Courtesy of the Vintage Computing and Gamine website comes The Most Disturbing Halloween Costume Ever: Atari’s Asteroids.
I hereby declare: let this monstrosity be spread about the world as the scariest, strangest, and most disturbing Halloween costume ever conceived by mankind.
I knew video games were big, but would a person actually wear that?
I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this sooner, the Arcade Ambience Project.
The arcade ambience project is an attempt of mine to simulate the audio ambience of a crowded arcade room during the golden age of arcades in the 1980s. This is a sound I think that has been lost over the years and does not exist in today’s pitiful arcades in my opinion. My main motivation for this project was to create some ambience in my basement arcade, having a somewhat authentic arcade background hum while I or my guests play on my MAME arcade cabinet. I thought that maybe others who have cabinets (or just miss real arcade nostalgia) could also benefit from my work.
I downloaded the three CDs, and they are pretty cool. I prefer to listen and try to name the games. Unfortunately, for the younger generation (readers that started on the SNES, I’m looking at you) will probably be totally lost on while these CDs are so cool.
This will be played the next time I have people over.
Atari, my favorite computer company of all time wasn’t the most well managed company. In fact, I’m shocked that they lasted as long as they did. From releasing a horrible version of Pacman (to save money, it had to fit on a smaller ROM cartridge) to manufacturing more ET cartridges then there were 2600 consoles, Atari blunders are legendary. After the video game crash, Nintendo came along and ate Atari’s lunch. Atari countered by releasing the XE Game System in 1988, which was basically 1977 technology in a new case.
They should’ve spent some engineering money and combined the 7800 Maria graphics chip with the AMY chip into the XE Game System. Then they would’ve had something that could compete.
In a Time article from January 18, 1982, some figures are released to show you how big the Arcade market was at the time. At $5 billion dollars, it was almost twice as big as gross movie receipts ($2.8 billion) and “three times more than the combined television revenues and gate receipts last year of major league baseball, basketball and football”. It’s a total flip flop now, with home consoles catching up to the movie industry.
Here it is, a video of the final scenes of the Atari 8-bit computer version of one of my favorite video games, The Goonies:
The Goonies is a great puzzle game, where you have two protagonists trying to get through various scenes from the movie. You can control both with one joystick, switch between the two, or you and a friend can control the characters separately.
I remember having to use a cheat to get unlimited lives to get through the game, but that was the style at the time. We also rented the movie to try to get hints on how to get through the various screens. Go over to Moby Games for more information. It’s a great game, if you haven’t played it you should be able to find it for an emulator.
Over at Washington University they have set up a teenager to control Space invaders with only his thoughts. That in itself is pretty cool. The problem I have with the article is the obviously staged photo that accompanies the article. Although it’s good to see the old 6 switch 2600 get some press coverage, I count at least three things wrong with the picture. Can you find them?