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I was lucky enough to have grown up with computers, writing my first program in 1977, and then entertaining myself with the Arcades of the 80's as they released
by mmjaa 9y ago
I was lucky enough to have grown up with computers, writing my first program in 1977, and then entertaining myself with the Arcades of the 80's as they released title after title .. while also having access to the internals of the cabinets, through friends of my Dad who owned an Arcade rental business .. without those halcyon days of burned fingers and EEPROM copiers I don't think I'd have gained the insight I then later used to get into systems software development... For me, it was a joy indeed to walk into the local Arcade ("Time Zone", in Australia) and see the new - almost monthly - releases from around the world, spend a few bucks on a game or two, then walk back into the employee-only area and inspect the games, chip for chip, on the workbench.
I think a lot of serious value came from that experience, and I really wish it were possible for youngsters to have a similar kind of environment, in this day and age .. alas, with the appstore/walled-gardens, its not so easy to get inside the boxes and have a look, although I do think that my kids are going to gain a great deal of experience from the independent gaming community, the Open Pandora/Pyra and emu-scene .. once they get enough of an interest in how things are working in order to stop playing the games of the zeitgeist.
I remember when Scramble came out, how revolutionary it was to have a side-scroller .. and then when R-type/Gradius hit the scene, WOW! It was an evolutionary progression that I don't think many see, these days, in the modern arena. Does the Nintendo Switch provide such inspirations? I guess I'll have to dig deeper to see if there is an indie scene on that platform .. for the sake of my kids.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoIf you are ever near Cincinnati, visit "Arcade Legacy".
- EvanAnderson 9y agoHoly crap. I live an hour from Cincinnati and had no idea this was here. Thanks for hooking me up with this!
- adamlovesgin 9y agoHonestly, I couldn't be more envious. There's nothing left here.
- gebeeson 9y agoWe had a 'Time Zone' in Mountain View, CA - It went on to be Aladdin Arcade and then at some point, They knocked down the San Antonio Shopping center and did not replace the arcade. Or The Hobby Shop. That was a bad day. I really miss arcades though.
- foobarrio 9y agoYoungsters have access to those kinds of experiences but they will never be the same as your experiences. For you those experiences were in access to hardware internals but for youngsters perhaps these experiences are more in software internals. For people older than you, they probably lament VLSI and youngsters not having to access to lower scale integration chips and being able to actually "see" the transistors. I can go online and see the source code of fully working games and even some older AAA games by just right clicking and "View Source" for html5 games or code dumps of older AAA games. Being able to access the source code for Super Mario Bros. was something of a dream to me when I was little! If you want to see what a full scale production 3D modeling/rendering package looks like you can go and look Blender's. I had to learn my 3D game programming concepts from books full of code that never linked or even compiled and hacked copies of POV Ray that never compiled or ran. Forget about even seeing the source for commercial packages like 3D Studio or Lightwave. For database stuff there is PostgreSQL and together with NodeJS, NginX can be set up in an evening to play with. I learned database stuff in a computer lab and some academic version of Oracle. Unfortunately I can imagine a future where software is much less accessible than it is now. Even in hardware there are things like Arduino and Pi that make prototyping a lot more accessible than before.
- Toenex 9y agoI recall the first time I encountered a 'Defender' machine. Up until then the machines had basically all been Space Invader or PacMan derivatives. I must have been 11 or 12 years old and it totally blew me away both virtually - it repeatedly kicked my arse as it took 10p after 10p (British btw) and I was only lasting about 20 seconds each game as I grappled with the controls - and also physically - the noise of the thing was epic! Also getting the high score on Phoenix ranks close to the birth of my children as a life moment. (Obviously I'll deny that if they ask). As a computer nerd the 1980's was a great time to come of age - ignoring the twin threats of imminent nuclear war and AIDS. A generation saw the home computer become a reality. Particularly in the UK where, thanks to people like Sir Clive, Curry, Furber, Wilson, Hauser as well as the good old BBC, for a couple of years it seemed all to be happening on the doorstep. I felt a similar thrill years later at University when I got into BBS's and using fidonet to send electronic messages that got anywhere in the world within 24 hours. OK, you kids get off my lawn.
- ddingus 9y agoOk god. Yes! The sound was single channel, procedural, driven by a priority system. Supreme example of how to make a compelling player experience. I reached good mastery of that game. Took a while, but man! Oh, so worth it. I will to this day, drop everything and play that one on sight.
- greedo 9y agoDefender was great! Played it for hours, rolled over the high score where you got something like 25 free ships. A quarter could last 30-45 minutes.
- antod 9y agoDefender is the all time king of video games IMO. Even though I sucked at it.