Platform: Arcade

Genre: Shooter

Description:

Your space craft is dangerously situated among fast moving asteroids in an asteroid belt that can destroy your ship on contact. Armed with a front mounted weapon and the ability to hyperspace, you fly through the debris, destroying each rock one piece at a time. Alien saucers visit the playfield from time to time with an eye towards destroying your ship! (KLOV.com)

Length of Time Played: 1 hour ($5 worth of quarters)

High Score: 34770

Comments:

This definitely ranks up there for me as being one of the best shoot’em ups of all time - I played it on other platforms before playing in the arcade, so I didn’t get the full effect of the glow of the vector monitor or the killer bass of the explosions, but it was mostly the same. This is one cab I wouldn’t mind owning for the basement. I have to admit, I had never thought about doing “hunt mode” (waiting until all but one ‘roid is left and hunting down the space ships) until reading the KLOV page. I found that it can be effective, but also boring.

Rating: 5/5

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Shooter

Description:

The original space alien vertical shooter. Move your tank back and forth along the bottom of the screen and shoot endless waves of aliens marching towards earth. Shoot the flying saucer for extra points. (KLOV.com)

Length of Time Played: 1 hour ($5 worth of quarters)

High Score: 2730

Comments:

This wasn’t a new one for me, at least not in general. I realized that I hadn’t played the arcade version much though (mostly Atari 2600) Still a classic though, and hard as hell I got to the 3rd stage once or twice I think. I tried out the “Furrer” trick (exploiting the fact that the machine didn’t have a random number generator for the mystery ships). I was successful a couple of times, but I found that I was just sitting around waiting, while the invaders kept getting closer to the ground. Something I found to be interesting is the fact that the game wasn’t in color, but it had simulated color by using a color overlay for the top (red) and bottom (green). My screenshot doesn’t have those bands of color though, since the emulator adds the artwork while playing — not part of the emulation.

Rating: 3/5

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Shooter

Description:

Timed submarine game where player looks through a large periscope to aim at ships moving across the top of the screen. Torpedos are launched with a thumb button on the right handle of the scope. Mines floating across the screen can block players torpedoes. Fast-moving PT Boat (worth most points) is hardest to hit. Game ends when time expires. Bonus time is added when player reaches operator-selectable point level. (KLOV.com)

Length of Time Played: 20 minutes (about $5 worth of quarters)

High Score: 4800

Comments:

Was slightly more interesting after playing after a few minutes than when I first fired it up. Given the age of the game, I imagine it was pretty fun for the time. The black and white graphics are a bit of a turn-off, but again, it’s old. Would I recommend it to others? Not really - I don’t see much here that isn’t in other arcade games. I would say that I was pleasantly surprised when I hit the bonus time. I do like the cabinet art though, so that counts for something

Rating: 2/5

I had an idea today for a new blog. The basic premise is that as a medium, video games are similar in a lot of ways to books and movies. There are some games that must be experienced. I would like to go through those games, by compiling top 10 lists for each console, and go through them, playing each game in it’s entirety (if possible). For some games, this might be an evening’s worth of playtime (arcade games where I can get my fill of it in one night) — for others it will probably take weeks. I would also be blogging about it, writing reviews, etc. — thus, this site. I would also like to add some of the more esoteric games that have either social significance or are rare, whatever. Most of these games will be played via emulation, but I’m also interested in buying old consoles/games, etc. so when I get up to the more modern games, I’ll probably be doing some game purchasing (which I had planned to do anyway)

I plan to compile the “todo lists” and post them - if there’s games that you feel that should be included, feel free to let me know and I’ll put it on the list. One of the things I’m going to try to do is focus on some of the games that are new to me, or ones that need special attention. I will most likely be interspersing newer games as well, and maybe even venture into non-video games)

One of the things that I’d like to do with this is *experience* the game. I plan on doing this by looking at various pictures (cabinet, cover art, etc.), as well as reading the manuals (and maybe walkthroughs Another thought that I have had is to keep things in chronological order — start off with the 70’s and move all the way up to more present consoles. I’m interested in checking out the more obscure stuff as well. Some of this I have in emulation, but some of it I plan on picking up at garage sales/flea markets, etc. One such console that comes to mind is the 3D0 system. That’s gonna be a fun one to get a hold of…