Obsolete Gamer

Author: Patrick Scott Patterson

The Last Starfighter
Blog
Patrick Scott Patterson

Site of Last Starfighter, birthplaces of Mario and Lode Runner added to registry

Some of the other 23 locations previously inducted include competitive gaming birthplace Ottumwa, IA, the original testing locations of classics such as Donkey Kong and Defender, arcade locations featured in films such as Tron, The Karate Kid and WarGames, former headquarters locations of companies such as Atari and Bally Midway and the famous landfill that saw millions of unsold Atari game cartridges dumped in 1984.

Read More
Mr. Gravity - Indie Games - Gameplay screenshot
Indie Games
Patrick Scott Patterson

Indie Game Gems: Mr. Gravity

The graphics for a game like this don’t need to be complex yet don’t need to be too simple, and Mr. Gravity nails this aspect to. The fairly simple graphics are given a color vector look and glow, reminiscent of classics such as Tempest and more modern hits such as Geometry Wars. Both characters in the game change facial expressions based on what is going on in the level with a simple yet fun charm. The background music is excellent, especially for an indie game, and adds a great extra element for the player while attempting difficult moves.

Read More
Pac-Man Battle Royal
Blog
Patrick Scott Patterson

Pac-Man Battle Royale super-sizes in new deluxe cabinet

Pac-Man Battle Royale is the first four player competitive Pac-Man arcade game. The original Pac-Man game concept has been given a cannibalistic twist: Eliminate your opponents by eating them and the last Pac-Man standing wins the round. When players eat a power pellet, they power-up by doubling in size and increasing in speed. Once powered up, they are now able to eat non powered-up blue players and ghosts. Players of the same size simply bounce off each other. Players can also be eliminated by running into ghosts if there aren’t any powered up players. Eating a piece of fruit or all of the pellets resets the maze with a fresh new set of power pellets. The game is simple, competitive, and highly addictive. The deluxe cabinet’s glowing lights and large viewing monitor make this the perfect centerpiece for any location.

Read More
The Simpsons Arcade Game - Xbox live - Gameplay Screenshot
Arcade Games
Patrick Scott Patterson

The Simpsons Arcade Game

Fans who remember pouring every quarter you had into the arcade game will be thrilled. The game is exactly as you remember it from start to finish with straightforward controls and even the full demonstration mode, complete with the annoying-yet-classic “waaa waaa waawaaa waaaa!” scene with Bart and Lisa. Several fun unlockables are also available for those who finish the game with specific characters. The Japanese ROMset is available for play along with character bios, a neat but brief look at the development timeline and original advertising materials for the arcade game, a sound test and more.

Read More
Abobo's Big Adventure
Indie Games
Patrick Scott Patterson

Abobo’s Big Adventure

As you begin your game you are instantly bombarded with characters from just about any NES-era game you can name. You’ll have to do battle with those pink sweater-vest guys from Kung Fu, characters from Renegade, River City Ransom and even T&C Surf Designs. You’ll encounter Goombas, Mega Man boss enemies, the masters of the Pro Wrestling ring and so many more. Even the title screen is full of any 8-bit game character you want to name, from the Duck Hunt duck to the Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus. Finally I got to live out my life-long desire to punch Kid Niki in the face, even if I had to dodge exploding barrels from Donkey Kong while doing so.

Read More
The Pac-Man Dossier
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.”

Read More
ChopLifter_HD_Logo
Remakes
Patrick Scott Patterson

Choplifter HD

I’m always mixed when it comes to retro remakes, especially if it was a game I really used to enjoy. Choplifter was one of those games I never thought caught on like it should. While it had a popular run on the old Apple II computers, I really got into the 1985 version from Sega and it’s counterpart on the fledgling Sega Master System. Sadly, these versions never really came during a time or place that allowed a large audience to see them, forever making a solid game a bit of a footnote to the 8-bit gaming era.

Read More
Xbox-360-Elite
Blog
Patrick Scott Patterson

XBox 360 passes Nintendo Entertainment System on all-time sales list

The current console generation is likely to see a hat trick in regards to the NES before all is said and done, though, as Sony’s PlayStation 3 is also catching up with the NES sales figures with 59.1 million units sold to date. Even as big as the Nintendo Entertainment System was in it’s day, it appears destined to find itself ranked under all three modern consoles on the all-time charts.

Read More
Christmas_Comes_to_Pac-Land
Editorials
Patrick Scott Patterson

Christmas Comes to Pac-Land

On December 16, 1982 the first ever Christmas special of the video game age debuted in prime time. Hanna Barbera’s Christmas Comes to Pac-Land took the popular new Saturday morning cartoon series based on Pac-Man and it’s many sequels into uncharted territory for anything related to video games. In this ABC holiday special, Santa Claus crash lands in the fictional town of Pac-Land, an odd world where it seems to be legal to eat other inhabitants and walk around without pants. Santa, (voiced by a pre-Optimus Prime Peter Cullen), has never heard of Pac-Land while those who live there have never heard of him or Christmas at all.

Read More
Ecstasy of Order
Movies & T.V.
Patrick Scott Patterson

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters

Ecstasy of Order centers around the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championships, an event set up in Los Angeles by NWC 1990 runner-up Robin Mihara. While Tetris had long been one of the most iconic video games in history, there was no one person considered THE Tetris champion, so Mihara rounds up the top ranked players in the Twin Galaxies database and some others, including NWC 1990 Thor Aackerlund, to come to California and compete on the classic Nintendo Entertainment System version of Tetris.

Read More
Jimmy Fallon - Batman Arkham City
Editorials
Patrick Scott Patterson

Are video games finally being accepted by the mainstream?

Any longtime gamer knows of that gut wrenching feeling that comes along when a mainstream media or entertainment source does a video game story. From news stories that claim violent video games are kid’s toys to Jay Leno jokes that paint gamers as basement dwellers and virgins, it often seems that the industry stats aren’t known by much of what passes as news and entertainment these days.

Read More
Eugene Jarvis
Editorials
Patrick Scott Patterson

Still Providing Raw Thrills: Eugene Jarvis has impacted over 30 years of gaming

“You start out with all these dreams and hopes,” he said. “Then reality sets in. You can’t do this because the technology isn’t there or you can’t do that because the budget or time isn’t there. Then something doesn’t work how you wanted it to. It feels like being on one of those old wagon trains going across the desert and one of your horses dies. Then you sometimes have your best moments, too, when you stumble across something cool and unexpected to add to the game.”

Read More
Steve Jobs
Editorials
Patrick Scott Patterson

Steve Jobs 1955-2011: Technology pioneer worked in the early days of Atari

Jobs and Wozniak would later pair up to work on Atari’s 1976 release Breakout, the ball-and-paddle brick-breaking game that has been cloned a million times over, from 1987’s arcade hit Arkanoid to countless Flash-based clones on the internet today. Offered a bonus by Atari if the number of chips that could be eliminated from the machine, Jobs offered to split the bonus with Wozniak, who worked for days on end to reduce the design to such a degree that Atari was unable to figure it out and had to redesign the circuit board over again. Despite the fact that Wozniak did the work, Jobs took most of Atari’s bonus money for the project without Wozniak’s knowledge.

Read More