Mame and the Privacy Of My Own Home

Arcade Games & Cooking.

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bruce
Posts: 2544
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2002 10:43 pm

Mame and the Privacy Of My Own Home

Post by bruce »

I just played Galaga. When I cleared the first Challenging Stage with a perfect 40/40, 10k points, I shrieked "<b>SUCK IT, BITCH!</b>" frightening my dog.

This would have gotten me expelled from an arcade, back in the day.

Reflecting on the entertainment possibilities afforded by arcade classics in the privacy of my own basement, it occurs to me that I could play Make Trax <i>without pants</i>.

Bruce

Ben

Post by Ben »

LOLOLOLOOAHAHAH!JFEiho

BTW, Bruce, I just wrote a rambling thing on MR about MAME. Here, I'll copy it here, since it's the type of thing which lends itself more to a "thread" (unless, as is normally the case, everyone just ignores me and I have to take steps.)

-----------

Bruce: I am better now at ALL of the games I care about (Asteroids, Joust, and now Galaga) than I was when they first came out. For a while I thought it was just that MAME makes things easier, since you can customize the controls to your liking, and pressing "left" and "right" keys is faster than moving a joystick back and forth. Except I took my newfound Galaga skills to an actual arcade, and they translated perfectly.

No, your reflexes probably aren't any better (and possibly significantly worse -- mine aren't, because I spend a lot of free time playing musical instruments, typing, and, well, playing video games, which keeps the level of degradation to a minimum), but your mind probably is. One of the reasons I've gotten SO much better at Galaga is that the patterns just seem to present themselves all the more clearly and quickly. If I miss a guy in any of the first four Challenge Stages now, I am pissed off. And decimating the regular stages is much easier just because my mind instinctively knows where the dudes are gonna be now, and when I need to start firing, and where, for the best effect. The only time I ever lose guys anymore is right after they're all "set up" up top, and they launch the first salvo of "attack dudes", because they all come at once, and the only way to survive seems to be to find the hole in their stream of bullets, and switch to the other side of the screen whenever possible. (Asteroids skill actually comes in handy here, because you have to see the whole screen -- or at least the bottom half of it.) The specifics of this dissertation aren't the point, though. The fact that any of this analysis is actually occurring to me IS the point. Nobody ever thinks this way when they're 12. (Or 9 or 4 or whatever any of you were when these things came out the first time.)

Or, maybe it's just because you can play 'em a lot more without going broke.

bruce
Posts: 2544
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2002 10:43 pm

Post by bruce »

Didn't work for Gyruss.

Largely because I keep expecting left and right to keep spinning me around rather than getting me to the left and right sides of the screen and stopping there. That was much more natural with a joystick, although a Tempest-style spinner would have been the best control.

Where did you find an arcade with a working Galaga?

Bruce

Ben

Post by Ben »

Santa Monica Pier has two of them, one of which is still in playable condition. I went there for three straight days, and enjoyed seeing this when I left:


BEN 163550
BEN 157280
XAX 42400
GGF 23950
AAA 20000
AAA 20000
AAA 20000

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