[HN Gopher] Atari revives unreleased arcade game that was too ha...
___________________________________________________________________
Atari revives unreleased arcade game that was too hard for 1982
players
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 94 points
Date : 2022-12-08 09:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think 'too hard' is not the right way to look at this. It's a
| qualitative rather than a quantitative issue. My wife is really
| good at pattern matching (Tetris style) and platform games. I am
| just adequate at the former, and useless at the latter, I've
| never completed the first level of Super Mario Bros and though
| I've enjoyed some other platformers like Little big Planet I'm
| really just Not Good at them.
|
| Some time back I installed a Jeff Minter game, Space Giraffe I
| think. I was a fan of both his games and his eccentric
| personality from my home computer experience in the 1980s (I had
| a Vic-20 and JMs games were the only thing ones that delivered an
| exciting game experience on that machine's limited hardware).
| Well, my wife attempted and couldn't cope with it at all, playing
| for more than 10 minutes would give her a headache, whereas she
| play things like Tetris near competitive level. She just found it
| overstimulating and with _way_ too many audio and visual signals
| coming in. for me, it was (unexpectedly) a breeze. I could just
| sit there and play and play and cruise through levels with ease;
| it 's comfortable because that's how the real world living in a
| city is for me, constant sensory overstimulation from people,
| cars, billboards, graffiti, messages etc. etc.
|
| So Jeff Minter's new game looks like a relaxing meditative toy
| rather than some some psychedelic torture device. It's not a
| question of hard vs easy, as if all games can be ranked along a
| single dimension. It's something to with how the human brain
| works. Why do I find Jeff Minter games easy when I'm bad-to-
| mediocre at many other simple videogames? The other simple games*
| I am good at are ones that require a lot of attention splits
| and/or tended to be unpopular with many players because they were
| 'too frenetic'. So in terms of classic games I was poor at
| Galaxians but did well on Tempest.
|
| * I mean simple in the sense of being 2d and not elaborate
| discovery/open world games like RPGs or FPS, which require a
| whole different set of skills.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Jeff is a true eccentric genius and I meant that in the most
| complimentary way. I remember spending endless hours on his games
| when I was younger. His sense of humor is great.
|
| He innovates and he squeezes more out of a computer than what
| should be possible.
|
| At least in the Atari ST days :)
| DarknessFalls wrote:
| Akka Arrh comes with the Tempest 12-in-1 cabinet produced by
| Arcade1up. Much to my dismay, the attract mode on this cabinet
| defaults to a demo of Akka Arrh, instead of Tempest. It seems
| like Atari wants to push more recognition of it, otherwise - what
| an arbitrary choice for a cabinet that also has Centipede,
| Crystal Castles, Missile Command, and other more celebrated
| titles.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I have that machine! Akka is... weird. And slightly ugly as the
| default attract mode. I normally select millipede and let that
| run in attract mode.
|
| I thought it was default because it was just alphabetically
| first...
| noobermin wrote:
| People don't appreciate how hard old games are. Somehow just
| because the graphics are "retro" now people assume old games are
| easy as well but consistently I find old games much more
| difficult than modern ones.
|
| The fact every gamer now expects a tutorial level just
| demonstrates how much gamers today expect to be hand held.
| Natsu wrote:
| Games were brutally hard back then because they wanted you to
| spend more quarters. And they did have tutorials, either
| written on the side of the arcade cabinet, or via the main
| screen showing a little bit of game play to give you the idea
| of what you were doing.
|
| And those games were simple enough that seeing a few seconds of
| play was enough to explain pretty much the entire game, whereas
| now many games have entire wikis (DF, Stardew, etc.) because
| there are tons of things to keep track of, whether that be how
| to make soap or when you can catch a squid.
| vintermann wrote:
| It's ironic that they call it "Nintendo hard". Because
| Nintendo were early to realize that hey, people aren't
| actually putting pennies per play into our consoles, we can
| give players stuff like codes to save their progress, maybe
| we'll even win over some kids who don't enjoy doing the same
| thing over and over.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Do you really want every RPG to be harder than
| Dark Souls where you die every minute so the non existent
| cabinet can steal another quarter? It's a silly argument that
| ignores context completely. I love the hell out of Robotron,
| but do I want every game to be that way regardless of genre?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| A lot of the "brutally hard" games were just bad with crude
| RNG that created unavoidable or not predictable behaviors
| though. Most games that are regarded as good were pretty more
| reasonable.
|
| Modern games want to give you progress at every step, but the
| reward for high skill tends to be much higher and there are
| more extreme difficulties.
| Natsu wrote:
| It's funny you say that because in some of the more beloved
| games like Pac-Man, the ghosts follow definite patterns to
| the point where you can learn a route through a level such
| that the ghosts will never catch you.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Most NES games were silly hard too though. Not just arcade
| wanting your quarters.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I believe the difficulty has more to do with what the
| market looked like. Once you bought a game, it would have
| to last you a long time - even if there were other games
| around, you could only afford so many before your allowance
| ran out.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Furthermore, they were very limited in terms of how much
| content they could fit on a cartridge. So what content
| they did put in had to last.
| Natsu wrote:
| Yeah, but they got steadily easier as time progressed. I
| remember when people started complaining that games were
| "too easy" after that, because RPGs went from games like
| Ultima or Wizardry where you might have to keep your own
| detailed maps and notes, to having the game do almost all
| of that for you, giving you waypoints, quest journals, etc.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I think many modern computer games are too easy, and I don't
| like forced tutorial levels (or many of the other forced
| explanations, sometimes they have). Including good
| documentation to explain the game rules, is a good idea.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Old arcade games had the tutorials on the idle screens.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye the difference is insane ...
|
| Try to finnish Mega Man or Super Mario 3 (without using the
| cheat pipes). I mean ... did any child actually manage to do
| it?
|
| As an adult I managed to finnish Sonic 2 after trying like 4
| times. I could only pass one level in Mega Man.
|
| The difficulty level were really hard core. And no easy mode
| either.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Kids has the benefit of the brain being in active learning
| phase. They notice the things (often subconsciously) what the
| adult brain misses or need more repetition or just shown
| slowly.
| bproven wrote:
| I did (mega man), but as others point out it was a diff time.
| Basically we would rent the game (remember that lol) and play
| it solid non-stop for 2-3 days trying to beat it.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Try to finnish Mega Man or Super Mario 3 (without using the
| cheat pipes). I mean ... did any child actually manage to do
| it?
|
| Of course we did. We also didn't have hundreds of games to
| play at the same time.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Correct, yeh, this is a matter of both a captive audience
| and the situation that a family might be able to purchase
| two or three games a year tops, so the games that they were
| able to acquire needed to have that difficulty in order to
| make sure that the players would not blaze through the
| content too quickly while at the same time ensuring that
| the hefty challenge was enough to entertain them for as
| long possible
|
| This is why rts games from my perspective will not return
| as we used to know them, they relied on that captive
| audience side of things, which faded away during the early
| 00's
| sethammons wrote:
| I beat SMB3 and MegaMan 2 as a kid several times. I can't
| make progress in Dark Souls :(
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I sunk many many 10s or 100s of hours into games like Shining
| Force, Breath of Fire, Chrono Trigger, Illusions of Gaia,
| etc.
|
| Now I get bored of games after a few hours :(
| mikebenfield wrote:
| There are plenty of very difficult old games, but Super Mario
| 3 is definitely not one of them.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I agree. I would say it's the easiest of the first 3 (4)
| titles
| dole wrote:
| As a kid, I played Mega Man for months before I had the
| patience and muscle memory to beat the yellow cyclops boss,
| and a few seconds after the first time I beat it, our area
| got hit with a power brownout. Wily ended up an easier fight.
|
| Now that I think about it, at that point, I'd played
| countless hours of games on the Fairchild Channel F, Atari
| 2600 and C64, how were my reflexes back then?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The fact every gamer now expects a tutorial level just
| demonstrates how much gamers today expect to be hand held.
|
| nothing even remotely new. That was already the case since the
| Playstation 1 days. It's just become worse since then, but that
| has happened as soon as video games went mainstream because you
| had to make the bunch of uneducated people want to play games.
| 9dev wrote:
| Oh please, that's just plain old elitism. Let me guess, the
| internet stopped being cool once it became accessible to
| ordinary people, uneducated cretins trying to act all lordly,
| not like the filthy peasants they are? Who don't have such a
| highly refined taste just as yours, and skill sharpened
| through years of serious gaming?
|
| I'm so glad it doesn't belong to people like you anymore.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Let me guess, the internet stopped being cool once it
| became accessible to ordinary people, uneducated cretins
| trying to act all lordly
|
| I'm sorry if you are hurt by actual facts. People who
| played video games in the early 80-90s where either kids on
| the NES or other 8 bits systems or college graduates on
| microcomputers and early PCs. The Playstation was really
| the first format that opened up the market to a lot more
| people.
|
| Oh and you are the one who added "cretins" to uneducated.
| Nice strawman.
| morelisp wrote:
| > The Playstation was really the first format that opened
| up the market to a lot more people.
|
| The absolute courage to write this in a thread about
| Atari, man.
| Avshalom wrote:
| People expect tutorial levels because nothing has a manual
| anymore games have a dozen buttons two sticks a d pad and half
| of them have multiple actions mapped to them.
| kubb wrote:
| Do you always play on the highest difficulty? Do you play
| challenging single player games or competitive games? If so,
| and you're not satisfied, then you can always load up Super
| Mario on your Switch and spend most of your time replaying the
| same portion of the game before you get to the part that you
| don't have muscle memory for yet.
| evo_9 wrote:
| True, games like Robotron: 2084 and Space Dungeon are on
| another level difficulty-wise. Great games, too.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It wasn't discovered until recently but Robotron will
| actually ratchet down the difficulty level, silently, if it
| sees that the player is struggling on the first wave.
| evo_9 wrote:
| Can you share a link going into this? My college roommate
| dissessembled the ROM and examined it extensively. We
| played on Level 10 constantly and had friends over (with
| the machine set to Level 10 - default was 3, 'normal'
| arcade difficulty was 5). The level never seemed to be
| easier when we had non-'pros' over (we routinly exceed 2.5
| million even on Level 10).
|
| My roommate went on to work at Bally Williams directly
| under Eugene Jarvis (who wrote Defender, Stargate and
| Robotron, amoung others), who I met at my buddies wedding.
| Anyway, this is news to me, and likely my buddy that
| dissembled the rom off the arcade machine.
|
| My friend went on to write the engine for World Crusin; if
| you hold down the view 1 and 3 button at the same time it
| will bring up the thank you page on the arcade machine; my
| name is the second on the page.
|
| Funny side note: the reason my room-mate got onto Eugene's
| team was because Eugene saw him playing Robotron at lunch
| on the company machine. After watching him he approached
| him and they became fast friends. Eugene told him he'd
| never seen anyone play at the level my roommate
| demonstrated; that's when he mentioned we played on Level
| 10 and typically exceed 2million. He was shocked.
| Grazester wrote:
| I rather not play a game for hours just to get to a part that I
| cannot get past because I didn't do something in a previous
| section of the game(Resident Evil Code Veronica).
| pimlottc wrote:
| Actually, Super Mario Bros does have a tutorial - it's baked
| right into the level design. The opening map was specifically
| designed to ease the player into the world and expose gameplay
| elements and mechanics gradually, giving them a chance to learn
| at their own place. It's not explicitly called as a tutorial -
| there's not even any text - but it still functions as one.
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a17251/super...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > The fact every gamer now expects a tutorial level just
| demonstrates how much gamers today expect to be hand held.
|
| No, "every gamer" doesn't expect that.
|
| The industry pivoted to these (frankly infuriating) tutorials
| because the term "gamers" now encompass a much larger number of
| people. Including those who only play very, very casually.
|
| And there are many games that are extremely challenging and
| brutal.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Somehow just because the graphics are "retro" now people
| assume old games are easy
|
| First I'm hearing of that. I usually see the difficulty chasers
| complaining that modern games are easy, never the old ones.
| [deleted]
| evo_9 wrote:
| Video of the original arcade game:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_UQ5wpa2eD0
|
| Also you can play it on MAME.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I kinda prefer the simple, focused esthetic of the original.
| The remake has a lot of distraction going on. But the music is
| cool.
| evo_9 wrote:
| Agree; sounds like there is a setting to turn that down/off,
| and hopefully restore the original arcade graphics.
| snthpy wrote:
| If it was too hard for players in 1982 then there's no way
| today's players stand a chance.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| At least now you don't need to plug in a quarter (nearly a
| dollar in today's money) to keep practicing.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| True, but you do need the ~500EUR console and ~50EUR game.
| ZiiS wrote:
| In 1982 you were playing $/minute for a small local group to
| learn how to beat it. Today online communities share tactics.
| Many of the hardest ever games are routinely speed run.
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's not the same game
|
| Here's the original https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2r9Pt01ruF8
|
| I'm thinking the payoff wasn't good enough to be a quarter
| eater. A hard game people don't want to play that much isn't
| good profit
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Looks like a circular Space Invaders, but with less variation
| and less fun. And a weaker narrative for your imagination to
| latch onto.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| I tried to play this on the Atari 50th on PS5 but the controls
| were very difficult as it was made for trackballs. I hope this
| remake takes into account that as it looks promising. Tempest on
| PS5 is also awful for the same reason.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I want to play Tempest using my mouse's scroll wheel. I think
| it would be quite close to the original. However, I haven't
| found a version that lets me map it properly.
| Grazester wrote:
| I always thought Tempest played fine with controller.
| criddell wrote:
| Can you plug a mouse or trackball into a PS5?
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Can you plug a mouse or trackball into a PS5?
|
| It'll depend on the software developers to support
| trackball/mouse inputs.
|
| For example, Code Mystics's Atari Flashback Classics Vol. [0]
| contains a version of Centipede (1980) by Atari which used a
| trackball for a controller.
|
| However, users cannot use a trackball or mouse as a
| controller because Code Mystics did not build support for
| anything except PlayStation controllers.
|
| As a then-contemporary Centipede high-scorer, the play
| experience is awful.
|
| I'd like to find more space- and money-affordable ways to
| play Centipede than a cabinet replica. [1]
|
| [0] https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/developers/games/5013
|
| [1] https://www.wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/arcade-1up-
| arcade1up-a...
| goosedragons wrote:
| I'm really glad I picked it up on Steam Deck, the trackpads
| work pretty well as trackball replacements although it takes a
| bit to dial in the sensitivity. Can you use the PS5 trackpad as
| awkward as that may be?
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Who's Atari in 2022? Stories like this one seem to suggest that
| it's somehow the same entity that once was. However there's
| nothing left besides the name, is it?
|
| Solution: Atari SA is the company formerly known as Infogrames.
| "As of 2022, the current Atari is pursuing several lines of
| business outside of video gaming, including cryptocurrency and
| video-game themed hotels." (WP)
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I remember digging its most recent history after a brief
| encounter with their latest CEO, a few years back. I vaguely
| recall that it was essentially a big mess of changes of
| control, copyrights, name rights, etc.
| [deleted]
| morelisp wrote:
| Unlike e.g. Nintendo with its (until recently) clear
| "succession" line and internal promotion, Atari's always been a
| Ship of Theseus company. Rapid executive transition from
| Bushnell to Warner to Kassar to Tramiel, the star developers
| leaving to form Activision, the separate VCS vs. PC vs. arcade
| divisions (imo sad how little attention was paid to the post-
| VCS arcade side in Atari 50!) It's been pieced out and put back
| together half a dozen times; it's surely dead by 2008 but did
| it die in spirit in 2001, 1999, 1996, 1993, 1984, or arguably
| even as early as 1979?
|
| And despite the cryptocurrency and pop culture mess, if it's a
| Jeff Minter reworking of Mike Hally and Dave Ralston game how
| could it _not_ be Atari?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What changed at Nintendo recently?
| morelisp wrote:
| Satoru Iwata, the president, died relatively suddenly and
| (at least publicly) very unexpectedly of cancer. This led
| to a rapid reshuffle of the leadership board and two new
| presidents in a short period, both of which which did not
| come from the development side. Kimishima in particular
| seems to have not done very well.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Nolan Bushnell is on the board so I'm saying it's not
| completely just a shell
| ofrzeta wrote:
| I don't know anything about public companies and the related
| info but according to this he is not:
| https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/ATARI-
| S-A-2168735...
|
| (Although Wikipedia says he will be but that info is from
| 2010)
| ekianjo wrote:
| Nolan Bushness is probably on the board just for show. He's
| almost 80.
| cbartlett wrote:
| Warren Buffet is 92, plenty of 80 year old are still
| productive workers
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Warren Buffet is 92, plenty of 80 year old are still
| productive workers
|
| when they are healthy. Let's not exaggerate by talking
| about outliers. Most men die before they even reach 80.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Here's a video interview with Nolan from June this year
|
| https://youtu.be/2A__XuCDgss
| Grazester wrote:
| It this right? My at is 80+ and still does intensive
| gardening (forking land to grow crops) and mows his own
| lawn with a push mower.
|
| He really should not be doing these things though because
| now he is suffering from carpal tunnel.
| uxp100 wrote:
| It's right that most men die before 80, but I agree that
| if you get there, a high quality of life is still
| possible. My grandpa in his mid 80s gardens a large area
| and keeps bees, lives alone, and most impressively to me,
| fell on ice, got up, and shook it off like he was merely
| old, and not elderly (walked with a cane for a week
| after). For some, a fall like that is the beginning of
| the end. Otoh, his blood pressure is not really
| controlled, meds + diet usually but not always keep it
| down, so it could be over for him any unlucky day I
| guess. Still, hard to ask for better.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I would bet on his health rapidly declining if he
| stopped.
| dahart wrote:
| > Most men die before they even reach 80.
|
| Surprisingly, this isn't true. It is true in the US that
| male life expectancy _at birth_ is less than 80 years,
| but that doesn't actually mean that more than 50% of men
| die before 80. The reason is because the death age is
| being averaged, it's a mean not a median, and it falls
| off faster above 80 than below, so when you average them
| it's below 80. Think about it this way: for the average
| age of death to be 80, you could have as many people
| dying at 1 year old as dying at 159 years old (80*2-1).
| Then the average is 80. But since nobody makes it to 159,
| the actual average is 1. Repeat for every pair of ages
| that sum to 160; only ages ~50-80 even have a counterpart
| between 80 and ~110, so all death under age ~50 skews the
| average down (and babies skew the average much faster
| than middle-age people). If 45% of people died at age 20
| and 55% of people died at age 90, then life expectancy
| for someone at birth is 58.5 years, even though most
| people make it to age 90.
|
| For proof of this, see the Social Security actuarial
| table: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
|
| Look at the "Number of lives" column, and scroll to the
| 80 year olds. Notice that more than half are still alive.
|
| On top of all this, remember that life expectancy changes
| as you get older. Note how the men who make it to age 50
| are expected to live to age 80. Men who make it to 80 are
| expected to live to 88 1/2.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| I was informed by Wikipedia that Bushnell is also on the
| board of Anti-AgingGames.com :-)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Wayne Gretzky shills online gambling for MGM, so beware of
| any hero association hinting towards anything more than
| burlap sacks with dollar signs on them.
| mynameishere wrote:
| If Wayne Gretzky was known as one of the greatest gambling
| moguls of all time I don't think that would be a problem.
| kennend3 wrote:
| I think one takeaway from Theranos should be this: People are
| willing to rent their names for large sums of money to be
| listed as board members.
|
| What exactly did the Theranos board accomplish? How much did
| they make?
|
| Much as "Long Term Capital Management" used the fame/prestige
| of its members as a marketing tool, Theranos did the same
| with her board of directors.
| cedilla wrote:
| The difference is that no one is willing to pour billions
| into Atari. Atari, SA really struggled to find investors.
|
| Also, the problem with Theranos was exactly that the board
| members were _not_ from industry, but retired politicians
| or diplomats.
| kennend3 wrote:
| I think you entirly missed the point.
|
| As others in this thread have posted, sometimes board
| members are just "window dressing".
|
| Sometimes big names put there to attract investors/show
| stability of the company, etc.
|
| Perhaps Nolan contributes, perhaps not - i dont follow
| the issue that closely to speak on that. My point is just
| to do your due diligence and not depend on "so and so is
| on the board".
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Nolan Bushnell was the founder of Atari.
|
| You're right that board members don't necessarily do
| anything, but the argument here is whether or not the
| current Atari has a connection to the old Atari. I would
| say Bushnell's presence on the board means that it does,
| even if he doesn't do anything.
| mrandish wrote:
| IIRC, Nolan wasn't involved with the many various holders
| of the Atari brand name rights for decades between now
| and when he originally left. I don't know if that matters
| to others but for me it does somewhat weaken the meaning
| of him being on the board again now vs if he'd been a
| presence on the board continuously from back in the day
| to now (which would have been lovely but unfortunately
| not the way the world worked this time).
|
| That said, hopefully the current incarnation of Atari can
| create products which further the retro renaissance. The
| Atari 50 retrospective was a nice start in that direction
| (though it was made by a retro-focused specialty
| publisher who licensed the rights from Atari, both Nolan
| and the current CEO did appear in an interview in the
| package).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| If the current Atari owns the intellectual property of the
| original Atari, is that all that different than the current EA
| being able to trace itself to the original Electronic Arts that
| made Archon, M.U.L.E., and Pinball Construction Kit? How many
| of those responsible for creating those early games are still
| with EA?
| danuker wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| Cpoll wrote:
| I was thinking that too, but there's possibly a distinction
| between repairing a ship and buying a new ship and naming
| it after the old one.
| [deleted]
| ofrzeta wrote:
| I don't know. I just wanted to raise that point because it
| bothered me. What could be a required property for a
| successor company to be "legitimate"? Some kind of merit
| that's in the spirit and the culture of the original company?
| Maybe the revival of unreleased arcade games could be it.
| Then again there should be more than this single event. Or
| maybe the even need some hardware of their own.
| ido wrote:
| A nitpick, but I feel it's worth noting EA didn't "make" any
| of these, but published them. These were all developed by 3rd
| party developers
| userbinator wrote:
| The name sounds like the grunts of frustration from those who
| played it.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Fed up of the actor model? Wait till you tried this game!
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I assumed it was named after this guy:
|
| https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Akaar
|
| Alas it appears to be a coincidence:
|
| https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=akka-arrh&page=detail&id=3...
|
| > The name Akka Arrh is an an pseudo acronym for : Also Known
| As Another Ralston Hally production.
| mwenge wrote:
| What makes this special is that the remake is by Jeff Minter, who
| is famous for, among other things, his multiple trippy remakes of
| Tempest on multiple platforms.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Looking videos of the original it honestly looks more like a
| sketch for a game than an actual game. The giant mandalas
| filling the screen beg for much trippier themeing than the
| generic blips and "the Atarian Federation vs the Xablartian
| Empire". The only reason it's really interesting to anyone is
| because the three people who ended up with the prototypes
| refused to let the ROMs get dumped for a while.
|
| Minter is a total wizard, and I hope Atari gave him enough
| leeway to turn this napkin doodle of a game into something that
| can reach into your brain and give your visual cortex a really
| soothing, satisfying massage. He's good at that. Scary good.
| morelisp wrote:
| Having played the version on Atari 50 some parts definitely
| could've spent more time cooking, but on the other hand for
| 1982 I think the two different scales alone would've made
| this stand out. (But part of the reason it was cancelled was
| apparently it was not just too difficult but "too
| complicated" - I assume primarily because of the scales.)
| ndiddy wrote:
| This game is a great example of how piracy helps rightsholders.
| Because the original game was cancelled (and the multiple
| corporate restructurings Atari went through), the only copies of
| Akka Arrh in existence were in the hands of private collectors.
| Typically, these collectors act like they own the exclusive
| rights to a game simply because they got a hold of the board.
| This often makes it impossible for unreleased games to see a
| legitimate release, as the collectors will either not cooperate
| at all, demand far more money for the ROMs than the game is
| likely to make, or try to place restrictions on the release (must
| be digital only, the ROM files must be encrypted, etc.) in order
| to "preserve the value" of their collection. Meanwhile, if the
| ROMs are freely available online, the rightsholders can just
| download them and avoid all of this red tape entirely.
|
| In Akka Arrh's case, the ROMs were leaked to a ROM site
| (supposedly by a vigilante repair tech) against the will of a
| number of collectors. While this pissed off the collectors who no
| longer had exclusive access to the game, it also meant that the
| game could now become a legitimately licensed part of several
| Atari compilations (such as the excellent Atari 50).
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| This kind of collector is so disappointing. They're very
| visible in games right now, but I've seen them in toys, and I'm
| sure you get them in everything from stamps onwards. They don't
| play the games, they don't play with the toys; they don't
| really care about the subject except insofar as it lets them
| feel superior to others with smaller collections or less
| thorough knowledge.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Pay attention to figure 3 in particular
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
| crtasm wrote:
| When someone won't even help digitally preserve their rare
| physical game for some reasonable fee for time/disruption I
| can't bring myself to call them a collector, they're either
| speculating or as you say just want to feel superior.
| yladiz wrote:
| I wonder if there is a strange discrepancy between the
| perceived and actual value that is being derived for the
| cartridge from.
|
| In my mind I can think of two main sources for the value: its
| rarity in ability to play (the rarity of the playable game
| itself) or rarity in ownership of the physical cartridge. While
| I think the collectors perceive the value is derived from the
| former, I'm skeptical that it's where the actual value is
| derived because of the value of special editions of Super Mario
| Bros carts (which can obviously be played easily) and, in a
| different way, the value of art that appears in museums.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > the ROMs were leaked to a ROM site (supposedly by a vigilante
| repair tech)
|
| Ha ha, a variation on the _Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe_ story.
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