperative on those last two! I had planned to import DIVA F but was waiting for a good slot in my budget for it . . . and now I won't have to. However, there is still DIVA f, the PSV title, not part of this localization announcement, and I do hope enough PSV owners make sufficient noise to convince Sega to bring it over, too. Your current avatar is quite fitting for this topic. onmode-ky P.S. I attached a photo of my proudest moment from the original DIVA, when I got a Great rating on "Hatsune Miku no Shoushitsu." It was the only song where I had to change the way I held the PSP in order to survive.

85,200. I had heard of this game before but had never played it until now. onmode-ky

I'm sure this is not the era of manufacture you have in mind, but my favorite is the 2-player Atari Paddles 13-in-1 TV Games system from Jakks Pacific, released in 2004 and developed by Jeff Vavasour and his crew at what was then Digital Eclipse Vancouver. Not only does it include a pretty good selection of the 2600's paddle games; not only does it run them well and with good controls; but, it also includes arcade Warlords, and that alone could have been both the icing and the cake. onmode-ky

What makes your picture and comment even funnier is that it's being posted by the guy who doesn't remember to put spaces after his commas and periods. onmode-ky

Well, the Life of Pixel Kickstarter (see it here) ends early Thursday morning US time, and it doesn't look like it will make its goal. I'm not much into Kickstarter in general, so maybe that's why, but I really can't tell why it's gotten so little participation. I played the PS Mobile original and thought it was great, so that's why I backed it. If you're someone who looked at the page and decided not to back it, can you explain what aspects of the Kickstarter turned you off? How is it different from Kickstarters that you did decide to back? onmode-ky

I don't know if the Xbox 360 version differs from the originals, but my PSP version of the game has Darius-style level branching. So, while one run of the game is 5 levels long, there are other levels not played in that run. Assuming the 360 version didn't change that, did you make it through every actual level or just one path? I was never able to beat the hardest path's final level. In retrospect, it might be doable for me if I start a new session and play well enough (quitting and restarting levels as necessary) so that I reach that final level with several more lives than in my "current" save. However, that would probably be more quitting and restarting than I could tolerate. onmode-ky

By the way, astrp3, your blog entry about 1973 still says "50,00" instead of "50,000" coin-op video games. The missing zero was what I was trying to get at earlier in the thread (though I wasn't sure at the time if it were a missing zero or a mispositioned comma). I found on YouTube, and it really is just Space Invaders upside-down and with replaced graphics. The sound effects are the same, and the attract screen is nearly identical, so it very well could be a hacked ROM running on Taito's own hardware. Not that no one else did that. onmode-ky

You can get it from publisher XSEED Games' online store, along with many of their other not-so-recent titles. Pick up some CDs of Ys and Trails in the Sky music while you're at it (unless you already got them from the PSP limited editions of those games). And cloth maps of the world of Ys, you can never have too many of those; I myself have three! onmode-ky

When I looked into Leisure Time's games earlier, I found them described as hacks of 3 Taito games. Does this mean Centuri (or whoever was making Leisure Time's cabinets) was producing hacks for them? Have you come across anything corroborating or disproving the clone allegations? Well, I suppose we could see if the ROMs are available and runnable by MAME, but those games are kind of obscure and not exactly in demand. Hey, don't forget that one company whose founder was a felon who ran off when he got sued and later murdered his wife and got the death sentence! These awful "biz op" guys make it seem like the video game violence controversy should really have been focused on those who sold, not those who played! onmode-ky

I'm honestly surprised this topic hasn't had any newer projects added in so long, but I'll bump it because the Life of Pixel Kickstarter has been launched. Life of Pixel is a platformer celebrating 9 classic gaming consoles (worlds are visually/aurally based around the capabilities of the VCS/2600, Sinclair ZX81, ZX Spectrum, C-64, Amstrad CPC464, BBC Model B, Game Boy, NES, and Master System), that launched on the PlayStation Mobile platform in February and garnered a fair amount of positive reviews. I generally skip platformers but really liked this one. However, it didn't sell well, because just about nothing on PlayStation Mobile sells well due to it not being available in many countries, the low install base of the major PSM-compatible system, the PSV, and insufficient publicity for the platform by Sony. I believe it's actually one of PSM's top sellers, judging from the user ratings count in the PS Store, but the game really deserves to be played by a bigger audience. So, the Kickstarter was established by the developer of the game in order to fund bringing the game to PC, Mac, iOS, and Android, with Ouya, Wii-U, and PS3 being stretch goals (would also fund new console worlds and enemies). And if you do have a PSV or Xperia or whatever else is PSM-compatible, get it now! . . . So that I can have someone with whom to compare best level times. onmode-ky

Interesting stuff. I think there's some confusion with one of your images, though. In talking about the lawsuit by Irem against Star Invaders, you have a sentence that says, "Here's side 2 of the flyer (comapre to the Uniwars flyer on TAFA)," but there's no point comparing that flyer to the UniWar S flyer. That side 2 is an ad for Star Fighter, one of the titles trademarked by Potomac that never saw actual release. As you point out with a subsequent image, Star Fighter rips off Moon Cresta. Based on the KLOV picture of a Star Invaders cab, showing the game's score table screen, it does indeed look like a hack of UniWar S. By the way, in your article about 1973, you have a sentence that says, "Ralph Baer estimated that about 50,00 coin-op video games had been produced." Was that supposed to be 50,000 or 5,000? Ah, so that's what it is. In looking up UniWar S just now to make sure I had the spelling right, I found Space Bird by Hoei and thought its KLOV description seemed very similar to Star Warrior's; apparently, both are hacks of Space Firebird. Also discovered another hack of UniWar S: Space Battle by Shoei. Anyway, so one Potomac Mortgage game was a simple hack of Space Firebird, the other was a simple hack of UniWar S, and they planned a hack of Moon Cresta. Star Series = Hack Series--for both Potomac Mortgage Company and Leisure Time Electronics. onmode-ky

PSN downloads for pre-Neo Geo titles (which SNK Playmore released as Minis) are $3 each, but the Neo Geo games in the PS Store are actually more expensive than this 3-for-$25 arrangement, if you're buying the PS3 versions. Those are $9 each, and the PSP versions are $7 each. Granted, in those cases, your purchase also gets you online multiplayer (or ad-hoc multiplayer, in the PSP version's case), the ability to record replays, and a music player. Still expensive, though. onmode-ky

It sounds like you have the third in Jakks' Namco-series TV Games plug-n-play systems, the Super Pac-Man unit from 2006. It contains Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, and Pac & Pal and was released with two versions of packaging; initially, it came in the plastic-windowed cardboard box that was the TV Games norm from 2004 through 2006, but during the production run of the system, Jakks Pacific transitioned to a plastic blister packaging that would last with TV Games until 2009. The games are ported from the original arcade versions to run natively on the Sunplus hardware used in the plug-n-play system, but they're probably nevertheless very accurate (for example, I know that Xevious on the earlier Ms. Pac-Man TV Game was ported by reverse engineering from the arcade original's assembly code, and it retains the original's many secrets). My high score on the TV Games Super Pac-Man is 56,530, which probably doesn't count as very good. If you'd like to see that particular plug-n-play unit's debug menu, do this as it's booting: joystick up, press-and-hold 'A' button, joystick down. onmode-ky

You got me curious about who the other two companies were. I poked around and came upon Google's archive of the September 1982 issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance, which ran an article about activities like what you mentioned. The other two companies on which the California Attorney General's office put injunctions barring future infractions were Leisure Time Electronics of Indianapolis and American Game Exchange of San Diego. Leisure Time Electronics seems to have been a bootleg operation; all 3 of the games they released were apparently hacks of Taito games, specifically Space Invaders (Space Ranger), Lunar Rescue (Moon Lander), and Space Laser (Astro Laser; and oddly enough, they also called their collective game releases a "Star Series"). They were assessed $5000 by the Attorney General's office. Potomac Mortgage was assessed $5000 as well and ordered to offer refunds to 23 California residents. American Game Exchange, now, I didn't find out what games they actually made, but they were assessed $40,000 and ordered to offer 29 refunds. Even more sordid, the founder of the company was already a convicted felon, went on the run after AGE was found out (illegal business because he was an undisclosed felon), murdered his wife, and was sentenced for execution, according to this account by the brother of one of the bilked customers. Geez. This topic is uncovering some weird stuff! onmode-ky

Lately, on the fairly rare occasion that I import something (not strictly games), it's been from either Play-Asia or CDJapan. I also used to shop at NCSX, but nothing from them lately. The nifty thing about CDJapan is that they're the international-facing branch of Neowing, a Japanese domestic retailer, and like a number of other in-Japan retail outlets, they sometimes get store-exclusive special editions on games. My copies of Shining Blade and Shining Ark from them came with some great bonus items, while costing the MSRP of the standard edition game. That's like the polar opposite of paying physical-copy MSRP and getting just a download! Having not yet watched my copy of False Songstress, I don't know where my film clip is in the story, but it's a shot of macronized Klan Klang looking over what seems to be a crashed Valkyrie. I'm not sure, but her expression appears to be eye-rolling boredom. I don't have really sufficient Japanese vocabulary to fully understand RPGs untranslated, but that did not stop me from importing Valkyria Chronicles 3 Extra Edition, Heroes Phantasia (massive anime crossover, including a big bunch of series of which I'm a fan), and the previously mentioned Shining Blade and Shining Ark. Not to mention a few visual novels for PSP and one for PS3--but I did draw the line and refrain from importing the Fate/stay night Realta Nua remake for the Vita, because I know from watching some of the FSN anime that I REALLY don't know enough vocabulary to understand any of what's going on there without a translation. I'd like to get the Sakura Wars 1 & 2 PSP collection, but it seems difficult nowadays to find a copy that is both not very expensive and not an ugly-label budget re-release. If that were put up for download for $55, no, I still wouldn't go for it. The most I've paid for a download-only game was $36 (after some discounting) for a PS3 title, and that's pretty much a one-time thing. Sorry, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2. onmode-ky

Where do you do your importing? I see that Play-Asia.com has Project DIVA F for $76 with free shipping. Is yours a special edition or preorder-bonus copy or something? I'm not entirely sure, but I think you're the only AtariAge member besides me who imports recent games from Japan, outside of people who strictly import Cave's Xbox 360 scrolling shooters and such. We would probably be the most likely members to say Yes to this topic, being used to paying import prices (my most expensive game software purchases are special edition Japanese PSP releases), but it looks like we're both firmly in the No camp. So, I think there's no one here who would say Yes. By the way, I'm a bit jealous of your Macross: Do You Remember Love? I've been pondering getting that. But, I should probably play my Macross F: Itsuwari no Utahime first. onmode-ky