The one arcade game that I could never beat

29-year veteran here. Began programming professionally in 1990, writing BASIC applications for an 8-bit Apple II+ computer. Learned Pascal, C, Clipper, COBOL. Ironic side-story: back then, my university colleagues and I used to make fun of old COBOL programmers. Fortunately, I never had to actually work with the language, but the knowledge allowed me to qualify for a decent job position, back in '92.

For a while, I worked with an IBM mainframe, using REXX and EXEC2 scripting languages for the VM/SP operating system. Then I began programming for the web, wrote my first dynamic web applications with cgi-bin shell and Perl scripts. Used the little-known IBM Net.Data scripting language. I finally learned PHP and settled with it for many, many years.

I always wanted to be a programmer. As a kid I dreamed of being like Kevin Flynn, of TRON - create world famous videogames and live upstairs my own arcade place! Later on, at some point, I was disappointed, I questioned my skills, I thought I should do more, I let other people's expectations make feel bad. Then I finally realized I actually enjoy a quieter, simpler life. And I made peace with it.

I'm now like the old programmers I used to mock 30 years ago. There's so much shit inside my brain. And everything seems so damn complex these days. Frameworks, package managers, transpilers, layers and more layers of code. I try to keep up. And the more I learn, the more it seems I don't know.

Sometimes I feel tired. Yet, I still enjoy creating things and solving problems with programming. I still have fun learning. And after all these years, I learned to be proud of my work, even if it didn't turn out to be as glamorous as in the movies.

So I made dis... Next goal is a full scale Arcade machine :-)

Winner EVERY time?! This could be the best arcade machine for devs!

Found this at my local movie theater.

Let's go to the arcade they said. Let's play this game they said. Game.exe stopped working Windows said.

I really like retro games and there is this thing called retropie which turns your raspberry pi into an arcade machine. Since I have way too much time, I decided to built an arcade machine case out of wood with an old TV and analog sticks from Amazon. So yeah, I wired everything together and wanted to share it with you guys. I'm still searching for stickers to put on the top and on the joystick panel, but for now I really like the result. Tell me what you think!

!rant

I was fiddling around on a website for a bar near me with an arcade. Friends and I already discovered that you could input the konami code on the homepage and be brought to a little easter egg with a chance to win a free beer, free pizza, or nothing.

This evening I was looking at the site a little more and decided to try to find the js code they're using to manage this because I thought it was an ingenious idea. When Looking at the source, I found this little gem. I'm very pleased and wish I had built this site.

Was in arcade and the machine just restarted into a Japanese Windows.

The year was 1983. My best friend and neighbour at the time invited me over to see an amazing device that his father had brought home from work, an IBM PC. We played a game called Track & Field, and I was amazed that the machine remembered my name once I've entered it. (Uptil then the only machines with any kind of memory that I've come in touch with, were arcade games and my cousin's video game console, which was also the first electronic gaming device I've ever played, back in 1978). In the early 1980s, computers were anything but commonplace in Åland Islands, but I think that it was in 1983 that people became aware of them, and there was a budding interest to buy one, at least among us kids. It was my sister who wished for a home computer for Christmas, so the same year Santa gave us a ZX Spectrum. It came with a game called Thro' the Wall, an Arcanoid clone(, that has inspired me to make my own clone "Wall" for all the different home computers I've had, ranging from Commodore 16 and Canon V-20 to Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200). Unfortunately, we only managed to load the game (delivered on a C cassette) like once or twice after several attempts. It turned out that the hardware was faulty and dad got a refund after first having had to complain a lot at the dealer (which went out of business some ten years ago), and then bought the Commodore the next Christmas. Anyway, I wrote my first code on the ZX Spectrum. It doesn't really count for programming as all I did was typing examples and running them. I do recall altering one example though, a program drawing the Swedish flag on the screen, by adding an inner red cross thus turning it in the Åland flag. But, with the Commodore 16 (which had an excellent Basic interpreter) I got started with programming almost immediately and by the end of 1984 I had written my fist very own Basic programs. In 1996 I got my first IT job, and am still a dev. So, what became of my childhood friend and neighbour? He runs a successful computer dealership :)

What's wrong with that guy?

Do arcade games (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Berserk) count? I got my allowance in quarters.

Atari 2600? Ti/99 with a tape drive to play a game at my friend's house?

Having to buy a 5.25" floppy in the HS bookstore for typing class on the TRaSh-80s and finding a way to put a break in the program and save it to disk so I got top score on assignments?

Tron. That's what really did it for me. To this day, I like to imagine there is a vast world inside the computer.

After a BASIC programming class in HS, I got an Apple IIGS and started writing my own load menus for these little games I'd find around FIDO and newsgroups. Instead of "PR#6, brun gumball" a nice styled menu would show where you could press the number of the game you wanted to play.

I bought a book on Apple assembler and promptly got disillusioned with full blown programming (in 1988), instead sticking to BASIC and, later, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, CSS, and Python.

Who remembers sharing hacked PCP accounts to dial out of state BBSes?

Applied Engineering customers and 300 baud chatroom lurkers represent.

User #243, God's Country chat

Subaru's Symmetrical AWD is the best thing in the world at the moment. Also, warning: !dev

Tl;dr: I'm getting another RPi3 thanks to awesome engineering.

Got a couple of inches of light snow here, and on my way home I came across a GMC Sierra dually stuck at the bottom of a moderately sized ditch. Naturally, I stopped by in my Forester and offered to tow it out.

With my 20ft tow rope stretched to its full length I was barely touching the road. He signalled that he was ready, and I gunned it. Slowly but surely the truck crawled out of the 6ft deep trench. She crested the hill with much applause (from me and the driver of the truck). As a thanks, he gave me $30.

Looks like I'm gonna get a new Raspberry Pi to play with. I think I'll turn this one into a countertop MAME arcade machine.

And for those of you wondering why I'm praising Symmetrical AWD as opposed to AWD in general, here's a quick lesson in drivetrains:
Most all wheel drive cars power the front wheels most of the time. This saves on fuel economy. The thing is, power is only transmitted to the rear wheels when the front wheels start to lose traction. At that point you're already screwed; only two wheels at any one time are putting useful power to the road.
Symmetrical AWD systems, like you'll find in all Subarus and most performance cars, distribute the vehicle's torque eaqually front-rear at all times. So instead of waiting until the front wheels start slipping, all of the wheels are powered right off the bat.

To make this more devvy: grrrr php, vim is best, I configured the tab key to enter four spaces, js has too many damn frameworks and they're still being pumped out faster than rabbits in a bunny farm.

I restore retro arcade machines because I miss the day when the game actually mattered and it wasn't all about the tickets

I have started doing one hour coding challenges... I try to make small projects in that time.. I have felt improvement in my programming and thinking skills but I wanna know your opinions if I am doing the right thing for the long run?
language: python, arcade library.

So today I spent most of the day "gaming", basically trying seeing what my PC could handle. It was very disappointing and realized I wasted a while day.

1.Somehow the graphics settings even set to Ultra didn't feel realistic.

2. The games take a long time to download even with Steam... 50-60GB... WTF....

The largest game I ever played on PC before was maybe 4-8GB... (DVDs)

And yes I installed Steam and bought a game (Project Cars 2). The videos looked pretty nice I'm videos but not so in game... (Waiting for refund now)

3. I downloaded some other demos but the setup time and cutscenes took too much time

4. Controls for some games seen to have been ported from console (they were mapped to XBOX buttons?).

I should've stuck to my original plan... Programming, no games

But I think one thing if certain... I will never understand console games (the ones with stories/plots). I'm sticking with arcade or the ones I can cheat thru at most.

!rant

I went to an arcade with the fam tonight and they had a rubber duck claw machine! Now I finally have my own debugging rubber duck. :)

Gotta love temporary laptops while waiting for your actual device. I literally have to press letter "T" like playing Tekken in the arcade.

Today I completed a childhood goal. Finished Time Crisis II

My first exposure to computers was when i was 7 in 98. Hp Palvillion with windows 98. Got it from walmart and it cost around $1100. Brought it home and i hooked it up on my own on the living room floor. First program installed was "who wants to be a millionare", fitting that a game be the first thing installed since it was for homework. I lived 16 miles from town at the time so i really had no friends and the isolation made it hard for me to adjust in school to the point that i was a loud kid seeking attention. Then we got dialup and i found invisionfree forums which my first programing experiance with javascript started. And no I'm not talking about jquery I'm talking about the real thing.

Fast foward a year. I find an opensource arcade and learn php while writting an arcade from scratch that uses curl to mitm login to verify the user. Later that month i create a small project that dynamicly creates a signature image for the top 1000 posters on a coding forum i liked.

Then all hell broke loose when i found osdev.org, thought i was going to be a badass and make the ultimate operating system that would combine linux, windows, and mac where it could run anything. Reality Check hit me like a semi and train hitting at full force trying that and made me look into hacking. Spent alittle while breaking windows in so many ways and talking to others on irc until i was about to turn 18. Switched to ubuntu 12.04 my senior year while that was occuring.

I guess it all started for me in the summer of 8th grade when I was 14. I saw all these javascript snippets for invisionfree forums, started learning javascript and html. later on I went into php development to make a arcade, it was pretty cool learning experience cause it used curl to login with invisionfree forums. a few years after that I got into c++ and I knew programing was what I was going to do the rest of my life cause there's no end to it

God, playing SoulSilver has made me remember an era (or two, but I wasn't alive for one and the other was my childhood) where games were actually fucking *GOOD.* Some games can be absolute home runs now on rare occasion, but if I name consoles from these periods, you can INSTANTLY tell me at least one game that is pretty universally regarded as a best-ever.

Examples and predicted responses:

-Gamecube: Too fucking many to even count. Instant answers vary immensely, but everyone who's played games on this thing have one.

-Original Xbox: Halo 2 is the one instantly on one's lips, or maybe CE for some. Also JSRF.

-Dreamcast: SA2 or Phantasy Star or JSR or...

-PS1/2: Resident Evil, Spyro, Final Fantasy, Ratchet & Clank...

-PS3: Lara Croft games, Uncharted, Infamous... (this one's right on the border, it seems)

-NES: The fucking birthplace of modernized gaming.

-Genesis: Sonic games, obviously. Some may answer with arcade titles, too.

-SNES: Mario games. Mario Paint, SMW, SMW2, SMAS, a couple like Super Metroid or Kirby's Dreamland or F-Zero may come up too.

-N64: Banjo Kazooie, F-Zero GX, Waveracer, 1080, Zelda games...

-Gameboy (all systems:) Pokemon is the instant answer.

Now, a harder one:

-Wii U? Maybe one of the Mii game things? U-less games? Not many people remember the games for this system.

-Xbox One? Halo 5, pretty much. You probably played everything else on PC.

-PS4? The PS3 lineup, but without any soul? You played pretty much everything here on PC, too.

Is there a point to this rant? Yes. Kind of.
Games used to be great, not just due to better hardware, but due to people putting some goddamn heart and soul into making games, and due to creativity stemming from working on such limited hardware. It seems the more powerful consoles (and PCs!) get, the more gaming becomes a soulless cash grab to drain cash from wallets on subpar products with paywalls every 20 feet you have to clear to get the "full experience." Gaming has become less about letting people have fun and being creative with games and more about the bottom dollar, whether that be through making games as fast and as cheap as possible with as much paid content dumped on top as possible, or the systematic erasure of archival efforts to preserve gaming history. From what I read here on devRant, that seems to be the moral of anything computer-related as well. Computers are made to slow down and fail far faster than normal via OEM bloat and shitty OSes, and are used to constantly empty one's wallets with constant licensing fees and free trials and deliberate consumer ignorance. None of it's about having fun anymore. Fun seems to no longer have a place in computing at all.

If you take anything from any of the madman-esque loosely-structured rambling i'm saying here, make it that "the enemy of creativity is the abscense of limitations... and the presence of greed." Another message i'd like to leave you with is "start having fun when making things whenever possible, as it improves not just the dev process, but user experience, too." You can't always apply this, and sometimes you can never do so, but always keep it in mind.

Working with friend and using nodejs websockets and SVG to build online multiplayer lazer screen arcade like games.

The only delay is having to stop every couple of minutes to restate how cool this is.

There was a small exhibition in our school. I made a retropie arcade with the ability to play them physically with gpio.

Another one streamed video from a android phone over wifi.

He won the competition.

Worse coding mistake was a typo when I first started. it was on a arcade site I made and as long as you had the users email the typo made it where you didn't need the password to login to an account. luckily it was a free arcade I made to learn from

So I'm a junior dev in a few languages and I recently went to an arcade. I got some inspiration again to work on a small toy of a game. I was wondering what you guys think I should make. I was thinking maybe pinball or something along those lines. I'd be using Godot engine so 2d is the main focus. tell me what you think and I'll post updates as I work on it.

Looking for recommendations:

I have a retropie set up in the living room TV that my parents play. They want an arcade-style joystick. It needs to be wireless, preferably not bluetooth. Known compatibility with retropie is a plus. Four buttons a plus, two is required.

! a programming moment

My ah-ha moment was when i got to know that I could play metal slug on it.
I had gotten a CD consisting of neo geo ROMs on it
and that was one of my best moments in life.
I had never thought that i would have an arcade machine at home
I even invited some friends over and showed them that I had Metal Slug on my computer.

You know I'm looking around a t a museum of 3d graphics programming right now.

Not my first time but the same arcade machines are playing the same tooons over and over again in an eerie way and strange;y thertes a basketball game up there on several large screen tvs too...

I remember my first detailed look at opengl.

For some reason it just never worked for me.
But I see all these incredible sources of past fortune sitting unplayed, and think.. wow... what a waste.

these brought me many hours of joy and gave me an opportunity or so I thought to try to make friends and meet other teens when I was younger.

They represent countless hours of lovingly crafted mind-crack, and noone smokes them anymore.

Aliens armaggedon sits right in front of me, holstered faux guns glowing in red alluringly.

the huge box of unclaimed mooks and stuffed sheep sit there sadly robotic arms that can never reach them just hanging rusting, unloved by a new generation to curse them for never grasping anything and stealing their quarters and a HUGE 96 inch or more screen for Tomb Raider, FUCKING TOMB RAIDER hums in a corner just slightly out of my full view.

and noone is here. why ?
and yet the gaming industry supposedly continued to thrive.

in a way arcades were better they kept people from being addicted to wowcrack.

just like raising gasoline prices would prompt the creation of cleaner more efficient mass transit.

There are still Android games that push CPUs and gfx to their limits? And actually worth playing/buying?

Haven't seen any non-arcade, console style games in a long time?

Just had a random nostalgia moment:

Childhood days playing wolfenstein 3d in the telephone cable modem internet times.

I clearly remember the first cheat code i used in my entire life for that game : ILM

What was your first cheat code and the first game that comes to your mind when talking about your childhood games :)

I'm never committing to finishing another PC game ever again... And sticking to arcade, short games only.

Playing Nu no Kuni 2 for the last 3 days... 25hrs and counting... Now at final boss... I think and I can't get infinite HP in Skirmish... So Keep getting entire force wiped out one hit with his laser beam which keeps getting stronger....

It's like a fly vs us. In order to win it's gotta slowly chip away at u, but he can die at an instant any time...

Oh and the 25hrs includes massive cheating and speed hacking to move faster.

Some game related info is here. Maybe you could make some sense out of this. Here are a few pictures related to this but I cannot say anything with confirmation as I am not into gaming. I know Arcade cabinet machine is good. You can try this out for more detailed stuff for all of us.

You ever try to get some cool dev swag? Stickers, t-shirts, maybe a notebook that makes you feel like a real hacker while you’re just writing TODO lists? Yeah, good luck.

First, you gotta jump through a thousand hoops. "Complete this 5-hour coding challenge!" "Sign up for our newsletter, then confirm via email, then sacrifice a goat under the next full moon!" And the worst part? Some of these companies ghost you harder than a bad Tinder date.

Google Cloud Arcade? Completed 10 challenges. No swag.
Hacktoberfest? Contributed to open-source. Shirt never arrived.
Random Twitter giveaway? Retweeted, liked, followed, tagged three friends. Crickets.

But the moment you don’t want swag? BAM—your mailbox is drowning in random recruiter postcards from companies you've never heard of.

And let’s talk about those "exclusive" ambassador programs. They dangle swag in front of you like a carrot, but guess what? The only people who get in are LinkedIn influencers who say "🚀 Keep learning! Stay hungry! Stay foolish!" 50 times a day.

At this point, I’d rather just pay $5 for a sticker pack than deal with all this nonsense. But no, these companies make it seem like getting a free T-shirt is harder than getting a job at FAANG.

Just give me my damn stickers!

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the penny-arcade comic today has a part of a conversation I have had before.

me: ... I did some internet research.

friend: Google. First result. Okay, continue.

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