While out shopping yesterday, I noticed this for �10, which was a no-brainer.
It’s the best tenner I’ve spent in a long, long time and the only down-side is the two of us having to prise ourselves away from it long enough to make food, eat, sleep etc …
Although many of the games work as nostalgia and nothing else, there are one or two complete classics. We went for Centipede pretty early on (after Asteroids, of course!) and haven’t tried too many other games since. I wouldn’t consider myself a Luddite and I think the Half-Life, Splinter Cell and Gran Turismo series (and many other modern games) are quite stunning. However, I honestly can’t think of a modern game that is so hopelessly addictive as the old classics. I suspect it’s the simplicity that makes them addictive. Our minds don’t *need* a back-story and wonderful music and graphics to challenge us and draw us in. All it takes is a repetitive ‘thunk’ sound effect and a steady increase in speed 😉 One of the most amazingly addictive games I ever played on the ZX Spectrum was Jumping Jack. From a technical perspective, it was almost diabolical, but could you stop playing it once you’d started? Not likely!
I think this particular PS/2 CD might need to be confiscated and destroyed in the coming days. We both have *jobs* to go to 😉
I’m still the proud owner of an ATARI 2600 and an ATARI 520ST. I’ve upgraded the ST from 512Kb to 1Mb RAM back in the days when you had to solder the memory chips yourself 😉
My favorites are still Pong and Berzerk on the 2600. (I remember Pacman costed about 80euros back then) but my golden oldie on the ATARI ST was Stuntcar Racer !!!
The graphics were superb – great 3D and physics engine !
Actually – after all these years I still have it running on one of my pc’s on an ATARI emulator. I also have it running on an Amiga emulator (ok – ATARI’s yamaha soundchip was crap – after all these years I think I can admit to that now 🙂 ).
But what I miss most, are the coding communities. Nowadays, kids pop in a cd in their pc or ps2 and they play the whole day long. We actually tried programming our own games – or at least used disassemblers to create a trainer.
http://www.yomgaille.com/pong/#
http://www.klov.com/B/Berzerk.html
http://studweb.studserv.uni-stuttgart.de/studweb/users/phy/phy33846/atari/roms/stuntcar.gif
“ATARI’s yamaha soundchip “
Sound chip? Sound chip?!? Try working on a machine that allows you to click the speaker on. Then off. Then on.
😉
I was hooked on Midway Arcade Classics (particularly Robotron 2084, Defender, and Spy Hunter). That lasted until World of Warcraft was released, and I’m not very good at any of them. Lately I haven’t had time to play video games at all (other than Freecell). I blame it on too many good TV shows to watch these days, and a pile of things to read, so have to wait for summer reruns instead to even think about it. Maybe I’m lucky the Playstation 3 is delayed.
Over the Thanksgiving (US, November) holiday I took the kids to the San Jose Tech Museum, and they had all sorts of real vintage games, including arcade Missle Command and Galaga! We couldn’t pull ourselves away. (In the ’80s, I worked for a guy who bought his own Missle Command. He could go forever.)
I still have my Amiga 1000, but haven’t turned it on in a while.
“In the ’80s, I worked for a guy who bought his own Missle Command. He could go forever.”
Ahh, Missile Command 😉 Even though it’s on the compilation, that’s one thing the PS/2 doesn’t have (by default) – a top quality trackball. I might never have been that good at them, but those old arcade games were great!
Remember kids, “Don’t Copy That Floppy”
http://ia300008.us.archive.org/0/items/dontcopythatfloppy/dontcopythatfloppy.wmv