Recon: Barcade (Brooklyn)
Posted on July 08, 2010388 Union Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211 (map)
Phone: 718-302-6464
Website: www.barcadebrooklyn.com
This bar/arcade is a block from the Metropolitan Ave G Train in Williamsburg, with a serious emphasis on both bar and arcade. It’s a large space lined with classic games in excellent condition, plus a healthy selection of craft beers on tap. A Barcade High Scores board hangs above the games, and they host special beer and game events (like Wiimbleton) from time to time. There are tables in the back, and drink-rests between the games. It’s a good atmosphere, although sometimes too crowded to pull a quarter from your pocket.
The Asteroids machine is in great shape with a brilliant display, although the buttons are heavier than average and require strong wrists and fingers. Also, the high score table doesn’t reset when the power’s off, so you’d need to break 469,160 to enter your name.
At the time of writing, John McAllister (ELF) tops the house Asteroids chart with 2,222,240 points, set one month before he broke the 28 year-old world record in April, 2010, with a score of 41,838,740.
Barcade Brooklyn - Asteroids in center.
Asteroids is a Donut
Posted on July 04, 2010Article on everything2 describing the topology of the Asteroids universe as a torus (donut shape).
…So the topological part is this: when you fly up off the top edge of the screen, you magically appear at the same position on the bottom of the screen, and vice-versa. The same is true of the left and right edges. So consider this: from the pilot’s perspective, he or she is flying around in a 2-dimensional universe with no edge, ie: where every spot the ship is in looks locally like two-dimensional Euclidean space. Mathematicians call this sort of thing a manifold, specifically a 2-manifold. I’m going to represent it like this, as it is represented on the game screen:
The edges ‘a’ and ‘b’ are labelled to indicate that the top and bottom are the same location in space (a), as are the left and right (b). In fact (when you think about it) the four corners are actually the same point! If you were to try to connect this up as a real physical surface (this is called anembedding), you could think about it as a sheet of paper where you first glued edge a-top to a-bottom (giving you a rolled-up paper tube), and then bent the resulting tube around gluing b-left to b-right. You would end up with…wait for it…a donut! Or, in topological jargon, a torus. So when you are playing Asteroids, you are actually playing it on a torus, mathematically speaking. (The advantage to this explanation is that in a bar, there’s always a napkin around that you can use to demonstrate. Sometimes there are even videogames.)…
Read the full article here: http://www.everything2.org/node/746760
1982 Asteroids record broken
Posted on April 06, 2010John McAllister just scored 41,838,740 points, beating Scott Safran’s 1982 high score of 41,336,440. Â This had been the longest-standing record in arcade history.
Full Wired article here — http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/04/asteroids-record
Twin Galaxies official scoreboard here — http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&pi=2&gi=4017&vi=643
Asteroids Movie in development
Posted on July 02, 2009Universal Studios just won a 3-studio bidding war for the rights to Atari Asteroids. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers 2, Imagine That, G.I. Joe) is set to produce, with Matt Lopez (Race to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories) as writer.
Variety article — http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005638.html?categoryid=1079&cs=1&query=atari+asteroids
di Bonaventura says:
“When I was called about the property – I was called because of what I’d done with ‘Transformers’ and ‘G.I. Joe.’ Atari reached out to me and said, ‘We have Asteroids,’ and I had an immediate reaction ‘Yes.’ The reason was not because playing the game, we thought somehow that game could be translated into a movie, it can’t. The word ‘Asteroids’ connotates a large-scale experience, so the challenge, which was great, was ‘Okay, so how do you get a mythology that will support that?” We really went after a mythology on the level of ‘Star Wars’ and we’ll see if we succeeded or not but it’s not a simple thing of the asteroids are going to hit the earth. We never come to earth. The entire movie takes place in the asteroid field. We do some homages to the game for sure, but I like the sense of scale.”
[UPDATE]
Variety article “Videogame companies set-up studio pics,” citing Asteroids:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010994.html?cs=1&query=atari+asteroids
Wired’s idea of what the script will look like:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/asteroids-movie/
Technical goldmine
Posted on June 09, 2009Wonder what’s inside the Asteroids cabinet? Know what’s inside and need to fix it? Do arcane arcade schematics make you drool? Ionpool.net is a comprehensive site of technical information for arcade consoles.
Their Asteroids offerings include a great technical troubleshooting encyclopedia, some Cocktail Asteroids goodies, a patch to operate in an Asteroids Deluxe cabinet, and photos of Arch Maclean’s cabinet restoration.
And if you want to go nuts with schematics, textfiles.com has pdfs of official service manuals.
Recon: Super Bear Arcade [CLOSED]
Posted on February 05, 200940755 Village Drive
Big Bear Lake, CA 92315 (map)
Phone: 909-866-8620
Super Bear Arcade is a small arcade on the main street of this Southern California mountain resort town. It’s packed with classic games including Frogger, Super Mario Brothers, several forms of Donkey Kong, Tron, and Discs of Tron (sit-down). It also has skeeball with cheap plastic prizes.
Their Asteroids (1979) is set to fast mode, and starts with 4 ships — good for getting a high score quickly, if you’re full of sugar from the ice cream places in town. One drawback is that the screen has a lot of glare from the overhead lights.
[UPDATE] — Super Bear Arcade is CLOSED! Â See the comment below.
Asteroids at the Super Bear Arcade.
Atari 2600 Asteroids Plot
Posted on February 03, 2009The following story was taken directly from the Atari 2600 Asteroids manual.
On a quiet serene evening the Cosmic Space Patrol sets out for the usual night cruise through the boulevards of space. This beat was always the same; calm, no action and no excitement. For some reason this night feels different. Shortly before 0200 hours some form of intergalactic material is sighted through the visual particle counter. The material is too large a mass to measure. It’s drifting closer. Lookout, it’s a giant asteroid boulder and it’s headed straight for the Cosmic Spacecraft. The only chance for survival is to dodge the boulder or destroy it. Destroying it doesn’t mean just breaking it up, it means vaporizing it. Small asteroid boulders are equally as fatal as large ones.
The Cosmic Space Patrol is highly trained to handle this situation. Could you do as good a job as the Cosmic Space Patrol? How would you protect yourself if you were caught in a deadly asteroid belt? This is your big chance to fly throughout the dimensions of space and fend against asteroid boulders. The longer you survive, the more space hazards you’ll encounter.
Whew, the boulder just missed colliding with the Cosmic Spacecraft, but suddenly the Cosmic Space Patrol find themselves surrounded by thousands of the deadly asteroids. The Cosmic Space Patrol must act quickly to save their spacecraft and spare their lives. The spacecraft is equipped with photon torpedoes, hyperspace, shields, and flip control.
Recon: Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Posted on January 28, 2009Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
400 Beach Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (map)
Phone: 831-423-5590
website: http://beachboardwalk.com/02_casino_arcade.html
This is a fun place, with a roller coaster on the beach outside, an excellent two-story pirate mini-golf course inside, and a respectable collection of older (not antique) pinball machines.
There are two Asteroids consoles and one Asteroids Deluxe. The Casino Arcade building has a small room with a dozen or so very early arcade games, including several other vector games (Tempest, Battlezone, Star Wars). This is where Asteroids Deluxe lives. This console has a weak monitor, and the image breaks up at the edges.
One 1979 Asteroids game is near the vintage game room, right by the shooting gallery. This one is in OK shape, except that the hyperspace button only works half the time. The contact probably needs to be cleaned.
The other Asteroids console is in a arcade room next door in Neptune’s Kingdom (mini-golf). This one is surrounded by more modern games, and the whole place is a bit loud for serious asteroid destruction. I don’t remember much about the machine itself because I was so distracted.
Vector games in the classic arcade room in Santa Cruz.
Asteroids Deluxe in the Casino Arcade at the Boardalk.
Recon: Ms T’s Barcade (LA)
Posted on November 15, 2008371 N Western Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90004 (map)
Phone: 323-465-5045
LA’s Barcade is a great dive bar with 80’s toys lining the walls. There are three rooms: the bar, the DJ room, and the back room with pinball and Asteroids. Sometimes the place is empty. Sometimes it’s packed. They have movie night (80’s classics) on Tuesday if you show up early. It’s a small but solid collection of classic games, and one of my favorite places in LA. It’s also the best Asteroids machine I’ve played to date. It has great button response and a brilliant display.
The only signage is a neon Pac-Man ghost, a block north of Beverly on Western, across from that giant modern KFC.
The excellent Asteroids console in the back room of Ms T's Barcade.
[Sept 21, 2009 update: Barcade has moved next door, and is now called The Blipsy”]
