Arcade Home Ports - Starship Rift Arcade Podcast Ep. 4

[@TimeRiftArcade]

Welcome to the latest episode of the podcast!

[@bryantgrove6199]

Will this pe posted to spotify?

[@-Brunnen-G]

I got into some arcade ports/emulation because of my memories of the local arcade where I made a small kids business out of reselling individual tokens. The arcade had special for $5 of tokens for $2.50. which I sold individual tokens to kids that their parents only gave them $1 to spend while the parents were out and about in the mall which meant they couldn't afford the special. I was making $20-$30 an hour doing this. Not to mention the manager liked me so he sold me the special throughout the day which was limited to two for everyone else. He also opened the games and tripped the coin mech. giving me credits to any game I liked. That's what got me into gaming.

[@andystandys]

59:34 The Simpsons definitely got ported. I had it for DOS.

[@franciscopina2899]

And also a lesser known C64 port.

[@user-nd8zh3ir7v]

wow brings back a lot of memories, great talk!

[@leefischer5814]

The Simpsons never got a home console port because Acclaim owned the rights to all console ports....and by the time Acclaim didn't have the rights to consoles it wasn't deemed profitable.

[@sketchylense]

Simpsons did get a home port on commodor 64. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4mTXqNue7CKirMsi=KMJ06SL4eY1wuuNi

[@stinkyham9050]

I love that when they started talking about the Mortal Kombat ports they a Nintendo guy that started arguing with a Sega guy. Some things never change. 😂

[@sevenof42]

Out of all the Atari 2600 games, the Pac-Man port is probably the most culturally enduring not because of the graphics, but because of the sounds. You can find the start music, gobble sound, and especially the death sound in many movies, tv shows, and independent videos. It's probably been used more than The Price is Right fail music. My cousin could play the Pac-Man port from morning to bedtime on a single run if I didn't use up all her lives on a bathroom break. Video Pinball was my eternal game.

[@SuperSmashDolls]

In terms of "console games that became arcade games", I actually experienced this yesterday. One of my local arcades has an exA-Arcadia with Donut Do-Do Do on it (name...) and it turns out that was a console game they ported to arcade last year. The thing about the Neo-Geo (and arcade boards of this era in general) was that it got caught on the wrong side of the 3D transition. Saturn could sorta do 3D by stretching sprites around but Neo-Geo was fully committed to 2D art. Meanwhile N64 and PS1 had hardware accelerated polygon drawing. Fighting games were huge back then and they all did 2D art at the time, but it's arguably when home consoles really started pulling ahead of the arcades. As for the "big ass old game" trend, uh... my local Round1 got in an *even bigger* Space Invaders Gigamax R that has six players and takes up the space of like eight game cabs. It's absolutely insanely huge, like to the point of being inconvenient.

[@sa3270]

It's interesting to note that the Bally Astrocade from the late 70s used the same graphics chip as their arcade games like Gorf, except it ran in a reduced resolution mode to save on RAM. So if you expanded the RAM and turned the TV on its side, you could probably have a pretty close arcade port.

[@ScornDefeat]

On the subject of pinball, one of my favorite games growing up was the NES port of Pin*Bot. I certainly wouldn't say it's a good port when compared directly to the original, but as a stand-alone I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[@BullittOutdoors]

I was the same, had Atari and NES and didn’t buy another console until XBox came out

[@sa3270]

10:55 The Atari 2600 does indeed have a video chip, it is a custom chip created by Atari known as the Television Interface Adapter.

[@TimeRiftArcade]

I think the name says it all. The TIA simply maps memory pixels to position, luma, chroma, etc. It's not a traditional video chip when compared to others of the era.

[@josefjelinek]

@@TimeRiftArcade Not really, that is still not how 2600 works, it really has a video chip with sprites etc. and a lot of control over how image is generated. What is does NOT have is video MEMORY or even RAM to fit graphics, it cannot simply map screen from memory as it has 128 BYTES including stack and control registers. What you need to do is to "race the beam" and program the video chip to start displaying sprites, field graphics based on how you configure the video chip ports.

[@SkittleKicksPlays]

The guy that made the ET game for Atari did it because he wanted to challenge himself. He alone said "I wanna do this game in X amount of time." Even Spielberg said "couldn't you make this better?" It was the wild west in the 80s with games, and that's why Nintendo had major rules as to how many games per publisher could be released for their system. they saw what happens when quality is out the window and more more more garbage is produced.

[@Andreas.Weller]

I wonder if there is a modern port of Pacman which is decent and works on a today PCs or consoles. It would be cool if there is a 4K variant with a huge map, awesome ghost effects and rich sound effects. Like CD-Man in the 90's. The latest port I've seen was on the X-Box 360.

[@matthewgumabon7498]

In May of this year, a new online 64-player “Battle Royal” Pac-Man game came out called “Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle”. It’s a bit pricy, but you can get it for PC on Steam as well as consoles (Switch PS4/5 and Xbox Series x/S).

[@58jharris]

I miss the Geekbits podcast. Are you guys ever going to do anything on there again?

[@npaladin2000]

You guys have an RSS feed I can subscribe to from my podcatcher? Definitely want to here more of this.

[@MrTropicalFusion]

My favorite home port, as a kid who experiences the 1990s version of arcades, would have been Street Fighter II Champion Edition for the SNES and Mortal Combat for the Genesis. What do you guys think about the blood and gore sensitivity that came around when things started looking more realistic in video games?

[@TimeRiftArcade]

Mike Woods, here, I was a ALL ABOUT the blood and fatalities when Mortal Kombat came out.

[@SteveEricson-o3c]

I wonder why this is not on Apple Podcasts?

[@TimeRiftArcade]

It should be. I'll go look and see what's up.

[@Keovar]

The worst Atari 2600 game of all was not a bad port like Pac-Man, or even a poorly designed licensed IP cash grab like ET, it was "Custer's Revenge". If someone doesn't know why it's disgusting and reprehensible, the Wikipedia article says all you need to know in the first line.

[@MelvinMasterson]

Just hoping you guys could clarify something for me. You referred to yourselves as the owners and David is not present in this podcast, yet in the videos he appears in he portrays this as his venture??

[@The8BitGuy]

There are 3 owners. I am one of the 3. I just haven't been on the podcast.

[@MelvinMasterson]

@@The8BitGuy Ah. Thank you for the clarification. I thought it was just your arcade.

[@MrTropicalFusion]

@@The8BitGuy Nice to see you in the comments, your videos are fantastic! Thanks for bringing us along for the Time Rift Arcade ride!

[@jackjohnson5426]

​@@MelvinMastersonOne of 8bitguy's key criticisms in forums is the perception that he presents himself as the sole force behind his work. Visit the X16 forums, and you'll find a group of discontented individuals in the background who receive minimal acknowledgment in his videos, almost as if they're invisible. While I admire David's work, he needs to learn to acknowledge the efforts of others. In his videos, his primary business partner Kevin is portrayed more like a supplier than the central force driving the X16 project forward, which does him a disservice.

[@TheGeekPub]

@@PotatoeSnow I agree! David at Buc-ees would be great!

[@TehPlayground]

arcade punch out is on switch

[@dennisneo1608]

Can you just let Mike do the hosting??? This guy has an annoying voice.