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Atari revives unreleased arcade game that was too hard for 1982 players
- snthpy 4y agoIf it was too hard for players in 1982 then there's no way today's players stand a chance.
- shadowofneptune 4y agoAt least now you don't need to plug in a quarter (nearly a dollar in today's money) to keep practicing.
- richrichardsson 4y agoTrue, but you do need the ~500€ console and ~50€ game.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- crtasm 4y agoThe remake platforms include PC, Switch and the last gen Playstation, nobody needs to pay €500 to run it.
- kristopolous 4y agoIt's not the same game Here's the original https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2r9Pt01ruF8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2r9Pt01ruF8 I'm thinking the payoff wasn't good enough to be a quarter eater. A hard game people don't want to play that much isn't good profit
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoLooks like a circular Space Invaders, but with less variation and less fun. And a weaker narrative for your imagination to latch onto.
- kristopolous 4y agoIt was pretty similar to Tempest (1980) and by 1982, games had moved on from this mode https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Sv28sYUZc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Sv28sYUZc Platforms and diggers like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Qbert, and Mario were all the rage by 1982 The older Atari ones are vector based and not pixel based. If you can see them in person on old hardware they look great
- ZiiS 4y agoIn 1982 you were playing $/minute for a small local group to learn how to beat it. Today online communities share tactics. Many of the hardest ever games are routinely speed run.
- ofrzeta 4y agoWho's Atari in 2022? Stories like this one seem to suggest that it's somehow the same entity that once was. However there's nothing left besides the name, is it? Solution: Atari SA is the company formerly known as Infogrames. "As of 2022, the current Atari is pursuing several lines of business outside of video gaming, including cryptocurrency and video-game themed hotels." (WP)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 4y agoNolan Bushnell is on the board so I'm saying it's not completely just a shell
- ekianjo 4y agoNolan Bushness is probably on the board just for show. He's almost 80.
- noobermin 4y agoPeople don't appreciate how hard old games are. Somehow just because the graphics are "retro" now people assume old games are easy as well but consistently I find old games much more difficult than modern ones. The fact every gamer now expects a tutorial level just demonstrates how much gamers today expect to be hand held.
- dmitriid 4y ago> The fact every gamer now expects a tutorial level just demonstrates how much gamers today expect to be hand held. No, "every gamer" doesn't expect that. The industry pivoted to these (frankly infuriating) tutorials because the term "gamers" now encompass a much larger number of people. Including those who only play very, very casually. And there are many games that are extremely challenging and brutal.
- Natsu 4y agoGames were brutally hard back then because they wanted you to spend more quarters. And they did have tutorials, either written on the side of the arcade cabinet, or via the main screen showing a little bit of game play to give you the idea of what you were doing. And those games were simple enough that seeing a few seconds of play was enough to explain pretty much the entire game, whereas now many games have entire wikis (DF, Stardew, etc.) because there are tons of things to keep track of, whether that be how to make soap or when you can catch a squid.
- rightbyte 4y agoMost NES games were silly hard too though. Not just arcade wanting your quarters.
- probably_wrong 4y agoI believe the difficulty has more to do with what the market looked like. Once you bought a game, it would have to last you a long time - even if there were other games around, you could only afford so many before your allowance ran out.
- myrandomcomment 4y agoI tried to play this on the Atari 50th on PS5 but the controls were very difficult as it was made for trackballs. I hope this remake takes into account that as it looks promising. Tempest on PS5 is also awful for the same reason.
- Grazester 4y agoI always thought Tempest played fine with controller.
- goosedragons 4y agoI'm really glad I picked it up on Steam Deck, the trackpads work pretty well as trackball replacements although it takes a bit to dial in the sensitivity. Can you use the PS5 trackpad as awkward as that may be?
- criddell 4y agoCan you plug a mouse or trackball into a PS5?
- mistersquid 4y ago> Can you plug a mouse or trackball into a PS5? It'll depend on the software developers to support trackball/mouse inputs. For example, Code Mystics's Atari Flashback Classics Vol. [0] contains a version of Centipede (1980) by Atari which used a trackball for a controller. However, users cannot use a trackball or mouse as a controller because Code Mystics did not build support for anything except PlayStation controllers. As a then-contemporary Centipede high-scorer, the play experience is awful. I'd like to find more space- and money-affordable ways to play Centipede than a cabinet replica. [1] [0] https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/developers/games/5013 https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/developers/games/5013 [1] https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/arcade-1up-arcade1up-atari-legacy-centipede-edition-with-riser-lit-marque-arcade-ljhy1174.html https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/arcade-1up-arcade1up-a...
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoI want to play Tempest using my mouse's scroll wheel. I think it would be quite close to the original. However, I haven't found a version that lets me map it properly.
- userbinator 4y agoThe name sounds like the grunts of frustration from those who played it.
- quickthrower2 4y agoFed up of the actor model? Wait till you tried this game!
- BaseballPhysics 4y agoI assumed it was named after this guy: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Akaar https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Akaar Alas it appears to be a coincidence: https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=akka-arrh&page=detail&id=3649 https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=akka-arrh&page=detail&id=3... > The name Akka Arrh is an an pseudo acronym for : Also Known As Another Ralston Hally production.
- DarknessFalls 4y agoAkka Arrh comes with the Tempest 12-in-1 cabinet produced by Arcade1up. Much to my dismay, the attract mode on this cabinet defaults to a demo of Akka Arrh, instead of Tempest. It seems like Atari wants to push more recognition of it, otherwise - what an arbitrary choice for a cabinet that also has Centipede, Crystal Castles, Missile Command, and other more celebrated titles.
- mgkimsal 4y agoI have that machine! Akka is... weird. And slightly ugly as the default attract mode. I normally select millipede and let that run in attract mode. I thought it was default because it was just alphabetically first...
- mwenge 4y agoWhat makes this special is that the remake is by Jeff Minter, who is famous for, among other things, his multiple trippy remakes of Tempest on multiple platforms.
- egypturnash 4y agoLooking videos of the original it honestly looks more like a sketch for a game than an actual game. The giant mandalas filling the screen beg for much trippier themeing than the generic blips and "the Atarian Federation vs the Xablartian Empire". The only reason it's really interesting to anyone is because the three people who ended up with the prototypes refused to let the ROMs get dumped for a while. Minter is a total wizard, and I hope Atari gave him enough leeway to turn this napkin doodle of a game into something that can reach into your brain and give your visual cortex a really soothing, satisfying massage. He's good at that. Scary good.
- morelisp 4y agoHaving played the version on Atari 50 some parts definitely could've spent more time cooking, but on the other hand for 1982 I think the two different scales alone would've made this stand out. (But part of the reason it was cancelled was apparently it was not just too difficult but "too complicated" - I assume primarily because of the scales.)
- ThinkBeat 4y agoJeff is a true eccentric genius and I meant that in the most complimentary way. I remember spending endless hours on his games when I was younger. His sense of humor is great. He innovates and he squeezes more out of a computer than what should be possible. At least in the Atari ST days :)
- evo_9 4y agoVideo of the original arcade game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_UQ5wpa2eD0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_UQ5wpa2eD0 Also you can play it on MAME.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoI kinda prefer the simple, focused esthetic of the original. The remake has a lot of distraction going on. But the music is cool.
- evo_9 4y agoAgree; sounds like there is a setting to turn that down/off, and hopefully restore the original arcade graphics.
- ndiddy 4y agoThis game is a great example of how piracy helps rightsholders. Because the original game was cancelled (and the multiple corporate restructurings Atari went through), the only copies of Akka Arrh in existence were in the hands of private collectors. Typically, these collectors act like they own the exclusive rights to a game simply because they got a hold of the board. This often makes it impossible for unreleased games to see a legitimate release, as the collectors will either not cooperate at all, demand far more money for the ROMs than the game is likely to make, or try to place restrictions on the release (must be digital only, the ROM files must be encrypted, etc.) in order to "preserve the value" of their collection. Meanwhile, if the ROMs are freely available online, the rightsholders can just download them and avoid all of this red tape entirely. In Akka Arrh's case, the ROMs were leaked to a ROM site (supposedly by a vigilante repair tech) against the will of a number of collectors. While this pissed off the collectors who no longer had exclusive access to the game, it also meant that the game could now become a legitimately licensed part of several Atari compilations (such as the excellent Atari 50).
- fomine3 4y agoInteresting https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/after-a-lost-atari-rom-leaks-retro-fans-ask-was-it-stolen/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/after-a-lost-atari-ro...
- yladiz 4y agoI wonder if there is a strange discrepancy between the perceived and actual value that is being derived for the cartridge from. In my mind I can think of two main sources for the value: its rarity in ability to play (the rarity of the playable game itself) or rarity in ownership of the physical cartridge. While I think the collectors perceive the value is derived from the former, I’m skeptical that it’s where the actual value is derived because of the value of special editions of Super Mario Bros carts (which can obviously be played easily) and, in a different way, the value of art that appears in museums.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anigbrowl 4y agoI think 'too hard' is not the right way to look at this. It's a qualitative rather than a quantitative issue. My wife is really good at pattern matching (Tetris style) and platform games. I am just adequate at the former, and useless at the latter, I've never completed the first level of Super Mario Bros and though I've enjoyed some other platformers like Little big Planet I'm really just Not Good at them. Some time back I installed a Jeff Minter game, Space Giraffe I think. I was a fan of both his games and his eccentric personality from my home computer experience in the 1980s (I had a Vic-20 and JMs games were the only thing ones that delivered an exciting game experience on that machine's limited hardware). Well, my wife attempted and couldn't cope with it at all, playing for more than 10 minutes would give her a headache, whereas she play things like Tetris near competitive level. She just found it overstimulating and with way too many audio and visual signals coming in. for me, it was (unexpectedly) a breeze. I could just sit there and play and play and cruise through levels with ease; it's comfortable because that's how the real world living in a city is for me, constant sensory overstimulation from people, cars, billboards, graffiti, messages etc. etc. So Jeff Minter's new game looks like a relaxing meditative toy rather than some some psychedelic torture device. It's not a question of hard vs easy, as if all games can be ranked along a single dimension. It's something to with how the human brain works. Why do I find Jeff Minter games easy when I'm bad-to-mediocre at many other simple videogames? The other simple games* I am good at are ones that require a lot of attention splits and/or tended to be unpopular with many players because they were 'too frenetic'. So in terms of classic games I was poor at Galaxians but did well on Tempest. * I mean simple in the sense of being 2d and not elaborate discovery/open world games like RPGs or FPS, which require a whole different set of skills.