Thursday, June 02, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Tron vs Saul Bass
Loved this:
There's also one for the tv series Lost if you enjoy that sort of thing :
Tron vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.
There's also one for the tv series Lost if you enjoy that sort of thing :
Lost vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Why I didn't like Dragon's Lair
It had everything that I like, a good fantasy story, animation by Don Bluth (one of my favorite animators), it was a video game... How could I not like it?
Well here's the thing. The first time I saw a Dragon's Lair, I was around 10-11 years old (can't remember exactly) at a campground we used to visit in northwestern Illinois. My brother and I ventured down to the gameroom with our couple of bucks in quarters, and joined a few other kids from the campground marvelling at this new, beautiful game. The price being 50 cents per play didn't even cause us to pause, my brother being older than me (and if I remember right everyone else there) walked up to the game and dropped in his $0.50. After about 30 seconds of "What the hell" and "How do you control this thing" and 3 death scenes, he walked away with the conclusion that the game was broken. One of the other kids made some comment at my brother about sucking at games, and let him try it, he'd get it to work, only to have the same exact end result. I didn't even bother wasting my change, neither did anyone else... We all thought the game was broken.
Here's my huimble opinion, take it for what it's worth. In the beginning Nolan said games need to be easy to learn and difficult to master. The instructions on Pong, "Avoid Missing Ball for High Score" were a good representation of this. Dragon's Lair wasn't by any stretch a complicated game, but there was absolutely no preparation, no instruction, no reference at all on the game (that I can recall), that the way to play is to perfectly time your moves, to move the joystick in the right direction or to depress the sword button at the exact right moment. I mean playing it a few times, one could most likely easily figure it out, but at 50 cents a pop, who would want to try (especially a kid that only had a few quarters)? I mean, every other game up until that point, you used a joystick and/or buttons to control the motion of the character on the screen. You move the stick to the right, and the little pixilated thingamabob moves to the right, immediately. You push the fire button, and whatever action is supposed to happen just happens, whether it be a missle shooting out, a swipe of a sword, or a punch/kick from said thingamabob... With this game, if you move to the right, when you are supposed to move to the left, you die. If you don't move in the exact moment you are supposed to move, you die. If you try moving any other time, the guy doesn't move. If in the offhand chance you happen to move in the right direction at the right time, the story continues. The control scheme was so vastly different from anything else that was out there at the time, but of course the game makes no mention of this. So ultimately what happens is that unless someone who knew what they were doing just happened to explain it to you, or you happened to read in some videogame magazine how to play it,(or you had a crapload of quarters to blow, and an infinite amount of patience) you would have no idea what to do, and have the same conclusion as the group of kids that were trying to play it that one day in the campground arcade... This sucks, lets go play Galaga.
Later on in life, I decided to memorize all of the moves and play through the whole game as I really wanted to see how the whole thing plays out, but even knowing all of the moves, I still couldn't get the timing just right, and never made it through. Perhaps that is the "gameplay" aspect that so many fans of the game go on about. To me, it's just like finding the most beautiful girl in the room is actually interested in talking to you, but only speaks French. And then once you find someone who can translate for you, you find out she has the brain capacity of the average goldfish.
Well here's the thing. The first time I saw a Dragon's Lair, I was around 10-11 years old (can't remember exactly) at a campground we used to visit in northwestern Illinois. My brother and I ventured down to the gameroom with our couple of bucks in quarters, and joined a few other kids from the campground marvelling at this new, beautiful game. The price being 50 cents per play didn't even cause us to pause, my brother being older than me (and if I remember right everyone else there) walked up to the game and dropped in his $0.50. After about 30 seconds of "What the hell" and "How do you control this thing" and 3 death scenes, he walked away with the conclusion that the game was broken. One of the other kids made some comment at my brother about sucking at games, and let him try it, he'd get it to work, only to have the same exact end result. I didn't even bother wasting my change, neither did anyone else... We all thought the game was broken.
Here's my huimble opinion, take it for what it's worth. In the beginning Nolan said games need to be easy to learn and difficult to master. The instructions on Pong, "Avoid Missing Ball for High Score" were a good representation of this. Dragon's Lair wasn't by any stretch a complicated game, but there was absolutely no preparation, no instruction, no reference at all on the game (that I can recall), that the way to play is to perfectly time your moves, to move the joystick in the right direction or to depress the sword button at the exact right moment. I mean playing it a few times, one could most likely easily figure it out, but at 50 cents a pop, who would want to try (especially a kid that only had a few quarters)? I mean, every other game up until that point, you used a joystick and/or buttons to control the motion of the character on the screen. You move the stick to the right, and the little pixilated thingamabob moves to the right, immediately. You push the fire button, and whatever action is supposed to happen just happens, whether it be a missle shooting out, a swipe of a sword, or a punch/kick from said thingamabob... With this game, if you move to the right, when you are supposed to move to the left, you die. If you don't move in the exact moment you are supposed to move, you die. If you try moving any other time, the guy doesn't move. If in the offhand chance you happen to move in the right direction at the right time, the story continues. The control scheme was so vastly different from anything else that was out there at the time, but of course the game makes no mention of this. So ultimately what happens is that unless someone who knew what they were doing just happened to explain it to you, or you happened to read in some videogame magazine how to play it,(or you had a crapload of quarters to blow, and an infinite amount of patience) you would have no idea what to do, and have the same conclusion as the group of kids that were trying to play it that one day in the campground arcade... This sucks, lets go play Galaga.
Later on in life, I decided to memorize all of the moves and play through the whole game as I really wanted to see how the whole thing plays out, but even knowing all of the moves, I still couldn't get the timing just right, and never made it through. Perhaps that is the "gameplay" aspect that so many fans of the game go on about. To me, it's just like finding the most beautiful girl in the room is actually interested in talking to you, but only speaks French. And then once you find someone who can translate for you, you find out she has the brain capacity of the average goldfish.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Special When Lit
Pinball Documentary "Special When Lit" will be airing next Saturday on the Documentary Channel...
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Lethal Enforcers Added to Gameroom
St Louis auction was a bit of a bummer with only about 50 games or so... ended up picking up a lethal enforcers for $87.50.
Didn't get many prices on this one, waiting to see if someone else has them... I didn't remember to bring a notebook or pen, and they didn't write the prices on the machines, so I didn't bother with it, from what I remember, the only "classics" (and boy am I using that term loosely) they had was a tetris in a nintendo cabinet and an Arkanoid in a Stern Cocktail cab... Feel free to correct me if there was anything else I'm forgetting...
Trying to remember what else... A few Trophy hunting type games, only 1 60-1 multi, an Ultracade (both of these went for <$500), Daytona USA Upright, Cruisin World Upright, Madden Football, Blitz 99 (went for around $200), CarnEvil, Ameridarts, Lethal Enforcers (mine), Area 51, a few Neo Geo's including one of those mini's...
Man with so few games I thought I'd remember more.
I know there were 2 Crazy Taxi's that went for around 300 each, couple of dedicated Cruisin Exoticas that went for $500 each.
Didn't get many prices on this one, waiting to see if someone else has them... I didn't remember to bring a notebook or pen, and they didn't write the prices on the machines, so I didn't bother with it, from what I remember, the only "classics" (and boy am I using that term loosely) they had was a tetris in a nintendo cabinet and an Arkanoid in a Stern Cocktail cab... Feel free to correct me if there was anything else I'm forgetting...
Trying to remember what else... A few Trophy hunting type games, only 1 60-1 multi, an Ultracade (both of these went for <$500), Daytona USA Upright, Cruisin World Upright, Madden Football, Blitz 99 (went for around $200), CarnEvil, Ameridarts, Lethal Enforcers (mine), Area 51, a few Neo Geo's including one of those mini's...
Man with so few games I thought I'd remember more.
I know there were 2 Crazy Taxi's that went for around 300 each, couple of dedicated Cruisin Exoticas that went for $500 each.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
RIP Elmer Lynn Hauldren
Don't tell me you don't know who Elmer Lynn Hauldren is...
See below for a reminder.
See below for a reminder.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Tron Control Panel (continued)
Finished up the CPO install, and put the new Joystick plastics on. Installed buttons, joystick and temporary spinner. Going to run Mame on this until I find a board and the right spinner...
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tron Resto begins
Got the Control panel today, actually arrived in better shape than I thought it would... Some pics below:
Removed the Joystick, buttons, and the generic CPO:
New CPO Waiting to be installed
More to come...
Removed the Joystick, buttons, and the generic CPO:
New CPO Waiting to be installed
More to come...
Monday, April 18, 2011
Build your own Apollo Landing Computer
Older article, but still kind of neat...
Would you like to own the computer Neil Armstrong used to land on the moon in 1969?
Well, that's possible now, because a geek named John Pultorak created a working reproduction of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), wrote a complete manual that will allow you to build your own Apollo flight computer clone and released it in the puclic domain.
More:
http://www.galaxiki.org/web/main/_blog/all/build-your-own-nasa-apollo-landing-computer-no-kidding.shtml
Would you like to own the computer Neil Armstrong used to land on the moon in 1969?
Well, that's possible now, because a geek named John Pultorak created a working reproduction of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), wrote a complete manual that will allow you to build your own Apollo flight computer clone and released it in the puclic domain.
More:
http://www.galaxiki.org/web/main/_blog/all/build-your-own-nasa-apollo-landing-computer-no-kidding.shtml
Friday, April 15, 2011
My other Blog
Figured I'd plug my other (seldom updated) blog here:
http://redwolfjc.blogspot.com/
Basically it covers anything non arcade related in my life (gotta keep em separated?)
On this blog you may find things like stories I wrote (or am in the process of writing) crap going on with my family, Sports, music, and a bunch of other useless nonsense that nobody will read :D
http://redwolfjc.blogspot.com/
Basically it covers anything non arcade related in my life (gotta keep em separated?)
On this blog you may find things like stories I wrote (or am in the process of writing) crap going on with my family, Sports, music, and a bunch of other useless nonsense that nobody will read :D
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
...And Another Thing
The Ultimate Tron Experience 5 Disc set arrived today... Pretty cool packaging:
Yes the Identity Disc does glow... It's pretty small though, just slightly larger than a DVD/BluRay.
Wait... What did that say? The Commodore 64 is getting a reboot? That could be interesting :)
Yes the Identity Disc does glow... It's pretty small though, just slightly larger than a DVD/BluRay.
Wait... What did that say? The Commodore 64 is getting a reboot? That could be interesting :)
Monday, March 28, 2011
Some pics
Someone emailed me a long time ago (I never check my Gmail account) asking for some pics of the Championship Shootout cab, figure since it's been months since the email. I'd just post them in case anyone wants to see them... not much to it though, looks like the same cab as a "dedicated" capcom bowling would be in... no sideart or anything, and the marquee is just a generic "Super Sports marquee.
Sorry for the quality of the pics, I'll try to get some better ones when the weather improves... Feel free to use these if you want, just give credit where due...
Sorry for the quality of the pics, I'll try to get some better ones when the weather improves... Feel free to use these if you want, just give credit where due...
Friday, February 18, 2011
Funny but true...
from the comment section of deals.woot.com
"Prices on classic arcade games these days are retarded. I wish people would start caring less about them like they did in the mid 90s so I can get this game for $200 again. Go to hell, $3000 piece of wood for douchey hipsters that didn't like classic games until aweful music, beards, nerd glasses and bum hair were in style. Stop wearing our Chuck Taylors, too. "
"Prices on classic arcade games these days are retarded. I wish people would start caring less about them like they did in the mid 90s so I can get this game for $200 again. Go to hell, $3000 piece of wood for douchey hipsters that didn't like classic games until aweful music, beards, nerd glasses and bum hair were in style. Stop wearing our Chuck Taylors, too. "
Sunday, February 06, 2011
More Tron Legacy...
Just preordered this:
I think Disney has enough of my money for now ;)
That is all.
I think Disney has enough of my money for now ;)
That is all.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Seth Rogan on Ellen
Sweet clip of Seth Rogan on the Ellen show...
At about 1:20 in you'll understand why I posted a clip from Ellen...
In other news, Superauctions may be done for good... Sucks as I really looked forward to those auctions.
At about 1:20 in you'll understand why I posted a clip from Ellen...
In other news, Superauctions may be done for good... Sucks as I really looked forward to those auctions.
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