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Mini Arcade Alert!


simbalion

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Wait....are there color pacman mini arcade cabinets out now??? Are these LED, LCD???

It's a wannabe VFD look for the style of it, just more detailed (a bit) than the old Coleco one, and uses some sampled audio from the game. The company decided to cheap out and downgrade their units from last years Centipede and Qbert using a real LCD screen and NOAC with a rom on there.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyp1lRe0J9o

 

Ahh...I see that now. Starts to make me question their honesty when they say they will continue with Centipede/Qbert style LCDs at Walmart. Still, it would seem they did that to use a portrait monitor layout. The Nintendo cartridge of PacMan was landscape next to a score column, so on an LCD with a NOAC, it would end up pretty small. And we did double dog dare them to give us color Pacman. Licensing the rom could be an issue also, where these liquid crystal and 4 color things are almost a mechanical approximation. But, you'd think if they can license the IP for the name, what's the problem with the actual game?

 

pac-man-usa-tengen.png?itok=Pv3bWJZv

It's an improvement over the B&W version, but then ya gotta wonder what are 5 and 6 supposed to be? Are those the 4 color Qbert and Frogger or something??? Who knows. As long as it's in a real mini arcade cab design, I'll probably get one. My stormtroopers need an arcade in their vintage death star play set. :grin:

Edited by JBerel
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I guess some folks may like the VFD version of asteroids, but I can't even see how you would move across the screen, and to rotate you'd be jumping positions. I'll just reserve judgement until I see the mini cabinet design. They've proven they use different electronics in those units, so the jury is still out. But I ain't buying asteroids if the mini cab is like that.

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There's an equally cheap and simple fix for that Asteroids to make it right, yet not using an LCD those tools were too dim witted to think up.

 

Notice that screen how it's made of a heap of row of little dots and as the rocks appear to go by they light up different? They could have left the tower defense 8 way ship wheel out of the middle and just made a little vector wannabe like little triangle of dots for the ship. Then that could have freely moved around the area and allowed you to take shots at the rocks. Same panel could have done it without the bs in the middle which is a real shame.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyp1lRe0J9o

 

Ahh...I see that now. Starts to make me question their honesty when they say they will continue with Centipede/Qbert style LCDs at Walmart. Still, it would seem they did that to use a portrait monitor layout. The Nintendo cartridge of PacMan was landscape next to a score column, so on an LCD with a NOAC, it would end up pretty small. And we did double dog dare them to give us color Pacman. Licensing the rom could be an issue also, where these liquid crystal and 4 color things are almost a mechanical approximation. But, you'd think if they can license the IP for the name, what's the problem with the actual game?

 

pac-man-usa-tengen.png?itok=Pv3bWJZv

It's an improvement over the B&W version, but then ya gotta wonder what are 5 and 6 supposed to be? Are those the 4 color Qbert and Frogger or something??? Who knows. As long as it's in a real mini arcade cab design, I'll probably get one. My stormtroopers need an arcade in their vintage death star play set. :grin:

Fun fact: Namco converted Pacman and Ms Pacman and a few others to landscape mode for the plug n plays but they play exactly like the arcade. Layout or something changed ever so slightly in Pacman though so vintage patterns won't work but the gameplay is the identical.
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Fun fact: Namco converted Pacman and Ms Pacman and a few others to landscape mode for the plug n plays but they play exactly like the arcade. Layout or something changed ever so slightly in Pacman though so vintage patterns won't work but the gameplay is the identical.

 

I judge a conversion of Pac-Man by its fidelity to the original arcade machine's patterns. If I can hide out underneath the middle T on the right side when starting a new game on level 1, then I know the patterns are arcade authentic.

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I judge a conversion of Pac-Man by its fidelity to the original arcade machine's patterns. If I can hide out underneath the middle T on the right side when starting a new game on level 1, then I know the patterns are arcade authentic.

I tried this on the plug and play and it takes quite a while but eventually you get eaten. You see me parking it in this video. Pacman died literally ten seconds after I stopped filming... :dunce:

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I tried this on the plug and play and it takes quite a while but eventually you get eaten. You see me parking it in this video. Pacman died literally ten seconds after I stopped filming... :dunce:

 

 

I tried it on this, but I may not have let the ghosts go for long enough :

 

Edited by Great Hierophant
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I forgot about that tactic, but more importantly that clone looks stunning. Shame companies too so many lousy short cuts and stupid interpretations with simple arcade titles on the NES when it really wasn't necessary. Be cool if there were more follow ups like Ms Pac Man and Galaga.

I agree that is amazing. There aren't enough homebrew arcade remakes for NES.

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Thanks for the thorough review. In short, they did the new Frogger right, but Asteroids is a huge, huge dissapointment. Makes me less interested in any of them except for a project box.

 

Soooo, what would be the end all, be all best mini arcade case to build a Pi arcade in? I've seen the conversions of these mini games, but in practice, they're a little too small and the controls are pretty poor for real play in my experience.

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Here's some further weirdness to add to the pot; the ToysRUS version of Asteroids:

 

Asteroids-Mini-Arcade-Game--pTRU1-254139

 

So, what on Earth is actually going on, I wonder. Did they simply not have a ROM available to use for Asteroids? Very very strange. The WalMart cabinet at least looks very nice for display purposes.

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Basically the company is being quiet about it, but they have some exclusivity deal with Walmart.

 

If you buy from Walmart since the last generation you get a LCD screen with a NOAC and ROM in there with a bigger cabinet(deeper) which is why you have the 7800 Emulated Centipede and the NES Q-Bert with the Nintendo imagery removed but still the KOnami jingle if you pause it. This go around, they oddly cheaped out either way on Asteroids as you get the bleh LCD above, or you get the backlit LED array or whatever it is from Walmart. Then with Frogger at Walmart best I can tell it's FROGGIE the homebrew for 7800 slightly tweaked, or you get the Excalibur games coleco like wannabe VFD style game elsewhere.

 

TO back up the cheapo line they redid Centipede and Q-Bert in the faux VFD style for non-Walmart stores.

 

Basically if you want the GOOD version of any of these, go to walmart.

 

EDIT: They had to have a ROM, it was a choice on Asteroids. The 7800 had Asteroids, and there is a 'NES hack NOAC version' of it online that was done for one version of the early Atari Flashback devices (which is the same rom set where Centipede was extracted from.)

Edited by Tanooki
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That seems so costly to make two or three versions so completely different, and then for some or all of them to suck just doesn't make sense. It would seem to make the most sense to do the better versions with a noac and simply slap different stickers and a rom in them. lower production costs, and better quality.

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With apologies to Q*Bert,

 

Why the $&@#%£¥ is anyone making segmented LCD games to sell in 2017?!

Because nostalgia. I grew up on segmented LCD games because my mom was too "thrifty" to buy me an NES as a child. So in my humble opinion, I kinda think the LCD games are funner than people give them credit for.

 

And yes, this technology is about as outdated now in 2017 as a new Atari 2600 is in 2017, but they are fun to play if you approach them with an open mind.

 

I still have my old Game N Watch LCDs like Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, and Donkey Kong, repurchased Tiger Mouse Maze a year or two ago, have the Pacman and Space Invaders LCD units from last Christmas, and will possibly buy more of them as Christmas Season rolls in.

 

I really don't see what the big deal is. They are banking on nostalgia for vintage toys, and these trinkets provide. The updated arcade samples are nice to have compared to the blips and beeps of the old chirp generators and peizo speakers they used to use in vintage hardware.

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