Analog Arcade: Hologram Time Traveler

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Hologram Time Traveler

Hologram Time Traveler (or Hologram for short), was another great arcade game that you would have to wait in line for an hour just to play it (just like Dragon’s Lair).

While the game had the very same game play as Dragon’s Lair, it used a hologram rear projection screen that made everything just pop out right at you. It was also the only arcade game that I knew of that cost you $1.00 to play per game. While this was a great arcade game, it came out just about the same time that the arcades were dying out thanks in no small part to home video game systems like the NES.

So, did you ever get to play this game when it was out in the arcades? And were you also blown-away by the “holograms” as much as I was?

Analog Arcade: X-Men the Arcade Game

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. X-Men the Arcade Game

I remember seeing this game at my local arcade and how shocked I was at how cool it was. The game was about the size of 3 normal arcade games put together, it had a wide screen so you can see everything, and you and up-to 5 other friends could play it at the same time.

And the best part, you can now buy and download this game on your Xbox 360 & Playstation 3 game system for $10.00.

I am Magneto! Master of Magnet! (Man, that line of Bad English never gets old).

Did you or your friends ever get play this game when it was in the arcades? How much money did you spend on it? Was it worth 3 screens?

Analog Arcade: Bible NES Games

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Bible NES Games

If you had a Nintendo NES system as a kid and you also had some very religious relatives, then you must have gotten a Bible NES Game like this one for your Birthday or Christmas.

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From what I remember, all the Bible games I ever had for the NES were made by a game company called Wisdom Tree (once also know as Color Dreams), and the cartridges for the games came in either Black, Light Gray, or Baby Blue colors. At the time, many game companies had a very strict no religious icons or items in games policy (Nintendo being one of them), and Wisdom Tree was the only company that made any religious video games for the Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Sega Genesis. But just like the games that were made by Tengen, Wisdom Tree’s games were unlicensed games that could not be sold in Toy Stores, so they were only sold at Bible Book Stores.

The games were not bad, but they were not that good either. They were what my Mom called “The Thought That Counts” type gifts. They were something that you got as a gift from your Grandma or any other relative and you had to pretend that it was the game that you wanted (even though it wasn’t). You just knew that their heart was in the right place when they got it for you and thought that it would be something that you would love to play.

Did you ever get a Bible game as a kid? Were you disappointed that you got a Bible game instead of the game you wanted the most for your Birthday or Christmas? Why make Bible games?

Analog Arcade: TMNT the NES Game

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. TMNT the NES Game

Have you ever played a game that you loved & hated at the same time? Will that was the filling I got every time I played the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES as a kid. As a big time TMNT fan, I thought it was great that there was a NES game being made and I was very happy when I got one for my birthday. Then I started playing it and all that love turned into hate. I think this video I found can sum-up everything that was wrong with this game (warning: this video may not be safe to view at work because of the language used in the song).

Even though this game was bad, TMNT fans still play it to this day, because it was the “first” TMNT game ever made. Thank goodness we finally got some good ones (like TMNT 2: The Arcade Game)

So did anyone here have this game as a kid? Did you hate this game as much as me? Did you throw down your controller in great anger? Did you yell? Did you break anything?

Analog Arcade: Duck Tales for the NES

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. Duck Tales the NES Game

As a kid, Duck Tales was one of my favorite cartoon shows, so when I found out that there was going to be an NES game for it; I asked my Mom if I could get one for my Birthday. And I got it.

Duck Tales was one of the few games based on a movie or TV series that got everything right. The game play was great, the music was good, and it was just fun to play. The game was also made by Capcom (the same guys who made the Mega Man games), so it was made by guys who knew what they were doing. But what makes this game so great in my book was that it was the only game I ever beat as a kid.

The game was so good, that Capcom even made a sequel to it.

Too bad not many fans played it, because the game came out at the end of the NES’s run, good thing they also ported it onto the Game Boy as well.

Did anyone else here play this game? Did you ever beat it?

Analog Arcade: Tengen NES Games

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

This is “Analog Agent Benjamin” coming at you this week with…. The Tengen NES Games

Do you remember getting a Tengen NES game as a kid and noticing how different they looked from other NES games, or how most of the games were made by Sega for a Nintendo game system? Or how about the fact that the Tengen version of Tetris looked much different than the Nintendo version?

Ninetndo’s Tetris

Tengen’s Tetris

So, what version of Tetris did you have? What Tengan games did you have or wanted as a kid?

Analog Arcade: Forget-Me-Not

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

Forget-Me-Not is a great new retro styled game.

It was released last year as a free download for your computer or a pay agem for the iOS. It’s a game in the style an arcade maze game like pac-man. It controls really well now that there is full icade support or even with touch screen controls.

One thing that I really like about the game is the fact that the levels can be super massive with a million little enemies that all have their own little functions and things they do. You can even ignore all of them and they will go around collecting things, blowing up or filling your board with crystalized goo.

The other thing that I really like is the sound. Man, that game sounds just like an 80’s arcade game on steroids. Sounds for when you regenerate, start a new level, everything. It’s just so blippy and fun.

I can’t say enough about this game, I play it and still love it. Check it out on the iOS, or download it for Mac or Windows:

Mac download: Mac OS X
PC download: Windows

App Store Link: Forget-Me-Not, $1.99 (Universal)

Enjoy, and please, tell me what you think!

Analog Arcade: Puzzle Bobble (Bust-A-Move)

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

Puzzle Bobble or as it’s known in the US, Bust-A-Move is one of my all-time favorite games. I love it. I love almost every version of it on every platform.

It’s puzzle game based on the characters from Bubble Bobble, two little dinosaurs Bub and Bob. In that game you shoot little bubbles out of you mouth to trap enemies and collect little fruits and ice cream cones. In Puzzle Bobble, you use a little pointer to shoot bubbles to bounce to the top of the screen and cling onto other bubbles. When you match 3 or more bubbles of the same color, they pop dropping everything hanging under them. A lot of the bubbles are filled with enemies from Bubble Bobble.

It’s a very simple game mechanic but adding new ways to play and amazing level design has kept this game series alive. There are later games that introduced characters that had different abilities that would affect your game field and your opponent’s. If you really knew how to use those other characters, there was nothing that could stop you.

This game was released on the Neo Geo arcade cabinet that included multiple games that you could pick to play, such as Samurai Showdown, Alpha Mission, and Metal Slug. It was released during the period in arcades when they were completely dominated by fighting games.

I always loved walking into an arcade, past all the crazy kids playing super loud Street Fighter II and plop a quarter in to start up the cheerful Puzzle Bobble. I was really happy when challenger would step up because they meant that I would just wipe up the floor with them. I was almost unstoppable.

This game lead to a lot of fights between my friends. Once we were all playing the N64 version and we would take turns playing the 2 player game mode. When the person lost, they lost their turn and the winner stayed on. Well needless to say it devolved into a “let’s take down Gabe” contest which resulted in me winning over 60 straight rounds! Man, do I love that game…

Do you like Puzzle Bobble? Do you still play a version of it on something?

Analog Arcade: The Simpsons Arcade Game

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games– the Arcade!

Simpsons Arcade Game was one of the most fun multiplayer arcade games you could play-ever. It’s up there with Turtles in Time and X-men, probably both made by this same team. In this side scrolling beat-em-up based on the cable television show where you could play as your favorite Simpson’s family member: Bart, Homer, Marge or Lisa. Each one had their own personalized attack. But this is what sets this game in a different league then the rest–combo moves! That’s right, when two characters were close to each other and did their specialized attack, they would combine and do a new attack. For example: on his own, bart would attack with his skateboard, but when teamed up with Homer, they would use the skateboard as a helicopter.

You would find yourself laughing while you’re playing, the moves, the voices, the plot, the graphics, the surprise cameos, were all really funny, really well done all while being super faithful to the show.

When I played this game with friends, we would be yelling, laughing and trying to punch each other. We would have to shout above all the arcade noise to coordinate a combo attack. We must have spent $50 on this game, but it was totally worth it!

Do you remember playing this game? Did you ever do all the combo attacks? Did you think it was sexist to have Marge attack with cleaning supplies?

Thanks Benjamin for suggesting this game!

Analog Arcade: Dragon’s Lair

Beg your Mom for some quarters, jump on your bike, ride down to that dark, smokey, noisy and slightly dangerous home for one of your video games the Arcade!

Dragon’s Lair wasn’t just an arcade game, it’s was like a movie. It set the the bar for animation and blew the doors off what people thought arcade games were. Animated and directed by the great ex-Disney animator Don Bluth, this game was the first laser disc game. It would play the disc and your reaction time would prompt the next track to be played. If you were too slow, you would get the dreaded skeleton exposed death animation.

(Click image below to watch the entire game):

I featured this game in the short video games because it was one of the first games I saw that really blew my mind. Yes, the design and animation was as unbelievable, but the game was almost unplayable because it was so hard. You needed to memorize every single move and get the timing perfect or game over. I learned that the way to get better at the game was to watch other people play and try to memorize what to do, but that still didn’t guarantee that you could get that tricky timing right though.

That game must have made so much money just because, not only was it super hard, but I think it was one of the first 50 cent games.

Dragon’s Lair for iOS

What were your memories of Dragon’s Lair? How much money did you lose in trying to see the ending? Do you remember the chess level?