People occasionally ask me how long I’ve been into “retro” gaming and I never have a good answer for them because I’ve been playing a lot of these retro games since before they were retro. Here’s an interesting thing I ran across today that reminded me of that fact.
I was interviewed for an article titled “Classic Video Games Make Comeback” by a reported from the Associated Press. The interview took place over the phone and a day or two after that, they sent a photographer out to the house to take pictures of me with some of my gaming collection. The article was picked up by most national newspapers and websites.
That happened twenty years ago, in the summer of 2004. Twenty years ago, classic video games were “making a comeback,” and I was considered to be enough of a subject matter expert on the topic that someone reached out to interview me. One of the funny things about that article is that the then-modern consoles being discussed, like Nintendo’s Gameboy Advance, are considered to be retro systems today. There’s a bit in the article about how Nintendo is cashing in on the retro crazy by re-releasing updated version of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, again back in 2004. Since then, Nintendo has released multiple Mario games, including Super Mario Bros. U in 2012 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023. To put the date of that AP article in perspective, it was published two years before Nintendo released the Wii.
On a recent episode of my podcast Sprite Castle I covered Congo Bongo for the Commodore 64. Congo Bongo is a super old and retro game — nobody would argue that. It was released by Sega in arcades back in 1983 as a pseudo-3D (“isometric”) competitor to Donkey Kong, and found its way to home consoles and computers later that same year. But the thing is, I remember playing it when it was a new release in arcades, and I have a copy of the cartridge for the Commodore 64 that I got from someone (Jeff, probably) back in the mid-80s. So, yeah — I play retro games, but I played those same games when they were new.
Anyway. That interview I did for the AP was a neat experience. I had friends in New Jersey and family in Chicago all see the article. The one newspaper it didn’t seem to run in was ours here in Oklahoma — go figure. Although a lot of people already knew my name, that article helped me get writing gigs at a few magazines and helped me make a few other connections. Not bad for playing and being willing to talk about video games — games that didn’t seem to be that old to me then, or now, twenty years later.
Earlier this week my buddy Robb and his wife Mel flew in from Colorado to celebrate his birthday. The two flew into Arkansas, drove over to Oklahoma to visit me, and eventually returned to Arkansas to visit the Arkadia Retrocade in Fayetteville before returning home. While they were here we ate onion burgers, had Mexican food at Ted’s, and had breakfast at Hatch. We also did some shopping, sight-seeing, and even stopped by Bob Funk’s stable to check out the Clydesdales. I had a great time visiting with Robb and his wife, and I hope they had a good time too.
Tuesday evening, the four of us (Robb, Mel, Susan and I) visited the newest barcade (bar + arcade) in town. Because I’m not trying to put anyone on blast, I’ll just refer to this place as the “Barcade.” Robb and I have both collected arcade games over the years (his worst games were in better condition than my best ones!) and still enjoy classic arcade games, so we were both looking forward to checking the place out.
When we arrived, we were overwhelmed at how awesome the place was. The walls were covered with retro-themed wallpaper, and up near the ceiling more than a dozen televisions were playing classic movies like Labyrinth, Back to the Future, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The game selection read like a list of classic “must own” games, a mix of games from the 80s and 90s. Along with all their games, the Barcade also has a small selection of pinball machines along with Skee-ball and a few other machines.
After ordering a couple of drinks at the bar, Robb and I acquired some tokens and began playing games.
On Spy Hunter, the first game Robb played, the “weapons” button didn’t work. On the first machine I tried, Tron, the spinner didn’t work right. From there, we moved upstairs. The next game we played, Super Off Road, had something wrong with the gas pedals and most of the nitro buttons didn’t work. The last two games we played (Tetris and BurgerTime) worked, but both had monitor issues.
The four of us wrapped up the evening chatting while sitting on the Barcade’s outside patio.
Summary: The people were great. The atmosphere was great. The décor was great. The drinks were great. The patio was great. The vibe was great.
And more than half the games we played had issues.
Man, I wanted to like this place. I mean, I did like the place, but retro arcades attract retro gamers, and retro gamers know when things aren’t working right. We had a good visit and a good time, and I might even take a friend there for a drink… but probably not for a round of Spy Hunter.
So the lobby leading to my movie room is done, and by “done” I mean it’s an empty 10×20 room with carpet, waiting for me to fill it. The outside door is slightly off center, leaving about 7′ of space to the left and 10′ to the right. To the left, I plan to put a couple of arcade machines, a small snack bar, and a monitor that streams cartoons, music videos, and movie trailers. The vibe I’m going for is “80’s skating rink,” more or less.
On Sunday, Susan and I picked up one of my two remaining arcade games from our storage unit. We’ve been paying for a storage unit ever since we moved into this house, but are hoping to empty it out this month now that the workshop is done.
My old 60-in-1 multicade arcade cabinet was in worse condition than I remembered. The marquee light had burned out, the monitor I had used was too small (and off center), and worst of all, the bottom of the cabinet appears to have suffered some minor water damage while in storage. (Everything else in the unit is stored in Rubbermaid tubs, so no worries there.)
The first project I tackled was removing the old CRT computer monitor and replacing it with a 17″ flat panel monitor. In retrospect, chronologically, this is the last project I should have worked on. With a few L-brackets and a bit of ingenuity I was able to mount the new monitor in place. I thought this was going to be the most time consuming project, but ha ha. It was not.
Next, I decided to replace the burned-out fluorescent bulb in the top of the machine behind the marquee. While making a Walmart run for food, Susan picked up a replacement bulb for me. Replacing the bulb did not fix the problem. I was about to replace the ballast next when Susan noticed some of the wires running to the fixture looked burnt, so I decided to pull the whole thing out and replace it. Not only will that be the safer approach, but also the more economical. On Amazon, a replacement bulb is $19.99, a ballast is $16.99, and an entirely new fluorescent light fixture (with bulb) is only $14.99. So, that’s been ordered.
The light never worked before, so I didn’t let that stop me from moving the machine into the lobby. Using my old dolly, I wheeled the machine from the workshop back to the lobby. After moving arcade cabinets back and forth across a lumpy lawn for almost a decade at my old house, it was so nice to be able to have a straight shot across concrete for a change!
After moving the machine to the lobby, I scooted the machine across the carpet into place and that’s when I heard it — the sound of wood splintering off. A quick check of the floor confirmed that the cabinet was leaving a snail trail of splinters each time I moved it. This was when I noticed that the bottom of the cabinet appeared to have sustained some water damage while in storage. This discovery led to a side project where I built a pedestal out of 2x4s and slid it underneath the cabinet, in an attempt to get it up off the floor. This resulted in a cabinet that was too tall and a little wobbly. Things were going bad, and were about to get worse.
I wanted to check if the game felt too tall while playing it, so I plugged the machine into the wall, turned it on… and got nothing. I flipped the switch and checked all the connects, but there was no power. After quoting Q*Bert, I decided to move the whole cabinet back to the workshop and regroup.
I decided that laying the cabinet over on its side (on a bed of plastic milk crates) would make it easier to work on. I don’t know why I thought that. It’s not. All it did was cause 200 vintage tokens and random pieces of glass (?) to fall out.
Inside the cabinet I found a new(er) switching power supply mounted next to the cabinet’s original power supply from 1981. The original power supply was not being used, so I decided to remove and bypass it.
Next, I took an old power cord, cut and stripped the ends, and attached them to the newer power supply. After confirming that I was getting 110 volts to the power supply, I checked the output and found what we call in the business “a problem.”
Zero volts out across the board explains why the machine wouldn’t power up. Ironically, the original 39-year-old power supply down in the bottom of the cabinet had been working right all along. It was the newer one that had released its magic smoke and died.
My buddy Robb Sherwin is mailing me a spare power supply he had on hand, and I’ll patiently await the new fluorescent light fixture from Amazon. For the time being I’ll leave the thing laying on its side until the next round of repairs gets the machine both figuratively and literally back on its feet.
In 2013, I traveled to Denver, Colorado to attend the Kong Off 3, an officially sanctioned national Donkey Kong tournament. That weekend I got to see some of the world’s greatest Donkey Kong players play live in person, people like Hank Chien, Steve Wiebe, and Robbie Lakeman. Of everyone there, the person I was most excited to see play was Billy Mitchell.
At least in video game circles, Billy Mitchell became a household name after the release of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The film follows two gamers, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, on their race to break one million points the classic arcade video game, Donkey Kong. In the film, Wiebe is both the underdog and the outsider. He practices for hours by himself on an arcade cabinet that sits in his garage. Mitchell, on the other hand, is a judge for Twin Galaxies, the self-declared official keeper of video game high scores.
Throughout King of Kong, Mitchell is presented as a conniving backstabber, while Wiebe is that guy who is destined to fail. When Wiebe finally breaks the world record and submits the required VHS recording of his game play, it is revealed Mitchell beat him to the punch. The amount of editing and the veracity of the order of events in the film as been argued to death, but the bottom line is, it was ultimately Mitchell’s name that went into the record books as the first person to break 1,000,000 on Donkey Kong.
Back to the Kong Off. In 2013, my personal Donkey Kong high score was around 100,000, about tenth of the score these guys were achieving. I wanted to look over their shoulder, and see how the pros racked up these gigantic scores. One of the people I watched play was Billy Mitchell. And while I’m sure the guy’s good, he wasn’t great that day. Out of 22 competitors in the tournament, Billy Mitchell came in 22nd place. Dead last. Mitchell failed to crack the 600,000 mark on a day when the top nine contenders each broke a million.
Anybody can have a bad day, but I couldn’t help but feel that something wasn’t right.
Over the past couple of months, digital sleuths began investigating into Billy Mitchell’s record breaking scores. In one YouTube video, eagle eye viewers spotted some inconsistencies in the game’s motherboard as it is being removed. Even more damning, however, has been the video recording Mitchell himself presented as proof of his record-breaking score. I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say that when the video footage is slowed down slower than the naked eye can see, the way individual graphic components on the monitor are drawn reveal that the obtained footage came from a game being played on a computer, and not a real Donkey Kong machine.
In the world of arcade competition, this is a pretty big deal. The only way global competitors can keep the playing field fair is by all playing on the same hardware using the same settings and controls. Emulating an arcade game on a PC might be close enough to the real thing for home gamers and hobbyists, but not for world record holders. In fact, it’s explicitly against the rules of Twin Galaxies not to disclose, the organization Billy Mitchell was a member of.
Based on this discovery, Billy Mitchell’s world record as the first person to break a million points on Donkey Kong has been revoked, as have all his other high scores. He has also been banned for life for submitting new scores.
Harsh? Perhaps. Some people think only his records that have been proven to have been played through emulation should be removed. Others feel like once you’ve been caught cheating, all of your records are suspect.
The year after attending the Kong Off in Denver, my family and I took a vacation to Florida. On that trip, we went out of our way to stop by Rickey’s Restaurant and Lounge, in Hollywood, Florida. Rickey’s is “Billy Mitchell’s restaurant,” according to King of Kong. I wanted to ask him what happened at the Kong Off 3. Was it just a bad weekend?
Mitchell wasn’t there. In fact, the waitress we talked to said she couldn’t remember the last time he’d been there. In the small arcade that sat off to the side of the restaurant there were two arcade machines: a Jurassic Park pinball machine, and a Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet. I don’t know why I thought I might find Billy Mitchell, a Donkey Kong machine, or the answer to my question at that restaurant. In the end, I found none of those things.
For his part, Billy Mitchell says this is a witch hunt. He says he has an explanation for the whole thing, one he is carefully preparing even though he chose not to respond to any of the charges brought against him or comment on any of the findings. I, for one, will be interested to hear what he has to say.
While working on my end-of-2016 post earlier this week I realized I had not visited Arkadia Retrocade this year. This injustice will not stand, I said to myself. Wednesday morning, I hopped in my car and made the four-hour drive to Fayetteville, Arkansas.
I’ve written and podcasted about the place before (and even sold them some of my arcade cabinets), but in case you missed it, Arkadia Retrocade is a retro-style arcade where customers pay a fee to enter, and all games are free to play. They aren’t the only arcade operating with this business model, but they’re the last one I know of that only charges $5 for admission. Literally, for less than a Taco Bell lunch combo, you can walk into Arkadia and play on their 100 arcade games for 8 straight hours. The only thing you can get from Taco Bell for $5 that lasts 8 hours is indigestion.
Some people do not understand the allure of visiting and hanging out in retro arcades, especially one that’s a four-hour drive away from home. On the surface, it’s difficult to explain. On the surface it’s a place full of old arcade games, mostly from the 1980s. If it’s the games you’re interested in, you can install RetroPie on a $35 Raspberry Pi and play every single game Arkadia owns in the comfort of your own home for free. But what’s funny is, each time I go I play fewer games, to the point where it’s not about the games at all. But if it’s not the games, what is the draw? It’s easy to say nostalgia, until you realize many of the arcade’s regulars weren’t even alive when these games were created. Pac-Man is 10-15 years older than most of the employees.
After roaming the arcade for a couple of hours on Wednesday and returning after dinner, I took a seat at the arcade’s bar — the snack bar, that is. There, Arkadia regular and Retroist alum Vic Sage served me a Coke in a glass bottle. Over the next few hours, Vic and I chatted about everything from old toys and games to the state of the arcade. Luca and Rhi joined in on a discussion about Rogue One. Tomas, a kid I hadn’t met before, was asked if he could handle one of the arcade’s New Years Eve traditions. Andy Pickle and I shot the breeze. Later in the evening, John Monkus showed me some of the machines he’s been working on. All the while, arcade customers came and went, buying candy bars and cans of soda at the bar for less than what you would pay at the average vending machine.
I promised my wife that no matter how good of a time I was having, I would leave Arkadia by 8pm so that I would be home by midnight. I pulled out of the parking lot at 10:30pm.
Four hours on the road gives a guy lots of time to think. I can’t help but compare Arkadia to movies like The Breakfast Club and Empire Records, coming of age movies where groups of young people come together and bond despite their differences. There’s no one person at Arkadia with all the answers; everybody helps out whoever they can, however they can, whenever they can. It’s the kind of kinship you can’t buy. In the middle of it all is owner Shea Mathis, a whirling dervish of energy who is always either coming or going. If the guy’s not standing in front of you with a smile, he either just left, or is about to show up. It is Shea who built the stage for this wacky video game dream, but all the actors play an important part.
I’ve driven all over the country visiting retro arcades. I even built an arcade in my own backyard. I’ve been chasing something for a long time, and it wasn’t until Wednesday night that I finally figured out what it is I’ve been chasing. It hasn’t been about the games for a long time. Arkadia Retrocade has it figured out.
Earlier this week, (geeky) news outlets reported that Wes Copeland has achieved a “perfect” game of Donkey Kong with a score of 1,218,000. While the truth of the matter is a bit more complicated than that, it is true that we are not likely to see a higher score on Donkey Kong any time soon.
If you’re into classic arcade games, you probably know that Donkey Kong has what is known as a “kill screen” — a point where the game simply crashes. Several other classic 8-bit arcade games (including Pac-Man and Dig Dug) also have kill screens, typically the result of poor variable handling.
In some games, this leads to a finite score ceiling. For example, the highest possible score in Pac-Man is 3,333,360. I am ashamed that I didn’t have to look that up. In Pac-Man, the player’s current level is stored in a single eight-bit binary register. That means level 0 is represented as 00000000 in binary, level 1 is 00000001, level 2 is 00000010, and so on. The largest number you can store here is 255, which is represented as 11111111. When the player beats level 255, the machines tries to increase the level to 256. Since 256 can’t be stored in a single 8-bit memory location, this is what happens:
Every level in Pac-Man contains a finite number of points. Each level has 240 dots, 4 power pellets, and 4 ghosts than can be eaten a total of 4 times. If you eat everything possible (all the dots, power pellets, ghosts and fruit) on every single level without dying, congratulations — that’s a perfect game of Pac-Man. Your score will be 3,333,360.
Donkey Kong is different. In Pac-Man, there’s a maximum number of points that can be achieved on each level. In Donkey Kong, there’s not, because many of the scoring events are random. For example, if you jump over a single barrel in Donkey Kong you’ll earn 100 points, but if you jump two at a time you’ll earn 300 points (three will get you 500). There are techniques that can help you group barrels together in order to maximize your score, but in some cases it just comes down to luck. Occasionally you’ll jump a barrel and get no points at all. It’s not fair, but it happens.
The goal of Donkey Kong is to score as many points as possible before the game crashes. In King of Kong, Steve Wiebe scored 1,064,500 points in Donkey Kong before reaching the kill screen. A year later, Hank Chien was able to score 1,064,500, but since then, people have found additional methods of “point pushing,” or intentionally running up the score. At one point it was thought that 1,100,000 was the game’s ceiling. In September of 2015, Wes Copeland scored 1,170,500 points. Six hours later, Robbie Lakeman scored 1,172,100.
The reason for these tiny increases in score is that it takes roughly three hours to reach the kill screen in Donkey Kong. For three hours, players must not only avoid dying, play an essentially perfect game and squeeze every single point possible out of the game, but also be lucky. In the case of Copeland and Lakeman’s scores, a difference of 1,600 points is literally collecting two additional 800 point items over the three-hour game’s play time.
Wes Copeland’s current score of 1,218,000 represents all of that — a game in which Copeland not only didn’t die (which allowed him to use his extra men to play the level prior to the last level multiple times and gain extra points), but every single lucky coin flip went his way. For someone to beat Copeland’s latest score, someone would have to play another perfect game of Donkey Kong and somehow get even luckier than Copeland. It doesn’t seem likely or possible for this to happen.
When it does, I’ll let you know. ;)
If you have three hours to spare and would like to watch a quintessentially perfect game of Donkey Kong, here is a video of Copeland’s recording breaking game.
After visiting barcades all over the country, we finally have our own right here in Oklahoma City: the FlashBack RetroPub. Last Friday, Susan and I attended the pub’s official grand opening.
That’s not my DeLorean, but it is my 8-bit tie…
The FlashBack RetroPub is at 814 West Sheridan, several blocks away from Bricktown. There are a few trendy businesses and restaurants nearby, but it’s also less than a block from the City Rescue Mission and right down the street from the scariest McDonald’s I’ve ever set foot in. It will be interesting to see how this part of town develops over time.
There are a few different business models for modern arcades: there’s the “pizzacade,” which combines food with arcade games, the “pay-at-the-door-cade,” where gamers can pay one entry price and play games all day long, and then there’s the “barcade,” establishments that combine arcade gaming with a full bar. FlashBack RetroPub is definitely a barcade, as we were carded at the door.
The front half of the pub is where the bar and arcade games are. Then there’s the dance floor, DJ booth and lounge area, the restrooms, and an unused area that I suspect will have seating in it soon.
A rough guess, I’d say the pub has 30 arcade games. The front right is loaded with classics (Robotron, Defender, Centipede, etc) and the rest of the machines run down the opposite wall. The oldest game I remember was Asteroids and the newest was NBA Jam, with most of the machines belonging to the awesome 80s. Directly across from the games was the bar, with bar tables standing between the two. Those tables became a problem later in the evening.
With a couple of drinks in hand, we took a few bills over to the change machine. “OUT OF ORDER.” We then went back to the bar and bought five dollars worth of tokens. Then we went back to the machines and found most of them had dozens of free credits on them. So, there was a little confusion there.
Beyond the bar and the games was the dance floor, the DJ booth (that giant boom box) and a lounge area. Some of the benches had signs on them saying they were reserved for VIPs. As the crowd piled in, all available seats were taken very quickly.
My biggest complaint with the place was with the games. Centipede and Tetris, Susan’s two favorite games, were powered off. Popeye couldn’t punch. Kung-Fu Master couldn’t punch. Player Two’s joystick on Mario Bros. didn’t work. Donkey Kong didn’t have sound. The joystick on Zaxxon was a little wonky. At least ten of the machines we tried had serious issues, which is 1/3 of their machines (and we weren’t able to try them all).
The other problem we had was this:
As people continued to file in, we got stuck. We couldn’t get to the games, we couldn’t get to the bar, we couldn’t even get out. It took us a solid ten minutes to make our way from the back of the pub to the front. Granted, the place will not usually be this crowded, but the bar tables in between the machines and the bar completely stopped foot traffic. Worse, it blocked access to the bar, which prevented us from getting more drinks or tokens.
One thing this place has going for it are the employees. We ordered drinks from two or three different bartenders and each one was super nice. The two doormen were also overly polite, thanking us for coming in. I suspect in the near future a few changes might be made to the floor plan to help the crowd flow. As long as they can get (and keep) the games in working order, it looks to me like they might have a winning combination.
FlashBack RetroPub, a great place to go party like it’s 1999. Er, 1989.
I like being involved in weird and unusual things. Sometimes I get involved in weird and unusual things by saying “sure” when I get invited to such things. Last week my friend Dean invited me to attend the inaugural Track and Field World Championships at a local private arcade. Dean told me a few well known competitors would be flying in from California for the event. He also told me that local video wizard Drew Stone would be documenting the tournament, and wanted to know if I would provide audio commentary for the proceedings and interview the competitors.
I said “sure,” which is how I ended up attending the 2084 Arcade in Beggs, Oklahoma with a wireless microphone system threaded through my shirt while watching some of the best Track and Field competitors in the world battle it out on the vintage game.
Track and Field is a classic arcade game, released by Konami in 1983. The game’s unique controls and social competition aspect (allowing up to four players to compete against one another) were enough to make it a good game, but the hype surrounding the 1984 Olympics (which took place in Los Angeles, California) certainly didn’t hurt the game’s popularity.
Each competitor in Track and Field must use three buttons to play the game. There are two RUN buttons that must be hit repetitively to propel your feet in the running events, and a third JUMP/THROW button that does just that. Not only does the game require quick reflexes and pixel-point accuracy, but also maniacally fast fingers (with tough forearms to match). While many classic arcade games only require good hand/eye coordination, Track and Field adds those RUN buttons to the mix. Literally, the faster you can mash those buttons, the faster your little man goes.
And Hector “FLY” Rodriguez is the fastest of the fast, although technically speaking he “flicks” the buttons instead of mashing them, as do most of the world’s top players. In 2008 Hector scored 95,350 on the game, breaking the former world record of 95,040 which was held by Kelly Kobashigawa for 23 years.
But Hector was not the only competitor in town. Jack Gale, also from California, arrived with his eye on the trophy. Gale is no stranger to winning — he is currently first in the world in games like Enduro Racer, Mad Crasher, and Vs. Hogan’s Alley, and holds (and has previously held) many others. Gale’s world record on Zoo Keeper stood for nearly twenty years.
Jack Gale and Hector Rodriguez discuss strategy outside the arcade as Mason looks on.
King of Kong did a disservice to the arcade community by prominently displaying the negative side of rivalry instead of the friendly competitive spirit I’ve witnessed at every single arcade competition I’ve attended. I’ve met several of the people featured in King of Kong (including Billy Mitchell) who have been nothing but polite and genuinely kind, not only to me but their other competitors. Anyone expecting anything less from a gaming competition (hosted in Oklahoma, no less) should be surprised. Rob Walker, one of the contestants and the owner of the 2084 arcade, cooked enough burgers and dogs to feed an army. My only complaint of the day was that so many people brought so many pops and drinks to share that there was no room in the ice chests for us to add our twelve pack. The vast majority of people I’ve met in this circle are generous and kind; in Oklahoma, doubly so.
(When some of the competitors noticed Mason taking an interest in the game, they began giving him tips and encouraging him to enter. While we all knew Mason’s chances of winning a tournament that included the world record holder were extremely slim, it was very nice for them to include him, a gesture that truly shows the real generosity and kindness of most arcade enthusiasts.)
With our bellies full of burgers and hot dogs, it was time for practice to begin. On any other day, everyone’s focus would have been on Walker’s immaculate collection of games… but not on this Saturday. On this Saturday, machines like Journey, Robotron, Joust, and Bubbles sat untouched as the contestants warmed up their chops on the three practice machines that had been moved into the center of the arcade.
As the sun went down, the competition lit up as nine hopeful competitors entered the qualifying round. Each qualifying round was played on the same machine. The machine had two cameras mounted on it, one rebroadcasting the screen to a large flat screen television mounted behind the player and another one recording each player’s face. Additional action was recorded by two or three additional cameras. All of this wizardry was concocted and coordinated by local television media Drew Stone.
After the prelims, the field was narrowed to five finalists: world record holder Hector Rodriguez, Jack Gale, event co-organizors Dean (owner of Arcade Sales and Rentals) and Rob, and Rob’s son Brad. Less than 10,000 points separated the top five scores.
Although Mason did not advance to the finals, he had another job to perform. Mason randomly picked each finalist’s name from a plate to determine the final order.
Although the competition was always friendly, it was also intense as each player flicked, tapped, and occasionally bashed the buttons as furiously as possible in order to propel their runners toward the finish line. Each competitor pulled out every trick they knew in order to obtain as many bonuses as possible. With gamers this evenly matched, a winning score could come down to earning a single 1,000 point bonus.
By the end of the night we were all hot, sweaty, tired, and having a blast. Dean and I, with our wireless microphones attached to our lapels, gave commentary on each player’s performance as they pushed their scores higher and higher. And while every competitor did awesome, at the end only one person could be the ultimate winner.
At the end of the night, pictures of the competitors were taken surrounding the Track and Field machines. The machine used in the competition along with a few additional Track and Field marquees were autographed. Trophies, leftover from the original Classic Video Game Tournaments in the 1980s, were obtained and distributed to the winners.
Oh, and speaking of winners, at the end of the night the points were tallied and the winner…
…will be revealed when the video is released. Sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy!
Thanks to all the competitors and spectators who attended the event, and special thanks to Dean and Rob for organizing the event in Rob’s wonderful private arcade, and Hector and Jack for coming all the way from California to attend the event. Talks are already underway in regards to a bigger event next year. Mason is hoping they do; he spent the morning practicing…
PS: If you want to hear me talk about the Commodore 64 version of Track and Field, I covered it a few months ago on my C64 game podcast, Sprite Castle.
A friend of mine tagged me with the following challenge on Facebook:
10 games that will always stay with you. Rules: Don’t take more then a few minutes. Don’t think too hard. They don’t have to be great works of the gaming industry, just games that have affected you in a positive way. Then tag 10 friends including me so I can see your list.
If you know me you know simply making a list isn’t enough, so I added some additional information and links to videos. Although many of these games appeared on many different platforms, I included the ones that my memories were most closely associated with. I also extended my list to 12 games, and you’re lucky I didn’t make it 50. Without further adieu…
01. Wizardry / Bard’s Tale (Apple II/C64)
Wizardry was one of the first dungeon crawlers to be released for home computers, and the first one I ever played for the Apple II. According to Wikipedia it was the first color dungeon crawler and the first true party-based Dungeons and Dragons-style game. Released in 1981, this was one of the first games I can remember my dad and I playing at the same time. He would play at night and make maps of the game’s dungeons on graph paper, maps I would use the next day to advance further in the game.
Just a few years later, my buddy Jeff and I would spend an entire summer playing Bard’s Tale in largely the same fashion. Although the graphics were slightly better, the gameplay of Bard’s Tale is largely identical to Wizardry. RPGs in the 80s got too large to keep my interest, but I greatly enjoyed (and miss) this era of dungeon roaming.
02. Lode Runner (Apple II)
The recent passing of Doug Smith has this game on my mind. Lode Runner was an early platform game with just enough tricks to keep it interesting. The goal was to collect all of the packages from each level while avoiding the “bunglings.” The game’s original gimmick came in the digging of holes, which could be used to bury your opponents or dig your way out of trouble. The original game only came with 50 levels, but there were sequels and also a level editor that allowed you to easily create your own levels. Lode Runner was fun in 1984 and it’s still fun in 2014, and I still play it occasionally.
03. Gauntlet (Arcade)
The first arcade games were one-player only. Then there were two-player games that required the players to take turns. Then came two-player head-to-head games. Gauntlet may have been the first four player game I ever played in an arcade, and unlike most games at that time, the goal of Gauntlet was for players to work together. Sure, occasionally Warrior would shoot Elf in the back while Wizard stole the food, but ultimately gamers learned they could get deeper into the dungeon (and more bang for their buck) by working together.
I have many wonderful memories of playing Gauntlet with my friends. Because of this, Gauntlet II was one of the first arcade games I purchased when I began collecting arcade games.
04. Dragon’s Lair (Arcade)
I will never forget the first time I saw Dragon’s Lair in an arcade. If you were there in the 80s, I doubt you have forgotten it either. Seemingly overnight we went from blips and bloops to actually controlling a cartoon. It was awesome! It was incredible! It was… not that much fun. And it was hard to play. Several laserdisc games (including Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace) came and went over the next few years. Ultimately they did not change the gaming industry in the way they had hoped to, but it was still pretty awesome. The takeaway from Dragon’s Lair ultimately was that graphics aren’t everything; gameplay is king.
05. Doom II (PC)
While I had experimented with playing games online with other human beings, Doom II was the first game I ever played against other people on a local area network (LAN). I actually learned how to network computers together just so we could play Doom II. The graphics in the video below make me cringe a bit, but back them the gloomy dungeons and atmospheric sound effects set the tone for an amazing game. It took what worked from Doom (and Wolfenstein 3D before that), added multiplayer, and delivered an unforgettable gaming experience. Doom II was so good that the gaming industry has been applying new coats of paint to the concept and re-releasing it for 20 years now.
06. Donkey Kong (Arcade)
Donkey Kong is a light-hearted game starring a pre-Mario Mario in which he climbs ladders, jumps barrels, and saves his girlfriend level after level. It’s simple… or is it? Once you start to learn how to “control” the barrels, how to control where fireballs appear from and how to run up your score thanks to several glitches, it becomes and entirely different game. Adding to the pressure is the game’s infamous “kill screen,” a point where Mario dies for no apparent reason and the game ends. Suddenly the goal switches from “how high can you go?” to how many points can you score before the game crashes. For someone who doesn’t play a lot of Donkey Kong, a respectable score is in the 20-30k range. My high score is just over 100k. The current world’s record is 1.2 million. If you have a couple of hours, you can watch a recording of it below. Donkey Kong is an example of a seemingly simple game that is still revealing secrets 30 years after its release.
07. Paradroid (C64)
This game captured my interest back in the mid-80s and I still enjoy it today. In Paradroid you control a floating helmet and your job is to take over other robots by challenging them to a game of electronic switches which… eh, it makes more sense when you play it, I guess. This game has been ported to a few other machines including the Amiga and Windows, but the C64 original is still my favorite. There’s no other game like it.
08. 720 (Arcade)
In the futuristic Skate City, one must learn to “Skate or Die” and do it quickly. There are so many great things about this game: the boom box mounted to the top of the cabinet, the one-of-a-kind joystick, the awesome music, killer bees, exciting levels and challenging competitions. If you were into skateboarding in the 80s, this was the game to play.
I fell in love with this game in the 80s. When I began collecting arcade machines in the 90s, I put this on the top of my “must have” list. It took me fifteen years to track one down, but I finally found one. It’s still out in my garage today, calling me.
09. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
If I had a dime for ever minute — heck, every hour I spent playing Super Mario Bros. 3, I would be a rich man. Jeff, Andy and I played this game for so many hours that we could navigate some of the levels with our eyes closed. One of the greatest platform games of all time.
10. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (PlayStation)
THPS2 did what no other game had done for me; it accurately portrayed skateboarding. I lost myself in this game for months, chaining together huge combos and pushing the points on every level to the max. There have been several sequels, but none of them captured my attention the way this one did. For years I owned two PlayStations and one had this game in it at all times.
In addition to gameplay, THPS2 had an incredible soundtrack, a new concept in games back then. It’s so good that I still have it on my phone today.
11. Impossible Mission (C64)
“Another visitor. Stay a while… staaaay forever!” This was one of the first (if not the first) game I ever saw for the Commodore 64, and what an introduction to the machine it was. Puzzles aside, the speech samples and smooth animation was enough to capture a kid’s imagination, and it did. For years I didn’t know what the goal of this game was and it really didn’t matter. We had fun running around, avoiding the robots and the “killer black ball” and couldn’t have cared less about “winning.” When it came to graphics and sound, this game set the Commodore 64 apart from the competition very early on.
12. Rogue (DOS)
Ever heard of a “rogue-like” game? This is where the term came from. Originally designed for mainframes, Rogue made its way to home computers in its original, ASCII format. The combat was rudimentary (you just ran into creatures to attack them) but the game offered a ton of things to discover, from magic scrolls and rings to cursed items. The game’s maps are randomly generated every game and items are randomly placed, so every game is different. You’ll need patience and skill to make it all the way through the dungeon, but you’ll also need a bit of luck; since all items are randomly placed, that includes food. Occasionally, through no fault of your own, you will die of starvation.
Rogue taught me three things: sometimes success depends on luck, a good game doesn’t need good graphics, and sometimes life isn’t fair.
Whenever I start a new project it’s not uncommon for me to dump all of my spare time into it and neglect my other projects, at least temporarily. Whenever my blog and podcast output wanes, you can bet I’ve been sidetracked.
My latest project is a Facebook page called Vintage Videogame Ads. Even if you don’t have a Facebook account (who reading this does not have a Facebook account?) you can access the page here: www.facebook.com/VintageVideogameAds.
Back in the 8-bit days of computing, advertisements in computer and videogame magazines were a great way to discover new games. Each time my mom would take me to the supermarket with her I would hand out at the magazine rack, skimming through computer magazines to find the game reviews and the latest ads.
This project started several years ago with the purchase of a Plustek OpticBook scanner. The OpticBook scanner is specially designed for scanning in books. I have a couple dozen computer and videogame magazines from the 1980s, and this scanner allowed me to scan them all into the computer. I love reading the old articles and game reviews, but I found I loved looking at the old ads even more — so much so that I pulled all the ads out and placed them in their own folder.
After going through all the magazines I owned I ended up with around 400 ads. Roughly 200 of those were ads for games or game companies and the other 200 were ads for hardware or services. I’ve been wanting to share them for a while but hadn’t quite figured out the right venue. It hit me the other night that a Facebook album would be perfect, so that’s what I did.
If I made any mistake at all it’s that I uploaded all of them at once, dumping 300 new photos into the group at once. By doing that, I ran myself out of new material almost immediately. After searching the garage I found another half-dozen magazines. Now that the well is dry, I’ve begun phase two of the project. I have hundreds of old computer and videogame magazines in PDF format. I spent the past three evenings converting every issue of RUN Magazine from PDF to JPG and pulling all the ads out of that stack. I have runs of lots of other magazines too, so I should have source material to pull from for years to come. Because they’re coming from different sources the ads are of varying quality. If I find better scans I’ll replace them as time goes on; if I run across the actual magazines, I’ll scan in better copies myself. I’ve also throttled the number of pictures I’m uploading to 2 or 3 at a time. It’s a much more enjoyable way to appreciate the ads.
Along with the game ads, I’m also really enjoying the hardware ads. As you move through time you can watch prices drop. I have ads with Commodore 64s ranging in price from $299 to $99. There’s a series of ads selling Sanyo monitors that drops $10 in price every month. It’s one thing to tell someone you remember when hard drives cost thousands of dollars, but it’s another thing to see the advertisements for yourself. Technically these aren’t “videogame” ads but so far I haven’t received any complaints about posting them.
The only bad thing about projects like these is that there’s no end, ever. My biggest hurdle at the moment is making sure that all of my scans are named properly to ensure that I don’t end up with tons of duplicates. That will come with time I suppose. What I have the most problem with are ads from game companies that feature multiple games. For example, I have “Heroes of the Lance (AD&D, SSI).jpg” along with “SSI (3 AD&D Games).jpg”. I’m trying to include enough information in the file names to be able to search and find similar ads (all SSI ads, for example) and that may take a little work — but that’s work on my end, not yours. All you need to do to enjoy the ads is to head over to the Facebook page where you can browse through the photos or “like” the page to receive updates whenever I post new ones. Feel free to post any you have as well!
