I would like to direct your attention to this little piece of video gaming history. This is Galaxian 3 --
Galaxian 3 is a standard on-rails shooter, nothing special. What makes it so special is the sheer scale of the thing. The machine cost $150,000. For that money, you got the
Everybody still with me so far? That's good!
My previous post about Doctor Who got me to thinking. Geeks are ALWAYS trying to outgeek each other. One has a rare comic book? The other has it in better condition. Oh, you watch anime? You watch it dubbed, I watch it subbed (or, if you're really hardcore, in the original Japanese without subtitles). Oh, you an Atari 2600? I have a Fairchild Channel F, the first cartridge based game system. Yada yada yada....
Adding to geek cred is fan projects. Making a fan film or some such thing. And with programming tools so widely available, making a fan game of, say, Doctor Who is nothing (and would probably be better than the Nintendo Wii offering in Britain. But I digress).
I am planning to build my own arcade game sometime, just to have one. And I have a lot of different designs based on what I want. Some are just oversized arcade games done with LED's and a few circuits. Some use microcontrollers. Some are full blown video games using a spare tower or two and my RAD kit. In fact, I already have the cabinet built, I just need to select the game, create it, and install t.
I've long thought about a Doctor Who game. I mean, that's not a surprise. And then, I thought about C2E2 and Wizard World Chicago. Both cons featured dealers with a full-size replica TARDIS that people could get their pictures taken coming out of.
And I thought, wouldn't it be awesome to build a TARDIS replica, and put the game INSIDE it, with a control console and you flying the TARDIS?
...and guess what data my mind is processing right now? I better be able to go to sleep instead of working on that all fucking night.
