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Here's a good video of the original game's gameplay. It reminds me of a combination of missile command and asteroids, the latter when enemy ships break through the outer layers of defense. In both cases your ship / base is always in the very middle of the screen, and you're shooting outwards at enemies. It also used a trackball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Geez, sounds like a bad sneeze...give it a real, proper name.

I think it would have been more fun if there were a two-player dynamic, where one player does the zoomed-out defending, and the other does the zoomed-in defending, on two separate screens. Then, make the defender's guns autofire, shooting a continuous stream of bullets, and make the controller a knob instead of a roller. Better still, make the bullets push the enemies back, and the players have to work together to push the enemies off the screen to destroy them.

Probably too advanced for 1982, but doable a f

I think I see why this game didn't get produced. It just doesn't look like much fun. And I'm old enough to have been playing it, were it released.

I think I see why this game didn't get produced. It just doesn't look like much fun.

And I'm old enough to have been playing it, were it released.

What's your idea of fun? Some people are in it for pure challenge. I don't find games like Call of Duty fun. One of my friends who does can't stand single player story driven games. I'm not so into arcade style games either, while my wife can play them all day.

You don't need to guess why it didn't get produced. The answer was in the first line of the summary: play-testers found it too difficult. No mention of boring or unfun.

You don't need to guess why it didn't get produced. The answer was in the first line of the summary: play-testers found it too difficult. No mention of boring or unfun.

You don't need to guess why it didn't get produced. The answer was in the first line of the summary: play-testers found it too difficult. No mention of boring or unfun.

Are you a betting Slashdotter? Want to wager on whether that summary is a) truth or b) a post-facto rationalization, motivated by corporate politics or "OMG please don't fire me," depending on the actual source?

This article, much like the MSM, is just telling the story that the interviewees want to tell.

Yeah I am. I'm all for modern conspiracy theories, but the 80s were a very different time.

I'll happily wager that this is very different from Microsoft's "our testing has shown people prefer less features on their taskbar" bullshit.

I think I see why this game didn't get produced. It just doesn't look like much fun.

I think I see why this game didn't get produced. It just doesn't look like much fun.

But it's very rapid, flashing not much fun.

Like a mobile game. Can I get this on iOS?

As someone who tried to get into trackballs for a few years back when they were more popular - the control was both slow and imprecise compared to a mouse. I mean, you could adjust sensitivity get rid of one, but then the other would become terrible. I can take a fairly slow, precise mouse and sweep it across 6-12" of table to still get fast and controlled motion. With a similarly precise track ball I either need to either run my arm across it (usually at an awkward angle), or for a larger ball capable o

Gunk still builds up on the rollers, and you still have the problem that you have a much smaller range of motion than a mouse (without spinning).

Right, bearings is what I meant. And I've never had a trackball whose bearings have not needed cleaning several times a month, usually becoming obvious at the worst possible time. Maybe it's something about living in a desert, or my personal skin chemistry, but it's just too big a nuisance to deal with.

Here's a video of the original on MAME, which shows gameplay a lot better than the trailer for the modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

One thing I notice is that while there *is* largish firing delay, it's much less than for Missile Command, and the aiming is MUCH more forgiving. It appears that there's only a few "aiming regions" on the main screen, and when your missile detonates in one it destroys *everything* in that region, even if they're halfway across the screen.

I think the primary gimmick or new novelty of this game (at that point in time) was having more than one type of gameplay and visuals. So in a way it was two games in one, which was probably the main selling point.

The problem appears to be that the difficulty or challenge of playing the game is too limited and is either too hard for novice players, and / or isn't something an expert gamer can master and have prolonged gameplay with. It's an incredibly difficult balance to make a game difficult enough to kee

No argument there. It looks like something that would be simultaneously very twitchy and emotionally unrewarding, what with the near-lack of aiming.

But... a lot of those old games end up actually being oddly addicting despite seeming to have no depth at first glance. So I'm not prepared to make any judgments without spending a few hours at it... and it just doesn't look interesting enough to spend a few hours at when I've got a big library of newer and more obviously compelling games I still haven't playe

Battle Garegga was released in 1996 - 26 years ago. Sorry to break it to you, but that's not modern any more.

sorry, no. today's gamers at their prime time are lightyears ahead of what we could even imagine to achieve in our time. what has changed is that gaming went massive and tuned for the lowest common denominator, so most games routinely do obscene amount of handholding just to not frustrate any millennial or z snowflake that is a potential source of profit. most, but not all, and there are skill based games that would blow your mind.

There is a big market for highly skilled gamers now. They often stream on Twitch.

Have a look on Youtube for some Mario ROM hack players, e.g. Grand Poo World 2. Those games are incredibly hard, and people love watching other people play them.

It really kicked off in the 2000s with the original Kaizo Mario World hack. The third one in the series has only been completed (without cheating) by a handful of players, it's that difficult. It inspired many other hacks, and Nintendo's official Super Mario Maker.

The point about arcade game design is that it predominately had to: (a) last not much longer than 2 minutes (b) be an enjoyable two minutes that felt "fair" (c) entice players to want to play again.

The point was that arcade machines were designed to gobble quarters, 100 yen coins, or similarly priced coin in your currency. They weren't supposed to be easy or you would play forever, hog the machine, and prevent others from having a turn. They were designed to maximize profits for the operators.

When's Jeff Minter actually going to come up with an original game? Every single one of his games is just an LSD-distorted interpretation of an existing game. IMHO he's one of the most overrated game designers.

In fairness, 99% of ALL games are just distorted interpretations of previous games, including virtually all AAA games in at least the last 30 years. Most of them don't even include psychedelic distortions, or much of anything else to add anything new.

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