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Memories of where and when you first played/saw this game


retrorussell

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11 hours ago, schuwalker said:

The first time I saw a Bank Panic was (kid you not) a waterbed store. This was probably mid '80s... they also had a Yie Ar Kungfu machine.

 

This is the Best!

 

Namely because I fully imagine someone under 25 saying,..."What's a Waterbed Store?"...."Oh Ok,  What's an Arcade Cabinet?"

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On 7/25/2021 at 7:06 PM, GoldLeader said:

 

This is the Best!

 

Namely because I fully imagine someone under 25 saying,..."What's a Waterbed Store?"...."Oh Ok,  What's an Arcade Cabinet?"

True, true.

 

 It pretty much shows that operators routed their games anywhere back then.

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4 hours ago, retrorussell said:

CHOPLIFTER (1985, Sega/Dan Gorlin)

I saw this at the Hickory Hollow Mall arcade outside of Nashville. I was rather surprised to see a home game make it to the big leagues! ? This is one of the nicest versions of Choplifter, along with the Sega Master System port. Great use of parallax scrolling to give the landscape lots of depth.

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Choplifter: at the Sega Center in the Sherman Oaks Galleria, Sherman Oaks, CA.  Played it a few times but the novelty wore off despite it being a good conversion.  Basically, I realised that I could save tokens for other games by playing this one at home :-D

 

Trivia: the Sherman Oaks Galleria was used for the interior of the mall in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

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New one this week:

CLIFF HANGER, 1983 Stern

Laserdisc game featuring scenes from the Hayao Miyazaki anime films THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO and THE MYSTERY OF MAMO, both starring the thief Lupin III and his allies.  This is just a reaction game ala Dragon's Lair-- you may see something flash to indicate you need to move there, or you might see an arrow, or a "boop" sound may indicate you need to do something.  I remember seeing this at my local 7-11, and I can't remember if I saw it anywhere else.  This appeared in the film THE GOONIES!

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Cliffhanger_marquee.jpg

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2 hours ago, Zoyous said:

Aside from Dragons Lair/Space Ace, the only other laserdisc game I remember seeing back in the day was Mach 3.

Good idea!

MACH 3, 1983 Mylstar

I saw this once or twice.  Once I think at a nickel arcade, another time maybe at Hydrotubes water park.  Laserdisc title with a fighter aircraft bombing or shooting enemies in 2 different missions.  I've never played it.  Either upright or cockpit cabinets.

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT9OjvWFZISQuATyFR8geN

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQCeaTtGqLszdI6Qwgj5hE

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M.A.C.H. 3 was one of my favourite laserdisc games.  First played it in the upright cabinet at Shakey's Pizza on San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank, CA, and later in the cockpit cabinet at (IIRC) Castle Park, somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

 

Never saw the sequel, Us vs. Them, in the wild.  Great B-movie spoof, though.

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I don't remember MACH 3,  but Le Mans (and one other place) had a Firefox (sit down)...

 

*I should not tell this story*  In fact,  I had a friend interested in buying Firefox, when *a place* went to sell it.  He asked if he could see the LaserDisc part functioning and they opened it up.  While looking at it, he accidentally dropped his watch into it, then quickly grabbed it back.  Then it quit working,... so he said he wasn't interested.

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2 hours ago, retrorussell said:

Good idea!

MACH 3, 1983 Mylstar

I saw this once or twice.  Once I think at a nickel arcade, another time maybe at Hydrotubes water park.  Laserdisc title with a fighter aircraft bombing or shooting enemies in 2 different missions.  I've never played it.  Either upright or cockpit cabinets.

The one I saw was the cockpit cabinet, at the Hillwood Plaza arcade in Nashville. I played it a few times. I remember it being pretty good, and I was particularly interested in trying to figure out if the footage of the landscape would bank differently in response to my inputs. Spoiler alert: it does not. But the combination of live action footage and raster graphics is pretty cool.

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On 3/12/2021 at 3:12 AM, GoldLeader said:

OH man!  I LOVED Space Odyssey!!  It had lots of variety as I recall, a lot of different stages for back then.  I dug those alien ships where you had to blast out the middle and fly through even as the top and bottom were still shooting at you.  Now,  Maybe it's nostalgia talking here.  The only place I ever saw it was Casa Bonita, (Denver, CO)...Usually we'd gone to Elitch's or Lakeside Amusement Park during the day, (sometimes Celebrity Sports Center or Malibu Grand Prix) then to Casa Bonita.   So after Mexican Food, in the mines/caves or at the cliffs, then watching cliff divers, and seeing the guy in a gorilla suit swing across the place, walking the village-like streets, Mariachi bands, seeing the puppet show, and Black Bart's cave with its goofy looking dragon...You went upstairs to the ARCADE and played some SPACE ODYSSEY!!

 

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On 3/12/2021 at 4:09 AM, retrorussell said:

Cool!  Casa Bonita was nowhere near my neck of the woods and I only heard of it from a South Park episode.

 

I just didn't think much of Space Odyssey.. I did like that there were bonus points given for flying through the center of the enemies but there were more interesting and plentiful bonuses in Sega's Astro Blaster.  Maybe it's just because Scramble was so much more polished that most copycats were pale in comparison.

 

Strangely enough, last I checked Space Odyssey's sound samples in MAME are pretty much the same as Sega's 005.

 

Seems like only 5 or 6 months ago we were talking about Casa Bonita over here haha....So I just thought I'd mention this ...

 

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/08/south-park-creators-buy-casa-bonita-1234658143/

 

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Next to Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, Mach III was the next one I've seen the most on location. My local arcade had the upright version; I recall seeing the cockpit version at Showbiz Pizza a few times. I always preferred Mach III over Firefox by Atari. I have that line from Mach III when you play in bomber mode imprinted on my brain "warning, radioactivity."

 

As far as favorite lasers go... next to Dragon's Lair 1, my favorite one would be Williams' Star Rider. Played tons of the cockpit version bitd. My runner up would be Funai's Interstellar, space shooter but with gorgeous laser backdrops. 

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I'll throw out some pics/memories of laserdiscs to mull over:

SPACE ACE (1984, Don Bluth/Cinematronics)

Space-Ace-Arcade-Game.jpg

FIREFOX (1984 Atari)

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BADLANDS (1984 Konami)

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And yeah, STAR RIDER (1983, WMS Industries/Computer Creations/Williams)

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I think I've seen all those except for STAR RIDER.  Space Ace I believe at a Chuck E. Cheese-- I would think of my sister Kimberly when I think of this game, though she looks NOTHING similar to Ace's gf.  Firefox (based on a dull Clint Eastwood movie from 1982) I think I only saw at Hydrotubes water park.  And Badlands I saw at a nickel arcade-- very silly anime game set in the Old West.

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Played all of the above at one time or another.  Only ever saw Badlands once, though, and that was at a cinema.  I remember being really excited to see a laserdisc game I hadn't heard of before and shot over to it to check it out.

 

After spotting the one button that was the sole control and watching the attract mode for a bit, I decided that I'd seen everything I needed to know about the game and played Circus Charlie instead.  Years later, thanks to DAPHNE, I was able to confirm my initial suspicions: it's not a very good game.

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  • 1 month later...

I don't think I've done this one..

4 PLAYER BOWLING ALLEY (1978 or 79 Midway)

Black and white bowling game with a trakball-- don't know if all previous arcade bowling games had one but it worked perfectly for this game.  My sisters and I played the HELL out of it at Malibu Gran Prix-- the only place I remember seeing it.  My older sister was crazy good at it.  I liked the names they gave for the several consecutive strikes good bowlers would make (Holy Cow, Hey Hey, etc.).  Regular or flash bowling were selectable.  Great sound effects.

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdvjeoKXLymzA61o0p-0x

 

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTDMXaB5U9N5UMCfz_1tMs

 

Edited by retrorussell
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On 8/26/2021 at 7:34 PM, retrorussell said:

Good idea!

MACH 3, 1983 Mylstar

I saw this once or twice.  Once I think at a nickel arcade, another time maybe at Hydrotubes water park.  Laserdisc title with a fighter aircraft bombing or shooting enemies in 2 different missions.  I've never played it.  Either upright or cockpit cabinets.

MACH 3 was the most common laserdisc game I used to see apart from Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.   In fact I don't really recall seeing other laserdiscs arcade games besides those three.   The laser fad didn't last long.

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Next:

STAR HAWK (1979)

B&W timed vector game created by Tim Skelly (RIP).  Move your crosshairs to destroy the various ships that appear for points as you fly through a trench Star Wars-style.  Try to pass 10,000 points to get a little extra time.  One ship will try to "zap" your score and dock you 800 points!  For its time it was okay.  I remember seeing this at the Washington Square Cinemas around Tigard, OR (long defunct), probably other nearby arcades like Malibu Gran Prix or Electric Palace in Beaverton, OR (both also long gone).

1043610662.jpg

 

starhawk01.jpg

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