Congratulations on a very successful restoration and thanks for writing such a beautiful deep dive.
The work put in here is a perfect example of how motivation can be so much stronger if it’s for the love, done by volunteers, than for any amount of money.
It also evokes the Penn & Teller quote, “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
These days, it seems like one of the best multiplayer arcade games is "Killer Queen" [1]. It'd be nice if there were more games like that. It offers a gaming experience that's more unique to the arcade IMO.
Expo '90 had over 23 million people turn up. That is a sizeable audience. However, on top of that, one of the themes with the expo was "coexistence" with nature. It wasn't just a gardening show. [0]
For example, Professor Iwatsuki gave the conference talk "Coexistence of Nature and Mankind in Urban Areas Role of Natural Science", and one of the forums was on "The Role of the Science in Building the 21st Century".
It was definitely partly a garden show. But it was also a scientific conference, discussing how to shape the world in the future, in a sustainable way. That meant any technological breakthrough was something to pull the crowd.
You can feel the sadness from the first picture with the tarp. Such hobbies of restoration will end, the "built-to-last" has lost it's charm and it's sad. We have grown up with such high expectations for an object; "It must have X, Y, Z" turning the future is a blessing and a curse. I guess it was the way for it to be.
You have a pocket device more powerful than Apollo 13 yet to actually preform restoration upon it is near-impossible. That itself will be a skill replaced by AI and as more future devices become completely unserviceable, all of this will just fade in to the darkness. It's broke, throw away and buy anew.
Young folk today are dumbfounded on how to top-up their oil, change their wheel for their car, I do ask is this as intended?
We are? There are games like this in any modern "arcade" like Dave & Buster's.
If you mean why aren't we building highly specialized hardware like this any more, I'd say it's because most of that complexity has moved into software running on general-purpose hardware, which is infinitely more flexible and maintainable.
That struck me as odd -- I associated only 8080 (Z80) systems with S100 (a very primitive bus). Wikipedia has early Sun systems based on Intel's Multibus (being multi-master capable, a considerably more complex bus).
I have an old Xbox 360, and a projector. Any multilayer games for get togethers. I'm actually building a backyard tki bar soon. Would be fun to add this for parties as well.
The arcades these days have almost zero wow factor, stuck in the 90s, I’m sure these machines were nothing short of fantastic if you first play it back then.
I found that the wow factor was friends. You went to these places with mates and enjoyed the environment. Grab a slice of pizza and play some games.
It wasn't so common to encounter arcade places in the UK so I used to dos around shopping centres. Not much of a wow factor but the wow was had having fun with mates and now this has now shifted to online and online friends making such places redundant. It's as we are now allergic to go outside.
very sorry to post something tangentially related but does anyone know what happened to that ridge racer full scale machine? Can't find anything on it past 2022.
The work put in here is a perfect example of how motivation can be so much stronger if it’s for the love, done by volunteers, than for any amount of money.
It also evokes the Penn & Teller quote, “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
[0] https://www.dragonslairfans.com/smfor/index.php?topic=231.0
I highly recommend to have a look at it, it is incredible and totally fun to read!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Queen_(video_game)#
Why would an arcade game be debuted at a gardening and greenery expo?
For example, Professor Iwatsuki gave the conference talk "Coexistence of Nature and Mankind in Urban Areas Role of Natural Science", and one of the forums was on "The Role of the Science in Building the 21st Century".
It was definitely partly a garden show. But it was also a scientific conference, discussing how to shape the world in the future, in a sustainable way. That meant any technological breakthrough was something to pull the crowd.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130314172710/http://www.expo90...
You have a pocket device more powerful than Apollo 13 yet to actually preform restoration upon it is near-impossible. That itself will be a skill replaced by AI and as more future devices become completely unserviceable, all of this will just fade in to the darkness. It's broke, throw away and buy anew.
Young folk today are dumbfounded on how to top-up their oil, change their wheel for their car, I do ask is this as intended?
If you mean why aren't we building highly specialized hardware like this any more, I'd say it's because most of that complexity has moved into software running on general-purpose hardware, which is infinitely more flexible and maintainable.
It wasn't so common to encounter arcade places in the UK so I used to dos around shopping centres. Not much of a wow factor but the wow was had having fun with mates and now this has now shifted to online and online friends making such places redundant. It's as we are now allergic to go outside.