Spy Hunter and the concept of Security Torx

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:24 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Anyway. Much like the tongues of half the current posters to this bulletin board, the road in Spy Hunter forks. If you go to the left, initially, you get the oil slick. (Which we have determined to be the most useful weapon.) Going to the right thereafter gets you the missiles. Skilled players, of which I am not, can shoot down the helicopters pretty reliably with those missiles. I end up shooting down commuters. And actually, as I like to fire the game up when I get home from work, I'm perfectly fine with this. Spy Hunter will stop you from scoring points when you kill innocent people. It replaces your score with the text string, "NO POINTS." It doesn't say "NO PLEASURE," however. This is because it can't.

There's probably an ideal path to take through the game, but I love that feeling you get when you are exploring everything about a game and finding the secrets out for yourself. Nobody who worked on the Xbox/PS2 versions of Spy Hunter, by the way, had the first clue of what was cool and interesting about the arcade version, but that's fine: the same can be said for the people who made the arcade game Spy Hunter 2. In fact, the SH2 people did not even have Benjamin "Pinback" Parrish supplying the only fun anyone ever had with the modern-day sequels, which was choosing the protagonist's name, a certain "Agent Butt." So there you go.

More later. I don't have this game down or anything.

Oh yeah. Update. Everything I wrote in that post was a bunch of bullshit, because I had my pedal configured wrong.

One of its owners in the thing's history apparently fucked up the pedal pot. The more you pressed it the LOWER the reading it gave.

It started at 0B. Pressing it a little bit got you DOWN to 3F. And then the assembly on the bottom of the pedal stopped you from going any further.

Thanks to some help from the guys at the Killer List of Video Games Forum, I was told that the wires on the pot were wrong. I ripped off the two offending wires (leaving the yellow/blue one alone) and put them in each other's places. That worked.

More in a bit, but Jesus Christ the game runs better now, with true analog controls over the low and high speeds.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:34 pm

Pontiac made an ad that features one of their cars inside Spy Hunter. I'll see if I can find it on Youtube.

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:44 pm

[youtube][/youtube]

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:22 am

Why, in the commercial, does the fine print read: Closed course, professional driver, do not attempt"?

Surely nobody would want a helicopter to drop bombs on them, right?

I dislike car companies (and for that matter any company) using pop culture to push their products. I rather like Spy Hunter and feel sad that the gameplay is now linked to an actual car. Much like the old movie monsters playing second fiddle to Abbot and Costello and the Three Stooges.

THE
ANYTHING FOR MONEY
AARDVARK

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:18 am

Personally, I am just amazed at how specific advertising is getting. They didn't show the car in the 2002 Spy Hunter remake for the PS2/Xbox/PC. They didn't show the car in Pole Position, which is probably a better-remembered old game. And the 20,000 points shown in the upper right hand corner is the (correct) default score that comes up after you disconnect your battery.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri May 02, 2008 4:40 pm

Note to self: OK, someday I am going to need to drop a new monitor in. To sum up what others have found:

demogo over at KLOV had no success with a Happ Vision Pro. The water is all fucked up.

tec9 from KLOV had success with a Betson Imperial. demogo is going to slide one into his SH this week.

Whatever originally shipped with Gyruss is compatible, which is how mine is set up. I'd say with two Betson Imperial success stories (should it take hold), that's all the data I'll need.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:48 pm

I moved this recently and I can't remember why.

Well, in doing so, the battery that I installed came loose. Lost my scores.

I decided to solder the wires to the battery's holder. Nothing permanent is really done by doing this, because the battery itself can still pop right out - it looks like the battery config on a computer motherboard.

I can barely move Spy Hunter, and since I have a tiled stone-like floor, I don't bother to try to move it. I was sandwiched between the wall and the game itself, trying to perform this soldering adventure. That's when it occurred to me that arcade games were like the spaceships of the past.

In Star Trek, it was always my impression that the best engineers went to Starfleet because the starships were the greatest feat of engineering, and that's where the cutting edge was. With that in mind, I would imagine they have to get their hands dirty, messing around with the, ah, warp coil and everything.

Arcade games are like that in the past, except for a tech rather than an engineer in this example. To get the SCIENCE!!! accomplished, I'm in all sorts of weird positions. ... OK, it's mostly because I didn't want to remove the circuit board with the battery properly, but still.

Anyway, it looks all right now, and I hopefully fixed a long-standing problem with an improperly grounded wire near the fluorescent light, which was causing it to go HMMMM constantly.

"HMM, YES" -- my neckbearded Spy Hunter

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Dec 28, 2010 11:26 pm

I really hate the fact that NOBODY can keep anything up on the fucking Internet. The video up above was a Spy Hunter-themed commercial for some stupid car. It's a dead link, now.

Anyway, my high score on my Spy Hunter was just over 125,000 the last time I posted in this thread. I just broke 127,000. I had zero bases left and got into a situation where two Road Lords had me boxed in on an icy road while a Mad Bomber was chucking bombs at me. What finally got me was the limo with the shotgun on the side of the road. It literally took four of them working together AND the ice stage to off my last dude. Fuckers!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:59 pm

I think I am going to sell Spy Hunter and buy a Qix with it. I think this will happen Thursday.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:49 pm

Why Qix? That sounds like a serious downgrade in terms of gameplay.

Qix is the game where you try to section off rectangular parcels of the screen, leaving smaller and smaller sections for the qix to live in, right? Much like what the white people did to the native Americans, right? Now try to play the game without a guilty conscience.

THE
HEY HOW ARE YA
AARDVARK

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 6:07 pm

AArdvark wrote:Why Qix? That sounds like a serious downgrade in terms of gameplay.

No. Spy Hunter sucks, and Qix is a pure test of hand-eye coordination and planning.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 7:26 pm

AArdvark wrote:Why Qix? That sounds like a serious downgrade in terms of gameplay.

My Spy Hunter is not that great. It has Gyruss burn on the monitor and there is a gouge in the cabinet. It's also like 700 pounds and tall.

I did do some mods to it, but it's a beast. I'd like to one day get a home with my girlfriend and rather than move it along with 14 other games, I'd just rather flip it for a Qix.

I am a bit disappointed in Qix for the 48-in-1 machine. Additionally, there isn't an arcade around town that has Qix.

I might get a Spy Hunter again. They become available. I will lament the fact that I won't be able to play it until I do, because the controls can not be emulated. But the bugginess of the game and cabinet, along with its unnecessary size took its toll.

I will miss you as well, Spy Hunter.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Jun 27, 2012 10:54 pm

The Spy Hunter is on location at the 2UP. So it's sort of like I can see it when I want. It just costs a quarter now.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Mon Jul 02, 2012 1:36 pm

Did you do anything to it to "mark" it?

On many of the games I've sold, I've written my name on the inside in Sharpie. (Now that I think about it, I don't think I "signed" your Gauntlet cab.) If I were selling a game that I knew would be on location, I would do "something" to it.

In my mind, it would be a way to impress a girl. ("Hey baby, see what Spy Hunter over there? Get on all fours and check underneath the gas pedal there. Aw, yeah ... that's my name.") In retrospect, you might not want to date a girl that (a) is impressed by that, or (b) would get on all fours in a dirty arcade. Or maybe you would.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 1:41 pm

So the Spy Hunter I sold to the 2UP was at the Kong Off 2.

Paul Dean, who holds the world record for Spy Hunter, played it.

I found out from Jon that Paul thought my old Spy Hunter machine was "unacceptable."

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:13 pm

Did that "torx" you off?

Years ago I had a guy come over to my house to buy one of my games. While he was there he proceeded to bash every single on of my games. This one was dirty, this one was broken, this one was a conversion, and so on. Looking back I think it was a ploy to get me to devalue my collection (I was selling a few games at the time). In reality what it did was ensure that I would never do business with that guy again, which I didn't. Yay for grudges! By the way the game he was complaining about was a working JAMMA game in an old Ms. Pac-Man cabinet that he immediately converted into a 48-in-1 machine and sold for a $500 profit.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 10:41 pm

I didn't mark it, unfortunately. Well, I guess I did as the screws that hold the marquee are gold.

I... I kinda miss old Spy Hunter. Might give that one another go someday.

I've never had someone go through and talk shit about all my games like that. I should say that when I sold Satan's Hollow, the Kong Off 2 had ended and two guys from the #arcade IRC channel dropped by to pick it up. We rag on each other all day long there.

So while they were point out all the things wrong with my Funhouse, they also grabbed a meter, took readings of the fuses, and fixed it so that the general illumination lights were working. (I had a 5 amp fuse in my house, and that's all it was.)

I don't mind people pointing out flaws in my games if they also immediately repair them.