The site has been fairly quiet this month as there hasn’t been a ton of news to go over but there have been some items floating around out there. Here’s to 2018 with our last Newsbytes of the year. Here’s a video to celebrate as well:
As a note, I am very aware of the story regarding Daytona Championship USA being hacked to run on PCs from that recent download the company made available (as far as I know, it cannot be controlled yet and requires the user to adjust things with a hex editor) but Sega staff is out of the office until next week so no comments from them on what happened here.
Space Invaders 40th Anniversary
Arcade historians know that 1978 was a big year in arcade games and Taito knows it too since they released a game that year that put them on the map. Unfortunately Taito hasn’t done anything earth-shaking in the past few years but they will certainly be celebrating the 40th anniversary of Space Invaders throughout 2018. They’ve started by launching this special website commemorating the original; if you frequent modern arcades then you likely will have come across the new Space Invaders Frenzy by Raw Thrills.
For the record, the arcade version was released in July of 1978. Many consider that to be the start of the Golden Age of Gaming although I personally feel it started when Breakout hit the scene. Either way, Happy Birthday Space Invaders!
An Interview With Atari Veteran Michael Albaugh
Michael Albaugh might not be a name that is immediately recognized among gamers but if you played an arcade game by Atari in the late 70s or through the late 90s, then you played something that he was involved with in some fashion. His role was often one of support as opposed to being an outright project lead but he still lead on several games. His resumé includes work on games such as Pool Shark, the unreleased Boxer title that Activision later ‘borrowed’, Destroyer, Ultra Tank, Atari Football, Video Pinball, the unreleased The Last Starfighter arcade game, Blasteroids and many others. If you are into arcade/video game history, check out the whole interview here.
Podcasting With GridSnaps
It’s been a while since I’ve done a podcast but this one worked out as I had a chat about the arcade industry with a friend of mine who works as a game designer on the home side of the video game business. We do discuss modern arcade design for a little bit but I should have gone into more detail about current indies and what it is they are up to than I did. Either way, give it a listen:
https://twitter.com/MattHighison/status/946503364413550593
And speaking of podcasts, Shaun Holley has one up of the Top 50 Arcade Games Of All Time. Do you agree or disagree with the list?
Cuphead Arcade
Pretty straightforward. If you felt like the critically acclaimed Cuphead for PC/Xbox One deserved to be an arcade machine, then here’s one man’s journey at creating such a thing:
CRTs Always Better Than LCDs On Input Lag? Not So Fast
The debate about CRT vs. LCD continues to rage on forums out there and as I was getting involved in one such conversation today, I came across this video that shows an LCD from a year ago besting an old CRT in input lag. Now to be fair, the LCD that wins here is $500 on Newegg at the moment (some other 240Hz monitors seem to start at the $300 range; then of course you have conversion of JAMMA to VGA or HDMI signals which likely will create lag) but the point is that the conventional wisdom that all LCDs will always be behind CRTs when it comes to input lag is not an accurate belief to hold on to. Pricing for such monitors will also come down with time as well. What do you think?
Golden Tee CAKE Edition
I wouldn’t recommend attempting to roll the ball on this one, you’ll just end up with a mess
https://twitter.com/Zz_JC_zZ/status/946893005528629250
And for our last item of the year, as PSA:
This is a public service announcement. Please do not confuse @ChuckECheeses Tokens for Bitcoin. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/zGL5i0Mu65
— Arcade Repair Tips (@ArcadeRepair) December 18, 2017
