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Smiling Jack
Dec 2, 2001

I sucked a dick for bus fare and then I walked home.

VelveetaAvenger posted:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=12746
I've played this thing before. You stick your head in the helmet, but there's a second screen for people to watch on. I think it was a pretty popular machine, and there were always lots of spectators because you looked pretty dumb spinning around.

Yeah, I played a port of the PC game Heavy Gear on something like this at a Dave & Busters in 1999 or so.

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redmercer
Sep 15, 2011

by Fistgrrl

iamathousandapples posted:

How about Reliant Robins anyone? I know they're not in the scrap heap(yet) but soon. I just found out about them and they're absolutely adorable :allears:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIn_ZgHJaE

Is that an orchestral version of Torgo's Theme at 53 seconds in?

Joey Freshwater
Jun 20, 2004

Always playing with my meat
Grimey Drawer

VelveetaAvenger posted:

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=12746
I've played this thing before. You stick your head in the helmet, but there's a second screen for people to watch on. I think it was a pretty popular machine, and there were always lots of spectators because you looked pretty dumb spinning around.

This reminds me of this thing they had in the mall near me. It wasn't in the arcade but just out in the main area where the kiosks would sit. You stepped up onto this round platform thing and they gave you a helmet that looked like that thing plus a couple of handheld "guns". One controlled your movement and the other was your gun. The point was to play against other people or the computer in a gladiator style battle. There was also a dragon or pterodactyl that flew around that was impossible to hit but apparently if you did you got a load of points or free game or something.


Anyone know what the hell I'm talking about?


edit: The Plague was playing one in Hackers; or one that looked like it anyway.

Joey Freshwater has a new favorite as of 17:25 on Sep 5, 2012

Jedit
Dec 10, 2011

Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

MindlessHavok posted:

This reminds me of this thing they had in the mall near me. It wasn't in the arcade but just out in the main area where the kiosks would sit. You stepped up onto this round platform thing and they gave you a helmet that looked like that thing plus a couple of handheld "guns". One controlled your movement and the other was your gun. The point was to play against other people or the computer in a gladiator style battle. There was also a dragon or pterodactyl that flew around that was impossible to hit but apparently if you did you got a load of points or free game or something.


Anyone know what the hell I'm talking about?

If it was one of the VR games I recall, it was called Dactyl Nightmare.

Bogatyr
Jul 20, 2009
In the early 80s in elementary school, my teacher(5th and 6th grade, had him both years) had a TRS-80. I think I recall him eventually getting floppies but most of the time he had the cassette drive. Anyway, not really the remarkable part. I assume you could buy programs already on cassettes but we(Yes, 5th and 6th graders) spent hours and hours inputting code(BASIC) from the computer magazines of the time. I remember a pong like game and a couple money programs, loan amortization type stuff. The money stuff we actually used in class to understand what home loans were and such but mostly we were slave labor. Happy to do it because computers. You can imagine the troubleshooting that required.

I wish I would have used that as a jumping off point in computing but outside of owning a Commodore64, that kinda fell by the wayside for me until the mid 90s.

Joey Freshwater
Jun 20, 2004

Always playing with my meat
Grimey Drawer

Jedit posted:

If it was one of the VR games I recall, it was called Dactyl Nightmare.

Yeah that's it. drat, that was a hell of a flashback

Colton
Mar 30, 2003

Member of the Kevin Smith look-alikes local #45317
ok, since I'm at work right now I can't post a picture, but here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_%28video_game%29

Time Traveller. Remember that game? the holographic arcade game about a time travelling cowboy trying to save the universe from an evil scientist? Made by the same guy who came up with the dragon's lair games. It was an FMV game where you had to push the button or move the joystick in certain ways when prompted or you die. Except this game had a "time cube" you could buy with extra quarters and when you activated it it would reverse time like prince of persia so you can replay an FMV sequence.

I remeber this game being expensive as hell (a dollar a credit maybe?) and being a poor kid growing up I would just rush to the game whenever my parents took me to an arcade to watch any other kids playing it or just watch the demo. I thought this was so cool and would revolutionize video games for all time! After reading that wikipedia article 5 minutes ago I was crestfallen to learn that it just used a tv and a concave mirror for the "hologram" effect. God drat I loved that game. Apparently it fell out of favor once street fighter rose in popularity.

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Jerry Cotton posted:

You can use some electric typewriters as printers (TAKATAKATAKATAKATAKATAKA). My dad used one back in the early nineties, I think it was a Triumph-Adler (or at least the interface box had TA on it).

Heyyy, you just reminded me of the company that produced my first laptop, Triumph-Adler! I got it from my mom's friend, and I was excited to have my own computer for the first time.



If you ever complain about a modern laptop's touchpad, you got first world problems. This thing's touchpad required you to FIRMLY press down with your finger on that area to the top right of the keyboard, and then the mouse buttons were awkwardly placed to the left of it, which sometimes resulted in requiring both hands to operate the whole thing. I sometimes used a coin to add pressure to the pad, because my fingers hurt from using it.

I fiddled so much with it it eventually broke I think, but I did have a lot of fun tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to run games with its 2MB memory, and learned a lot of DOS console stuff in the process. I also used DoubleDisk (or was it DoubleDrive?) to get "more" space on the 40MB harddrive.

It had a 640x480 grey-scale DSTN screen... it ghosted with a delay of almost a second, and playing Civilization, I was oblivious to the fact that those blotches on the mountain tiles were yellow-colored gold (due to the grey-scale), didn't realize it until a friend told me.

Another peculiar thing about it was that its surface and bezel had this really rough, almost fuzzy feel to it, almost like a Kiwi fruit. It was overall solidly built.

Rolling Start
Jan 11, 2012

Kalos posted:

I think the head guy on this ended up getting kicked upstairs far from any new-tech positions, if I'm thinking of the right thing.

Kind of. He left Nintendo and designed the Bandai WonderSwan, another obsolete and failed handheld system that was never released outside of Japan.



It had some decent games and neat features (you can play it horizontally or vertically!), but the Game Boy Advance killed whatever market share it had. And then the creator died in a car accident :smith:

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
You wanna talk old computers? I learned DOS on two old Toshiba Packet Sniffers. Those things retailed new for a huge amount of money and had that odd Asian card slot RAM. Yeah, thats right, RAM in what was basically a PC Express slot.

Those things are loving beasts, they still work today and have better LCD displays than a lot of modern laptops I've used (this is why they were so expensive). More impressively, its a pre-1995 computer that can run Liero with little to no slowdown.

It used to have a build of 311 on it, but I deleted it as a teenager to fit more games on my 50 pound suitcase sized laptop (did I mention it was portable? It was in a very technical sense).

Toshiba posted:

The ultimate Power Portable
The Toshiba T6600C is the Power Portable that can meet even specialist's needs. Just look at the processing power - an Intel 486DX2 with an internal clock speed of 66 MHz, 8 MB memory, expandable up to 40 MB, and a 510 MB hard disk expandable to an unprecedented storage capacity of 1 GB. This is the sort of muscle you'd expect from a high-end desktop, not a portable. The T660OC's expansion capabilities are just as impressive. Two 16-bit full length ISA slots, one Type III PCMCIA 2.0 slot and an internal and external SCSI-2 port make the T6600C the complete connectivity system for today and tomorrow.

The website for it is a loving goldmine of hilarity.

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/computers/products/notebooks/t6600c/index.shtm

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Colton posted:

ok, since I'm at work right now I can't post a picture, but here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_%28video_game%29

Time Traveller. Remember that game? the holographic arcade game about a time travelling cowboy trying to save the universe from an evil scientist? Made by the same guy who came up with the dragon's lair games. It was an FMV game where you had to push the button or move the joystick in certain ways when prompted or you die. Except this game had a "time cube" you could buy with extra quarters and when you activated it it would reverse time like prince of persia so you can replay an FMV sequence.

I remeber this game being expensive as hell (a dollar a credit maybe?) and being a poor kid growing up I would just rush to the game whenever my parents took me to an arcade to watch any other kids playing it or just watch the demo. I thought this was so cool and would revolutionize video games for all time! After reading that wikipedia article 5 minutes ago I was crestfallen to learn that it just used a tv and a concave mirror for the "hologram" effect. God drat I loved that game. Apparently it fell out of favor once street fighter rose in popularity.
I remember this game just SPAWNING YOU DEAD on a new location and then having to use a Time Reversal Cube to not die at all. (This might be my arcade being absolute dicks with the difficulty setting.) Also you could only buy more cubes at specific spots on the map.

Also everything took place on a featureless black background. I remember dumping a couple dollars into it then going "welp" and never touching it again.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Zereth posted:

Time Reversal Cube

Are you a Knower of 4 corner simultaneous 24 hour Days that occur within a single 4 corner rotation of Earth?

0dB
Jan 3, 2009
Not enough ancient crap in the thread.



The GCE game watch, it used little circles for all the elements whether they were supposed to be spaceships or cars or people or I don't know WTF. The games were pretty good so long as you had a strong visual imagination. Big hit at school! Status: broken, thrown out.



MiniDisc camera. It takes about 6 seconds to store each photo you take. But the disc holds 1G and you can drag n drop WAV files and no need for Sonic Stage. Built like high end SONY should. Status: it still works perfectly.



TASCAM Portastudio One. It records 4 channels to a cassette and you really should use a high quality CrO2 tape. My one worked hard at a college for years on end so it's a little worn. But still - four channels! On a cassette!

Other crap: actually, three minidiscs. But the discs are so pretty. BearCat police radio. Zenith shortwave radio. Fairlight CVI Video Synthesiser (a whole 256 by 256 pixel resolution!) Amigas. Wall to wall crap.

kensei
Dec 27, 2007

He has come home, where he belongs. The Ancient Mariner returns to lead his first team to glory, forever and ever. Amen!


Manky posted:

I was actually looking on eBay to see how much a Micro would cost me, and was surprised that they're still going for around $60. Considering you can get a used 3DS for around $80, you can guess what I bought. (Sure hope the 3DS doesn't appear here in a few more years.)

Now, for another failed Nintendo product, this time one I actually owned: The abysmal Nintendo e-Reader.



It sounded like a cool idea. For a few bucks you could buy a pack of cards and magically end up playing a game on your GBA. In reality it sucked, it doubled the size of the device, it cost $40 iirc, which could have gotten you two good used games. I used mine to play old NES games, which I could already do in Animal Crossing. Or an emulator. Or on the NES Classic games that Nintendo was making for the GBA. :psyduck:

You could also get cards to unlock exclusive items and things in other games, but as anyone who ever did the Gamecube - GBA link cable thing can tell you, it is almost never worth it.

I found mine in a box of my old Nintendo stuff and got a little mad about it.

This was the only way for me to play the original NES Golf for a long time until I got a phone that could run an emulator. I think I paid $5 to a guy at Game Stop because they didn't want to buy it from him, and they had the Golf Game on cards for like $.98 at that same store. That was a good day.

b0nes
Sep 11, 2001

Athenry posted:

Apple still sells HD based ipods. I'm not sure if other companies gave up on that or not. I know apple is close to.

I was about to tell you not new but sure enough you can still get the iPod classic. I am thinking of getting an iPod U2 model seeing as they are so cheap on Ebay now compared to when they were new. I don't think I can fill up 160GB of music.

b0nes
Sep 11, 2001

0dB posted:





MiniDisc camera. It takes about 6 seconds to store each photo you take. But the disc holds 1G and you can drag n drop WAV files and no need for Sonic Stage. Built like high end SONY should. Status: it still works perfectly.



That wasn't really a camera, but a MD player with a lovely camera built in. Also Sonic Stage was THE WORST piece of software ever invented. I had bought a pink MD player on clearance somewhere and besides the color it was the coolest product I ever owned, except for the awful SS software. I had to sell it.

Fooley
Apr 25, 2006

Blue moon of Kentucky keep on shinin'...

Manky posted:

I was actually looking on eBay to see how much a Micro would cost me, and was surprised that they're still going for around $60. Considering you can get a used 3DS for around $80, you can guess what I bought. (Sure hope the 3DS doesn't appear here in a few more years.)

Now, for another failed Nintendo product, this time one I actually owned: The abysmal Nintendo e-Reader.



I like how this and the CueCat were sort of the precursors to QR codes being everywhere.

Manky
Mar 20, 2007


Fun Shoe

Fooley posted:

I like how this and the CueCat were sort of the precursors to QR codes being everywhere.

Yeah! I thought the same thing. Case in point: the 3DS has a QR code scanner built in.

Hey, did this thread already do QR codes?

kensei posted:

This was the only way for me to play the original NES Golf for a long time until I got a phone that could run an emulator. I think I paid $5 to a guy at Game Stop because they didn't want to buy it from him, and they had the Golf Game on cards for like $.98 at that same store. That was a good day.

Buying things from a dude in the video game store is the best. I was trying to sell a Game Boy GameShark, and the guy at the counter was offering me like $3. Then a dude offered to trade me his N64 GameShark for it, you can bet I made that trade in a heartbeat.

Not Your Senorita
May 25, 2007

Don't you recognize me? It's-a me, Mario!
Nap Ghost

Rolling Start posted:

Kind of. He left Nintendo and designed the Bandai WonderSwan, another obsolete and failed handheld system that was never released outside of Japan.



It had some decent games and neat features (you can play it horizontally or vertically!), but the Game Boy Advance killed whatever market share it had. And then the creator died in a car accident :smith:



I think the Atari Lynx was the first handheld gaming system that was able to be played horizontally or vertically. In 1989 (same year the original Game Boy was released) it was also the first one with a backlit color LCD screen. Unfortunately the games for it weren't as popular as what was on the Game Boy (and later the Game Gear), and the battery life was pretty crap. Compared to the Game Gear's lovely color screen, though, this thing was fantastic. Still just as awkward and annoying to hold for more than 15 minutes, but nothing else came close to touching the colors and graphics at the time.

The hardware on it is pretty amazing considering the time it was released (in addition to the great screen and horizontal/vertical switching, you could network with up to 17 players for multiplayer games), but with Nintendo and Sega dominating the market with better titles, cheaper systems, and easier buying accessibility, it's no surprise this thing didn't make it.

My dad got my brother and I the updated model which is a little neater looking than the one in the ad. Paperboy was my by far my favorite out of the games we had for it. My dad probably still has it somewhere - a lot of the old Atari stuff he has would probably be great for this thread if I can dig it up.

Leon Einstein
Feb 6, 2012
I must win every thread in GBS. I don't care how much banal semantic quibbling and shitty posts it takes.

0dB posted:

TASCAM Portastudio One. It records 4 channels to a cassette and you really should use a high quality CrO2 tape. My one worked hard at a college for years on end so it's a little worn. But still - four channels! On a cassette!
Oh man, I had a 4-track (not that one), and I loved the poo poo out of that thing. We would get high and just record poo poo all the time. Not that any of it was remotely good, but it certainly was tons of fun and the limitations forced you to be more creative. Now I can record as many tracks as I want on a computer and it's not nearly as cool. :(

Lowen SoDium
Jun 5, 2003

Highen Fiber
Clapping Larry

Not Your Senorita posted:



I think the Atari Lynx was the first handheld gaming system that was able to be played horizontally or vertically. In 1989 (same year the original Game Boy was released) it was also the first one with a backlit color LCD screen. Unfortunately the games for it weren't as popular as what was on the Game Boy (and later the Game Gear), and the battery life was pretty crap. Compared to the Game Gear's lovely color screen, though, this thing was fantastic. Still just as awkward and annoying to hold for more than 15 minutes, but nothing else came close to touching the colors and graphics at the time.

The hardware on it is pretty amazing considering the time it was released (in addition to the great screen and horizontal/vertical switching, you could network with up to 17 players for multiplayer games), but with Nintendo and Sega dominating the market with better titles, cheaper systems, and easier buying accessibility, it's no surprise this thing didn't make it.

My dad got my brother and I the updated model which is a little neater looking than the one in the ad. Paperboy was my by far my favorite out of the games we had for it. My dad probably still has it somewhere - a lot of the old Atari stuff he has would probably be great for this thread if I can dig it up.

It is also worth noting that the Atari Lynx was a fairly large device for a hand held system, even for the time. Supposedly Atari/Epyx listened to some focus groups during the development of the system and the feed back was that $179 was too much money to spend on something so small. So they increased the size of the casing of the device to make it look and feel bigger.

Also, the Lynx was originally developed to load games from some kind of cassette tape. Later in development, the changed to ROM cartridges, buy system was still designed to load the entire game image in to RAM before playing. The limited the amount of system RAM was was available to games. It also meant that it was a cartridge based system that had load times.

Lowen SoDium has a new favorite as of 15:33 on Sep 7, 2012

Not Your Senorita
May 25, 2007

Don't you recognize me? It's-a me, Mario!
Nap Ghost

Lowen SoDium posted:

It is also worth noting that the Atari Lynx was a fairly large device for a hand held system, even for the time. Supposedly Atari/Epyx listened to some focus groups during the development of the system and the feed back was that $179 was too much money to spend on something so small. So they increased the size of the casing of the device to make it look and feel bigger.


Yeah, I know they ended up dropping the price on it significantly to compete with other systems, but the second generation of Lynx systems were so loving bulky and large. The one in the ad seems reasonable in comparison, though it's not as cool looking. My tiny child hands were not made to hold something as ridiculous as the Lynx, though, and nobody ever played it for more than 10-20 minutes at a time because the thing made your hands hurt so bad just from trying to hold it. It's a shame because quite a few of the games took advantage of the layout and screen switching to make the games more interesting and innovative, but actually trying to turn the thing and still play the game was almost too hard to accomplish for me at the time due to its size.

Also I totally forgot you could flip the Lynx around entirely if you were left-handed, which I don't think I've ever seen another system do before. I'm not left-handed, so I have no idea if being able to do that really made much of a difference since all controllers/handheld systems now have the same setup. Still pretty neat that they included it, though.

Not Your Senorita has a new favorite as of 15:38 on Sep 7, 2012

Transistor Rhythm
Feb 16, 2011

If setting the Sustain Level in the ENV to around 7, you can obtain a howling sound.



Long before the iOS explosion, Roland came out with their musical answer to the PalmPilot craze. This was before you could even really reliably make music on laptops, so for dudes hoping that they could make music on their commute or "on the go," it was a godsend. The sounds were surprisingly decent for the era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMo7p0__RIE and the battery life wasn't the worst. I always wanted one but they were a little too expensive at the time. There was a computer connection kit and librarian software, but it involved a serial cable.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012
I never had an issue holding the thing for an amount of time :colbert: Then again I always ran it from the powerpoint only used batteries once so it wasn't as heavy.
What was even better was the battery pack you could get to extend battery life. It only needed 6 D cell batteries.

If you won the tournament in Malibu Bikini Volleyball you totally got to see a chick in a bikini on the screen.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

Croccers posted:

If you won the tournament in Malibu Bikini Volleyball you totally got to see a chick in a bikini on the screen.

But if it's bikini volleyball wouldn't you already see that just playing it?

BogDew
Jun 14, 2006

E:\FILES>quickfli clown.fli
It reminds me of a souped up stylophone - which appears to have a makeover in 2007 and a mysterious "S2" coming out...next year.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012

Aphrodite posted:

But if it's bikini volleyball wouldn't you already see that just playing it?
This was a close-up. Plus you could scroll up and down the picture!

amishbuttermaster
Apr 28, 2009

0dB posted:





TASCAM Portastudio One. It records 4 channels to a cassette and you really should use a high quality CrO2 tape. My one worked hard at a college for years on end so it's a little worn. But still - four channels! On a cassette!

I used my somewhat newer Tascam 4-track just a couple years ago to mess around with some drum loops. I programmed the loops and dropped them to the 4-track and then used it's pitchshifting feature (tape speed +/- 30% dial) to drop the pitch and tempo and then recorded them back into Cubase. It was a pretty cool effect.

One of these bad boys. It still works just fine too:

Fuzz1111
Mar 17, 2001

Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.
I have the 2nd gen version and unlike the poster above I didn't find it that uncomfortable to use even with my fairly girly hands (I did use the bottom set of buttons intended for using in the opposite orientation).

I had the worst taste of games for that thing though and the best 2 I have were bought by my dad (without my input): shadow of the beast and a hockey game that has a fight mode.

At one point I had a WW1 Flying/Dogfighting game that I returned when I realised it was multiplayer focused and therefore horrible (because no-one else had the thing). I traded it in for a helicopter flying game that ran at something like 3 frames-per-second. Oh I also have the batman game angry nintendo nerd briefly reviewed once, and my opinion of it is worse than his.

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

WebDog posted:

It reminds me of a souped up stylophone - which appears to have a makeover in 2007 and a mysterious "S2" coming out...next year.


Yeah the Stylophone had a major resurgence in the mid-2000's with nerds and nerd music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHgziac87-Y

Does TechTV fit in this thread? God I miss TechTV :(

JediTalentAgent
Jun 5, 2005
Hey, look. Look, if- if you screw me on this, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine, you rat bastard!

Fooley posted:

I like how this and the CueCat were sort of the precursors to QR codes being everywhere.

Also, back in the late 80s/early 90s, there were some VCRs that got released with a barcode reading pen in a sort of overdone VCRPlus+

How it was supposed to work in the commercial setting was that just like VCRPlus, your local TV listings and TV Guide would include barcodes that you would scan and that would tell your VCR to record that show.

An article on them here: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-10-31/entertainment/8603220140_1_bar-code-bar-code-tv-guide

In that same article they mention Toshiba having a VCR with a light pen that you would touch on the screen to set recording parameters which I never even heard of until now being used on a VCR.

skog
Aug 20, 2009

Adus posted:

Nah it was actually designed by Gunpei Yokoi, who is the creator of the original Game Boy. Not every project can be a winner, I guess.

Virtual Boy was kinda cool in a gimmicky way but yeah it certainly wasn't a great system.

He resigned from Nintendo and died in an accident driving home from said meeting

The virtual boy killed him

Fuzz1111
Mar 17, 2001

Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.

JediTalentAgent posted:

How it was supposed to work in the commercial setting was that just like VCRPlus, your local TV listings and TV Guide would include barcodes that you would scan and that would tell your VCR to record that show.
We had a Panasonic VCR that would do this (scanner in remote) I think this is the right model:


My parents still have that thing and its a solid VCR, stereo output was actually a big plus for us because my dad had a kick arse Pioneer surround sound system (Dolby Pro-Logic) and mono VCR's sounded like poo poo through it. It used to record every bit as well as pre-recorded tapes and the volume sensitivity and VU meter came in handy when I briefly had a video editing movie-making hobby as a 10-12 year old.

Croccers
Jun 15, 2012

Fuzz1111 posted:

I had the worst taste of games for that thing though and the best 2 I have were bought by my dad (without my input): shadow of the beast and a hockey game that has a fight mode.
Hockey was actually quite a solid title. It had in-game stat tracking with Attempted/Completed Passes and Shots and whatnot. Kept track of penalties/goals/fouls.
You had little animations when you scored a goal and could change the stats of the teams too.

The Lynx did really have some really nice games. It wasn't a complete washout.

Casu Marzu
Oct 20, 2008

:unsmith: I have a second generation Lynx. It still runs fine and every so often I'll throw some batteries in and play Paperboy.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

skog posted:

He resigned from Nintendo and died in an accident driving home from said meeting

The virtual boy killed him

That's a myth. He died over a year after leaving Nintendo (And even designed another handheld console in the time between), and the Virtual Boy wasn't even why he quit.

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug
On the topic of single video game toys, my sister got one of these in the early 80s, the Tomy Mini Arcade:



It was like a little arcade standup about nine inches tall, and it played a spaceship shooting game. The ships looked like ships, there were cool colored lights, neat sound effects, and even voices! But before things sound too good, that's because it wasn't really a computerized game at all, but rather more mechanical. The ships were on a backlit plastic tape that gets pulled across the screen at varying speeds, and the sounds on a little record in the unit:



I even found a video of it in operation, though I forgot how noisy the mechanism was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6qhegzYmhk

Still, it was pretty awesome at the time. Sure, it was simple and never going to be taken for a "real" video game, but it had lights and colors and sounds that a watch-sized gray screen with black dots flashing on it just wasn't going to match. The arcade box was pretty neat too, with enemy types and scores showed just like on a full sized one.

One Eye Open
Sep 19, 2006
Am I awake?

0dB posted:




TASCAM Portastudio One. It records 4 channels to a cassette and you really should use a high quality CrO2 tape. My one worked hard at a college for years on end so it's a little worn. But still - four channels! On a cassette!

We had the slightly more low-rent 4-track cassette studio, with record player and radio, with the best advert in history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyewGF9xkmE

Still, it was good enough for recording the band I was in during my sixth form in the mid-90s, although the mics that came with it were of the quality that ad suggests.

Cephalectomy
Jun 8, 2007

Killer robot posted:

Tomy Mini Arcade

While probably not the most fun toy, this thing is really neat and cool.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Perry Normal
Jul 23, 2010

Humans disgust me. Vile creatures.
Re: Gumpei Yokoi, it always seemed like a shame to me that the disgrace of the Virtual Boy was caused by his going against his own basic design philosophy. He was all about using dependable, simple and cheap technology to it's fullest purpose (i.e. using calculator style LCD displays for the Game and Watch series, using very simple graphics tech for the Gameboy to keep battery life long and costs low, etc). Virtual Boy was new, untested technology and it blew up in his face.

For content, The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer

No audio, it worked via hand crank. It played these -

There was a handheld version as well.


The bigger version could also be used as a projector. Pretty simple stuff, but I had hours of fun moving cartoons forwards and backwards.

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