Arcade Horizons

Posts about Classic Arcade Machines, Discussion, Trivia and Retro Gaming Nostalgia

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@exQUIZitely MI1&2 are the GOATs of point and clicks, hands down. They took us to another world. It was the first time beautiful hand drawn graphics were laid out to me in a game. I couldn’t resist sinking hours into trying to solve the puzzles and explore further

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@dineen20dineen Fizzy Cola bottles were king, substituted by cola pips

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@RetroMoviesDB You must be alone then because the NES version didn’t have Co-Op like the arcade. King Fu gets my Friday Night NES pick. Sylvia!

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@Nintendork9 @ColonelFalcon Record it and share on here if possible, would love to see this

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@TheRealWizar The box prophecy would be fulfilled

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

Yeah if there was a limit with the console a lot of times it could literally be solved by shipping new hardware in the cart 😂 the big one with the original NES was a hard limit on ROM size (32kb) so they started shipping new carts with bank switchers that let them get up to 256kb

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@unvaXDmelt @MattPinner_ I honestly never really noticed any difference in performance in any of my games or windows or boot time when I pressed it, but that could have been my board. Were there any obvious signs between the two with yours?

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@StairwayToRetro Sublime! That takes me right back! I think I must have bought about 4 different versions of this game over the years 😂 Amiga, PC Disk, PC CD-Rom and Remastered on Steam

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@RetroMemoriesHQ @atari I loved these button bashers, We had a “hyper sports” arcade in a cafe near me back in the day. It was a choice between that and Wonderboy, Hypersports took more of my money, even if I was rubbish at it.

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

Playing these two games made me want to play every single point and click game I could get my hands on. The hand drawn graphics, unbound by tilesets etc were so immersive and the music on these were next level. I think that’s why I have such an affinity with MI2. Their iMuse midi system blended moving between environments so seamlessly it kept me totally immersed in the game. (Until I needed to change disks!).

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@Ki_fun_thoughts @StairwayToRetro I would ask where is the category for “keeping hold of things even if on knackered, well loved condition”. It doesn’t fit ‘vintage’ by that definition 😎

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

Here is the board from Double Dragon. Somewhere between the Mario 1 and 3 boards. This demonstrates where the NES learned to bank switch. That fourth chip on the L shaped extension is Nintendo’s MMC1, the first memory mapper, and it’s the only reason a 128KB game fits in an address space built for 32KB.

The board had to grow a limb just to carry it. Nintendo was literally bolting new hardware onto the side of the game.

MMC1 was the workhorse: Zelda, Metroid and Mega Man 2 all ran on it. Same console, same CPU, same PPU. The arcade style upgrade path just kept coming through the cartridge slot.

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

Thinking about NES games after this mornings double dragon port post. The great thing about a game cartridge is they are an extension to the board in the console. Each new game could ship a hardware upgrade, just like arcade boards!

This pic shows my Super Mario 1 and 3 boards side by side. Mario 3 boasts significantly more advanced hardware allowing it to achieve much more on the same platform. The cartridge is doing work the console alone couldn’t.

If you look at an arcade PCB, the architecture shares a similar idea. Separate program ROMs and graphics ROMs, each sitting next to the chips that directly read them. On the bigger arcade games, they can be on two different boards entirely. Nintendo effectively took that arrangement and let you carry the game specific part home.

Every time we bought a later NES game you were quietly buying a hardware upgrade. Few consoles did that as often and it’s why the library kept getting better right up to the end.

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@TheRetroRoomRoo This so the way! Trying our best to time it right not to get any DJs talking on it 😂Great memories

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@16bitnostalgia Such a catchy theme song!

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@ColonelFalcon This is one of those arcade games that looked really exciting with the flight stick control but I found really hard when actually playing it

[Arcade Horizons @ArcadeHorizons]

@Y2K_DOTCOM Changing the start menu theme back to windows 2000 classic