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Knowledge<br />
talK/arcade<br />
Soundbytes<br />
Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls<br />
“we like phones<br />
and tablets because<br />
they offer us different<br />
experiences to<br />
Pcs and consoles.<br />
the same<br />
will happen<br />
with Vr.”<br />
Valve’s Chet Faliszek overlooks<br />
the fact no one’s getting a free<br />
Vive with a phone contract<br />
“The arts and sciences<br />
should no longer be a<br />
question of either-or.<br />
It is the combination by<br />
which world-changing<br />
companies are built.”<br />
Ian Livingstone continues on his one-man bid to fix the UK education system<br />
“The idea of me hyping<br />
up a game, or talking<br />
about a game before<br />
it’s available to the<br />
public, I just don’t<br />
think it’s going to<br />
work ever again.”<br />
we appreciate the sentiment, Peter Molyneux, but welcome to 2010<br />
“It is helpful to know<br />
what you know and<br />
know what you don’t<br />
know, and in this case,<br />
I know what I think<br />
but I don’t know<br />
the answer to<br />
your question.”<br />
a move into game dev hasn’t<br />
changed former US defence<br />
secretary Donald Rumsfeld<br />
arcade<br />
waTch<br />
Keeping an eye on the<br />
coin-op gaming scene<br />
Game VEC9<br />
Manufacturer 68 Crew<br />
Up until now, the most recent<br />
example of a vector-graphics<br />
arcade cabinet was Exidy’s 1986<br />
game Top Gunner. But thanks to<br />
programming group 68 Crew<br />
members Andrew Reitano,<br />
Michael Dooley and Todd Bailey,<br />
a modern machine has now<br />
supplanted it. VEC9 sees players<br />
take on the role of a Soviet pilot<br />
who has been woken from 30<br />
years of stasis in order to avenge<br />
an apparently fallen USSR.<br />
The machine is built around an<br />
Electrohome G05 monitor, the<br />
same display found in the original<br />
Asteroids cabinet. But while the<br />
hardware may be authentic, the<br />
additional horsepower under the<br />
battleship-grey cabinet has<br />
allowed the team to create true<br />
3D visuals which more closely<br />
resemble Star Fox than early<br />
vector games. Players steer their<br />
ship using the gunner controls<br />
from an M1 Abrams tank (the<br />
design of which pleasingly<br />
resembles the controller for Atari’s<br />
1985 vector machine Star Wars:<br />
The Empire Strikes Back), and this<br />
heavy-duty military aesthetic is<br />
carried over to the rest of the<br />
cabinet. Those grey surfaces are<br />
broken up by a monochromatic,<br />
green second screen, a bank of<br />
ten incandescent industrial lights<br />
which provide feedback on your<br />
status, a row of red<br />
and green LEDs for<br />
health, and some<br />
safety-protected<br />
toggle switches that<br />
come into play during<br />
VEC9’s endgame.<br />
There is currently<br />
only one VEC9 cabinet<br />
in existence, now a<br />
permanent resident<br />
of Chicago’s Logan<br />
Arcade, but the team<br />
plans to create<br />
additional machines<br />
later in the year.<br />
18
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