Previous thread: >>11763390
Rules of the thread are simple:
>You can only talk about games and systems made before the US release of the NES (1985). Everything before it from the CRT Amusement Device to stuff like Marble Madness is cool here. Later and homebrew ports for Pre-NES games are allowed (e.g. Jr. Pac-Man was released in arcades in 1983 but the 2600 port came out in 1986)
>That's it.
I'm in the mood for Burgertime, what's your best score in it Anon? I suck at it, my personal best is still under the default scores kek.

Would it be safe to say that Williams was one of the most prolific game companies during the pre NES era? I feel like the quality of the games they were putting out was exceptional compared to other companies at the time.

Graphics from an unreleased Atari 2600 game dubbed Earthquake were found recently. Not much is known about it right now it seems. I wonder if this is a Zoo Keeper/McDonald's situation where no game was developed or if there's a prototype somewhere in a dev's closet? The Atari 2600 still gets discoveries so it's not impossible.

>>11796818
Loved Joust and Robotron, but they'll always be a pinball company to me, and the best one at that.

>>11798909
I agree 100%, Williams was a fantastic pinball company that was able to make killer video games. If only Stern could do the same (besides Berzerk and Frenzy).

Anon who is reading this: You have a friend who plays mostly 4th gen and later but wants to try out pre NES games. What do you recommend? Personally, I'm going with either Mario Bros, Berzerk, or Defender. I think these arcade games are pretty timeless and really addictive. If I had to pick one I'd choose Mario Bros though.

>>11799772
Mario Bros is a good pick since it's recognizable and easy to get into and can keep your attention, but also introduces common arcade aspects like fixed jumps and single screen gameplay that builds in difficulty.
Depending on access to arcade games/decent ports, DigDug, Gravitar, and Tempest were the games I found most addicting as someone new to early 80s games (I was already familiar with Mario Bros via the updated graphics versions on GBA)
If it had to be a 2nd gen console game, I might go with Mario Bros, Centipede, or Joust ports, maybe adding Dreadnaught Factor and Thunder Castle if they seemed ready for something that had a little more depth in exchange for some manual reading.

>>11799910
Oops, Thunder Castle was 1986, don't tell them

Lode Runner for the Apple ][
Now THAT is a fucking game

>>11799772
Joust and Burger Time

>>11800284
I've only played the Atari 8-bit and Famicom ports but when I finally "understood" it the fanfare behind it suddenly all made sense. It's an amazing game that is hard but not in an unfair way.

Well Anon, have you? I'm feeling like playing some Atari vector games. Maybe Battlezone. What's your favorite Atari vector game?

>>11801831
Never played many Atari vector games, but my choice would go to Red Baron. Another interesting one is Major Havoc, but it's a bit of a mess.

Finished playing some Flicky right now, and... well, not a bad score.

>>11801831
I played a little bit of Quantum last night. It's a cool game I can see myself sitting down and getting good at.

>>11802643
Never heard of this before. Is this an interactive attract mode I'm seeing here? If so, that's surely the first interactive attract mode I've EVER seen.

Joinem.
Not a bad game at all.

>>11803246
To be honest I usually ignore attract screens in arcade games so I never noticed it. However I just checked and yeah you can move around during that particular section. Another reason why these old games devs were based.

>>11800287
I'm actually gonna try to beat the KEN score on Burgertime (not a huge feat, but I absolutely suck at it). Do you have any tips on getting good?

>>11805916
lure the enemies, save your pepper

Qix is good, that is all.

How popular were books on arcade vidya in the states? From my understanding they were huge in Japan but I don't see your average American gamer in 1982 reading about video games outside of magazines maybe. I'm planning to read picrel for shits and giggles and if it's actually informative (I doubt) or enjoyable (even in a novelty sense) I'll probably look for more /lit/ on that subject.

>>11806917
I'm 44 and a USian and I've never heard of any book like that being read by anyone, although I was vaguely aware that such things existed. Surely someone bought them but my vague impression, for what little it's worth, is that they can't have been all that popular. Magazines are fun, and manuals are sometimes essential and sometimes fun, but this seems like it'd just be for competition. Did most people really care about competition at the arcade? I don't really know, but now I've bumped the thread.

>>11807324
A bump and input from someone actually alive around the time is always appreciated. I'm personally a little autistic about high score stuff so it interests me to see what strategies they were peddling from the time, but I agree that they most likely weren't huge hits.

>>11807339
Yeah, I'd be curious to read one too, or at least the few sections of it that happen to cover games I've recently played or that I was really into as a kid. But then, I'd probably just end up being annoyed at whatever small flaws I could see in their advice.

>>11806917
In that vein, I highly recommend The Winners Book by Kubey - imo the best of those early guidebooks. Kubey went above and beyond interviewing people at arcade companies, providing historical details and loads of colorful anecdotes about the early days - stuff lost to time like some anonymous girl that used the initials ANA who had a winning method of playing Asteroids that Kubey ran into at the Circus Circus casino so then he names that technique "circus circus", the GET brothers Pacman patterns at a donut place, weird regional shit like naming the UFOs in Asteroids after leave it to Beaver characters, etc. Author's colorful language for disliked games. etc.

As an autist kid into old games in the 90s, finding that book in the library was like a bible, was lucky to buy two nos copies from a dollar store years later.

https://archive.org/details/Winners_Book_of_Video_Games/mode/2up

>>11807691
Added to the log. I'm about to be the most pro gamer of 1982 with these books.

>>11807691
Huh, so much for my idea that this kind of book wouldn't be fun. Haha "outfox" the "diabolic", yeah he seems like a character.

Just got back from the dentist, what are some good pre NES games for ignoring the discomfort? Hard mode: No Plaque Attack.

>>11805945
Qix: America's Game®

Funny how whenever I see this kind of thread appear I keep wanting to shill the Epoch's SCV - only to realize that it got realeased almost 11 months after both the Nintendo's Family Computer and Sega's SG-1000 once again...

>>11808889
I'd want something that demanded constant attention but didn't punish you too much for getting distracted, like Entombed, Solar Fox, or Jawbreaker

>>11796119 (OP)
Major Havoc

>>11799772
Mario Bros they may reject the lack of air control. I'd go berzerk.

>>11809069
Still came out before 1985. Comic Circus is my most played game unless you count Boulder Dash multiplat time. I think there's a lot left for me to discover on SCV.

>>11809069
SCV games have goofy sounds due to Epoch's decision to use PCM sampled audio instead of traditional sound chips.

Got some Sharp X1 done, but the majority of those games were post 1985 and the ones that were, frankly, bad. Whilst not pre-NES, avoid original JPC Valis as if your life depends on it.

An appropriate image has been prepared as an apology/mental attack.

>>11809106
Mentioned it last thread, but give Star Speeder a shot.

Everybody think about the birds in Joust for a minute. Just think about them

Went through some Arcadia/2001 family games again, as usual the better games were the odd arcade ports. I rolled a port of Astro Invader/Kamikaze, Crazy Climber and Spider.

The former and latter play fine (just uglier). Crazy Climber is a bit simplified in that you just move using singular directional controls to climb without having to worry about what limb to move. This means you don't get to grab on to the chopper as you'd normally do, instead it lowers a ladder and you then go down using the chopper to grab other climbers for bonus score. The dangers are also less varied.

>>11810257
>subliminal Bananza ad

>>11810497
What system would you say Arcadia 2001 compares to the most? Here it looks like a sequel to the Channel F. Does it have its own emulator or is it a part of MAME or something?

>>11812096
I'd say the 2001 sits between an odyssey 2 and Intellivision for game complexity and graphics. Its arcade ports are generally very playable, its own "original" efforts not so much. They run the gamut of being bad to mediocre 2600/contemporary computer tier game to just having the weirdest control schemes to go along with weird design choices. Auto race and Soccer (non 3D) for example.

For emulation you use (win)Arcadia. It also has an android version. It is a multi-system emulator for Signetics machine, so it includes the 1292s, some arcade machines and computers. IIRC it should even come with most games in an archive file though that might be a seperate download on the same website.

It's one of those gen 2 systems that has a more interesting history than it does games. Apart from being sued for its games being too obvious clones, the system is iirc just a licensed Philips design they proposed to sell Signetics chips (like the weaker 1292 family). It also uses APF MP1000 molds which I guess they acquired when buying a factory. One developer mentioned how after making his first game ever, they immediately flew in some Hongky Kongs for tutelage under him. The lawsuits led to delays, missing an important sales period leading up to the American videogame crash. It's misery fuel in console form.

Played some Mr. Do today and some Mr Do's Wild Ride.
Imho it's kind of sad that the franchise was kind of shelved after Do! Run Run.

Played some more 1984 arcade games. Generally shooters, all fine simple endless ones but nothing that really wows for 1984. Think things like Gaplus and Gyrodine (which admittedly has some nice tiny eyecandy). Hat Trick and Goalie Ghost are something you'll want to play with friends.

Great Swordsman was something different. A swordfighting game with 3 disciplines, though they all play the same except for amount of hits to win and the animations/range. You don't have many options, just a low/mid/high attack that also changes your stance. It's a one-hit affair, so it becomes about judging distance of strikes or forcing the opponent out of the arena whilst not getting struck. There are some unique ways of winning battles to, like hitting their weapon just right or very quickly striking their head.

>>11813157
Great Swordsman mentioned. Love that game.

>>11812385
>It's one of those gen 2 systems that has a more interesting history than it does games.
I got around to trying it on the emulator and yeah this is an extremely accurate take. It plays like how people who don't play the 2600 think all 2600 games play like. That being said it had a surprisingly good Galaxian port and ironically a more faithful Pac-Man port than the 2600. Also apparently the main CPU is from 1975 and it runs at 0.895 MHz which makes the games actually kinda impressive from a "How did they get anything to run" aspect.

>>11809183
>Star Speeder
I remember seeing some video footage of that game and it seemed cool, like a futuristic Night Driver.

Trying to play it became a bit of a struggle, so I may as well present my results for prosperity.
The two SCV archives I have, which are supposedly from TOSEC and No-Intro, seem to basically contain the same files with slightly different name based on the matching MD5s I checked, and I personally haven't seen any other sets around that weren't clearly just copies of those two. Most of the zips in these archives contain .bin files. However, Doraemon, Nekketsu Kung Fu Road, and Star Speeder zips each had two files, with extension .0 and .1 which was a bit strange. Maybe this works fine for MESS and its mysterious MAME ways, but I play on console and I had no idea how to load them with my flashcart. Some of them booted as individual files and Kung Fu was even playable but something was clearly fucked up. Leaving them zipped didn't work either, so I figured it must be some weird MAME thing of splitting the file up. I tried using a hex editor to just append the .1 data on to the end of the .0 file, and shockingly all three of them booted after they were each combined into a single file like that. Kung Fu had its music working and Doraemon and Star Speeder were actually playable for the few minutes of testing I did.
I don't have any context for why these files were split like this to begin with, and for all I know I'm being an idiot and it's a fluke that will show issues later, but it's definitely an improvement.
Here are the files to save some trouble https://files.catbox.moe/gemxa0.rar

>>11813910
To be fair , the 2600s 6507 is a '75 model too, but unlike the 2650 it isn't based on ancient designs (IBM 1130 mini). The 2650 was supposed to be a '72 release at which point it would've been a nice buy, but it got pushed back due to other priorities and now it had to compete with "modern" 8-bit microcomputer CPU designs rather than the 4004/8008 it blew away. It's a fittingly sad CPU for the system in its own right.

>>11814464
It's sort of a proto-antigrav racer imo.
According to someone working on the MiSTer emulator for it, Kung Fu Road and Star Speeder are special cases mainly because they mix ROM sizes (both 32+8). No mappers exist yet outside of how MAME does it. MiSTer recommends creating a 64KB bin as follows: 32K ROM + (first 24K [24,576 bytes] of 32K ROM) + 8K ROM --> 64K .BIN

>>11816319
I like Pole Position but there's something about it that prevents me from enjoying it fully. I prefer F-1 Race on Famicom more despite it basically being a clone of PP.

>>11812480
Another spin at Mr. Do.
This one kinda went better than the first ones.

I'm gonna be honest, I love these little fuckers. So far I only have the Pac-Man and DK one but I wish to get all the released ones some day, especially Galaxian. Also the commercial where Elvis is using black magic to shrink the machines is kino.

https://youtu.be/AUOTLhPvZZY

>>11816693
>>11818852
For me it's Lock n Chase

What games have you been mastering lately PreNES Lads? I recently got a PB in I, Robot which was cool. My main objective is to match my NES DK score of 166k.