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Retro extravaganza!
Download all 21 issues of DC Comics’ Atari Force, one of the more ah, interesting Atari licensing deals of the 1980s. The original pack-in issues (telling a previous story) are also available.
Scott Evans, curator of AtariGames.com, recently uploaded the CAX 2009 Atari alumni discussion panel. Available in 5 parts, Arcade Heroes has bundled them all into a single post.
The birth of an industry: Ralph Baer and His All-Purpose Boxes.
For the ZX Brits: 25 Years of Crash.
Filed under arcade, MLP, nostalgia, video games | Comment (0)Pinball Hall of Fame’s new home.
On Tuesday, November 3rd, Tim Arnold’s Pinball Hall of Fame reopened in its permanent location, a 10,000 sq ft former tile store across from the Liberace Museum here in Las Vegas.
I dropped by last night a few minutes before closing, and took a handful of photos of the new space.
American Laser Games
In 1990, five years after the birth, boom, and death of the arcade laserdisc craze, a small spin-off company called American Laser Games released Mad Dog McCree, a live-action laserdisc light-gun game.
Mad Dog McCree was based on Robert Grebe’s I.C.A.T. (Institute for Combat Arms and Tactics) system, a police trainer built around an IBM PC, a modified handgun, and a series of pre-recorded scenarios that could be selected at will by the training officer.
From Game Chronicles, here’s how ALG’s laserdisc arcade setup worked:
All nine games were filmed on location in New Mexico and Chicago. Once filming was complete, it was then edited and transferred to laser disc. ALG designed a RAM/ROM software board that could attach to the Amiga 500 computer. This board provided the game software that controlled the Sony LDP-1450 laser disc player. The hardware was the same for all nine games with the exception of the RAM/ROM board and the laser disc. The guns used in all of the games were aluminum casting with a photo-optic diode. When the trigger was pressed, the computer whitened the screen for an instant to allow the diode to detect a particular pixel on the screen. This action registered a “splotch” on the screen for the game player to see. It also told the computer to make the laser disc player scan to the correct scene (either the game player getting shot or the bad guy getting shot).
Moderately successful in the arcades, American Laser Games then looked to the home market, focusing development efforts on Trip Hawkins’ unsuccessful 3DO console, and then the PC market, until a 1999 buyout by Her Interactive (itself an earlier spin-off of ALG).
One year later, Digital Leisure, the current holder of the Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace franchises, acquired the development and licensing rights to the entire American Laser Games catalog. They then published light-gun compatible PC versions of most of the ALG titles — unfortunately, cooperative play was omitted, and all of the Digital Leisure home releases were single player experiences only. That is until this year, with the release of the Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack (featuring Mad Dog McCree, Mad Dog McCree 2: The Lost Gold, and The Last Bounty Hunter) for the Wii. B-movie gaming at it’s finest.
And now here, just for you dear reader, are some of the highlights of the American Laser Games library…
Filed under arcade, video games | Comments (2)link love 080709
It’s burger Friday! Today’s pick: Burger Bar. It’s gonna be delicious.
The Dreamcast User Top 100 Poll. Give Rez and Typing of the Dead some love.
Who’s Buying, a Jet Set Games side project, is now in the App Store. Go buy it and get drunk. [Bonus: try and see how many concurrent balls you can get going in a single player Multiball session]
Keeping The Cabinet Alive, an interview with the owner of Austin’s Arcade UFO.
Another bonus chapter from Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice’s Vintage Games is now available: The History of Robotron: 2084 – Running Away While Defending Humanoids.
Filed under arcade, MLP, nostalgia, propaganda | Comment (0)EVO 2009, Tournament Day 2.
“Despite your manners, I like your style. Let me buy you a drink.”
