You won't like this

August 26, 2005 12:52 PM

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posted by Capn (33 comments total)

Bah, I was hoping it would be a story the plague of stenciled space invaders.
posted by Artw at 12:57 PM on August 26, 2005

*Claps* Good show.
posted by VanRoosta at 12:57 PM on August 26, 2005

Awesome.
posted by Hlewagast at 12:59 PM on August 26, 2005

Very cool
posted by caddis at 1:01 PM on August 26, 2005

My first 3 computer games:
Snake
Adventure
Spacewar

I remember my dad had come up with some really complicated explanation of Snake's narrative, because he was really annoyed that I kept asking him what was supposed to be happening.

Actually, I played all of these games as a kid, missing only Robotron somehow.
posted by selfnoise at 1:08 PM on August 26, 2005

I applaud you, sir.
posted by Emperor Yamamoto's Eggs at 1:19 PM on August 26, 2005

Artw, I think that's this guy.
posted by jonson at 1:23 PM on August 26, 2005

God, now I remember why I fucking hated QBert.
posted by antifuse at 1:32 PM on August 26, 2005

Top Three Things Q*bert Is Pissed About Today.
posted by bonecrusher at 1:46 PM on August 26, 2005

Beautiful
posted by mathowie at 2:00 PM on August 26, 2005

For the three people who haven't heard about it yet, another way to run these old-style games is MAME. It stands for Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, and emulates several thousand old arcade games. What's interesting is that you're running the original code... MAME is recreating the hardware in software, and the ROMS are unaware that any emulation is taking place. As far as they can tell, they're sitting in an arcade cabinet somewhere, earning quarters like crazy. In most cases, the emulation is absolutely perfect.

MAME itself includes no ROMS. You can get legal ROMs at StarRoms, although their selection is only about two dozen old Atari games. Other than that, you have to either extract the ROMs yourself from your own machine, or download them somewhere. If you own the machine in question, that's not even illegal on your end.. but the person providing you the copy is breaking the law. You can also buy the collections that are available for the consoles, and then download PC-style ROMs for the same games. Also legal on your end. And, of course, many people simply ignore the law and pirate like crazy.

If you didn't previously know, check it out. It is really neat running the old classics in their full glory on your PC.
posted by Malor at 2:02 PM on August 26, 2005

a Pong tag! : >
posted by amberglow at 4:08 PM on August 26, 2005

Well done, Cap'n.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:27 PM on August 26, 2005

Nicely done.
posted by drstupid at 6:36 PM on August 26, 2005

Anybody remember a game console called Odessey? It was marketed by Magnavox/Philips in the 1970's and a cool friend had it--we were, like 12 or 13 yo....
posted by ParisParamus at 6:50 PM on August 26, 2005

D'oh! Should have looked more carefully at the links.
It's just incredible what passed as a game 30 years ago. Makes you wonder what "entertainment" will be in another 30...
posted by ParisParamus at 6:56 PM on August 26, 2005

On Bloglines, your posting looked like this:

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I'm, like, hmmm....goddamn monotonic ASCII art again...
posted by RockCorpse at 7:07 PM on August 26, 2005

Heh. I like this in theory, but I burnt out on most of these games (and that version of Bomberman sucks) back when I had an Atari. Well, and Missile Command about a month ago, when I ended up playing it for about an hour straight...
posted by klangklangston at 7:28 PM on August 26, 2005

wanted to post a comment earlier, but didn't have time. this was AWESOME, thanks.
posted by WaterSprite at 8:01 PM on August 26, 2005

#########
posted by Eideteker at 8:09 PM on August 26, 2005

Great post, thank you!
posted by fondle at 9:34 PM on August 26, 2005

I had the Odyssey Two, which was ancient by the time I got it as a kid. While my neighbors were playing Mario Kart, I was navigating large, single-color blocks around the screen.

It had a keyboard built into it for games like Hangman. Damn, I'm sorry I gave that away.
posted by brundlefly at 10:03 PM on August 26, 2005

High score on Missle Command!

Using a mouse is so much easier than a trackball. Woot. I used to get blisters and pinched fingers from that thing.
posted by loquacious at 10:12 PM on August 26, 2005

My mother never particularly liked videogames, but when I was a child I recall her being completely devoted to our copy of Bomberman. I would write the passwords down for her every evening, while watching, so that when she was done so she could continue the next day. Once she finished it her gaming days were essentially over, but I've remained addicted.
posted by mek at 2:43 AM on August 27, 2005

OK, I admit I am a loser... I have it all here, how do I run this "from the command line"... MAME and all its files are in a folder on the desktop, the roms are in the right folder... I just don't have experience using the command line, can someone spell it out simply, please?

I would be so much obliged, xevious and commando are waiting for me!!
posted by Meatbomb at 5:14 AM on August 27, 2005

Just to be clear(er), I downloaded the "Windows command line version of MAME 0.99" from here.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:17 AM on August 27, 2005

Just to look like a compleat idiot, I have now found the help file on the webpage, and think I have everything under control... Sorry for the disruption...
posted by Meatbomb at 5:24 AM on August 27, 2005

I miss playing Tempest and Subroc 3-d (cool little monchrome "shoot the submarine" game.) I know Tempest has been emulated, but I've never seen Subroc out there on the 'net.

And playing Tempest with a mouse just ins't the same... although I get spiked just as often, it seems. :)
posted by keptwench at 7:21 AM on August 27, 2005

Meatbomb, if you're still reading, there are much nicer Windows versions of MAME. I didn't realize how unclear they were about the 'other ports' section.

What you really WANT is MAME32, from here. This will give you a nice GUI and lots of easy settings to adjust for joysticks and the like. I'm very sorry I wasn't clearer in my original post... I simply forgot that the core team does only a command line version.

I sure hope you see this. Command-line MAME does work, but it's very hard to use.
posted by Malor at 12:18 PM on August 27, 2005

k k k k k k k k k k
o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o o o
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
posted by ericbop at 3:20 PM on August 27, 2005

ericbop what the HELL
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:34 PM on August 27, 2005

Way to go, Capn.
posted by safetyfork at 9:34 AM on August 29, 2005

"My first 3 computer games:
Snake
Adventure
Spacewar...

Actually, I played all of these games as a kid, missing only Robotron somehow."

Right. You had a PDP-1 at home as a kid, did you? I call bullshit.
posted by nthdegx at 5:11 AM on September 2, 2005