Shannon's Blog - Quirks, Oddities, and Necessary Evils (awecade)

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I had to think about this section a little cause I was not sure how I was gonna go about it. Since I was trying to stick to a blog style format for something that is basically a list, it is a little hard. At this point I will just be updating this current entry as I find things. So just keep an eye on it. When it's complete maybe I'll bump it up in my blog list.

 

Odd little title there but it was the best I could come up with. As with every machine the awecade is gonna have it's quirks, oddities, and what I call "necessary evils". Meaning that due to the nature of the universe, or the intention of the design there aint much that can be done about it. I may not like it, but it's a necessary evil. Now when it comes to intention of design, the awecade unit does a really good job. So anything it does that is outside of that intent I label as quirks and oddities.

 

From what I can gather, in alot of ways the awecade units are a WIP (work in progress). I'm mostly referring to the software end of it. The awecades team is constantly toying around with and tweaking the machine. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing, cause that means if something is wrong chances are it will be corrected. Case in point I noticed a few descrepencies in the way the controls were labelled on the panel diagram that accompanies each game. When I mentioned them to the awecades team they were aware of them. In fact I will be receiving a USB stick that should correct these issues. Apparently my unit shipped off with an incorrect HD image whom's control settings did not match those of the control panel. Which is why I have not said anything about the control oddities just yet. Once I get the USB stick with the correct settings then I will comb thru again and mention any oddities in the control scheme.

 

Quirks

 

The laser disc games - OK... Now Dragon's Lair has an odd history for me. It's one of those games I have always been fascinated with. It's kinda fun to watch someone else play, but can be frustrating playing yourself. Well one of the little "quirks" with the awecade machines is exiting the game. In order to exit properly you must hold the exit button down until you get to the menu. If you don't, the controls wont work and BAM, you have to reboot. Not a real big issue, but it is sooooo easy to get exciteable and slap that exit button a little too quickly.

 

Oddities

 

Demo mode - The awecades unit's demo mode is neat, and it even allows you to start a game while it is in it. Problem is, there's no sound! A quick slap of the exit button, and then reloading does the trick.

 

Overlay/Control Panel - The Atari games have a nice little overlay that shows the player 1/2 buttons. They even blink accordingly. They even include instructions on how to play the game. Problem is, some of them are perfectly clear, whereas others you can barely read.

 

Light Gun games - The light gun games are cool, and the gun is even accurate. But darn, they sure can be hard. If you go to the killer list of video games and look at the actual original units you will notice that most of them had some type of riftle "mounted" to the unit. This may have something to do with the difficulty. One nice thing though is the trackball really helps out!

 

Necessary evils

 

Scandisk - I never thought that I would label Bill Gates as a necessary evil, but here it is. Depending on when you turn off the machine you may have a scandisk screen come up. I call it a necessary evil, because unless you want a scrambled hard drive (read: cross linked sectors) it is necessary for this process to run. But it is a definite reminder that you are not in an arcade, but Bill Gates evil world of Windows and emulated arcade machines. It's kinda jarring.

 

Pluses - I kinda plunked this here until I can decide what to do with it.

 

High scores - It saves your high scores so you can have braggin rights

 

Gun games - A definite score by awecades team is the Exidy license. You get a bunch of cool light games and quite a few sleeper hits in here. I find that the trackball also comes in handy in regards to the light gun games.

 

Overlays/instructions - The atari arcade games typically have an overlay with the flashing player 1 and player 2 buttons, along with instructions. Pretty nice, but look under oddities though for a little flaw..

 

User (hackable) expandable - This is one of those "Duh huh" moments. Curt once described this machine as a "designed for gamers who want a turnkey, zero maintenance system". They unit comes with an "awecome control panel utility" the most obvious use of is for people who wanna do their own modifications. Plus I got to thinking this is the guy who designed the flashback 2 (which allows you to hack a cartridge port onto it). I will post info in regards to this as I get to that aspect.

 

Minuses

 

Trackball sensitivity - This was a tough one cause I think years of playing arcade games on consoles have tainted my ability to gauge this. But I'm pretty sure that the trackball sensitivity could use just "a little" tweaking. I'm supposed to be receiving a USB stick with such adjustments. More on this later.

 

No Pause Key - When the phone rings, mother nature calls, or your kid's call it's really disheartining to drag yourself away from the machine knowing full well your gonna loose all your lives doing so. I'm beginning to wish I asked them to slap an extra button on there for me and program it to the "P" key.

 

Dip Switches - Most games allow you to set such things as number of starting players, difficulty, and when bonus lives are received. Unfortunately this ability is not there. I considered slapping this under "necessary evil" cause I think this might fall into the "intention of the awecades design" classification.

 

So there you have it. This section is kind of a WIP, like the awecade unit itself. But I will try to refine it as I go.

 

 

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