S is for Super Pac-Man

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's Super Pac-Man!  Other than the extremely odd side-scrolling Pac-Land, which was based on the old Pac-Man cartoon, Super Pac-Man was probably one of the stranger members of the early days of the Pac-Man video game hierarchy.

I encountered Super Pac-Man as a kid at the Scandia in Fairfield during the Pac-Man gaming heyday.  At this time, along one of the walls there was a Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Super Pac-Man machine all next to each other.  If memory serves, the former two were already occupied, so I tried out Super Pac-Man.

The gameplay of Super Pac-Man was different from the norm from the beginning.  Instead of the usual dots, you had various foods or objects (depending on what board you were on).  You had to eat keys to open up access to the foods/objects, energizers and super energizers.  And, if you ate one of the special green energizers, you briefly turned into Super Pac-Man, which was basically a giant version of Pac-Man which was capable of going through the unlockable barriers, "flying" over/through the ghosts, and able to zoom around the maze very fast with the use of the "super speed" button.

It was the latter capability that fascinated me as a kid.  The ghosts always seemed like these perpetual monsters that would eventually get you no matter what.  So, it was really cool for your Pac-Man to be huge and super fast, going right through the ghosts.

It was also hilarious to me that in Super Pac-Man you could go inside the central area where the ghosts regenerate.  In fact, I recall getting stuck in there a couple of times (and naturally dying) after zooming around too fast as Super Pac-Man and the super energizer wearing off.

Super Pac-Man wasn't a huge commercial success, but I liked it.  But then, I like quirky games.  What spin-offs of popular games have you played and liked, particularly ones which may not have been popular with the masses?

R is for Rampage

I first saw Rampage at the local Scandia arcade when I was in high school, and I remember thinking to myself I gotta play this game.  Monster movies have a long standing iconic status in our culture.  Everyone knows about King Kong, Godzilla, etc.  How could you pass up a game where you have the opportunity to be one of those monsters and do what they do best (destroying buildings, vehicles, eating people, etc.).

I also liked Rampage because it had 3 sets of controls, so all three monsters could play at the same time, in either competitive or cooperative style as the players saw fit.  I usually went to Scandia with a couple of friends, so that meant all three of us could cause monster mayhem at the same time.  The monsters could also hit each other or knock each other into enemy weapons or pools or what have you, usually with hilarious consequences.

I liked being Ralph the giant wolf the best, followed by George the killer ape and then Lizzie the huge lizard.  We usually fought over who had to be Lizzie because George and Ralph were guys, while Lizzie was a girl (stupid guy teenager logic at its finest).

Interestingly enough, getting to play the role of a traditional villain kept its appeal for me.  Later on when Super Mario Kart (and the resultant series) took off, I usually liked being Bowser rather than one of the "good guy" characters (go figure).

What did you think of Rampage?  Enjoy rooting for and being the traditional bad guy?

Q is for Qix

My initial introduction to Qix was actually in junior high or high school through a video game strategy book which covered a dozen or so games from the 1980s.  I remember being intrigued by the description of the gameplay as well as the use of the word googleplex, which was used to describe the variation on resultant board patterns which could be seen during gameplay.  Not to mention that the game name actually started with Q, which was rare and which I thought was cool (given my Scrabble playing experiences).

I actually can't remember the place I first found a Qix machine.  I just remember seeing it in an arcade and saying to myself "Hey! There's that cool nerdly Qix game you read about.  Let's try it!"

Suffice it to say, the game is harder than it looks.  It seems on the surface to be some sort of souped up Etch-A-Sketch, but it's a lot harder to draw what you want when you've got enemies chasing you and when the huge Qix is zooming around the screen randomly (though always seeming to want to go at you).  Playing the game was always quite a workout as well, because you had to follow the contours of the filled-in screen if you weren't in the process of drawing a line, and I remember my arm being tired after a few games.

What games have you played that had a seemingly simple premise but when played turned out to be more complicated than was evident on the surface?

P is for Paperboy

Paperboy was one of those games that was easy to start to play, hard to learn to play well, but still typically was fun almost every time you played due to the ridiculous things you could do while playing the game.  In case you couldn't guess from the title, you're a paperboy, whose objective is to safely deliver papers to the light colored subscriber houses while simultaneously avoiding obstacles and vandalizing the dark colored non-subscriber houses.  Obstacles range from cars, people, fences, dogs, breakdancers, bombs and bees (the same ones from 720 degrees) if you go too slowly.

Honestly, did anyone ever deliberately start the game on Hard Way?  I always picked Easy Street, and even doing so only usually allowed me to last a couple of delivery days (usually).  I also usually managed to crash and burn early on in the obstacle course that you try to complete after you reach the end of the street.

One of my favorite things about the game was the controls, which were designed to look like bike handle bars.  You push the handle bars forward to go faster, pull back to go slower, and the buttons for throwing papers were on the handle bars too.  It felt pretty much like you were steering a bike as you were playing.

I also have fond memories of the game because I had a paper route as a kid, so I remember those days of biking around with a heavy load of papers and delivering them.  Nowadays I think the paper gets delivered by some guy driving around in a car.  Thankfully I never had to deal with obstacles like the guy in Paperboy though :-)

How many days could you survive on Paperboy?

O is for Off The Wall

My first encounter with Off The Wall was actually the 1979 Michael Jackson album (Don't Stop Til You Get Enough!).  My second encounter with Off The Wall was the early 1990's Breakout clone.  The interesting part of the story this time around actually has less to do with the game itself and more about the circumstances under which I encountered said game.

In the fall of 1991 I was just a freshman at UC Davis, and having no car, I spent a good deal of time getting acquainted with my new city of residence riding my bike.  As it so happened, I was riding through downtown on G Street when a sign caught my eye.  "The Library" was painted on it in fairly plain letters, and the location seemed a bit plain and frankly, un-library-like.  Naturally my curiosity got the best of me, so I parked and locked my bike and went in.

Lo and behold, I found that The Library wasn't a library at all, but was a reasonably sized video game arcade occupying two large rooms worth of real estate!  After getting over the wonderment of having found this random video game arcade in my new town, I naturally got some change and went to play some games.  The first game I ended up playing that day was Off The Wall.

Off The Wall was an okay game in and of itself, and added various widgets onto the Breakout theme.  It also had a multiplayer option which was a change from, say, Arkanoid.  However, having played Arkanoid quite a bit, I wasn't as wowed by Off The Wall as I otherwise might have been.  Not to mention the fact that the game behind Off The Wall, Mortal Kombat, was the one getting all of the attention from avid gamers.  I actually spent a good deal of time watching folks squaring off and seeing fatalities for the first time was a trip.

I still laugh to this day when I think about the genius of naming an arcade "The Library".  I just imagine the conversations kids would have with their parents:  "Hey Jimmy, where are you going?"  "I'm going to The Library!"  "Ok, that sounds nice." lolz

The Library has long since closed down, and I can't even remember what business took over the space now.  I spent quite a few dollars playing various classic and current video games at The Library, and it was a nice place to have a study break in between the rigors of an engineering major and band events and practice.

What's the most interesting name for an arcade you recall?

N is for Noah's Ark

There aren't a lot of arcade games starting with the letter N that really stood out for me.  But, I do remember a strange game I saw when I used to go with the family to the Scandia in Fairfield called Noah's Ark that seemed worth a post.

Noah's Ark was one of those games where you just looked at it and thought why the heck would anyone make a game about this?  As you'd expect if you have any familiarity with the biblical story about Noah, you control Noah as he runs around trying to collect pairs of animals.  That was pretty much it.  I think I played part of a game of it and just left it for someone else to play, as I sought out games with more action.

If memory serves, the game itself was in one of the smaller upright arcade cabinets as opposed to the usual sized ones, probably to try to encourage little kids to play the game.  At the time, Scandia had Noah's Ark mixed into the section of ticket games, hoping for little kid money?  Unfortunately, that game gave no tickets out for scoring achievements, so if anything it was largely treated as a novelty.

Have you ever come across a game and wondered why they made this into a game?  Alternately, what other biblical-themed arcade games have you seen if any?

M is for Ms. Pacman

I'd be remiss if I didn't include a blog post about Ms. Pacman.  For me, this was the game that turned me into a patron of arcade games.  Ironically, one can still find Ms. Pacman machines about here and there, and seeing one never fails to bring forth wonderful feelings of nostalgia and joy.

I had encountered video games before Ms Pacman.  I vaguely recall going to a Chuck E. Cheese with relatives down in southern California and playing some games, but my memories were vague and I was young enough that I know I didn't know what I was doing.  I had also spent some time watching people play games at the skating rink, such as Galaxian and Asteroids, but up to that point I never had spent any money of my own (not that I had much anyways).

All of that changed when my parents surprised me with a birthday party at the roller rink.  Besides being surprised by all of my friends showing up to skate with us, they were also tossing quarters in my direction and suggesting I play some video games.  The first game I skated up to that day was a Ms. Pacman machine, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I find it ironic that I first played Ms. Pacman as opposed to Pacman, which historically is regarded as one of, if not the quintessential 1980's arcade game.  However, I always found Ms. Pacman to be a better game, given the variance in mazes, the floating fruits, and I enjoyed the intermissions with the "story" of Pacman and Ms. Pacman meeting, hooking up and eventually making a Jr. Pacman much more than the ones in the original Pacman game.

What was the first arcade game you ever put a quarter into?