retrorussell
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Posts posted by retrorussell
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Wha...? No entries from "Mystique"? Their "erotic" games with "anatomically correct" 8-bit graphics were awful. The nadir, of course, being "Custer's Revenge". I suppose the games are good for a laugh but that's it. If you paid one penny for any of their games you got ripped off.
And I recognize one blogger has an avatar from "Beat 'em And Eat 'em". Nice..
Oh, and of course, ET was awful too.
And Activision's Laser Attack was pretty damn boring and linear.
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Atarian63,
Yeah, I've ordered stuff from Bob Roberts before. He's pretty cool; he even sent me some moon pies and Mardi Gras stuff last time I ordered a cap kit for my Phoenix! Neat guy.
I just wanted to be sure the cap kit was what I needed this time.. just not sure how to send pics through PMs on this site. You get the option to send images but only through URLs, it seems. I just wanna send pics I've saved on my hard drive! How do I do that?
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Hey folks.
Ever get that one boss that would just OWN you time and again, and you were compelled to beat his ego into next week, but you knew as you popped another quarter in that he was going to hand out another week's worth of backside burn?
My choice... GEESE HOWARD of Fatal Fury 1 (he seemed to be a bit easier as the series continued). Just beat the crap out of me time and again. The only way to consistently have success against him, it seemed, was to use the Andy Bogard trick. Knock him down, and JUST as he was about to get up use the speed dash elbow attack. He has no chance if you time it right. Other than that.. ugh.. good luck.
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Hey Atarian63,
I see you have a Dig Dug cabinet, and I do as well. I'm looking to get some second opinions as to how to fix mine; it's playable but has color distortion issues, I guess. Not sure how to diagnose exactly what the deal is and the pics I have aren't terribly clear, but something don't look right. But if you think you might have enough knowledge of fixing them maybe I could send you some pics?
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I'm guessing Saker One was never released. I can find no information on it other than the page you posted. Sounds like it might have been cool.
Another rarity: Lost Tomb by Stern. The most obnoxiously loud game next to Zoo Keeper. Basically an Indiana Jones-explorer type of game. Not too memorable save for the above detriment.
Last one for tonight: Williams' "Make Trax". I liked that a lot, actually.. basically a PacMan clone but instead of eating dots you paint a new pattern in a maze. You are a paintbrush being chased by 2 goldfish (!) and some critter comes out and makes tracks on your paint, forcing you to go back over
their tracks. Unlike Pac-Man the enemies here are faster than you when you're not "eating", and you are faster than them when painting. I liked this game quite a bit due to the good AI of the goldfish. They would team up to try to corner you.
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Every other weekend I'd visit my mom in Vancouver (lived with my dad + stepmom) in the early to mid eighties. Aladdin's Castle in Vancouver Mall (one HUGE mall) was my favorite hangout. Played the hell out of Kung Fu Master and Elevator Action there. And after all that video excitement, an Italian dog and Orange Julius was the PERFECT refreshment.
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That's the one!
And you are right,it wasn't that great. I hung out so much at that arcade that I had played everything there.Anyways,thanks for the help.
No problem Nightwing.
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The Jamesway in Culpeper, VA would get weird stuff up along the wall in the front. Only place I ever saw Super Cobra. The most unusual one I recall was Zoo Keeper. The arcade in town was pretty good about adding in less known games into the popular ones, so that's where I played a lot of Reactor. Some drug store had a Space Duel set up near the front.
The arcade in the Charlottesville, VA mall had a bunch of unusual titles for a fairly small room, like Satan's Hollow, Major Havoc, Cloak & Dagger, and Krull.
The arcade at King's Dominion, outside of Richmond, VA, was huge and full of all kinds of strange stuff, including Discs of Tron (environmental cab), Venture, and Leprechaun (they had a minicab set up elsewhere in the park for little kids with the Pot of Gold ROM at an insanely easy difficulty level).
The arcade in the Steubenville, OH mall had quite a line of vector games including Armor Attack, Lunar Lander, Star Castle, and one where you controlled a knight from an overhead perspective who had to fight another knight while avoiding falling into two pits/wells on the screen (technically I think the wells were on an overlay). It's also where I encountered just about the rarest game I have ever seen, Zwackery.
In the mid-90s when I lived in Matsuyama, Japan, I saw a bunch of very exotic stuff in those arcades: Dig Dug II, Elevator Action II, Rolling Thunder 2, and a bunch of stuff I have no idea what the names in English might be.
and one where you controlled a knight from an overhead perspective who had to fight another knight while avoiding falling into two pits/wells on the screen (technically I think the wells were on an overlay).
Oh yeah! "Warrior" by Vectorbeam/Cinematronics, circa 1979. Played it a bit at Electric Palace in Beaverton Mall, but kept falling in the pits. D'oh! And yes, the wells were on an overlay.
Zwackery was definitely a weird one. Played it once and didn't really care for it.
I recall a really bad Asteroids clone once called "Meteoroids". It was in color but it was utterly awful in every possible way. I think it was by Venture Line. Didn't play it but watched the demo, and decades later played it on an emulator. Horrid!
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I've seen a clip of Got-Ya on YouTube. Never seen it anywhere before. Somehow, the game strikes me as creepy!
A few more I'll throw out there..
Exidy's "Hard Hat". Not a very good game but as common with Exidy games, good music.
Exidy's "FAX". Early trivia game with some long-haired character climbing up ladders to ascend to higher levels of intelligence as you continued to correctly answer questions. Not as big a bust as Professor Pac-Man but died a quick death nevertheless, because it was too expensive to produce enough machines and trivia didn't really catch on in the video game market.
Meadows' "Gypsy Juggler". Played this a lot back in the late '70s at Malibu Gran Prix.. not that great of a game. You control this guy that juggles eggs, up to 4 at a time. When one would splat on the ground a chicken would walk out of it while peeping. Cracked me up to no end.
Lastly, Rock-Ola's "Eyes". One creepy game where you play an eyeball(!) that shoots other eyeballs. Rock-Ola (originally a jukebox-only company) didn't have many good games. My favorite of theirs was probably "Jump Bug".
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I believe Nintendo's first arcade game was Space Firebird, which was also licensed to Sega/Gremlin.
I think I remember playing that one. Galaxian clone wasn't it? And couldn't you at intervals hit a special attack button and rise up the screen and smash into your enemies rather than shooting them? It's a funny thing but I've played a good many of the titles others are mentioning. I only ever saw a Red Baron once. Pity too, it was a fun games. At one time or another I've seen most of Atari's vectors. I don't believe Black Widow was all that common either though someone was always playing it at the Gold Mine. Come to think of it, that Gold Mine had Thayer's Quest as well as Space Ace and Dragon's Lair though not all at the same time. They packed that location so tight with games that they'd round out their floorspace with what had to have been seen as B-List titles at the time. The same mall had another Gold Mine in another wing, it was smaller but I also played M.A.C.H 3, Firefox, and a "holographic" title that was a cowboy themed gun game there.
A mall in Ashland, KY had the only Exterminator cab I've ever seen. It broke down a lot but was really fun when it was working. Smashing cartoon frogs with a semi-realistic rendered fist was hilarious and fun.
At the time, I didn't appreciate these places being the wondrosities that they were.
Yes, Space Firebird has play mechanics exactly like you described. It was like Galaxian but the enemies were ALWAYS attacking, never sitting in formation. Some required several shots to kill, and a number would count down as you killed the enemies, showing you how many you had left before the stage was completed.
I remember once me and my sister spending a night at my mom's friend's house at the Oregon coast back in about '82 or'83, and he had Red Baron and Space Wars. We were in seventh heaven!
Technos' first games in the US were weird: Mysterious Stones and Dog-Fight, which I saw at Sea-Tac Mall's Gold Mine arcade.
A fairly rare game (but probably Century {not to be confused with Centuri}'s best game behind "Hunchback") is Dazzler, a game much like "Turtles".
Also rare is a maze game called "Guzzler" involving a weird blue thing that soaks up water and shoots it at foes made of fire. Notable for giving you a chance to stop a spinning wheel to gain an extra life, after you lost your last one.
Last one before I hit the hay:
Mayday. A blatant Defender clone.. though the gameplay was a little different, the sounds were ripped off completely. Played this at Kellogg Bowl in Milwaukie, Oregon. They got a number of rare games there back in the day.
Thanks, everyone, for the many posts on this subject!
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There are a few games I've seen that are pretty rare (which I didn't know back then, of course...)
First, there was the Data East game "Manhattan", actually running on their DECO system.
At the same time, in another arcade, I saw "Sheriff" by Nintendo. It was the color version as shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_(arcade_game).
Actually, I didn't know Nintendo was a company back then, so I thought the title was "Sheriff Nintendo". Of course, I learned better not too long afterwards when Nintendo put out the Game&Watch games.
One of the later games I saw I would consider rare was "Parasol Stars" by Taito, the sequel to "Bubble Bobble" and "Rainbow Islands". As I learned later, there really wasn't an arcade version of that game, rather they put the NEC PC Engine version (or was it Neo Geo?) into the arcade.
Other games I saw which I didn't consider THAT rare were "Turtles" by Konami (which actually there were some home versions of by Entex and Philips), "Splash" (can't remember the company name), "Super Space Invaders '91" and "Super Burger Time".
Most of them I saw in the Prater of Vienna, which is a big amusement park which is open all year long (but more attractive from April to October than in other months, when many of the rides are closed). It contains about 100 rides, arcades and restaurants. In the early 80's, there were about 10 arcades in there with video games (and some more which only had gambling machines). From the mid-80's on, however, they closed down one by one, and today there are only 3 or 4 of them left... and others have converted from video games to gambling, such as the "Fortuna Halle" at the entrance near the Praterstern, which converted to gambling in the early 90's.
Oops.. meant to actually reply to that one.
Splash! was by Gaelco, and from what I recall was sort of a soft-core porn game with nude pics revealed by playing a Qix-like game.
I used to play quite a bit of Turtles.. I remember seeing it on the Magnavox II.
I believe Nintendo's first arcade game was Space Firebird, which was also licensed to Sega/Gremlin.
I BARELY heard of Manhattan.. there were some good games on the DECO system but mostly crap.
Thanks for the memories! Keep 'em rolling!
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There are a few games I've seen that are pretty rare (which I didn't know back then, of course...)
First, there was the Data East game "Manhattan", actually running on their DECO system.
At the same time, in another arcade, I saw "Sheriff" by Nintendo. It was the color version as shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_(arcade_game).
Actually, I didn't know Nintendo was a company back then, so I thought the title was "Sheriff Nintendo". Of course, I learned better not too long afterwards when Nintendo put out the Game&Watch games.
One of the later games I saw I would consider rare was "Parasol Stars" by Taito, the sequel to "Bubble Bobble" and "Rainbow Islands". As I learned later, there really wasn't an arcade version of that game, rather they put the NEC PC Engine version (or was it Neo Geo?) into the arcade.
Other games I saw which I didn't consider THAT rare were "Turtles" by Konami (which actually there were some home versions of by Entex and Philips), "Splash" (can't remember the company name), "Super Space Invaders '91" and "Super Burger Time".
Most of them I saw in the Prater of Vienna, which is a big amusement park which is open all year long (but more attractive from April to October than in other months, when many of the rides are closed). It contains about 100 rides, arcades and restaurants. In the early 80's, there were about 10 arcades in there with video games (and some more which only had gambling machines). From the mid-80's on, however, they closed down one by one, and today there are only 3 or 4 of them left... and others have converted from video games to gambling, such as the "Fortuna Halle" at the entrance near the Praterstern, which converted to gambling in the early 90's.
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Unless you have more to go on, that will be tough. There were literally hundreds of Pac-Man clones back in the day.
Tempest
Yeah, hence my failure to figure it out. I really want Google to develop a direct brain interface so that you can google a mental image.
I was hoping KLOV could help me, but their genre search for the "Labyrinth/Maze" category is broken... clicking on it returns no results.You're sure it was a ship? And not a car (like Exidy's "Crash" or Sega's "Head On"), or a piranha (as in GT's "Piranha")? Those were both Pac-Man like games.
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Wow.. good picks folks!
Got some more for you..
A nickel arcade in NE Portland had an old Sega Gremlin game called "Tranquilizer Gun" with a safari hunter shooting and collecting animals. Pretty crappy.
A fairly rare game that I liked a lot: Exerion by Jaleco/Taito. Nice parallax scrolling background. I liked the option to hold the button down and shoot a steady stream but that depleted your shot supply faster than shooting one blast at a time.
One more before I hit the hay: Jaleco/Cinematronics' "Naughty Boy". Weird but very easy game where you're a kid that throws rocks at monsters. Your goal is to destroy all the flags on the fort at the top of the screen, burning it down.
Thanks for the replies!
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I can recall a couple of games I've played that were at least uncommon:
Tac-Scan - Sega
That was a VERY nice vector shooter with a lot of originality.
Quantum - Atari
I only saw one example of both of those games. Tac-Scan was at a health club my family had a membership at in the early eighties. The Quantum was at a Gold Mine at the Huntington Mall in Barboursville WV. Interesting that both of mine were vectors.
I liked Tac/Scan quite a bit. Quantum wasn't that great; it was a vector version of Qix. Tac/Scan had more lasting power. But I definitely remember both of these.
Another one I'll throw out there is Data East's "Astro Fantasia". Kind of weird shooter with a background that scrolled as you moved up or down. Made on the DECO cassette system, which took a long time to boot up and also had "Mission X", "Lock and Chase" and "Burgertime" on it. Not their worst, but not the best either.
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You may recall sometime way back when where you were at some arcade where all the big-name machines were right up front; the Ms. Pac Mans, the Battlezones, the Donkey Kongs, the Dig Dugs, the Galagas, etc. But back in a corner, you saw some weird title that you tried out and maybe talked to your friends about, and NO ONE had ever heard of it before. It promptly disappeared from the planet and no one seems to know it existed. If you can remember the name (or if you can't maybe I can help you), what was it? Did it deserve to die a quick death?
I'll shout out a few to get things rolling. I used to play Sega's "005" a lot at an arcade in Tigard, OR called Astrocade. I don't know why, as it wasn't a very good game. I also recall seeing Rock-Ola's "Pioneer Balloon" and Sega's "Borderline" at Funland in Seaside, OR. Pioneer Balloon was a VERY stupid, repetitive game with a balloon dropping missiles(!) on Native Americans, covered wagons, and other enemies to the tune of "The Great Escape". The hell? Borderline was much better, involving jeep warfare.
Anybody heard of these?
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You may recall sometime way back when where you were at some arcade where all the big-name machines were right up front; the Ms. Pac Mans, the Battlezones, the Donkey Kongs, the Dig Dugs, the Galagas, etc. But back in a corner, you saw some weird title that you tried out and maybe talked to your friends about, and NO ONE had ever heard of it before. It promptly disappeared from the planet and no one seems to know it existed. If you can remember the name (or if you can't maybe I can help you), what was it? Did it deserve to die a quick death?
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Hopefully somebody can help me out. I remember that it was a fighting game before the SF2/MK days - so say late 80s.
You were able to choose different characters & weapons & then you had to fight different people/fantasy creatures.
The thing I remember the most was if you won the match,you hear a really cheesy audio clip yell:
"HA!!!!!!!!! Victory!!!!!!!!!"
If anybody has a clue,please let me know.Thanks!
Nightwing..
Sounds like Data East's "Hippodrome" from 1989. It absolutely sucked.
Yup, Hippodrome. Here's the link to a video of this abomination.
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A short list of my faves:
Dig Dug
Donkey Kong
Astro Blaster
Ms. Pac Man
Mr. Do
Spectar
Scramble
Phoenix
Track And Field
Gyruss
Pac-Land
Kung Fu Master
Kicker
Yie Ar Kung Fu
Street Fighter II CE
Fatal Fury Special
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
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Galaga.
I've owned one for 5+ years and still can't get enough.
Still have yet to see level 40.
It still kicks my ass and gives me a rush.
(Tempest is a close second I though for the same reasons.)
therealred5,
Are you using the "no-fire" cheat?
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I have a Neo-Geo 4 slot in my living room and almost directly across from it is a Phoenix cabinet. Then a Dig Dug cabinet in my bedroom. In the guest room I could put a cocktail in the closet but that's about it for space. Unless I wanted to get rid of my keyboard, but I'm happy with 3 machines.
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Hopefully somebody can help me out. I remember that it was a fighting game before the SF2/MK days - so say late 80s.
You were able to choose different characters & weapons & then you had to fight different people/fantasy creatures.
The thing I remember the most was if you won the match,you hear a really cheesy audio clip yell:
"HA!!!!!!!!! Victory!!!!!!!!!"
If anybody has a clue,please let me know.Thanks!
Nightwing..
Sounds like Data East's "Hippodrome" from 1989. It absolutely sucked.
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PLEASE anybody who remembers these in the Beaverton, Oregon area give me a shout.
Innerspace - The best, and a hotty by the name of Candy operated it.
Electric Palace - Great while it lasted, in the Beaverton mall.
Chuck E. Cheese - Hi Molly. Uncle owned the Beaverton franchise and she always hooked me up with tokens.
Malibu Gran Prix - Still going strong. but games most of their games suck now.
Wunderland - Still going strong, but caters mostly to little kid gambling (tickets).
Hey Cougar302B,
I remember all those except Innerspace.. there was a couple others in the area I remember that were around for a very short time. One was in Raleigh Hills by the ice rink, that was where I first played Space Panic and Mr. Do. They used to have Hydrotubes at Washington Square with a great arcade; they turned it into a Wunderland, now it's Wells Fargo. But before all that there was an Engine House Pizza more in the center of the lot with a great arcade. Other arcades I recall were Astrocade at Canterbury Square, Pac Pals in Garden Home, the Chocolate Chipper Mini Golf Course in Milwaukie, and there was some nickel arcade over on Sandy in NE Portland. I played at MANY Wunderlands back when they started; the ones I frequented were in Beaverton and in NE Portland on Halsey. I have perhaps the best memories from Malibu Gran Prix, playing Crazy Climber and Dig Dug to death. Now I have a Dig Dug cabinet in my bedroom, and a Neo Geo and Phoenix in my living room. I still want to have a cocktail Ms. Pac Man or Crazy Climber some day.
Thanks for the memories! Nice Thayer's Quest av, by the way.
I completely forgot about the hydrotubes arcade. That place was awesome. They closed it down after a few kids bumped their noggins. Torgar Halverson's dad owned it, right? I also vaguely remember an arcade by Raleigh hills, was it right by an old Sentry market? You did'nt by chance go to Sunset H.S. did you? I am class of '88.
Have you been able to get over to Ground Kontrol yet? If you have'nt, you should. It is not Malibu in in its heyday, but it is pretty close.
I had heard some kids got hurt but I didn't know all the details. I didn't know who owned Hydrotubes. But it was fun while it lasted. Good sized arcade there.
I don't remember what stores were near the Raleigh Hills arcade. I just remember it was right near the bowling alley and ice rink. Not too many games, as the place wasn't very big. All the shops in Valley Plaza are of the hole-in-the-wall variety. I remember Grizzly Bear Pizza up the street a ways further was pretty sweet for arcade games too. My sister and I pumped many quarters into Wizard Of Wor there.
I split my HS education between Oregon and Washington. 1 year at Beaverton HS, then moved to Federal Way and attended Thomas Jefferson HS for the other 2 years. Graduated in '89. Then 2 years later came back to Portland, still live here.
Definitely heard of Ground Kontrol. Will check it out sometime. In the meantime I'm happy with my emulator programs and can play pretty much anything on them.
Good chatting with you man.
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PLEASE anybody who remembers these in the Beaverton, Oregon area give me a shout.
Innerspace - The best, and a hotty by the name of Candy operated it.
Electric Palace - Great while it lasted, in the Beaverton mall.
Chuck E. Cheese - Hi Molly. Uncle owned the Beaverton franchise and she always hooked me up with tokens.
Malibu Gran Prix - Still going strong. but games most of their games suck now.
Wunderland - Still going strong, but caters mostly to little kid gambling (tickets).
Hey Cougar302B,
I remember all those except Innerspace.. there was a couple others in the area I remember that were around for a very short time. One was in Raleigh Hills by the ice rink, that was where I first played Space Panic and Mr. Do. They used to have Hydrotubes at Washington Square with a great arcade; they turned it into a Wunderland, now it's Wells Fargo. But before all that there was an Engine House Pizza more in the center of the lot with a great arcade. Other arcades I recall were Astrocade at Canterbury Square, Pac Pals in Garden Home, the Chocolate Chipper Mini Golf Course in Milwaukie, and there was some nickel arcade over on Sandy in NE Portland. I played at MANY Wunderlands back when they started; the ones I frequented were in Beaverton and in NE Portland on Halsey. I have perhaps the best memories from Malibu Gran Prix, playing Crazy Climber and Dig Dug to death. Now I have a Dig Dug cabinet in my bedroom, and a Neo Geo and Phoenix in my living room. I still want to have a cocktail Ms. Pac Man or Crazy Climber some day.
Thanks for the memories! Nice Thayer's Quest av, by the way.
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Rare arcade games you've seen
in Arcade and Pinball
Posted
Great Topic!
Thanks!
Another one I can think of is Sega/Gremlin's "Pulsar". Fairly good game with a tank picking up keys to open gates while being shot at by different colored spheres. The maze moves constantly making you scramble to get to the gate before you have to reroute suddenly.
Also.. "King And Balloon" by Game Plan/Namco. Weird Galaxian clone with balloons trying to steal the King (not Elvis, nor the Burger King mascot, but an actual king) from your castle. A goofy "Help! Help" (when grabbed), "Thank you!" (when saved), or a "Bye-Bye" (when taken away) would be vocalized by him.
I've noticed a lot of oceanside arcades and the old drive-in theaters had a good share of the obscure, hard-to-find games. Just my observation.
Off to karaoke.. catch y'all later!