nostalgia overload

One of the super-useful bits of advice I picked up somewhere about writing and blogging goes like this: most people can’t write for a book and a blog at the same time, because our brains get different kinds of feedback and rewards from each. For most of us, if we had to pick, we’ll write in our blogs because the feedback and interaction is more immediate and rewarding, and it trains us to write short bursts instead of longer narrative pieces.

YMMV, of course, but I can’t do both, and I’m having such a good time writing this thing that I’m writing, I really don’t want to stop until it’s done, so here’s something that should be entertaining until I get back[1]:

Actual recordings of classic video games, digitized from the original cassette recordings.

We recorded our video game experiences from 1982 until 1988 in a variety of locations on the east coast. Most of the recordings come from Ithaca, NY, Albany, NY and Ocean City, MD. Other locations include Lancaster, PA, Falmouth, MA, Rehoboth Beach, DE and Key West, FL.

Luckily I stored all fourteen audio tapes in a safe place and rediscovered them when I moved the rest of my stuff out of my parents house in 1997. In the last several years I digitized these nostalgic recordings to preserve and share them.

This is the most wonderful thing, ever. You get the little kid commentary about games that suck, the occasional burst of excitement when a difficult level is cleared, and the pure unadulterated joy of hearing the other games around the one they were recording. For maximum fun, I suggest putting it in a tab you aren’t looking at, and see how long it takes you to identify the sound clips once they start playing.

Man, I wish I had room and the money for a few arcade cabinets, or at least a MAME cabinet. I’m going to keep on reaching for that goal.

Hey, this’ll be fun: you can have any four classic arcade games in the world. Maintenance and cost aren’t a factor, and there’s no ROM swapping. Which ones to you pick? It’s really tough, but more fun if you don’t spend a ton of time thinking about it, so it’s right off the top of your head. Here are mine:

  1. Robotron
  2. Spyhunter (sit down version)
  3. Galaga
  4. Tempest

You also get one pinball machine. I pick Creature from the Black Lagoon.

When you get tired of riding the nostalgia train, you may want to unwind with the Cerebral or Medieval music collections from Magnatune.

[1] I am well aware that you can all get along just fine without me, I just needed a segue and that was the best I could do on short notice.

90 thoughts on “nostalgia overload”

  1. Another cool thing is listening to how much some of the lingo has changed and how some stuff like “I suck bad” has stayed universal.
    Also strange listening to their voices get progressively deeper hehe…ah good ole puberty.

  2. 1. Elevator Action
    2. Gyruss
    3. Star Wars (stand up)
    4. Steel Talons (2 seater, sit down)*
    ‘I suck bad’ at Pinball
    * might be to new – but damn it was fun as hell

  4. Classic Arcade Games:
    (1) Donkey Kong
    (2) Defender
    (3) TRON
    (4) Tailgunner (does anybody remember this one?)
    Pinball:
    Star Wars. (Jurassic Park is a very close second.)
    Jeff

  5. 1. Tempest
    2. Double Dragon (maybe DD2, I’m kinda split on this one)
    3. Street Fighter III: Third Strike
    4. A 6-slot Neo-Geo with The King of Fighters ’98, Real Bout Fatal Fury 2, Metal Slug X, League Bowling, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and Baseball Stars 2. (Okay, so this one is cheating, but you said no ROM swaping, and I’m limiting myself to the 6 slots. I could name a lot more Neo-Geo games I wouldn’t mind having…)
    As for a pinball machine, I’m tempted to say Pin*Bot, Harley-Davidson (which has been on my mind a lot lately for some reason), or Cyclone.
    However, I have to go with The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot.

  6. 1. Battlezone
    2. Crazy Climber
    3. Gyrus (?) (it was like Galaga, but cylindrical like Tempest)
    4. Shinobi
    Pinball: Black Hole
    Request: Can someone point me to the entry from awhile back regarding the little ‘indie’ games that everyone liked to play? Not the board game post from around Christmas, but a few months earlier (I think). I want to say it had titles like Brains!, or Zombies! or something like that… I think most of the games were pretty quick-play and simple, but sounded like lots of fun… Thanks!

  7. It’s on like donkey kong…
    Great memories of great/fun games here. [DoubleDragon @ greyhound station; TMNT ; Asteroids Deluxe; Joust & Moonpatrol at ChuckECheese! ]
    My four are easy : (okay not so easy, I had to cut StreetFighter and NEOGEO worldheroes from the list)
    1. Star Wars “This is red 5 going in” “…you’re all clear kid”
    2. Hard Driving -sit down
    3. Rampart: castle building/cannon shootin’ 3-person trackball stand up game from Atari – a bit like Tetris meets Civilization I
    4. Omega Race – sit down (awesome space game, easily a fav)
    Pinball:
    Damn hard call… I love me some pinball. T2 is very good, but I gotta go with the classic WIZARD, there’s one at the nearby laundromat/selfstorage place:
    *www.pinrescue.com/games/images/wizard/wizard2.JPG
    Honorable mention to Elvira’s Scared Stiff *12yo snicker*
    dayum funny: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078400/

  8. I had a similar experience, except I didn’t manage to finish the game — I was too exhausted. Instead, I turned all my extra men over to my buddy. It took him another half hour to use them all up.
    We had an interesting “advantage” of sorts on Robotron, though… One of the arcades (but not the one where I found the “Robo Zone”) wasn’t making money with Robo, so the owner cranked down the score for an extra guy and set it to start with five or six for a quarter, too. That made the play time last long enough for us to learn to play without going broke. Unfortunately, that arcade went broke after not too long.
    I wish Robo worked on a PC, but I’ve not found a way to get two joysticks mounted solidly enough to play it. They need to be mounted so that one can pick up the cabinet and move it around the room and nothing *I* can find for a PC can take that.
    (In an unrelated note: Why can’t I post this from Firefox? Even with all scripts enabled, the post/preview buttons remain grayed out. Also, clicking ‘Reply’ opens the edit box where it belongs, but moves the page focus to the bottom, requiring me to search for the place I was going to reply, derailing my already precarious train of thought.)

  9. Did you notice that Wil defeated Wesley Crusher in en early round? Am I confused or is that like being entered twice?
    PS: When I left the site, Wil was behind 1134 to 772. People, get out and VOTE!

  10. Congrats! The first of many foehead smacks as I realize this is why my long narrative mode fails.
    And on getting to the final round, even against your hero.
    And people… VOTE!!! Just so that the haters know they are 1. a minority and 2. wrong. Statistically Whedon has a better shot because of all the shows he’s created… but we have dedication.
    A productive hiatus to you, sir. Perhaps by the time you return with new merch I will have found the chutzpah and technology to purchase one of everything you have in stock.
    Technophobia can be overcome, one day at a time.

  11. Just tried to vote again… only once per ‘puter. Tell your friends, your friends friends and go to the public library to vote often.

  12. Four arcade games…”classic” doesn’t have any restrictions, does it?
    [1] Star Wars “Trilogy Arcade” (1998) would have to be number one if only because it has never been ported over to a console as doing so would ruin half the fun. A sit-down rail shooter that took you through the highlights of the original Star Wars films, back when they were still the ONLY Star Wars films, wasn’t very challenging but it was a hell of a ride. With practice, I could finish the whole game on one credit, making it the ultimate version of those quarter-operated motorized spaceships that used to sit outside the supermarket.
    [2] Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star (2000) is another game that cannot be enjoyed in a living room because the game requires you to actually beat the crap out of moving padded targets. Considering Fist of the North Star is all about a guy who can punch people faster than the speed of light, this game doubles as an intense workout as you try to hit the targets as fast as he can.
    [3] Captain America and the Avengers (1991) isn’t the greatest four-player cabinet from that era, but the kitchen-sink approach to bosses offers a wide range of famous Marvel foes to defeat. The four playable characters are all really cool as well, especially the Vision. But the best part of all is hearing the machine yell “I…can’t…move!” when you lose, just like a comic book hero would.
    [4] Golgo 13 (circa 2001) was a tremendous sniper action game where you filled the shoes of the legendary assassin from the Japanese manga. Unlike other sniper games where you were always fighting soldiers, this game offered a constant variety of targets. I remember shooting a diamond out of a crooked fatcat’s hand, disarming a bomb on an elevator by cutting the wire with my high powered rifle, and even sniping a lady’s high heeled shoe so that she fell down a stairway…because sometimes, it’s gotta look like an accident.
    My classic pinball game is FUNHOUSE with the big dummy head at the top. He talked a lot of smack as you played, making shooting balls down his throat all the more satisfying.

  15. 1. 1943
    2. Twin Cobra
    3. Galaga
    4. Tron
    MAME cabinets are cool, but for me the original arcade games are cooler. I would love to have a game room with my top 4 available to play all the time. Until I have it I’ll just have to settle for the Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas.
    http://www.pinballmuseum.org/

  16. Yes! Every year my family stayed at the beach for a week or two and the little arcade there had a Space Duels machine. My brother and I would always be very upset if anyone topped our scores so we would keep playing until we had *all* the scores, not just the top one. It was a nice tradition. 🙂

  17. 1. Space Wars (blackholes! hyperspace! head-to-head!)
    2. Qix (math geek entertainment)
    3. Galaga
    4. Tron
    Pinball: Toss up between old-school All Star Baseball (mechanical!) and new-school The Getaway (digital, with La Grange playing over and over and over and over…)

  18. Currently I have in my basement:
    Simpsons Bowling
    Gauntlet Dark Legacy
    Operation Thunderbolt
    Iron Man Ivan Stewart Super Offroad
    Offroad Challenge
    Defender
    Donkey Kong Jr. Cocktail
    Lethal Enforcers
    You would be suprised on the cost of the classics these days. We have collectors here in the Seattle area that have all of these. Ballpark on the costs:
    Robotron – $300 to $600
    Spyhunter (sit down version)$500 – $700
    Galaga – $400 – $800
    Tempest – $400 – $700
    Of course you picked some of the most expensive games out there. You can find most of your classics between $50 and $300.
    Will, I know you don’t usually make it down this far in the thread, but if you have any games you want to play at Emerald City just shout. I can get them there for you.
    More nostalga fun? Try http://www.klov.com for the Killer List of Video Games.

  20. Wow, I was just thinking yesterday how cool it would be to try to find some old arcade sounds to pump through some speakers once I get my MAME cabinet built (I’m dreaming too). Awesome sauce.

  23. 1. Robotron
    2. Defender
    3. Rainbow Islands
    4. Tekken
    I built a MAME cabinet not so long ago. Got an old, about to be thrown away, full size Sega power drift cabinet for $20 and gutted it and added an old, about to be thrown away, PC. Bought some joysticks and bits from a company in Vegas and wired it all up. Was awesome. Well worth doing and not too difficult.
    Writing vs. blogging always feels like exercising vs. eating/drinking to me. Short term rewards, long term rewards.

  25. I never played pinball much – but I played a lot of video games. If I could have any four now they would be (in order of desire):
    1. Subroc 3d – sit down
    2. Tron
    3. Galaga
    4. Centipede
    Everyone probably knows the last 3 very well – but Subroc wasn’t as widely available to my knowledge. I never got to play it as much as I wanted.

  26. Mmm, of the top of my head:
    Wonder Boy
    Bubble Bobble
    Bomb Jack
    TMNT (or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles as it was named over here.)
    I left SFII and Super Mario Bros off the list as there are good console equivalents but I must have spent a huge chunk of my pocket money on those two games in the arcades.
    I dream of the day that we have room for our own MAME cabinet.
    You can make a basic cabinet pretty cheaply or at least get the main parts together and add details later.
    The arcade down the road was chucking a load of old cabs out a few months back and I’ve been kicking myself for not asking them at the time but seriously we just don’t have the space. *sigh* One day.

  28. Tempest
    Cyberball (original 4 player)
    Sprint (Pick one.. 4 player)
    Dragon Spirit
    Pinball: Cyclone (* Id take this above all the video games)

  29. “I am well aware that you can all get along just fine without me. . .”
    Who told you this pack o’ lies???

  30. 1. Frogger
    2. Crystal Castles
    3. Qbert
    4. Burger Time
    Pinball: I suck at pinball — Ms. Pac Man gets the back up.

  31. OMG, Kung Fu! I love Kung Fu! I forgot all about it and now… flood of memories. They had it at the arcade in Utica, MI. I can’t believe how far from home I rode my bike when I was 11… or at least it seemed far, especially carrying bags of cans to turn in for the deposit at the market so that I could go next door and shove the money into Kung Fu and Pole Position.
    Awesomeness.

  32. Wil,
    Anytime you are in Portland, Oregon, you can drop by my office downtown (http://opensourcery.com) and play our sit down Spy Hunter as long as you want. We found it in the corner of a small office of a client of ours. Allocating funds for its purchase was a must. The legend is that it was owned by the 6th best player in the world.. it was his backup machine. Non-corroborated but still fun to tell around a geek circle.

  33. For me, the difficulty is picking just one pinball machine. I played the crap out of TNG, Addams Family, and Twilight Zone as a teenager. I think I’d have to go with Twilight Zone.
    As for arcade games, I’m going to have to go with the following:
    1.) Smash TV (Big money! Big Money! I Love it!)
    2.) Paperboy
    3.) Rampart
    4.) Sinistar

  34. 1. 1943
    2. Galaga
    3. Spyhunter (I can once again hear the music)
    4. Donkey Kong
    Recently downloaded Galaga on the Wii. It’s so cool to be able to play these games w/ our kids.

  35. Cyberball is the football game with specialized robots? Where the ball explodes if you take too long?
    I LOVED that game!

  38. Robotron
    Tempest
    Donkey Kong Jr.
    Ms. Pac Man – cocktail table
    Runners up:
    Centipede – cocktail table
    Zaxxon
    Battlezone
    Pole Position
    MAME is great even without a cabinet; I got a Saitek P880 dual-stick gamepad and Robotron rocks as hard as ever. The gameplay, controls and sound create such an intense experience, and it’s beautiful in its simplicity. Making the humans invulnerable to the hero’s blaster was a stroke of genius. To think that the same guys who invented this also created Defender…mind-boggling. That game has held up *so* well. People will still be playing it in 2084.

  39. 1. Gauntlet (how can you not go for four way action?)
    2. Tempest (shwwwwwiiit BESHHHHHWWW)
    3. Battlezone (because the game was never as fun as it was with the two sticks)
    4. I was going to say Commando or Altered Beast, But I liked Galaxian way to much.
    For a pinball machine, I’d have to go with High Speed, because it completely changed the speed of pinball.

  40. Hi
    I found your blog by random and thought, Why does the name look familiar?? LOL Sorry – I never was one for remembering names of authors or actors, so the fact the name actually stirred a response in my brain counts for a lot. 😉
    Anyway… I wanted to reply to this:
    “One of the super-useful bits of advice I picked up somewhere about writing and blogging goes like this: most people can’t write for a book and a blog at the same time, because our brains get different kinds of feedback and rewards from each. For most of us, if we had to pick, we’ll write in our blogs because the feedback and interaction is more immediate and rewarding, and it trains us to write short bursts instead of longer narrative pieces.”
    I hadn’t thought of that, but then I wrote long before I had a blog and yeah… I can see how now that I blog it could potentially keep me away from writing. :-\ What really bugs me is that I can’t read when I’m writing, because I pick up writing styles the way some people pick up accents. I even do it replying to letters and some bloggers, I just “morph” into their writing style. It’s part funny, part annoying.
    You have a nice blog. 🙂 I know NOTHING about arcade games (I grew up in Africa, we missed out on stuff like that), but I am enjoying reading your other blog bits.

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