I took the drive up north the other day to pickup that ‘Vbas’ Jamma Arcade machine I won on eBay last weekend. Thankfully my measurements were just about right as with a bit of manoeuvring and taking a few back seat out of the MPV there was just enough room….for the plug and that’s about it
Getting back late and after dark, I dragged it into the garage (yay, finally I’ve got an arcade machine with wheels on the back) I reluctantly left it there until today and with four days off for the Easter break and a little more free time (and light) , I couldn’t wait to get out there for a looksee this afternoon.
Here it is.
Overall the woodwork is in really nice condition. Sure there’s a few bit scuffs here and there but there doesn’t appear to be anything that looks like it’s about to drop off. It could do with a good cleaning though. The rear panels are present and the the T-Molding on both sides is complete with no chipped or loose bits.
I’m also really happy with the bezel glass too, there’s not a mark on it and all the paint on the reverse side is intact and has not flaked. Likewise, (boring though it is – it will be swapped out soon) the ‘V-BAS’marquee is unmarked and complete with both retaining clips
A bit rough down at the bottom side but still sound and the metal work will probably get a fresh coat of paint.
The control panel exterior is in really nice condition with no major scuff, rips or unsightly cigarette burns. Both joysticks seem to be o.k, centred and have a microswitch audible click on all directions. Most of the buttons seem to be good too although there’s a couple on the right hand side that might need replacing or have new switches fitted. Either way, I’ve got plenty of spares so no major problems there. The joystick mount bolts are looking a bit rough and rusty though so I’ll treat them to some new chromed ones.
Clean me!
The eBay seller mentioned that the coin mechanism is fully working but the coin box door at the bottom will need a new lock.
As you can see here, the bottom coin box door is looking a bit rough compared to the coin mech door. I’ll give it a good rub down and a fresh coat of hammerite and hopefully it’ll look much better. It seems to shut o.k though so at least there’s no dents beat out etc.
The seller also mentioned that the monitor was dead but the game board was working. I thought I’d check it out myself and true enough, no picture on screen but the coin and marquee lights up and the familiar SNK startup sound could be heard through the speakers.
My next job is to have a looksee inside and get a feel for where the PC, Monitor and various components will go……it’s here that I hit a snag. When i collected the cab, we were far too busy nattering about good old games, I completely forgot to ask for the keys to the rear panel door I could ask him to mail them down to me but with the holidays etc, there would be no chance of getting these anytime soon and I’m itching to make a start on the Mame conversion.
It’s a cheap tubular lock on the back anywasy and easily replaced and so I broke out the power tools ….and watched a few lock picking Youtube videos.
I’m having an impromptu afternoon off working this afternoon – yesterday, our central heating boiler decided not to central heat anymore and wasn’t expecting a to be able to find an available heating engineer so soon considering last weekends rapid drop in temperatures and the huge dumping of snow we’ve had these past few days. Any-ho, he’s on his way so whilst I wait for him I thought I’d catch up with my blog posts as free time has been a bit elusive these past few weeks.
Here’s a selection of games that’s been keeping me entertained this week (and the last week too as I didn’t get chance to post then either).
It’s no secret, I do love a good dose of Pinball, be it on a real table or in digital format and there are many digital tables out there which, unbound from any restrictions of a physical table often contain many weird and wonderful designs and features.
One such digital pinball game, really takes this to the max.
Devil Crash (Devil Crush) Sega Megadrive (1990).
Devils crash expands the pinball experience by presenting the main game table in multiple parts. The initial table is split into three sections, each with their own set of goals, bonuses and objectives to shoot for and expands on these by adding even more sub tables, again with there own set of goals. I haven’t managed to visit them all yet, but at the last count, playing Devils Crash is like playing on a pinball table which spans over eight tables.
I’ve only ever seen the PC Engine version running but never played it myself so was hoping that the Megadrive port going to be as good.
Visual, it certainly looks fantastic and although I’m not a horror fan, am loving the Gothic/Splatterhouse/Doom-esq/Gieger/Demonic <insert red stuff> look to the entire table. The sound effects perfectly match the table too with plenty of cliché ghoulish laughing, screams and howls – The background music I find, can be a bit repetitive so i’d decided that anything by Metallica was perfectly suited.
Here’s the bottom of the table, lose the ball here and it’s game over my friend. Aim for the centre castle to help you seal up the gap between your flippers and/or plant the ball into ‘boney’ mouth on the right.
One of the amazing looking sub-tables.
Am also loving the centre section, which kinda reminds me of Bride of Pinbot where the ladies face changes after hitting certain targets. This time around though, instead of robot to girl, we get girl to vamp to aged vamp and on to demonic snake thing….eek!… I’m sure she’s a lovely person though..just misunderstood
But all that goodness would be wasted if the ball physics and framerate turned out to be a bit iffy and thankfully, Devils Crash on the Megadrive doesn’t suffer with any of this. A great pinball game well worth checking out you ever get the chance.
The first time I played Buggy Boy in the arcades was at Smiths arcade on the East coast. They had the huge triple screen monster of a cabinet version (although not the largest according to KLOV) and I remember it had red rope netting added to the rear window and sides to enhance that offroad buggy experience. I’m not sure if this was added by the arcade operator themselves as I can’t find any reference to it being on as standard but it’s something that has always stuck in my mind. Funny how all the little obscure little details often do.
The port to the C64 by Elite surely ranks up as one of the best arcade racing games on Commie and a sure inclusion to pretty much everyones top lists of C64 games? Like most, I’ve played this over and over again, but it wasn’t until I was reminded of the fact that I’ve not actually loaded this in ages after seeing it included in NikNice’s ipad C64 games collection (see previous post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/niknices-collection-of-c64-games-for-ipad-and-iphone/
You all know the game so I won’t go into it, but if like myself and its been a while, I hope these will also serve as a reminder to do so again soon.
It might not have the large vehicle graphics of the arcade original but of all the home ports, surely the C64 conversion has got to be one of the best Buggy Boy experiences – especially the speed when comparing it to other home ports.
I’ve always like the look of the the ZX spectrum version too, especially the visuals which despite the lack of colour are pretty darn close to the arcade original. However, it runs incredibly slow and the camera angle is way to low, your Buggy blocks you view. It’s a shame as this could really have been something special. I occasionally play the Amiga version and a friend of mine recommended the Atari ST version so that’s added to the play list for another day.
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I had no idea this game existed until receiving a response Youtube video featuring an arcade gaming convention From the 3 or 4 seconds of game footage I thought, woo that looks cool, in a sorta Salamander-organic way. Little did I know that it was actual a sequel.
Salamander 2 – Arcade/Mame (1992)
I’ve not really got far into the game yet but so far am looking the levels and bosses. Sure, apart from a huge graphical update there’s that much extra going on here but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just more of that Salamander/Gradius goodness.
One ugly mother.
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I’ve also been playing a handful of classic vector based arcade games using an emulator that’s designed to accurately reproduce a little bit better than say with MAME. Games like Asteroids, Rip off, Tempest, Gravitar and Lunar Lander.
Play Asteroids in Mame and then on AAE and you’ll instantly notice the difference.
You need a fairly beefy PC to run some of the games though and some seem to run better than others despite having less objects on screen. Initially I tried tried to run Omega Race on my Netbook and it just groaned and stuttered at 1 – 2 fps but on my main desktop things ran much better and am now toying with the idea of adding this emulator to my own arcade/Mame cabinet (yes I will finish it one day!).
AAE adds lots of new graphics options to closely present what the original arcade machines/monitors produced so for example, you can set screen burn, vector phosphor glow levels, motion blur and light trail length as well as all manner of tweakable controls to suit your preferences.
Arcade bezel and overlay art is supported in AAE too and worth tracking down to complete the illusion. You’ll also need to hunt down the rom images as these are not included in the download.
A note on Rom files -
Out of the box I couldn’t get AAE to work correctly with my Mame set and on closer inspection of the error/log file that’s produced after running a game, it appears that my roms are named incorrectly – or that they are correct but the AAE uses a different naming convention?
- for example, AAE might call for a rom image called 30210.01 but my image was called 30210-01.fr. Concidering that each game might contain a collection of anything between 6 – 40 rom images, that’s alot of file renaming you might need to do – not including the additional game revisions and prototypes. It’s a bit of a chore but , the emulator is so good I think the reward is so worth the input.
AAE was last updated in 2008 with little advancements after that, but there still appears to be a thriving forum community that should be able to answer any questions you might have.
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Lunch time web/flash gaming has mainly collection classics like Frogger and Space Invaders and one i’ve been playing quite a bit of is yet again, another Depth Charge port.
The same classic mechanics of the arcade original are here – bomb the subs within a set time and avoid the torpedoes. However, this flash version differs somewhat by adding the ability to set the depth of you charge. So not only have you got to get the timing right, you also need to figure out the correct depth too…and don’t think those sub driver will stay at the same depth too…the dirty little rotters!
This version has upgrades too allowing you to outfit your warship with faster engines, increased reloading times and armour plating.
Able Seaman Stiggy at your service Cappy…..is it lunchtime yet?
My top tip, try to upgrade your ships speed first as without that you won’t be able to react quick enough to sink the subs or avoid incoming fire.
Looking back through some very old gaming magazines, I notice that most of the screen shots for those early arcade games often look kinda blurred – I’m guessing because screen capture was all about some bloke with a camera standing in front of an arcade cabinet and shooting at high speed to reduce the amount of blur? It got me thinking, what if I went the opposite way shot with a loooong exposure?
I set my camera up this evening, manually focused on my Netbook running a selection of arcade games, set the iso to 100, exposure to 30 seconds and with joypad in one hand, remote release in the other, I switched the lights off.
Check out some of these Donkey Kong inspired movie scenes by pixel artist BazNet. All we need now is a talented coder who could actually mod DK for us so we can actually play these
This first one from ESB has got to be my favourite.
We’ve been planning a drive out to the coast for a few months now but with one thing and another we didn’t quite seem to make it. Yesterday evening all plans converged on making the trip out early today so up at stupid o’clock this morning with flasks of hot stuff, sausage buttie’s, winter wear and boots….huskies, rope, icepick etc etc
It’s about a two hour drive and at this time of morning we had pretty much the roads to ourselves. When the sun did wake, darkened skies turned to cool blues with hardly a cloud in the sky…absolutely perfect.
Well, that was until a few miles out from the coast when we noticed that many of the roof tops, gardens and parked cars were covered with a heavy dusting of snow. When we arrived the blue skies were gone, the icy wind blowing off the sea had intensified and the sleet and snow began.
We sat and waited…
It got worse…
We sat and waited…
It got worse…
We sat and, as if a switch had been flicked, we were back to blue skies, sunshine and the snow clouds heading away and further inland.
Cool shapes on the sand left after the tide.
Making the most of it in the event that the snow decided to do a u-turn, we our took our stroll along the beach…and after a while, time to win a bet I had with a couple of my friends at work.
I win Rob, boy was it nippy!
Back on dry land, with warm soup and sandwichs we headed into town to see if anything was open. Pretty much everywhere was shut up for the winter months but we did spot a couple of the larger amusement arcades that were open for business. Remembering our visit from last year, I wondered if the Mirage Arcade still had….?
Woot woot, yay it does – time for a spot of retro gaming.
I’ve blogged about this multi-cade before so feel free to click on the link below for more details – If you ever spot one out in the wild, you’ve got to check them out.
I tried out the trackball on the cabinet again on games like Liberator, Golden Tee and Missile Command and it works really well although I found it to be a little too sensitive for spinner games like Arkanoid and Breakout.
I also had a blast on Robotron and actually lasted into a few more waves this time around – maybe all that research is paying off! I finished off with a game I’ve been playing a lot of this past week on the 2600 – Gravitar. I must get this booted on MAME at some point over the weekend , such a great game.
Our fun and games over and we headed back home…..although fun and games was about to begin again! Five miles out from the coast, clunk, bang, growwwwwl, instantly my little Peugeot was transformed into something that sounded like a hot-rod Hemi Cuda. You see, my exhaust pipe had fallen off :-O
We called our breakdown cover and (thankfully) didn’t have a long wait until emergency repairs were completed and we was on our merry way again. All crappy boy racer cars on the road just couldn’t compete : -) Hear me Roar!
I’ve used I-Funbox to browse to the app/documents/rom folder and dropped a couple of zipped roms from my iMame collection. After re-scanning the roms within the app, they all showed up on the game list. Also, no problems detected when dropping the files into this folder even though I’m running iOS 6.0.1.
Yay it seems to work! Go Frog.
I’ve added a few more roms but some appear not to work. I’m pretty sure it’s because my existing iMame rom set is quite old so I’ve since replaced them with a few examples from the .0139u1 set. This time, all appears to be working fine.
Awesome-ness – WWF Wrestlefest is now supported with this version of Mame and the iCade compatibility means I use can also use my 8-Bitty Bluetooth controller. I fear those few jobs I’d planned to do around the house might be put off for a bit
Got an iPhone/Ipad…download Gridlee on the app store right now….it probably won’t be around forever.
Missed iMame when it appeared briefly in the Apple App Store? Not got a jailbroken iOS device and want to play arcade classics? Eager to run arcade games on that iCade you received for Christmas?
Well, there might be a chance afterall with a new (free) game that’s appeared on App Store.
Gridlee is an arcade game that was originally designed for hardware designed by Bally / Sente. It’s an interesting looking game and well worth a look in itself, however the real interesting bit is that it uses a emulator wrapper to allow it to run….and that wrapper appears to be a version of Mame.
Although I haven’t tried this myself yet, it’s alleged that like Mame it has a Rom folder and if you use something like iExplorer or I-funbox and drop other game Roms into this folder and restart the Gridlee app, you’ll be presented with the familiar Mame games list including access to all the usual emulator options (including iCade support).
Even more interesting to those who already have Mame on their iOS devices is that this particular wrapper is based on Mame version 1.3 (.139u1) which is a much more feature rich version than the version of iMame that appeared on the App Store.
It stands to reason that Gridlee might not stay on the App Store for long, so head on over there right now and pick up yourself a copy ASAP.
If you’re frustrated by the lack of Mame port for the iPhone Arcadie, check out the iCade Jr which is currently on sale for just $9.99 at ThinkGeek. If its anything like its bigger brother then it’ll be a great bit of kit and the Jnr gives you twice the number of buttons compared to the Arcadie and uses the entire iPhone/iPod screen including portrait and landscape modes.
Very tempting at this price considering that they’re usually $49.99.
It might be cold, grey and damp out there today but inside it warm and full of the joys of summer with clear blue skies, big fluffly white clouds and three tropical soundtracks. Yup, Outrun is back and and this time, thanks to coder DJYT, a new game engine has been released called ‘Cannonball’. Using the original roms Cannaball has many enhancements and improvements over the original and can also used to run Outrun at a very impressive 60 frames per second
I had issues getting it to run at first but then noticed that Cannonball calls for an Outrun Rom file called ‘epr-10381a.132′ which is not in the revision B Rom set. Either rename the file to epr-10381b.132 or copy the rom file from Revision A set.
Game Controls are as follow -
Cursors: Steering
Z: Accelerate
X: Brake
Space: Gear Change
5: Insert Coin
1: Start
F1: Pause
F2: Advance a frame when paused
F3: Toggle/Freeze timer
At first I thought, yeah it looks pretty impressive and smooth at 60 fps but it wasn’t until I switched back to the original 30 fps did I notice that how MUCH of a difference the enhanced version looks. Play, for example the first (left) path to get to the area with the overhead stone structures…it looks flippin awesome, you won’t go back to Mame again for your Outrun fix
Woot woot, party time!
Still shots won’t show how smooth this looks at 60fps but I highly recommend running two version of Cannonball configured at both 30 and 60 fps. Pause both (F1) and run them together.
My desktop – 60fps on the left, 30fps on the right….or it it the other way around
At the moment there’s isn’t a frontend menu system for the game so for example, if you wish to change the graphics properties and other game options you will need to do this by editing the games config file with notepad or similar.
I’ve found that if you select the fullscreen toggle, the audio is effected slightly, therefore I prefer to run Cannonball in Windowed mode but set the scaler mode to either 3 or 4.
Here’s what my config looks like – <Widescreen, Windowed, Scale 4, Normal difficulty, Normal traffic, Auto gears.
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<!–
Video Settings
–>
<video>
<!– FPS
0 = 30 FPS. Optimized Mode (Slow computers)
1 = 30/60 FPS. Original Game Mode. (The original experience)
2 = 60 FPS. Smooth Mode. (Full 60fps)
–>
<fps>2</fps>
<!– Set Screen Mode: 0 is windowed, 1 is full-screen –>
<mode>0</mode>
<!–
Windowed Mode Settings
Scale: Scale or zoom factor for window mode. 1 is original size.
–>
<window>
<scale>4</scale>
</window>
<!–
Fullscreen Mode Settings
Stretch: Set to 1 to stretch the screen and remove borders.
–>
<fullscreen>
<stretch>0</stretch>
</fullscreen>
</video>
<!–
Game Engine Settings
–>
<engine>
<!– Game Time:
0 = Easy (80 seconds)
1 = Normal (75 seconds)
2 = Hard (72 seconds)
3 = Very Hard (70 seconds)
1= Infinite Time
–>
<time>4</time>
<!– Traffic Difficulty:
0 = Easy,
1 = Normal,
2 = Hard,
3 = Very Hard
1 = No Traffic
–>
<traffic>0</traffic>
<!– Advertise Sound In Attract Mode –>
<advertise>1</advertise>
<!– Gears:
0 = Manual (Click to shift, for normal play)
1 = Manual (Hold to shift, for cabinet play)
2 = Automatic
–>
<gear>2</gear>
</engine>
Many thanks to DJYT for the awesome-ness release. For more info, visit the project page -
Just got back from another damn fine weekend of retro gaming goodness at the Retro Computer Museum.
Despite a nip in the air, +40 classic computers, consoles, one projector and a collection of eager gamers was all that was needed to raise the temps and to get everyone enjoying themselves. There was a couple of new faces this time around which is always nice to see as well as the ‘usual suspects’ for guaranteed laughs and fun.
I’ve not taken a great deal of photos this time around as I was rather enjoying quite a bit of gaming on the Saturday including copious amounts of Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. Here’s a handful of the quick snaps I made in between bouts.
This weekend was a chance to take a good look at some of RCM’s new toys like this Memotech MTX 512 complete with Rememorizer addon board which provides additional VGA output, SD card storage and 512k of extra RAM. With this much tech, I’m pretty sure our MTX 512 can now recreate our own Kelly LeBrock
The ZXpand on the ZX81 still continues to impress and at one point we had one of the old ’81′s running at 20mhz! The game ‘Mayhem’ still continues to be an event favourite and high score sessions to beat Stu’s 72 points where attempted. I think Soph came closest with 60 odd points.
JT was happy to test fit one of his SwinSID C64 SID chip replacements into one of RCM’s breadbins and take it for a test drive. Big thanks for letting me have one of these puppies myself. It’s currently sat in my C64 next to me playing a bumper crop of High Score Ballads from CSDB . More on the SwinSID later on.
I also managed to pick up another homemade SD2IEC for my Commodores as my own has developed a bit of a fault. Hopefully the chip will be of use to you JT?
Mike brought along his Android based MK808 mini computer which is so small it makes the Raspberry Pi look huge…and to think, something that small can run pretty much all console emulators (even PSX) full screen in hi def! XBMC runs beutifully on it as well as PC games like GTA3. Add to that all those lovely Google apps and for around £45, i’m highly tempted to get one of these myself. I’ll be researching a bit more on the Mk808 these coming days as its a real tinker’ers tech toy!
What was also impressive was Sophie’s new Atari Mega STE. Some of the demo’s running on this boxy monster were veeeery impressive. This was the first time I’ve seen a Mega STE before and despite it looking a bit ugly, was quite an impressive piece of kit it was. Soph was telling me it’s one of those rare items that pop up from time to time and she’d managed to locate this faulty unit on eBay in Germany which was being sold for next to nothing as it was faulty. Having won the item, said fault turned out to be very was minor and is all in working condition again. Top marks Soph!
Sunday was all about relaxed, chillin and having a natter and I spent a while trying out a someones Android tablet – one of those very impressive – now it’s a netbook, now it’s a tablet Asus Transformers thingymebobs. We wanted to see if we could get Mame and other emulators working with my iCade. After detecting via Bluetooth and pairing successfully we tried a few emulators but couldn’t get it to work . Even mame4droid, with native icade support wouldn’t work. In the end, we downloaded a simple joystick app, mapped the controls of the iCade as keyboard inputs and used this configuration to set the control type for each emulator. This time it worked, and really well too. In fact, just as well as on the iPad with no lag or connection issues after that initial hiccup. With Christmas coming, and if you’re an Android owning retro gamer. Maybe think about adding one to your list to Santa?
Messing around with the iCade, messing around with the MSX.
Amongst the games played this weekend, there was a couple that seemed to stand out for me so i’ve added them to my list further exploration.
More digital pinball courtesy of ‘Ruiner’ on the Atari Jag. I’m still tempted to get a Jag now, even if it’s just for this one game.
Moon Cresta on the Dragon 64 (via multicart). Suprisingly a very faithful port of the arcade original…on a Dragon!
Strider II – Sega Master – I’ve not played this one before and was instantly hooked. Will be tracking down my own copy of this fun little run and gun sequel.
Soviet Strike – Playstation. I haven’t really played any of the ‘Strike’ games since Desert Strike on the Sega Megadrive but this 3d-ish incarnation on the Playstation was actually rather fun.
More Soul Caliber but not before resting ones aching wrists. Thanks to Levs for bringing the arcade sticks in, much better than standard controllers. Am now on a mission to find myself one!
Even better connected to the projector and the lights off.
All in all a rather splendid weekend of gaming with friends new and old. That pretty much wraps it up for gaming events this year and it was nice to have the last of 2012 finished off at home at the retro computer museum.
If you’ve got a few minutes to spare and fancy a quick old school gaming fix, check out this 1980′s classic from Taito.
‘Every balloon carries a bomb of deadly power’
Better do something about that then, so its your job to shoot them down before they decimate the land. Controls couldn’t be simpler, left/right and fire.
Move your gun across the bottom of the screen, aim and fire at the moving balloons above.
The balloons will also drop bombs which can be shot down if you’re accurate enough. If not, they’ll hit the ground causing a crater and will restrict your movement.
Crater to the left, crater to the right, can’t move….awaiting the inevitable.
Simple and fun, but despite being basic, I’m sure will see you return for just one more go.
Another Play Expo highlight was meeting Jim Bagley and playing on his newest project, the ‘Pac-Manic Miner-Man’ arcade machine. Jim is an oldschool programmer who has working for such giants like Ocean software and worked on some of their well know games and coin-op conversions. He’s a really nice chap to talk too and a regular guest at gaming events like this one.
For this project Jim has ported the ZX Spectrum version of Manic Miner to play on the same hardware PCB as Midway’s arcade classic Pac-Man. Bonkers I know, but when the chaps at custom arcade builders Turnarcades heard about it, they just had to give the project it’s own bespoke mini arcade cabinet.
Jim was all to happy to give me a tour including a looksee inside.
My friends Max and Jackie helped provide some of the side artwork and beta testing and so it was a real nice surprise for them to see that they’d been including in the game credits.
The cabinet should be making another appearance at the Retro Computer Museum members event in December so it’ll be nice to see it again away from the crowds at Play Expo.
One of the highlights for me was seeing and getting chance to play on Dave Brown’s miniature replica arcade machines. The Star Wars upright forms part of Dave’s collection which also includes Donkey Kong and Defender bartop machines as well as a twin joystick emulation centre control type thingie which was connected to a projector and was bags of fun…so much so that I’m seriously thinking about building my own.
However, back to the Star Wars cab. This thing is truly awesome and is completely scratch built by Dave to resemble the original Atari upright cabinet albeit in about half scale.
A a thing of beauty!
The workmanship on the molding around the screen is fantastic and perfectly detailed just like the original. You can see that a lot of work has gone into this.
Inside the mini cabinet houses a PC which is running Mame to play both Star Wars and Empire Strikes roms back on to the 7″ screen.
The decision to include a full size reproduction yoke control was a good move as it ensures that both games play really well. I think I got a few laughs whilst playing this at the weekend as I was wearing my X-Wing Rogue Squadron T-Shirt at the time
Lock S-Foils into attack position, StiGGy Five standing by…etc etc.
Here’s a quick video of someone playing it on Saturday and then me having a go one handed whilst I filmed and played Empire Strikes back.
If anyone has any more details on Dave’s cabinets and any build photographs I’d love to hear from you.
Urgh!, Spiders…not a huge fan myself and as it’s October, those little (big) critter like to drop in for a chat and to scare the living snot out of me and poor Mrs Stiggy. We had one in the bathroom the other week and I kid you not it was so big I could see it smiling at me. Thankfully in this country we don’t have some of those really nasty ones especially those that you wouldn’t want in your sleeping bag on a camping trip.
But I do like a spot of Black Widow though, the classic 1982 Atari arcade game that is.
I was playing this superb twin stick shooter just the other week on that modern/retro arcade cabinet I came across (see previous blog post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/retro-arcade-hunt-result/) and so yesterdays unveiling of a pretty spectacular PC remake was most welcome….unlike that one living in my Mame cabinet
The freeware remake is by Sokurah and is yet again, another superb example of a vector based remake to add to his equally superb back catalogue.
Options galore including multiple degrees of vector graphic glow, re-definable and tweakable controls systems including twin analogue stick control pads (my USB Logitec Rumble Pad2 works perfectly with it ) just to get it looking and playing just how you like it.
With afterglow set to ‘Normal’
No afterglow.
Gameplay is the same as the arcade original including the eggs and helpful but money stealing bug slayer.
I’ve been trying to capture some footage with HyperCam2 on my PC but for some reason I can’t capture any sound and the .avi file playback appears as if running at twice the speed no matter if I change the capture fps. Weird, but until I can fix that, I’ve found this gameplay video on Youtube…although, I think the afterglow was set to max here and so you’ll miss some of the detail.
Defend your web at all cost!
If you like this, I highly recommend checking out Sokurah other vector remakes including everyones favourites Omega Race, Rip Off, Star Castle, Space Fury & Zector.
I could ask him to mail them down to me but with the holidays etc, there would be no chance of getting these anytime soon and I’m itching to make a start on the Mame conversion.
