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Masaya Nakamura, Japanese arcade pioneer, has died
- baldfat 10y agoI still loved the fact that I was a kid who played in a bowling league and the arcade was always mind blowing. First mind blowing games were Asteroids and Space Invaders for me. Those games were a ton better then the other games. Then Pac Man and Donky Kong took it to a whole new level. It was a magical time and nothing at home could match it. Personally I liked Mrs. Pac-Man more.
- rollthehard6 10y agoThe most amazing thing from that time for me was the first time I heard Defender, let alone saw it. The sound of those Williams games is as memorable as the visuals and gameplay.
- baldfat 10y agoGalaga was also a game that turned up the difficulty up to a new level. It was amazing how the older games kept feeling easier and easier to play. I eventually played Defender for over 8 hours on one quarter. I even went home and eat and walked back to the corner store to finish the game. Then I had to spend 30 minutes killing my guys so I could put my name as the high score. The score lasted a whole week :( Then the machine got shipped out the next week.
- jjw1414 10y agoAgreed. There was definitely a characteristic "Williams sound collection" that was common across many of their video games (Joust, Defender, Robotron 2048, etc.), and pinball machines, too (e.g. Gorgar). You didn't even have to turn around - you knew a Williams game as soon as you heard it. Personal favourite = Joust respawning sound.
- daodedickinson 10y agoRobotron's sound on the actual machine is overwhelming even today. And the amazing color splash between every level is absolutely entrancing/mesmerizing.
- koz1000 10y agoWant to know the best part? Nearly all of those signature sounds were generated algorithmically by the processor on the sound board. The main program would feed some values into a series of feedback loops and shifts to generate the waves before pushing them out the DAC. Game programmers would just play around with various vectors until they found something that sounded interesting. The whole shebang ran in 2KiB of ROM firmware and 128 bytes of RAM. At 894 kilohertz. This dude reverse engineered the 6802 code and translated it to C#. Pretty amazing: http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/ http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/ Next time on our show we'll talk about the magic of palette cycling. Jarvis still uses this on his games to this very day. Kind of his signature now, right?
- sien 10y agoSam Dicker was the programmer for the sound on Defender. He went on to work on the sound for the Amiga computer.
- narag 10y agoMy favourite by them was Galaxian. There were a dozen games of that kind, I don't remember the names. But on top of a great gameplay, I would like to remark how good the graphics were. Very low-res by today standards, it's so difficult to express how nice the colours felt at the time.
- Beltiras 10y agoIs the golden age of arcade gaming over? I can't remember going into an arcade psyched about playing any game. It's all dance pads, racing games and FPS. Frogger, Pac-man, Gauntlet, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, Warlock, those were exciting games. Maybe it's just the gramps in me yelling about the kids on my lawn.
- erickhill 10y agoIt's been over for a very long time. You can still find the 'classics' but you really have to hunt for them. To find them all in one place is truly unusual these days, as they are referred to as 'retro arcades' and most cities don't even have one. My son thinks of them as old-fashioned. Hard to wrap my head around that sometimes, but it is what it is.
- Beltiras 10y agoWe have one in Reykjavík. https://www.facebook.com/freddireykjavik/ https://www.facebook.com/freddireykjavik/ It's a small collection but some golden oldies.
- rb808 10y agoIf you're in NY region/Philly look for Barcarde - its a chain - they have all the classics. eg http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/ http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/
- Neliquat 10y ago1up bar in Denver has a decent rotation last time I was out there.
- ghostDancer 10y agoI feel something similar, where i live most arcades have disappeared, sign of the times. If you feel too nostalgic , take a look at this documentary "History of Arcade Video Games" [1] and visit this fantastic blog [2] (not mine). [1]https://youtu.be/NO0yJ54f-RU https://youtu.be/NO0yJ54f-RU [2]https://arcadeblogger.com/ https://arcadeblogger.com/
- artofcode 10y agoPlease note that this is not Toru Iwatani, who designed Pac Man.
- nodja 10y agoToru Iwatani made make pac-man. Masaya Nakamura is the founder of namco. Why am I seeing a blatant wrong headline all over the news?
- tinus_hn 10y agoIf they used the correct headline, normal people wouldn't click. Normal people don't know what Namco is.
- louhike 10y agoIf they do not know what Namco is, I'm not sure they would be interested in him. Now everybody in the comments is talking about PacMan. Namco made/makes a lot of other great games worth talking about.
- sbuttgereit 10y agoAbsolutely. Particularly the early 80s. Many of those games filled too many childhood hours to count. Ironically, I didn't like Pac Man so much (back then or today), though I recognize it as being a great game and understand why it would appeal to many.
- ghurtado 10y agoI don't know exactly who you mean by "normal people", but I can tell you I most definitely don't come here looking for "normal news".
- Pulce 10y agoOr Crash is... https://r.mprd.se/MAME/snap/crash.png https://r.mprd.se/MAME/snap/crash.png
- emodendroket 10y agoSteve Jobs did not personally design or engineer the iPhone either.
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- kodfodrasz 10y agoI played it a lot as a kid, and only recently learned how complex the ghost behaviours were (compared to what I beleived about them): http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-m...
- gowld 10y agoWhen I read that, I was impressed how simplistic they were. canonical article: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossier.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossie...
- kodfodrasz 10y ago> compared to what I beleived I thought they were moving mostly randomly, when I was a kid starting to learn programming.
- duderific 10y agoI remember them moving randomly at first, then when they "caught sight" of you they would start tracking you. Except for the orange one, who would always go the "wrong" direction.
- shultays 10y agoyeah, basically they have two modes. in chase mode they try to chase you in their own algorithms and in scatter mode they go to their own corners. orange one is special, even in chase mode, it stops chasing you when it is close enough.
- ageofwant 10y agoI understand the Inuit have many words that translate into English as 'snow', same for Aramaic languages and 'sand'. So it stands to some reason that those cultures have a deeper understanding of those things even if they just simply assigned shorter symbols to things that can be described in any other language "soft snow", "sand that drifts and collects behind bigger stones", and so on. But because these symbols exist they can be natively manipulated and reasoned about. Hayao Miyazaki's work could not be replicated by an American and the same for Masaya Nakamura. Maybe another from the same culture that comes with it's unique cognitive patterns and world views. We should value our differences, it benefits us all in curious and unexpected ways.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoYou understand incorrectly: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.h...
- Girlang 10y agoThere's only one "Aramaic" word for Sand that I know of, "חוֹל"
- typetypetype 10y agoThere is definitely something to be said for the time when video games were created by small teams of people instead of being huge blockbuster efforts.
- skocznymroczny 10y agoJust like indie games today. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, with lots of high-quality engines available for free (or free to try), and big asset marketplaces.
- typetypetype 10y agoSeeking recommendations!
- filoleg 10y agoAs a person who isn't into the indie hype at all, I found Hotline Miami 1+2 and Super Meat Boy to be amazing. Soundtracks also got me into some quality music I wouldn't have heard about otherwise
- drinkjuice 10y agoThough still in early access, I kind of adore Catacomb Kids, and I'm even more of a fan after I looked up one of the GDC talks [1] of the creator he mentioned in his blog [2]. [1] http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-Catacombs-Procedural-Architecture http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-Cataco... [2] http://catakids.tumblr.com/ http://catakids.tumblr.com/ I'm not affiliated, and I'm not saying there aren't others that may be worth your money more, but I am absolutely convinced that he has the heart and mind in the right place when doing this, and it really shows. I'm hopeful to see where it will go and what he'll come up with after it's finished.
- krapp 10y ago>The barrier to entry is lower than ever, with lots of high-quality engines available for free (or free to try), and big asset marketplaces. I wish I had that 20(mumble) years ago when I was doodling Mario levels on my high school book jacket...
- coleifer 10y agoHe can finally realize his dream of being a ghost chasing Pac-Man.
- protomyth 10y agoI remember the local Team Electronics used the Pac-Man on the Atari 8-bit computers (400/800) to show how much better it was than the Atari 2600. I will remember Pac-Man as a game I put way too much time into. I will remember it fondly along side Wizard of Wor, Time Pilot, Mr. Do, and Sinistar.
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y agoAmazing really that the 2600 port was a total mess while the 400/800 port was widely regarded as one of the best arcade conversions of the day. It always surprises me that the 2600 is remembered so fondly in popular culture while the fantastic Atari 8-bit home computers have faded into obscurity vs. contemporaries like the C64, Apple II, Spectrum et al.
- Malic 10y agoTrue. The commercially available Atari 2600 Pac-Man was not a visual treat. And that is an understatement. The lead developer for Pac-Man at Atari considered it a rushed effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(1982_video_game)#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_(1982_video_game)#Rece... Since then, however, some hobby developers have taken another swing at Pac-Man on the 2600. The 400/800 port still holds the crown but the following is an impressive difference in my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk
- WillPostForFood 10y agoWow, that is an incredible effort at reproducing Pac Man on the 2600. Kudos to the person who did it, DINTAR816, I wish they were around back in the 80's. http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on-atari-2600-receives-much-improved-version-by-homebrew-developer/ http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on-atari-2...
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThe 2600 was vaguely affordable for a middle-class family and very popular at 30m units sold and had no real competitors during its run. Even later competitors that had superior hardware and graphics had a hard time fighting the 2600. The Colecovision[1] far surpassed what the 2600 could do and provided near arcade quality, but was fighting a losing war against the 2600, which was still on a 1977 design on store shelves in 1982, even as it had to compete with the less popular and more expensive Atari 5200 and tough competitor Intellivision, all at the same time. Of course people will talk about something more popular, especially if they owned one. 30 million people owned the 2600. That's a lot of mindshare. Owning an Atari computer was much more rare. The Atari computer line-up had real competitors and did not have monopoly status. They had to contend against popular products like the Commodore 64, Apple //, etc. By a lot of metrics, especially game quality and selection, the Atari computer was the poorer choice and the market simply chose against them. It didn't help that the Atari 800 was nearly twice the price of the C64. The C64 had a poorer color palette but could instead do more sprites and had more colors per sprite, which is something that favored gaming and pushed it more towards being a favorite with those who wanted a computer, but also something that could play games well. [1] This was a Z-80A based console. The Z-80A is actually what the arcade PacMan ran on, so it was like an arcade machine that could take carts, in your home! Its an underappreciated gem that more or less got caught up in the great video game crash of 1983-1985 and hamstrung by various issues Coleco had including its long delayed computer based on this system called ADAM. By the time ADAM launched it couldn't compete and the Colecovision was more or less dead. Wonderfully enough there was a version ADAM that was just a cart you plug into your Colecovsion, but I think it also suffered from "too little, too late" as by then C64, PC, and Apple ruled the home market without much room for new players. Video below showing how some games were almost identical to their arcade equivalents: https://youtu.be/SUMzVkzoRjs?t=4s https://youtu.be/SUMzVkzoRjs?t=4s
- sizzzzlerz 10y agoGame over <wa-wa-wa-wa-waaaaaa>
- Pulce2 10y agolol, "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." is new for me... https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s
- duderific 10y agoI remember getting a little handbook that had all the "patterns" you could learn to evade the ghosts. One of the top days of my youth was when I "turned over" Pac-Man by topping 1,000,000 points, I think I was on the seventh key (the little symbols that you could eat would progress through a series, ending with the key symbol which would then repeat ad infinitum). People would gather around the game console if you were really on a roll, craning their necks to get a look...good times, good times.
- Pulce 10y ago1987, Crash, https://r.mprd.se/MAME/snap/crash.png https://r.mprd.se/MAME/snap/crash.png Stupid people...
- Pulce2 10y agohttps://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans-death https://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans-death