Thread 11986381

Previous thread: >>11948358
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 and Kung Fu Master is cool here. Later and homebrew ports for Pre-NES games on Pre-NES systems are allowed (e.g. Jr. Pac-Man was released in arcades in 1983 but the 2600 port came out in 1986)
>That's it.
What's your favorite Pre-NES arcade game from a pinball company? Berzerk is my answer, but Bubbles is definitely underrated.

I'm trying to get into Tapper but level 2 is overwhelming as fuck. Any tips on managing the alcoholic patrons?

70s video game art is amazing and I hate that it didn't stay in style.

Got an Apple II roll with a minimal amount of (post-NES) edutainment. The trade-off was that the bulk of the games were early text adventures, not exactly much to say or show about those.

The text adventures I got were Palace in Thunderland, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Adventure #0 (a sampler), and Zork. All treasure hunts. The 1st has an Alice in Wonderland theme and the 2nd a generally confused one with a random enemy and defensive item to boot (it was made by a 12 year old). Adventure #0 is cut-down Adventureland with just 3 treasures to find, it'd cost you more than 1/3rd of the price of the actual game though. Zork 1 is quite obviously bigger, better and with far more interesting writing.

I also got Lair of the Minotaur for Eamon, a modular text-based RPG. A better showcase than the beginner's dungeon for sure, but mechanically still the same aside from being able to dig. The Minotaur is a "boss", but that's just another fight. The character I helped also disappeared and I didn't see a corpse, maybe I missed a line saying she escaped.

South Pacific Quest is a single-screen platformer with 16 stages, you can pick up items that range from an axe to an armored suit to solve some simple puzzles all the while some dudes keep shooting at you. You can fire back in 8 directions, it's neat but failed to get a publisher in 1985. Battle at Sea is just Battleship (text graphics too).

picrel is AWACS. Bit of a mystery, but likely a development build that got abandoned. It's a bit like Missile Command except you are an AWACS that tells anti-air what to shoot. You get a panic button that will shoot just enemies and a single refuel you'll have to succesfully use per round.

>>11986381 (OP)
Berzerk is an easy one. Shame Argus was a proto as I'd pick that over Q-bert for Gottlieb, they always felt a bit clumsy. Spy Hunter is good too and you can count that for 2 companies.

Got Atari 2600 twice (amount of games, not a 5200).

Got some 1st party ones for a change. Air-Sea Battle is a pretty typical early/launch title for gen 2 systems, shoot moving targets with a focus on 2P (it does have some original variations). Midnight Magic is a competent post-crash port but with its own simplified and less interesting table. Night Driver is actually neat in that it is an enhanced port of the old arcade game, adding oncoming cars and some eyecandy. I also got Swordquest - Earthworld, which is just an incomprehensible puzzle masquerading as a terribly bland "game" where you need to stuff objects into rooms (some guarded by minigames) in a specific order to get clues.

The rest is 3rd party. Alien is a cynically licensed but decent Pacman clone. CocoNuts has you dodge Coco's Nuts, LCD game tier design. Dragonfire has you avoid some fireball (horizontally) to then grab treasure and avoid more fireballs (topdownish), plays nice and fast and a good example of simple design. The Earth Dies Screaming is a cockpit shooter where the vertical aim is managed for you, the only other point of interest is having to follow certain enemies to kill an enemy to replenish your/earth's energy. Fire Fly is a simple (in a bad way) shooter with some different enemy types, little in the way of graphics and annoying music.

The last for this post is Piece o' Cake where you need to construct a cake in multiple layers, the cherry signifying a completed cake (even if it's just a plate). It quickly becomes too fast to properly play though, which is a bit of a shame.

Tube Panic is an awesome game and I hope it gets some love one day.

The second batch is all 3rd party. Also got some homebrew, but most don't qualify.

Robin hood (picrel) is has you walk the titular character across some screen shooting non-merry men until you are allowed to move to the next screen, the final screen has you save Maid Marian who seemingly pops out at random. Sir Lancelot is a joust clone with an extra boss stage where you need to stab a dragon in its stomach. As usual with Xonox games they tend to look good and are competent, but nothing special.

Skiing is a simple game with a slalom and a downhill course (removes the gates, but adds more obstacles) with a few courses to pick from. Star Wars: Jedi Arena is a 2P focused game where you try to block and attack by pointing your lightsaber in the direction you want the ball to fire/fires from.

Strategy X is an oddity as it is one of 2 Konami ports they made for the system, the game is a vertical scrolling shooter with a breakable block and fuel mechanic and it is ported decently but it's not very good as an arcade game and simplifying it didn't do it any favors.

Sword of Saros is a maze game where you are chased by a wizard and need to find the titular sword's pieces in various rooms with a monster in it. It's got a decent selection of items to use, but you can't actually fight so you just feel weak.

Another oddity is Smurfs Save the Day made for use with the Kid Vid voice module. It essentially adds sing-song tutorials and encouragement that appropriately play during gameplay. The game itself consists out of 3 simple mini-games that have you copy musical notes on a bar, mix colors and sort by shape/color/size.

Also got some homebrew ports. M-4 (same name) is a timed horizontal fixed screen versus shooter. Jetman (Jetpac) has your jetman get fuel for a rocket whilst avoiding objects. Hunchy (Hunchback) is a flip-screen platformer. All 1K games which does hurt Hunchy a bit.

>>11988837
>posts AI

Gonna play some Atari 2600 tonight and might explore the 5200 library. Any recs?

>>11992543
Every game on the 5200 is on the A8 and you don't have to deal with the terrible joystick. Do yourself a favor and explore that library instead.

Buggy Poppers

What Pre-NES games are you gonna play during Labor Day Anon?

>>11986381 (OP)
I feel conflicted by these threads because with most pre-NES arcade games the console of choice for me is playing them on NES

Played some arcade games. I didn't particularly care for Seicross, Shooting Gallery (Seatongrove), Snake Pit, Son Son, Speed Coin and Squash. They're all decent, except Speed Coin but that's a proto. Of these, Snake Pit I'd say is the best, get decently hectic too. Son Son is too manageable for how little variety it has, but is probably a bit more familiar.

Sea Fighter Poseidon is a horizontal shooter. You ride a diver propulsion vehicle with rockets that you can eject from in case of low fuel or it getting hit. You can shoot enemies off of theirs and then take it for yourself. There are some environment hazards (which do hurt enemies) and a boss enemy. Your actual goal is to save divers. Simple and not that much in the way of content, but good for a 1984 conversion kit.

Snacks'n Jaxson is a bit harder to define outside of "arcade". The clown bounces his nose (similar effect to those 3D pong games) and in between bounces you need to quickly get all the food items and receive the nose using your face. You'll have to watch out for soap and peppers as they'll stun you for a bit. After every day an obstacle is added to the room.

Spatter (picrel) is a rather cutesy maze game in the vein of Head-On. The gimmick is that you can jump into stretchy railings to avoid enemies. There's also some objects you can push into them. Your goal is to get all the flowers. The bonus stages are single-screen platforming levels instead.

Speed Attack is quite a bit simpler, but a rarity as it's a card game that isn't for gambling. You get 2 stacks of cards and you can put adjacent cards on them. If no moves are available, card(s) are taken from the players deck and placed on the pile. The gimmick is that it's real-time. The CPU does get really fast, but due to the win condition you can still win if you just have a good final hand.

Played some Super Cassette Vision. Nothing particularly good, but the last time I posted it I mentioned 1 good game so that seems par for the course.

Astro Wars II is a Galaga clone which does get hectic (on pro at least). Punch Boy is a maze game where you punch dragons to death on walls (but only from the front) and then punch dudes to death through windows when the game switches to a platformer for 1 stage. Wheelie Racer (you actually drive a car) is a bad Zippy Race clone which makes you slow down a lot to avoid obstacles (on pro), ramming vehicles just slows you down though.

It's a sad day when the best thing you get is a barebones Mahjong game and Super/Real Graphics Mahjong comes with an annoyingly slow tile slide effect to somehow make it subpar. Mahjong/10.

The other thing of interest is Milky Princess, but not for the game part. That's just you floating in the sky grabbing flower pieces and making sure the princess doesn't fall to the ground. It comes with fortune telling, compatibility testing and Biorhythm. This gamble for the superstitious girl market didn't work out because it was likely more fun to do it in the arcade or with a magazine at school.

I've done my pre-nes rounds, so have some some contemporary Donkey Kong at home (Japan).

>Feel like shit after partying (alone) a little too hard
>No real obligations today
Pre-NES games will fix me. Gonna start with Ms. Pac-Man.

>>11996793
Comic Circus is pretty fun and has the best graphics for a home console game in 1985.

Improved my Ms. Pac-Man score a little bit. I take back what I said about this game being easier than Pac-Man, the speed increase after maze 2 is crazy and puts it on the original's level.

>>12000470
Midway knew what they were doing

Bump with Karate Champ.

>>12001796
This game gets a lot of shit because of the NES port, but I think the arcade version is pretty fun. The controls are a little difficult to understand at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a fun little Karate game.

>>12000470
Not too bad. My local ms. Pacman machine has a high score of 145k I can barely hit 60k on a good day. The dude was high in a id or something when he got it, he can't get close to that score anymore.

>>12001838
High on acid*

>>12001838
>>12001842
That's funny because I was baked out of my mind when I got the score kek

>>12001837
Plays away nicely and odd controls aren't really an issue for arcades unless they are incomprehensible. These ones are completely mappable to modern controllers as well. AI is simple enough that making it act faster makes it harder yet retains some semblance of fairness unlike later 2D fighters.

Got some regular Videopac/Odyssey 2. There are some games that aren't plussified which I guess I kept for the original machine.

Electronic Table Football is actually pretty decent for table football on such an early machine. You can control all lines of players with just your joystick with the left and right being handled by that direction's diagonals. You do need to control a line for them to receive the ball though, otherwise it just bounces off. 2P is possible and probably preferred.

As for an oddity, Musician lets you turn your Videopac keyboard (typing) into a keyboard (musical). No add-ons, just an overlay and the cartridge. You'd get a manual which also includes some songs for you to try. You can record and playback a song. No way to save it though, you'd have to write it down. Works fine, but is obviously a bit simple.

Monte Carlo bump.

>>12005487
I'm surprised this game came out in 1980. It looks like some of their games from 1977-1978 (except in color obviously).

>>12005504
It's basically colourised Super Bug which is from 1977. Just a filler machine with a new theme.

Bring back woodgrain

I recently got an FM-7 and Coleco Adam. Anyone know any kewl stuff to play on either?(besides colecovision carts)

>>12007178
The Adam doesn't have a particularly strong commercial library with the strongest titles being ports (Wikipedia has a list) and of that generally compilations too, I guess that's good value at least. It has one of those Dragon's Lair ports that are more minigame compilation instead of great technical achievement so that should be more playable.

For FM-7 you tend to be able to look at what's good for most other 8-bit JPCs. It's got a pretty large database over on FM-7.com, but iirc it doesn't have searchable ratings/rankings last I checked and it includes type-in software so you just get a huge database that can be searched on everything BUT quality.

>>12007801
You wouldn't happen to know of any FM-7 rpgs or text heavy games that have been fan translated, but still playable on original hardware, would you? So far I just have been trying out the one version of Mario Bros on it and what im assuming were type-ins based on their simplicity.

>>12008194
Unfortunately no, as most text-heavy FM-7 games were ported to or from other, more popular platforms, and those versions were given greater priority by translators.

>>12008194
The only RPG I've even played on it is Xanadu, but of the RPGs I have played on JPCs I don't think any have translations to begin with, let alone for the FM-7. It's secondary/tertiary machine in a niche section of the hobby.

Best you can do is use it as an excuse to learn Japanese or sell it at an upmark locally and get an MSX2.

>>11986381 (OP)
>Bubbles

RIP Python Anghelo. Heck of an artist. A bit of a wild man, with a bit more direction he could have achieved more than he did.

>>12006402
Best Intellivision

What Pre-NES games can you confidently get to 100k on? Mario Bros is my game of choice. Yie Ar Kung Fu as well.