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Geek Trivia: Name of the game

Back in the day I have wasted many a quarter in the local mall arcade playing my favorite game - Donkey Kong. It's funny, how technology has improved 100 times over since the early 80's, yet there is still nothing like the days of an arcade and video games. PacMan was addictive, then Ms. PacMan with different levels. Asteroids, Galaga, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Defender, Joust, Centipede, Battle Zone and others were the staple. When I was a freshman in college Star Wars came out on a video game. Wow! A chance to fight Tie Fighters and destroy the Death Star on my own! It was wonderful. The nostalgia is fun to remember.

What was your favorite arcade games of the 80's?

Wasn't the original Mario character, before he
was called Mario, the guy who brought you
your ball in the arcade game Alleyway? Wasn't
that even before donkey kong?

Okay, horrible rendition of the theme song (it sounded good in my mind), but SPY HUNTER takes the cake. Driving the car, ramming the guys off the road, pulling into the resupply truck - it doesn't get any better.

Spyhunter was probably my favorite arcade game. The music, the simple interface, the sheer joy of using cool spygadgets and tarching gangster cars. Man, I need to find an emulator.

My first great console love was the original NES, and MegaMan 2 was far and away my all-time favorite title on that platform. Ah, memories...

Yah...and remember some of the early nes hacks? I was so happy when I found out I could play Contra with 99 lives (wow!). That was the coolest.

P.S. My friend has a great t-shirt - it has a picture of an NES box with the words: "Classically Trained."

GSteve:

You just jolted a memory...

up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start

Ha!

Mine were Berzerk and Tempest in the early 80s. One day in the fall of 1981 I went to the college-campus-area gameroom of pool tables, ping-pong tables, air hockey, etc. -- and overnight all old "games" had been removed and replaced with about 25 video games. We would stack quarters on the game's shelf to show how long we would monopolize a game. People started hovering around to jump in as the stack got down to the last couple of quarters. Berzerk and Tempest were in their first year and definitely my favorites.

That game had the simplest graphics of any of them, I think, but the playability was just awesome. It was by far and away my favorite video game from the 80's.

Battlezone, Joust, and Tempest. Final Fight was my favorite dual player game.

I find that I play Battlezone most often (using MAME32 on my home PC) though it is pretty predictable.

Joust is still one of the most original concepts and is lots of fun. Jousting over a multilevel lava field on the back of a flying ostrich...

At the arcade, Tempest used to leave me as a quivering pile of adrenaline-depleted teenager. I'd try to walk out without falling down, it really was that intense. I can't find a control for my computer that gives me the same accuracy that the spinner did in the arcade.

Final Fight teams up a couple of guys who have to fight their way through a city to rescue a girl. What a feeling of accomplishment when we finally won! It probably took $10-20 in quarters.

Were my faves... Vanguard was a scroller like Defender, but with really cool zones and music PLUS you could fire in 4 directions. I also still play Turbo. Alphonso's Pizzeria in Scotch Plains NJ had that one in their lobby-- I spent my week's lunch money on one slice, a Coke, and lots of Turbo!

BTW- does anyone remember the name of the game by Taito that used to talk? It was a shooter like Space Invaders, but little stick figures would say "Help Me!" as aliens were picking them up. All my old friends' brains are too fried to remember the name...

Defender, I believe.

All of the games listed as of this post (and then some) can be found at DisneyQuest in Downtown Disney, Orlando.

The best thing about it, is that once you get into DisneyQuest, just press the credit button to enter all of the virtual quarters you want into the game.

My favorites: Tempest, Sinistar and Marble Madness.

My first gamer was played on a Sinclair ZX+,back in 84.It was Chukie Egg,where there were 24 levels (ok,I admit I never got passed 10),where giant chickens? chased you around this course.The object was to get all the eggs,and move onto the next level.The other one was super-sportsman (back in the sexist days!!),where you had to do six individual sports.The pole vault destroyed my joystick!! I kid you not.Thanks Sinclair.

Someone else had a Sinclair?

I thought I was the only one that owned one of those!

I still remember the 2k of ram memory, the tape (cassette!) drive, and the touch-pad keyboard.

We'd play the sit-down model, with the floor-mounted joystick, beating the fire button until our thumbs cramped. This was long before anybody knew what carpal-tunnel was.

He would just drift off into the zone where he didn't even have to think, just zap 'em.

(Self-indulgent post alert!)
The sit-down Tail Gunner was the only video arcade game I ever "rolled over"; the score only had 4 digits so the most you could score was 9999. If my memory serves me correctly, my final score on one occasion was A106, I can only assume I went over the limit with a score of 10106. I got so good at this game, I would blast the 3 oncoming ships outta the sky to the beat of the arcade's sound system music.

One of the tricks of this game was to find an arcade that had the game set to give you more "units" of shield. I found different arcades had the amount of shield that you started with set at different levels.

www.retrogaming.com or www.emulators.com

I just got a copy of space invaders and packman for my smartphone, and the gameplay is still there. (check www.modaco.com)

For me, the game was Chuckie Egg. I managed to find that again a few years ago as a .eve file. What freaked me was that as a child I can remember waiting 10-20 minutes for this thing to load from tape (audio). The .exr file would have fitted 100+times on a floppy....

I played a lot of PacMan and Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, but my favorite thing to do was to sit at home with my atari and play Pitfall.

We didn't have electricity in the small town where I grew up so we couldn't play video games. (j/k) Actually, I was more into playing real-live games like football and baseball. And going out in the woods with my friends and shooting limbs off trees with our shotguns (because we had a lousy aim and couldn't hit birds when they flew overhead). Live targets were more fun than electronic objects zipping by your computer screen.

Hey, I did find these sites that have a pretty good emulator for NES:
www.everyvideogame.com
www.NESCafe.com

I spent last night teaching my son about the 'old days' of video-gaming

grannies garden!
i played this at school when i was like 10 so 18 years ago..
would love to find an emulation for this somewhere cause no one i talk to has ever seen it1

I remember playing space invaders at the local arcade and someone asked how the aliens knew when to shoot. That got me thinking and ultimatley led to my interest in computer programming. So space invaders actually launched my career in IT.

Does anyone remember this game?

For me, it would have to be Super Mario Brothers with the "6" trick and the "000" trick, the above mentioned game (was it just me, or was "tonfun" the tonfa wielding guy IMPOSSIBLE to beat???), and Tempest (watch out for spikes!).

Where you had to win 2 of 3 points and could win either half or full points? And part way through - the bonus round was jumping over a charging bull?? If so, way cool game.

You're thinking of Karate Champ. If I could have back all the quarters I put in that game, I could buy one of the original stand-up arcade units on eBay!

Cliffhanger, for those who may not remember was one of the original "laserdisc" games that followed soon after Dragon's Lair. I loved this game and was eventually able to beat the game, not only one quarter, but without losing a life. This never got the highest score, but it usually drew a crowd in the local arcade.

Not really an arcade game, but I spent hours playing Elite on my Commodore 64. My friends and I used to get a condition called 'Elite wrist'. It's called RSI now - we were so far ahead of our time!!

Can you imagine what a great game it would be if a good remake was made that could take advantage of an Athlon 64 FX and an nVidia 7800? It was an amazing game on an 8-bit, 1.02MHz 6502. I still play it occasionally with VICE. That and Gunship.

It's too bad Bell and Braben can't see past their differences to allow this game to get its 21st century due. There have been some open-source efforts to re-create the original, but they seem to have petered out.

Ian Bell released the code for the trade engine. It's at his website: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/

There have been over half a million hits on his website--a testament to the enduring nature of this outstanding game.

Albeit under the name of "Escape Velocity: Nova" by Ambrosia.

Head on over to http://www.ambrosiasw.com

--MAB

I played a lot of Missile Command. Also enjoyed Lunar Lander, have to laugh today in the comparison of the graphics involved.

Xevious and Major Havoc were always my favorites. I wasted many quarters on Xevious during my lunch hours in the mid-80s. This past weekend I picked up one of these all-in-one retro game consoles in the joystick that has Xevious. My 7-year-old son thinks it's cool. Truly, what's old is new again.

I was ten years old when my sister was born. The night my father took my other sister and me to see her for the first time we went to our local "Ground Round" for dinner. This was back in the day when they had a bank of coin-ops just begging to be fed. I found the sequel to Q-Bert - Cubes. Maybe no one had played it yet or maybe I just had a knack but in no time, not only did I have the hi-score but the entire list was me. I have looked at many game rooms since then to find it again but to no avail.

Sheesh, I can go on and on, but if I had to limit to a reasonable list, I'd have to mention these Quarter Eaters...

Tron, Star Wars, Gauntlet, Marble Madness and Space Harrier, Joust, Rampage, Elevator Action, Spy Hunter, Asteroids, Tempest, Qix, 10 yard fight, Track and Field, Oh my gosh, shall I go on?!?!? Jungle Hunt, Rygar, Golden Axe, Centipede, Missle Command, defender, Yeah Donkey Kong and DK Jr., I can keep going if you like...
Space Invaders, Pac Man, Berzerk, Smash TV, Robotron, Mr. Do!, Crystal Castles...

Like I said, I can go on and on...

And, thanks to the surge in retro gaming interest, I am building my own arcade cabinet to play these yet again.

Of course I buy new games too, but there's nothing out there that even compartes to the unique challenges and playability of the classics.

That game was awesome...i was also a fan of donkey kong and joust. exactly how much of my money did i waste? seems like a lot...

HAHAHAHA! (I still remember that game laughing at me)

That is a game I used to LOVE, but haven't thought about in years!

Had to be two player when you got up there as everything went too fast to do anything but get back to back and pray you didn't get overrun.

Played joust on the xbox not that long ago. Wasn't the same without the big joystick.

That brings back lots of good memories from the arcade at the roller rink! In no particular order, here is my top 10.

1. PacMan
2. Ms PacMan
3. Asteroids
4. Star Wars
5. Space Invaders
6. Donkey Kong
7. Dig Dug
8. Joust
9. Centipede
10. Pole Position

...I spent many hours at the arcade on these two in college. In my junior year it would piss off the guy I was dating because I could get beat him at Centipede!

-Dell

I think that was the name of it, I also emptied my pockets on Galaga and Berzerk. "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!"
Anyone remember Show Biz Pizza? It was the precursor to Chuck E. Cheese. Pizza and video games, what else could you possibly want?

I loved that game so much I bought one myself and put in in the bar in the basement! Now my 6 year old plays it too, and the Mrs also.

bigWillie, if you're ever around Madison, WI, look me up, it's set up for free play now!

Joust was also great, but I don't have room for one of those too.

Galaga was the one I dropped the most quarters into. Getting your two ships docked together for double the firepower was critical (and a blast).

I played a fair amount of Battlezone also. I hated those stinking missiles, but the "radar" was very cool.

Jet

I rocked the house with my Galaga scores (well,... for a GIRL)! To this day my wrists go limp thinking how many hours I spent firing wildly!

Zaxxon. I used to play that over and over at the pizza place we used to hang out at. At the end you shot a giant robot. Asteroids, I used to play that for hours with one quarter. I bought a Space Invaders arcade game a couple of years ago for $300 bucks. No it's not for sale. Galaga, was that a game you flew left to right on the screen through a cave and avoided ships and meteors?

where you controlled a cartoon-type charecter, dressed like a Knight? You started in a raft, and had to decide with your joystick which direction to go at a specific moment.

It was all cartoon/animated -I believe it was "Dragon -(something?).

Man, I hated that game.

That was probably Dragon's Lair, a sort of choose your own adventure game that used animated segments from Don Bluth (or "American Tail" fame) stored on laser discu instead of rendered graphics. Very cool idea with very bad game play. It has legions of fans.
http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/related/prototype/dl/default.asp

I still despised it. I don't think I ever got past the first 2 "moves".

Yea that game sucked big time. Big deal over the laser disc at the time but the game went nowhere. I think that pretty much began and ended the entire laser disc in video games idea right at the get go. Kinda makes you wonder what could have happened if the game had actually been good.

Used to play that game for hours on end. After a while my bud and me got so good the game would litteraly go on for hours on the same quarter.

Was more likely to get tired and walk away than to get derezzed.

The light cycles and the spiders, the tank and the cone.

I would LOVE to buy and old arcade system of that and spyhunter.

Anyone remember the stick animation of "space wars"? On ship looked like the ship from asteroid and the other was a generic "enterprise".

It was very common to ride the bus out to the mall and drop $10 in a day of playing.

Now my twin boys love to do gaming. I have no idea where they get it from......

I couldn't be beat at that game.

BUT I'm still old school. NOTHING beats pinball for a rousing good time.