Andromeda Stardust Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, Tanooki said: I saw that American Girl pinball machine I think last year at the shop down in TN, also they had this bowling alley and it's big, quite big, and fully functional with a counter and everything for 2 bowlers. Given the price, vs the toy store models you get elsewhere and the totally crappier quality, the AG one is worth the dough if you want a mini bowling alley or pinball at home. Am I the only one who clicked the link humming to the Tom Petty song? ("American Girl") https://www.americangirl.com/shop/p/julie-pinball-machine-gdw97 That thing is cute. 18" tall and real pinball. Tempted, but I've made enough impulse buys to last me a while though. It appears the flippers are hand actuated like every other toy pinball I have seen. Are the bumpers just passive springs like every other toy pinball, or do they have solenoids in them? Edited January 21, 2020 by Kosmic Stardust Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekkiELO Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 On 1/20/2020 at 3:02 PM, negative1 said: I will never stop buying, mini, micro or mid sized units as long as they are titles I like. I would love to see sinistar, robotron, marble madness, arkanoid, and more if they would ever come out. Of course, I would wait for them to go on sale, no point in pre-orders, or picking them up at retail price. later -1 Paperboy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekkiELO Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 On 1/18/2020 at 11:24 AM, Kosmic Stardust said: I only bought the donkey kong ornament because nintendo won't license it. I'd kill for a donkey kong quarter arcade... I'd also like a Donkey Kong mini! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted January 21, 2020 Share Posted January 21, 2020 4 hours ago, Kosmic Stardust said: Am I the only one who clicked the link humming to the Tom Petty song? ("American Girl") https://www.americangirl.com/shop/p/julie-pinball-machine-gdw97 That thing is cute. 18" tall and real pinball. Tempted, but I've made enough impulse buys to last me a while though. It appears the flippers are hand actuated like every other toy pinball I have seen. Are the bumpers just passive springs like every other toy pinball, or do they have solenoids in them? Fairly sure it's push button but don't hold me to it, I saw it last fall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted January 22, 2020 Share Posted January 22, 2020 My first 50k+ Ms Pacman score: 53,430pts. Made it to the banana stage. Nabbed both fruit. Girl needs her potassium! Waka waka... ??? Thank you quarter arcade. Could you imagine if these came out in the early 1980s instead of the Coleco minis? Mind blown!? 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wolfy62 Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 I am looking forward to the Track and Field quarter arcade. About time they made a mini machine with a game other than the usual suspects:Galaga,Pacman,Space Invaders etc. Also looking forward to my New Wave Toys Dragons Lair. Sweet!? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 2, 2020 Share Posted February 2, 2020 Major discussion of the mini and new colecovision units: later -1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 4, 2020 Share Posted February 4, 2020 no its not a mini arcade, but the myarcade retrochamp is finally out with a review: later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 5, 2020 Share Posted February 5, 2020 the mini USB Charger change machine, and walkman powerbank: later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 6, 2020 Share Posted February 6, 2020 (edited) You know what would be fun? If quarter arcade or new wave toys started making faux mini tube tvs (3x4 lcd screens like the ones on the arcades with a curved acrylic lens over it and a wooden retro console tv housing, mini hdmi port and 1/8" trrs composite jack in the back. Throw in a rechargeable battery for good measure.? Edited February 6, 2020 by Kosmic Stardust 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 10, 2020 Share Posted February 10, 2020 at some point, the arcade 1up mini systems will come out, here is a pic of the intellivision one: later -1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 buy one replicade, get the 2nd half off, ends today: later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 14, 2020 Share Posted February 14, 2020 So I got some intimate 1 on 1 time with my new Galaga cab from Quarter Arcades. I know Galaga was technically #2 in the series but they published Ms Pacman (#3) second, and for good reason considering the window for the license deal with Namco was the last consumer product to officially feature the Ms Pacman arcade ROM prior to transfer of the rights from GCC to Atgames. I don't exactly have great faith in Atgames to pull off a quality product. Slight product improvements seem to continue from the Ms Pacman cab to the Galaga one. They appear to have sealed the vent surrounding the speaker grill so that the LED marquee backlighting no longer shines through casting glare on the screen. I did notice some debris on the backside of the marquee glass. I may have to get a jewelery or eyeglass screwdriver to access the tiny phillips screws and clean it with a microfibre cloth. My Pacman and Ms Pacman are both clean in this area. Pacman had the paint on the exterior whereas Ms Pacman and Galaga have it underpainted. Other thing I noticed is the galaga side art is a decal instead of screen printed on the actual panel, and the artwork appears shrunk compared to the other arcade units. I don't know offhand if this is a design choice by quarter arcade or if the original cabs were fabricated with decals. Since Galaga is the first cab to use fire buttons, slight performance issues with the buttons come into play. There does not seem to be adequate debounce on the buttons, so high score entry does not register correctly. I attempt to enter ALI (short for Alita) and it will skip a letter due to bounce, so I got some AAI and ALA entries. The lack of debounce does not affect gameplay much in Galaga but could potentially cause issues in other more complex games. My OCD complex kicks in here so it doesn't save the scores like the 1up cabs. It also by design doesn't have the "high score greater than 100k" bug that truncates the first digit of the high score like the soft resetting 1up cabs do.Get a smartphone camera ready for bragging rights if you want to save your high score! The 1up cabs have some other bugs in the ROM not present in the Quarter Arcade machine. On the 1up cab, playing in the demo mode can potentially crash the game machine. Pressing player 1 or 2 does not fix this. On the quarter machine, dropping coin will job the machine out of a stuck attract mode. The coin inserts and player start buttons are distinct and you can add as many credits as you like up to 99. I really dove into the Dipswitch settings in the ROM machine and discovered some lovely secrets very few players have actually explored. These machines are basically single player affairs so I curiously toggled the "two credit game" option to single player and was greeted with a bonanza of extra lives when hitting the 2 player button. I like to see how far I can get into upper levels. 2 lives option = 5 3 lives option = 7 4 lives option = 9 5 lives option = 11 ships! Also bonus ship configuration is different for 5 lives as well. 20k bonus every 60k becomes 30k every 100k 20k bonus every 70k becomes 30k every 120k 20k bonus every 80k becomes 30k every 150k Existing 30k bonus options just yield a single bonus ship at 100k or 120k instead of every. So that's up to 13 ships at 120k points using stock every 70k bonus option with 5 stock, compared to 12 ships at 120k points using the every 60k bonus option with 4 stock. Either way, that's a lot of ships to play with. I have been trying to advance further into the game by exploiting the dip switch settings and this cab delivers where the 1up arcade cab does not. I'm not a competitive gamer, just recreational, so I give a thumbs up to quarter arcade. Other musings. You can get higher than 100% kill ratio in Galaga. Play the first stage. Don't shoot anything and allow the leftmost Galaga boss to capture you. Carefully pick off the red escourts and take out the boss to retrieve your ship. This will use 3-4 bullets, or you can kamakazi your spare ships into the escourts and the boss galaga to turn it blue. Kamakazi style kills will not rank up your kill counter, however this avoids diluting the kill ratio limiting the number of single shots. So you still need to fire one lone bullet into the blue boss to upgrade your ship. Otherwise a kamakazi take down of the captured boss results in freeing a ship which has no mate to dock to. 200% kill ratio is impossible for this very reason. Now carefully line up the double shots and pick off a couple of bees from the bottom rows 2 at a time. Kill yourself and on the game over screen, and your shot/kill percentage will fall between than 100% and 200%. Taking out all 20 bees on stage 1 with flawless execution, using 5 stock ships (burn three ships to take out the escorts and damage the first boss galaga, then capture the fourth ship and rescue it with a single bullet), will net 21 kills with 11 bullets for a hit/miss ratio of 190.9% ? 3 kills / 2 bullets = 150% 5 kills / 3 bullets = 166.7% 7 kills / 4 bullets = 175% 9 kills / 5 bullets = 180% 11 kills / 6 bullets = 183.3% ... 21 kills / 11 bullets (all 20 bees destroyed using double shots) = 190.9% Obviously laws of diminishing returns apply here. Not sure how many additional pairs of red enemies one could pick off before they break formation. Useless but fun for bragging rights. You can still disable enemy fire by eliminating all but the leftmost or rightmost bees and parking your ship to the side of the screen. Leftmost bees can still shoot across the screen boundary and kill you so you must periodically jog your ship a bit to the left of the rightmost edge. Rightmost bees will not kill you across the screen boundary so safe to park your ship far left, but it takes a couple hours with right bees before they stop shooting bullets compared to 20 mins or so left bees. Once enemy fire is disabled it remains so for the rest of the game. With up to 11 ships available, no excuse for getting killed, you should be able to play for long time. Kill screen at stage 255? = = = = = = = = Replicade and 1up, please consider putting dipswitch options into future game releases. We paid a license for the arcade game; so we should get to access all of it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 17, 2020 Share Posted February 17, 2020 On 1/22/2020 at 11:59 AM, Andromeda Stardust said: My first 50k+ Ms Pacman score: 53,430pts. Made it to the banana stage. Nabbed both fruit. Girl needs her potassium! Waka waka... ??? Thank you quarter arcade. Could you imagine if these came out in the early 1980s instead of the Coleco minis? Mind blown!? Damn. I think I kicked Galaga's ass... 398,960 pts, stage 49! Say whaaa!? ? On 2/14/2020 at 4:44 AM, Andromeda Stardust said: Once enemy fire is disabled it remains so for the rest of the game. With up to 11 ships available, no excuse for getting killed, you should be able to play for long time... Yeah I suck this much... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 18, 2020 Share Posted February 18, 2020 not a videogame, but a rubiks cube simulation, rubiks tilt: later -1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 18, 2020 Share Posted February 18, 2020 Heh reminds me of "Rubik's Touch Cube" which was a non-rotating cube where the colors were made with lights, and you used touch to move the faces. I have one (the battery in it has since gone dead) and I remember the one thing I kept thinking when playing with it was "This is sure much more of a hassle and less fun than a regular rubik's cube" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 18, 2020 Share Posted February 18, 2020 53 minutes ago, NE146 said: Heh reminds me of "Rubik's Touch Cube" which was a non-rotating cube where the colors were made with lights, and you used touch to move the faces. I have one (the battery in it has since gone dead) and I remember the one thing I kept thinking when playing with it was "This is sure much more of a hassle and less fun than a regular rubik's cube" The rubick's touch cube was garbage Imo. It retailed for $150 When it came out. Then went on clearance for $50 within a couple months. The custom square touch screens were not very responsive. It only responded to touches on the top layer, straight swiping for slices or FBRL moves, and circles for U moves. There was absolutely no means to rotate the D face without rotating the cube. I finally lost the stupid charging dock for that thing, but it was a chore to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 19 hours ago, Andromeda Stardust said: The rubick's touch cube was garbage Imo. It retailed for $150 When it came out. Then went on clearance for $50 within a couple months. The custom square touch screens were not very responsive. It only responded to touches on the top layer, straight swiping for slices or FBRL moves, and circles for U moves. There was absolutely no means to rotate the D face without rotating the cube. I finally lost the stupid charging dock for that thing, but it was a chore to use. I love my rubiks touch, got it for $40 after the clearance. Still in mint condition and works perfectly. I'm not a speed cuber, so the limitations aren't an issue, and it looks really cool lit up. never had a problem using it or solving it either. a nice fun toy for cube fans, which i definitely am. will be getting the twist also, it's already been reduced to $15. later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 3 hours ago, negative1 said: I love my rubiks touch, got it for $40 after the clearance. Still in mint condition and works perfectly. I'm not a speed cuber, so the limitations aren't an issue, and it looks really cool lit up. You're lucky.. My Rubik's Touch no longer holds a charge. Once you turn it on, it immediately dies no matter how long you charge it. And the thing is, it's completely minty in the fact that I've only ever taken out of the box a couple of times since buying it new. Go figure. Yeah it's possible to change it but it's a little more hassle than it's worth for me. Not like I ever broke it out to play anyway even when it worked ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 19, 2020 Share Posted February 19, 2020 The touch cube was a novelty. Get the real thing. Or you can pick up Rubik's World for Wii and DS. I solved the profesor cube one day with the wiimotes. It was a chore but I did it. See video game reference. This post is not entirely off topic... ??? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik's_Puzzle_World Modern Rubik's brand cubes rotate slightly better than the old ones and have interlocking rings making popping pieces much more difficult. So lifting up the edge to pop them doesn't work anymore. No cheating!!! Though dis-assembling a scrambled cube to piece back together makes an exciting dexterity puzzle in and of itself. Especially the larger 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 varieties. Ever try assembling a rubik's cube inside of a jar? Basically the core fits through the round opening but not the whole cube. Not for the feint of heart. Jarred 3x3x3 and 4x4x4 Rubik's brand cubes from my personal collection: In 2007, Verdes came out with the V-Cubes which were 6x6x6 and 7x7x7 varieties. Now some truly massive cubes exist. These things IMO cease to be fun to solve and become an exercise in tedium. Then twistypuzzles are not limited to cubic shapes. Meffert produced the Pyraminx, a tetrahedral puzzle, and the megaminx, a dodecahedral puzzle. Learning the Megaminx was a great stepping stone to understanding the dynamics of interlocking layers and piece commutations. The principals learned can be used to solve a huge variety of puzzles including the original cube, without the need to memorize countless algorithms. I got hooked on the puzzle craze in 2007, but after a few years I just became disillusioned by the hobby. Increasingly exotic geometries, some of which were barely usable. Bandaged cubes, internal gear locks blocking specific moves, and other such antics to make the solving process excruciating. Also many concepts got the "let's make 8 different versions of the same puzzle" treatment so we can peddle to desparate collectors...??♀️ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 21, 2020 Share Posted February 21, 2020 (edited) tiger handheld electronics making a comeback by hasbro: this one has a mention at the beginning later -1 Edited February 21, 2020 by negative1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 wow, space invaders looks so good, and they're using the mirrors, will probably have to get that one: https://www.myarcadegaming.com/collections/featured-products/products/space-invaders-micro-player later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 hour ago, negative1 said: wow, space invaders looks so good, and they're using the mirrors, will probably have to get that one: https://www.myarcadegaming.com/collections/featured-products/products/space-invaders-micro-player later -1 SNES version? Looks like it.? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
negative1 Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 1 hour ago, Andromeda Stardust said: SNES version? Looks like it.? not even close: doesn't look anything like it, the background is banded, the moon looks wrong, colors, etc. its probably their own port. later -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 25, 2020 Share Posted February 25, 2020 4 hours ago, negative1 said: not even close: doesn't look anything like it, the background is banded, the moon looks wrong, colors, etc. its probably their own port. later -1 Wait, were the ships green on the originals w/ overlay? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.