The UKFF Retro Gaming Thread

[Tiki]

Some of you may be interested in the life of a mental arcade collector. If so, this is for you...

I got a new toy today. It's a generic JAMMA cab built for vertical games. It may be generic, but I think it's quite pretty! I've got a 60-in-1 board to go straight in there so will be testing it with Galaga, Bomb Jack, Frogger, Time Pilot etc. later. I have no idea what kind of control panel this originally came from. It's going to stay in my arcade room "as is":

 

So whilst taking that in today, I had to do some tinkering. Recalibrated the steering on my sit-down Scud Race. This now plays beautifully. This game deserved to be ported, it's one of Sega's better drivers (and you know there are many in that list).

I also fixed a really annoying issue on my Data East WWF Royal Rumble. The issue was that after finishing the first game it would play Land of Hope and Glory on a never-ending loop. Awful! Of all the bloody songs!! So a quick look inside the back-box... one ribbon was loose. Plugged that back in and now, not only does Macho Man's theme not loop forever, it actually plays others sounds I hadn't yet heard!

Always check the fucking cables! This pin has a great shaker motor. So great, it can shake out cables!

I've reconnected the kick buttons in my JAMMA/MAME cab. That's now playing every flavour of Street Fighter proper good.

Currently have two issues left that are winding me up: Firstly, I'm getting jumbled sprites on a Street Hoop MVS cart. I've cleaned this twice now and no different. More importantly, my imported Ms. Pac-Man keeps restarting randomly. That really sucks

I'll never fix the second gun on Point Blank. Just not happening.

[Merzbow]

Desert Strike is awesome, the whole Strike series were top class games and rated highly but why are they never mentioned?

I'm slowly making my way through them but Desert is especially tough, some fuckos guarding a POW camo keep shooting me down.

[WyattSheepMask]

Fucking-a! Desert Strike was one of those games that everyone had where I lived, or if they didn't it definately got borrowed from someone so every had played it. I wouldn't be suprised if 90% of Mega Drive owners had it, it just epitomised the Mega Drive in the early 90s. I don't think I ever played Urban Strike though

[patiirc]

4 hours ago, Merzbow said:

Desert Strike is awesome, the whole Strike series were top class games and rated highly but why are they never mentioned?

I'm slowly making my way through them but Desert is especially tough, some fuckos guarding a POW camo keep shooting me down.

Jungle Strike is the best of the bunch, Urban had cringe inducing on foot sections. There's Soviet Strike on PS1, but never got around to it. Jinking and copious use of hydras were the way forward. Hellfires when really knackered. 

Desert got a port to Snes and Amiga amongst others and was never the same. The Master System had a version was really good but been an age since played it.

[Merzbow]

There's also Nuclear Strike which I think is based in North Korea.. and Future Cop: LAPD which was originally going to be a Strike game, I've stuck that on my Pi too.

The 3 button pad makes jinking difficult on the Mega Drive, I've set the A button to both square and L1 so I can fire easily while strafing.

[Onyx2]

Desert Strike: back when everyone eagerly awaited the next Electronic Arts release. 

[BomberPat]

Urban Strike was brilliant, and actually my introduction to the series, but, yeah, fuck the on-foot sections. Completely out of place and terrible, hated them even at the time.

In hindsight, Desert Strike is probably the best of the bunch, but I liked the greater variety of locations that Urban Strike gave you. And that one of the first missions is seemingly to rescue Elvis from a shack in Hawaii...I'm not making that up, am I? It was a bloke in a white suit called "The King", that as a kid I always assumed was meant to be Elvis.

Also, the game used to abbreviate "building" to "BLDG" due to character limits, and for years I thought it said "CIVILIAN BLOG DESTROYED", and I had no idea what a CIVILIAN BLOG was.

[Onyx2]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Also, the game used to abbreviate "building" to "BLDG" due to character limits, and for years I thought it said "CIVILIAN BLOG DESTROYED", and I had no idea what a CIVILIAN BLOG was.

[WyattSheepMask]

So I bought a SNES recently on eBay. I was under the impression that id be able to just whack the cable with the White, Yellow and Red sockets into the the TV and id be away. Did that, and nothing, tried it on another TV and again nothing. Tried it from the scart thingy that came with my Wii, and again nothing.

Am I being a complete goon and missing something? Or do I need to buy some sort of adapted cable to get it working 

[WyattSheepMask]

SNES does come on (I wasn't clear about that earlier), it's purely a case of getting to display (no picture or sound). I've just been out to Argos and tried running through a litre scart adapter where you plug the coloured pins in and then that into the scart, and it just is t having any of it

UPDATE: Got it working somehow. Not sure what I did as it is in the same sockets I tried earlier, but it seems to have decided to work now after plugging a controller into it. I even busted out the classic "blow in the cartridge to get it working" method, something that's lost on kids today

Edited August 22, 2017 by WyattSheepMask

[WyattSheepMask]

I'd already plugged the cart in, just seemed a bit odd that it seemed to be a case of plugging in the controller and it worked. Either way I'm off and running, just need to save up to buy one of those flash carts now

[patiirc]

Astron Belt is an early Sega Laser disc game, it's fun, there's also a GP game that's similar .. Sounds like you had a fun night and looks like visit maybe in order

[Kaz Hayashi]

That looks great @scratchdj sounds like you had a blast and well done on the high score.

[Au]

That sounds awesome @scratchdj!

I was just coming in here to mention a similar trip we took over the weekend but I wish we'd known about that in advance because that would have made a far better day.

It was my mates 36th birthday over the weekend and we'd heard about a place called Timewarp Arcade in Bridgwater, not far from Weston Super Mare.

It's fairly hidden away and is basically just a large garage filled with arcade machines but it's only £6.50 to get in and everything's on free play.

We were there for four hours but it just flew by and I reckon I could have easily spent the whole day there.

A fairly good selection of cabs, old and new. A whole bank of really old stuff; Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders. I mostly ignored these so not sure what was there in total.

After wandering around, I played Tekken 2 first. Had completely forgotten most of the moves but still managed to button mash my way quite far through with Law.

Switched to an old Street Fighter 2 cab and although I definitely hadn't forgotten the moves, really struggled to get it to recognise the inputs. So after getting soundly beaten, I jumped to a much newer Capcom vs SNK machine that was far more forgiving with my attempts to hit moves.

I think the most fun thing was when all completed X-Men on four player. My mates girlfriend had started playing my herself then I noticed and went and joined, then her boyfriend, then another mate. Felt really organic and just like being in an arcade as a kid. They also had TMNT but not set up for four players, sadly.

I moved on to the more interactive machines after that. Found out I really sucked at Lethal Enforcers but was significantly better at Virtua Cop 2 so put my earlier failure down to age of the machine. They also had a punching game there where you had to hit pads in the sequence they popped out that was a lot of fun. Turns out I'm awful at racing games though.

They had quite a few consoles set up too. On the website, they claimed to have PSVR which is something I'd been thinking of getting for a while but wanted to have a go at first but they didn't have it when we got there.

Spent quite a while playing Mario Kart 8 and resoundingly beating my mate and then moved onto playing SORII on an old portable 14" TV, which took me right be to childhood. Just got the end of stage 6 when my mates insisted we had to go and find food.

All in all, I'd highly recommend it. There's some significant games missing that I was really hoping to play but with so much else there it meant I didn't feel disappointed. 

[Fog Dude]

5 hours ago, Au said:

It was my mates 36th birthday over the weekend and we'd heard about a place called Timewarp Arcade in Bridgwater, not far from Weston Super Mare.

It's fairly hidden away and is basically just a large garage filled with arcade machines but it's only £6.50 to get in and everything's on free play.

We were there for four hours but it just flew by and I reckon I could have easily spent the whole day there.

 

I live between Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare and have been to the Timewarp Arcade a few times, twice just after it opened and once more recently. Despite being right next to the bus station and near the river, it is somehow well hidden. In the early going they wondered if it would be viable but luckily they've managed to stay afloat.

On the last Wednesday of every month they hold a gaming and takeaway night which is great value. It's become so popular that they're thinking of making it a fortnightly event. It's worth visiting more than once because their machines go in and out of repairs, especially the more popular ones. They also have occasional StreetPass days with discounted entry.

All in all I can only echo Au's recommendation. Time really does go by so quickly there. I only wish I'd known about the Museum of Computing History when I was last in Cambridge too.