link love 08-15-08
Arcade Mania, the new book on the Japanese arcade scene by Brian Ashcraft and Jean Snow, is now available for pre-order, at a very reasonable fourteen bucks. There’s also a Flickr group.
Jason Scott shares some neat Karateka trivia. I have no idea if the trick worked on the Atari 8-bit version, but then again I never tried putting the disk in upside-down.
Also from Dtoid, Games time forgot: Space Ace. Poe’s Pizza, the place we’d trek to and burn our allowance on, had Space Ace in it’s lineup for quite some time. Still, for a kid on a limited budget, laserdisc titles were several places down the preferability list, as playtime could be painfully brief until you mastered the game.
Hey wow, SEGA discovered a roomfull of games, from back when SEGA games were good. /TEAR 9-9-99 NEVER FORGET
Filed under MLP, arcade, books, nostalgia, video games | Comment (1)The TRON design documents.
I came across this fascinating collection of documents last night while digging around some of the less-travelled corners of the internet, searching for specs and background on the TRON cabinet I’m restoring.
This following bit, from Dave Nutting’s response after attending the TRON design meeting, is particularly wonderful, and shows how little things in the game industry have really changed:
(by the way, Bill is Bill Adams, designer and developer of the game, and George is George Gomez, visual designer, and the guy responsible for the look of the cabinet)
Anyway, here are the goods. The design documents, outlining the seven (!) mini-games and basic gameplay features, a couple Disney memos regarding assets, and Dave Nutting’s followup mail about the game to Dave Marofske, then President of Midway.
TRON Design Document: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
Disney memos: [1, 2]
Daving Nutting mail [1, 2]
…or just download the whole collection.
link love 08-07-08
The Game Libratory. Library plus laboratory, the project aims to collect gaming hardware from the entire history of our industry, assembling it all in one place where it can be accessed for cultural studies and scientific use (and hopefully a LAN party or two). [via andre]
Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice’s excellent A History of Gaming Platforms series continues on Gamasutra, this time with a personal favorite of mine, the Atari 8-Bit Computer. A book is in the works.
The Last Guy, available soon on PSN, is a clever rescue the civilians during the zombie apocalypse game that uses real-world satellite maps for the gameplay stages. As a promo, they’ve released a web version that builds the play level from a submitted web address.
Looking to fill out your Sega collection? CAG nebrazca78 is auctioning off a ton of Genesis, 32X, and Master System gear. I’m gonna keep an eye on a couple of those 32X titles.
Filed under MLP, nostalgia, video games | Comment (0)
