Dragon's Lair Fans - Arcade Lifestyle
General Chat => Arcade Lifestyle => Topic started by: liquidx on December 24, 2012, 09:22:52 AM
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Not to be confused with Meteor:
In 1979, Atari made Asteroids... But, in 1981, Amusement World produced Meteors - a clone of Asteroids. This lead to Amusement World getting sued. When the case went to court, the judge sided with Amusement world. This landmark case ruled that you cannot copyright a genre of game.
Stephen Holniker, CEO of Amusement World passed away in October, 2012.
After 30 years, Eric Holniker, his son uncovered the actual Meteors arcade.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jotEgcEY6-w
Pics: http://imgur.com/a/BaLHs
(http://f.cl.ly/items/340W02122C3a0V3q441D/Image%202012.12.24%2009:21:22.png) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jotEgcEY6-w)
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Thanks for sharing!
He has the same cloth designer as Bruno's ;D
But come on it's exactly the same game, just a bit less pure.
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Not exactly, though, it's colour raster. Reminds me of the Dragon 32 Meteors game.
Paul.
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There also seems to be no or very little inertia in the ship movement. Should make playing easier.
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Its not entirely the same, makes me think of Mad Planets looking at the rocks... but its in an Asteroids cab (it looks that way)
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Yes I am positive that is an Asteroids cab because it has the newer coin door, LL and the only the very first Asteroids had Owl-eye coin doors.
It's interesting as such, but the game is definitely NOT better looking "because it has color".....they probably never have seen a real B/W vector screen.....
and indeed the movement of the ship reminds me of Minestorm on the Vectrex. I don't like that movement. It is unnatural and feels "wrong".
See, making an Asteroids kind of game is not hard at all to do. In fact, it's relatively easy. The essence however is called fine-tuning. The guys at Atari had the game running roughly pretty quick but spent a lot of time on fine tuning. How many bullets can you fire after another, what is the speed of the bullets, is there friction or not ? Of course, there is no friction in space, but it made the game unplayable without it....but these parameters are insanely important for Asteroids. Mess it up, and you change (screw) the whole game.
HOWEVER, it is a very cool find... don't get me wrong :)
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Wow, love such stories...a very uncommon way to discover a new game( :P thanks for sharing! :)
During the high score name introduction, I was wondering if his father left an 'easter egg' for his son? ::) ... Joshua? 8)
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Nice story, Thanks for the links :spaceace:
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I wish he'd reveal the hardware behind the game as well. What computer/CPU was used? And how many of these conversions/bootlegs did they make? .. etc.
Very interesting and mysterious.