space invaders – Obsolete Gamer

I blew a lot of lunch money on that bad boy, but what really hooked me was when I got my first GAMEBOY… I loved the game for a simple reason….endless ammo!!! and endless replays..well… until he battery dies… I came out of the pin ball era where all you got for a quarter (thats about $50 in present day rates) was five metal spheres and it got really expensive really fast just learning how to play…. I could’ve bought a mustang with the cash I stuck in that tin box. With a Game boy I could play SI all night and all day…I have no memory of any traveling I did for about 18 months because my head was bent over the GB perfecting the hold and sweep tactic…whole smoking of incoming…I loved the hold and sweep technique….similar to a spray and pray in and FPS…just hold the trigger and move the canon back and forth…chicks just did not understand that their love would not have cured me. ~James C. Burns

The Arcade Room

J.A. Laraque

Space Invaders Arcade Flash Game

Developed by Taito, Space Invaders was released to the arcades in 1978. The game consisted of a laser cannon being controlled by the player whose job is to shoot down the attacking aliens. You can move from left to right and also hide behind barriers that protect you from the enemy’s fire. However, the barriers can be destroyed in time and one shoot from an invader kills you. The aliens themselves move side to side and will slowly move down and the more you kill the faster they go. You either kill them all or they kill you or they reach the ground and it is game over. There is also a UFO that flies across the very top of the screen, if you kill it you get bonus points.

Blog

Erik V

Donkey Kong: The start of a collection

The scan shown above is from the actual copy I picked up that day, thirty years ago. Given the many times I have thumbed through it (and drooled over it), in the months that followed that moment, it looks surprisingly fresh. The main selling point of the ColecoVision was a mouth-watering home conversion of Donkey Kong. A screen shot of it was put prominently on the front of the brochure. With the yellow high-light behind it, it stood out more than the actual console itself. And with reason. This was its killer app.

Editorials

Patrick Scott Patterson

Arcade Classics: What happened to them all?

Several arcade conversions have appeared on these popular treasure-hunting television programs in recent years, often without the people on the show seemingly aware of it. An episode of Pawn Stars saw someone bring three “Japanese Arcade Games” into the Las Vegas shop, two of which were conversions from Defender machines. The Ms. Pac-Man machine that appeared on an episode of Auction Hunters was actually a conversion of an original Pac-Man machine, a cabinet that is similar but quite different in many ways as well.

Blog

Patrick Scott Patterson

Everything you ever wanted to know about Pac-Man, but were afraid to ask

“The game studio I was a software developer for went under in 2008, and I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands,” he said. “I started playing a lot of Pac-Man using the MAME emulator and realized that, as much as I enjoy playing Pac-Man, it would be even more fun to reverse engineer the game and finally learn how the ghosts work ‘under the hood’, so to speak. So I set out to fill in the many gaps in the internet’s collective knowledge base on the inner workings of Pac-Man. The goal was to conclusively prove how every part of the game functioned, especially everything related to ghost behavior, and put everything I learned into one reference document to share with interested parties.”

Blog

J.A. Laraque

99: The Last War

The game plays like a mix between Galaga and Space invaders and features a shield button as well as a fire button. You can activate the shield before the vessel’s energy meter depletes to protect yourself against incoming missiles. Backgrounds depict a variety of locales, from futuristic cityscapes to moon surfaces, but it was 1985 so all the backgrounds are just static images.

Blog

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Totally Tiny Arcade

The main attractions of Totally Tiny Arcade are of course the arcade remakes themselves. Impressively, there are more than 20 of them available, each sporting excellent, chunky, retrotastic graphics and some equally impressive sounds, with each game spanning four levels. The games are inspired from an impressive variety of titles including Space Invaders, Spy Hunter, Pac-Man, Joust, Frogger and even the Atari 2600 version of E.T., though -unfortunately- not all of them are equally good.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

E3 2011: Classic Gaming Museum

They had what I called a 80’s living room complete with a couch, a radiation level 6 television and an Atari 2600 and best of all you could sit down and play. Now, while I was still just a baby when the 2600 launched I remember setups that looked exactly like this.

Arcade Games

Simon Lethbridge

Outrun

Simon explains how the original Outrun fueled his passion for forever being in love with video games.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

My Favourite Games – Part 4

Even more favorite game picks by Simon 😀

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Starcade

The second player then played the same game as the first so it was possible that even if one player went before the other the second player could score more points in the game and win. The strategy here was to choose a game you were good at to rack up the points and hope your opponent would not do as well as you.

Company Representatives

J.A. Laraque

Jason Cirillo: Robotube Games

Space Invaders is such a simple and beautiful formula, and allows for the development of personal technique. It’s accessible to anyone, and still remains satisfying, fun, and relaxing. There’s nothing like playing a real arcade machine…those glowing phosphors and that rad moon backdrop are iconic.

Modern PC Gaming

Obsolete Press

Machinarium review en espanol

Leandro habla de lo bueno que es el juego Machinarium.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN

While I personally loved this video I couldn’t help but think of the flyover scandal that hit New York in summer 2009. Could you imagine if this was broadcasted how many people would believe it was real and go into a panic. Oh you don’t believe people would think this was real? Well they thought this was a freaking bomb!

Arcade Games

Honorabili

Gyruss

I’ve been playing Gyruss since the early 80s and I visit it often when I’m in a retro arcade/c64 gaming mood. The mix of the music, retro sounds, non-stop gameplay keeps me having fun even though it’s been many years that I’ve been playing this gem. It’s hard for me to get tired of the gameplay. Replayability get a score of 9 out of 10.

Interviews

Honorabili

Interview – CoLD SToRAGE (Tim Wright)

I’ve done a lot of fast paced racing or shooting games. Recently I’ve had the chance to write some music for younger children’s games, so that was fun. I’d love to write music for a horror game, something really dark and terrifying. It’s not a genre I’ve really had much to do with, so I think I’d really love the challenge of writing a score that gives people an adrenalin rush (like the Wipeout tracks) but for a different reason.