Arcade Flyer Archive

A long, long time ago, folks used to have to put on pants and leave the house to play video games.  The people that owned such "gaming establishments" had total control over what games were available for the hordes of gawky teens to spend all day pumping their greasy quarters into.

How did the owners of these "arcades" choose what games to have? Remember there was NO internet until March 12, 1998 at about 4 in the afternoon!

They looked at flyers, of course. Full color, informative, one or two sheet brochures that try to make the game seem much more exciting than it probably is.  Click here to see the largest collection of new and old flyers for arcade games, pinball machines, and video games.  Stumble around the archives and look around for a while.  Make a sandwich and stay all night if you want.

Here are some of my favorites...

(all great games involve a drunk wolf with sunglasses)

(I like how the helicopter's NOT rescuing them...just lowering a game)

(the average game lasts 31 hours...pack some pills)

(Pat Sajak is more "punk" than anyone in this picture)

(we all need more Computer Space)

CHAPTER TWO: Book Work

Three electronic games.  Hmmmmmmm.  What to choose, what to choose?  Well, what game console do I own?  None.  There's that Atari joystick thing, but I've already used that this year.  Back into the depths of the closet with that thing.  I know.  I'll play one of the games on my wife's fancy phone.  She's using it now, but she'll understand if I say it's an emergency.

(52 minutes later)

Got it.  It's a free game called "Abduction".

This game was designed for soccer moms, knitting dads, wrestling grandmas, napping grandpas, and, most likely, little kids in the backseat.  The art is bright and pleasant.  There's no wordy instruction screen before it starts.  Just start tilting.  You're a cow fighting aliens, saving the other members of your herd, endlessly bouncing upwards on little platforms.   It's controlled by a thing called an "accelerometer".  You tilt it and it moves.  Great game to play while driving.  It's simple.  It's free.  I hope somebody got paid for their work on this.  Wonder if it was a team of 400 game designers?  Or one dude?  With a thing for floating cows.

Next up, another webernet download from 1up.com's  101 best games of 2007 list.  I went with one from the "Armchair Strategy" category called "gate 88".

I had no idea at the time, but "Armchair Strategy" means "bor-ing".  After 50 individual instruction screens, I was finally able to fly my little green shuttlecock around.  The flying was fun.  You leave a little trail of digital smoke behind.  I'm supposed to be protecting the pulsing, green ping pong ball.  You're also supposed to be building stuff.  Power stations or something.  You press a letter and then there's all these choices you have to make....all while a swarm of red shuttlecocks are speeding towards you, shootin' lasers. 

It looks cool.  Kinda like the designs of the Death Star that R2 had in his belly.  And you have a few choices for the background. This was made for fans of science fiction.  Not the casual game playa.  

I need a drink.  I'm heading out to a local watering hole for the final game of this assignment.  

Ahhhhhh, there it is.  My old friend.....

The MEGATOUCH!  Nobody's playing it, so I'm in luck.  Even if somebody was playing it, I'd sit behind them and heckle them 'til they left.  I'm like that when it comes to games played in public setting.  Not sure why.

Allright

Beer me  (glug, glug, glug)

Quarter in

Beer me again  (glug, glug, glug)

"Trivia Whiz"

"Music" category

(awesome electric guitar riffage sound)

I've played this game so much, that I recognize some of the questions.  Of course, I usually make the same wrong guesses.  But when I get it right, sometimes answering the question immediately when the first clue is presented, it feels great.  It's the simplest game of this assignment.  You bet ALL, 1/2, or 1/4 of your points on the first few questions.  Just bet it ALL.  All the time.  Do it.  Believe in yourself.  Answer quick.  the quicker the better.  More points.  If you get 'em correct, you'll enter round two, where you have no say over what points you're betting.  

Unlike most video games, points in this one DO matter.  Only the top 10 can leave their name.  Your name will be forever, digitally engraved in the "Top Scorers" cycle that loops over and over while the Megatouch is not being played.  People will see your name and be amazed that a true master of music trivia ACTUALLY sat and scored such a staggeringly high score right where they're sitting!  Wow.  You achieved something great in life.  Screw all those teachers that said otherwise.  Your name is attached to something.  Well, until somebody scores higher than you.  Or unplugs the machine.  

This game was designed for, in a lack for a better term, drunks.  And bar/restaurant owners that want drunk people to remain in their establishment, buying drinks and plopping dollar bills into it.  As the evening proceeds, players get drunkier and drunkier.  Burp.  The screen gets a little blurry and, instead of touching answers (or shooting basketballs, or releasing darts, or whatever task the game calls for) with just a finger, they're using three or four.  Or using their palm.  Or tongue.  This machine was designed to take punches and beer splashes and full force headbutts.  Bonk.  Its gotta be sturdy.  There's money inside!

The art is simple.  Under each trivia question is a picture.  Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't.  A question about Sun Records might just have a close-up of a microphone.  Or a question about Junior Walker will have a dude playing a saxophone on a dock and a woman with her feet dangling in the water smiling at him.  It doesn't matter.  Nobody in the history of this game has ever called the Megatouch Industries offices and complained.  

Okay.  That's all.  I need to go the ATM and get out $100.  Keep my barstool warm for me while I'm away.  

Favorite Game Play & Control

I apologize in advance for the heightened passion that will be spewing from underneath and in between the following words of this blog.  It's my favorite game because of the special times we've shared.  Just me and it.  And everybody else in the arcade.  It's "Centipede", or, as it's better known by kids nowadays, "The One With the Ball Thing".

Since we're just talking about the game play and control, I won't delve into the reasons why this is my favorite game.  The internet's not big enough for a blog that long.  And shockingly intimate.  So, here we go:

Input:  You input da' quarter into da' slot and press the raised red button for "One Player".  That's the first step.  If you can't manage that, you've just embarrassed your ancestors.  Great job.  Once the game begins, you're off.  It should take you about half a millisecond to realize that if you roll the ball, your little shooter fella at the bottom moves around.  

The trackball is the white circle on the right.  

The button in middle of the circle of white dashes fires.

Response:  My response at this point is usually "Ha!  Get outta my garden, centipede!" as I shoot the sucker to shreds.  Naw, the response is immediate.  I recently played a faulty machine that would let me move all the way up, but it would stagger and stick on the way down.  This enraged me so much that, after playing it with that crappy hazard and sucking, I strolled on up to the arcade counter and demanded that it be fixed.  "We'll, get around to it", the guy replied.  "Okay", I said, "today, maybe?"  He looked at me like I'd just recited the recipe for buttermilk pancakes in Swahili.

Context:  Your character isn't clearly defined.  You can tell the thing that's coming to get you IS DEFINITELY A MAD CENTIPEDE.  There's no doubt about that.  There are also spiders, fleas, and scorpions doing stuff.  How a trackball is supposed to fit into the insect/dangerous garden theme, I don't know.  It kinda resembles the thick, armoured shell of a beetle.

Polish: Yeah, these things probably require a lot.  Nothing worse than a dull ball.  It's a little slow and jumpy sometimes, but that's easily forgiven.  It also doesn't help that every time I die, I spin the ball as hard as possible.  If everyone else has done the same thing for the last 30 years, i'm surprised they all haven't popped out like glass eyes by now.

Metaphor:  I'm not sure why they used a trackball instead of a joystick in this game.  Oddly enough, the game was co-created by one of the only female programmers back in 1981.  Her name was Dona Bailey.  Maybe she had a thing about balls.  Not those kind, you old dirty chap.  TRACK-balls!

Rules:  Shoot the things that are coming at you.  Shoot away the mushrooms that alter the course of the out-of-control centipede.  You only have a very limited area in which to move around.  Really, just the lower third of the screen is all yours.  Simple.  Hard and frustrating, fun and ignored by most all modern game players.  That's fine with me.

Introduction to the Game Design Document

A game design document isn't really that important in the creation of a game.  Sure, go ahead and try to make a video game that someone would play (and buy) without one.  That'll show you how unimportant it is.  You fool.

(I hope you didn't stop reading this after the first sentence and just started making a game.  Then again, if it gets released somehow and does REALLY, REALLY well, making you incredibly rich - please tell everyone that I was the one that told you to go ahead and not have one.  But how would you know I just asked you to do that?  You stopped reading a long time ago, right?)

I associate a game design document with a film script.  Both a game and a movie take a lot of time, equipment, and various hard working souls to make real.  And all of those things require money.  You can have the coolest "Star Wars" meets "The Three Stooges" meets the tall blue lizard smurfs in "Avatar" meet "The Day the Clown Cried" opera/movie/video game/ice sculpture all worked out in your head, but if you can't write it down - you're screwed.  Write something down.  Show it to people.  They'll help you.  Or they'll know somebody that can help you.  Changes may happen here and there, but you'll find that the parts of your idea that were destined to remain will stay.  The crappy parts, no matter how cool you imagined they'd be in the final product, will thankfully be tossed onto the dung pile.  Goodbye talking blowfish robot with a Rosie O'Donnell head.  Goodbye to the polka-funk-fusion soundtrack.  Goodbye and good riddance.  Taking the seeds of ideas from your mind and letting the roots grow deep on paper makes your creation one step closer to being something that the world can soak up and enjoy.  So get writing, Jack.

Oh, and here's the greatest game design document of all time, but it's missing one thing - it doesn't mention how the game ends.

(fade up eerie, minor key version of "Star Spangled Banner")

Slowed Down ZELDA Ad

I'm not sure why this is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in my life.

Game Review: Adventure

"Adventure" was an Atari 2600 game.  It's still out there in the world.  Just because it's old and not used a lot,  doesn't mean all the cartridges just vanished into thin air.  Well, mine did.  No idea where it is.  Here's what it looked like - 

There is a version with a colorful label - a dragon and castle on it, but I didn't have that one.  This was it.  No art.  No instructions.  Nothing.  I'm not even sure how I ended up with it.  I don't remember getting it as a gift, stealing it, or anything.  It just appeared one day.  A friend probably just abandoned it with me.  It's easy to see why.  It's boring as hell.  Boring, but addictive....and somehow calming (like cheddar cheese flavored heroin)

Gameplay:  You're a little yellow dot in front of a big yellow castle.  Start walking around.

See a key?  Grab it.  It'll stick to you.  Same with the sword.  You'll need that.  There's also a bridge thing that helps you out of mazes.  Grab that, too.  But you won't be able to take more than one thing with you.  Unless you get the magnet...wait a minute.  I'm not telling you what took me hours upon hours of playing this thing to find out.  It's called "Adventure".  You're on an adventure.  Figure it out.

Graphics:  Yep.  What you see is what you get.  Grey floors.  Simple, solid colored mazes, hallways, rooms, and castles.  Oh, and the thing that's chasing you?  This is what it looks like -

It's a duck dragon.  Run.

Sound:  The only sound you here is a "blip" when you pick an item up.  And when you win, by bringing a yellow chalice into the yellow castle....the audio shows off it's full sonic capabilities.  Some sort of space humming noise occurs. No music.  No dialogue.  No nothing.  Just the sound of you breathing in your own head.  And your annoying sibling blasting a Madonna remix and singing off key at the top of his lungs.  A perfect soundtrack for this quest.

Story:  You're a dot.  A lonely dot.  In mazey castle land.  You are assigned no race, age, religion, orgin, history, name, or anything.  I don't even think you're given clothes.  The back story isn't important here.  It's all about what lies ahead - one of those mean, quick duck dragons, waiting in a room  to eat you!

Learning Curve:  If chimpanzees could be taught to master a game and then teach humans how to play it BETTER than how they were originally taught it, this is the game.  It can be frustrating with no instructions.  As a kid, I'd pick stuff up, carry it and move it all over the place aimlessly.  Just passing time, but satisfied.  Like a wandering child, lost in the Middle Ages, but happy.  At least I didn't have the plague.  I hope.  (cough,cough)

Control Scheme:  Since I lost this cartridge and have no idea where my old Atari 2600 console is, I played this on one of those new Atari joystick things that you plug into your t.v.  It has 8 games built in.  Magically.  

The joystick is easy to control and brought back a lot of memories.  You used to be able to take the plastic casing off the stick part, lick the end, and stick it "unicorn style" on your forehead.  Then your mom would wonder why you have a giant circular hickey there.  They fixed that problem with this contraption.  It's sturdy and straightforward.  Move your dot where you wanna go.  Press the only button to release the item you're holding.  

It might seem like I just chose an old, antiquated game so I wouldn't have to do a lot of special examination of all the different facets of gameplay and design.  Well, not exactly.  I could have done the Atari game, "Circus".  That game sucked in 1984, and it still sucks.  

CHAPTER ONE: Book Work

How do you make a game more fun? Tequila.

Naw. The hangover's not worth it. Seriously, how do you make an UNFUN game FUN?

Let's look at the most unfun game ever: Marco Polo.

A game that consists of one person having their eyes closed for the entire game, the loud yelling of just 2 words over and over and over again, treading in and swallowing chlorinated water (and pee),  possible broken teeth and bones from running on slick poolside surfaces while pulling some daring "fish out of the water" escape action, and no clear winner.  Oh, and there's probably a gigantic hornet's nest or something under the pool slide, so there's that, too.

Why do people play this game, again?  Who knows.  Who cares.  It should be banned.  However, if banning it's out of the question, let's implement these changes at once.  Or, wait until next summer.


1.  Instead of the annoying "Marco!"..."Polo!"..."Marco!"..."Polo!"..."Marco!"..."Polo!", use various first and last names.  Keep it interesting.  Use unique first names like "Kiefer" (Sutherland) and "Homer" (Simpson) at first, but then start saying common names like "Pat" and "Jennifer".  It'll be interesting to hear what last names everybody says in response.  If you can't think of anybody with that first name, make a fart sound or something.

2.  The "blind" person should have a high powered water gun.  I'm talking one of those that'll leave a red mark on your skin if you get hit.  Randomly shoot it to see if people are sneaking around.

3.  Send someone out of the pool to hide the "blind" person's towel/shoes/wallet/car keys/cell phone/medicine/car

4.  EVERYONE should have their eyes closed for the entire game.

5.  Keep playing if you hear thunder in the distance.  It'll add to the excitement.