The Geek Connoisseur Blogs

ARCADE NOSTALGIA BLOG :: One of my all-time favorite arcade machines: Missile Command ! It is also one of the best looking Atari arcade cabinets of the 80’s! I've played this awesome game in arcade rooms for hours on end. Easy to play but hard to master if you wanted some serious high-score! When I first saw its cool large control panel with its big target control trackball and its missile launch control compose of three volcano-like buttons I was hooked immediately and wanted to play it. I still remember the first time I've played it; pressing the start button for the very first time. Hearing the sounds of a new level starting and all the sound effects during gameplay and at the end when it was calculating the remaining missiles and cities you've saved along with the bonus city sounds which was a nice relief to hear after they've destroyed them all. How cool it was to defend your cities from incoming ICBM missiles with fast reaction and precision trackball gameplay b

ARCADE RACING RETRO GAMES BLOG :: From low res to high speed, racing games have come a long way! I remember playing my first racing video games in 1974 : " Gran Trak 10 " from Atari, a black-and-white top-down racer with white dots trace the borders of the track, we needed to avoid hitting the dots with a real steering wheel to control a car sprite. Then we've played in Night Driver in 1976 in arcades beside pinball machines; this also came out on the Atari 2600 in 1978. In 1980 , we had other types of arcade racers, one that I really enjoyed was Rally X from Namco; this was a top-down, multi-directional racing game with multiple paths and opposing racers. A few years later, in 1982 , Namco came out with Pole Position ! This arcade racer was one of the most influential racing games of all time. This is when a bright, third-person view graphics and smoothness of motion became a standard for racing games. The 2600 arcade port was still decent even with the console limitati