The problem with SPACE INVADERS arcade cabinet! | Quarter Arcade review
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2023
- Space Invaders is one the most iconic retro games ever released and even though you have most definitely played it, It's unlikely you have ever played it the way it should have been played unless you played the original arcade cabinet.
Massive thanks to Numskull for letting me see the early prototypes of these cabinets. If you are interested in getting on here are some affiliate links
🕹️Space Invaders: Part 1 tidd.ly/466dcJm
🕹️Space Invaders: Part 2: tidd.ly/3ZkTW8u
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Space Invaders is one of the greatest and most iconic retro games ever created.
A big thanks to Quarter Arcades for allowing me to take a deep dive on their latest arcade machine.
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#SpaceInvaders #QuarterArcade #Arcade #RetroGaming #numskull #retro - Ігри
Massive thanks to Numskull for letting me see the early prototypes of these cabinets. If you are interested in getting on here are some affiliate links...
🕹Space Invaders: Part 1 tidd.ly/466dcJm
🕹Space Invaders: Part 2: tidd.ly/3ZkTW8u
I don't know what the yellow dot really is, but I would suspect it's a stand-in for the key-lock to retrieve quarters and tokens.
Plus, you can easily increase the intensity of a LCD screen by changing the backlight. Well, maybe not easily, you have to take it apart, and there's a LOT of delicate ribbon cables, but it's doable. You'd really want to use an LED screen, and over-power it, which would decrease its longevity and create burn in, but that's a lot like a CRT isn't it?
Slight correction: Space invaders Part 2 doesn't use coloured sprites, it uses bands of coloured semi transparent film stuck to the black and white crt to give the monochrome sprites the illusion of colour as they advance down the screen. You can see this when bullets travel up/down the screen changing colour as they pass underneath each band.
You are absolutely correct. No idea how I missed this after talking about games like twin-bee before.
Cheers for the comment mate
Mmmm that’s not entirely true here. What they have emulated here is the Part II hardware with electronic colour overlay, not transparent film. Midway’s SI Deluxe used transparent overlay. So the video is correct.
In the upright Taito SI Part 1 &2 cabinets, there were only 2 colored strips. The UFO flight path, and the shields/ship area. The invaders pretty much stay monochrome white, until they reach the shields area obviously. The COCKTAIL Space Invaders Part 2 however is often indeed color.
@@ElectricLuvz it looks like Quarter Arcades have got a little mixed up here and the only reason I can think of is to highlight the differences more in their two SI releases. Yes, the two uprights in this shape of cabinet were monochrome but they also did a colour monitor Part2 cab with a slightly different cab design. These used the same hardware as the cocktail cabs using colour video overlay. I didn’t make it clear in my reply. I can see why Quarter Arcades did it though else the two would look far too similar. Very impressive though how they got the half mirrored screen to work so well.
A terrible video. A massive cockup by Slopes, and rather than just put in the correct information, he leaves his mistakes in then does a "correction" later. Absolutely padded out and what a piece of junk when you could just blend the background into the game without needing any of this stuff.
I'm a CG modeler and I've built a physically accurate, 3D version of the Space Invaders cabinet. It was surprisingly tricky to get the screen image to properly line up with the mirror so that it looked correct through the shield. Same with Omega Race and Asteroids Deluxe.
To this day, I still don't know where my dad got one, most likely from his Take Away shop, but in the early to mid 80s, we had one of those sit down table arcade machines of Space Invaders in our living room. It was a hell of a gathering point for us kids and friends, it doubled as a "play station" for our toys and to play the game, it was a kids diner table, it was even a money bank for my savings. Such a shame when we eventually got rid of it years later, the house was never the same without it.
That's a great story! Thanks for sharing it!
For those that don't know. Space Invaders gameplay was revolutionary because Space invaders invented difficulty progression. The game got harder as you progressed through the level, because of the enemies getting faster as you kill more of them. That was new at the time. It changed everything. Other developers started designing games to have difficulty progression directly because of SI. Funny thing is, it happened by accident. The programmer put as many enemies on the screen at one time as the hardware could do, and instead of telling the hardware how fast the characters should move, he just told it to move them at the highest speed it could. Since almost all of the system memory was taken up by having so many characters on the screen at one time, the movement speed was slow, because there wasn't much memory left to run the character movement. So when he tested it, everytime he killed an enemy, there was then one less character on the screen at one time, so less system memory taken up by enemy sprites. So there was more memory available, so the hardware had more memory to run the character movement, so the speed increased after every kill. The programmer found this made the game more fun, so he didn't bother fixing the mistake, and rest is history.
Someone should make a list of originally unintended programming quirks that turned into significant features in video games. Alongside the speedup in "Space Invaders," there is stuff like the combo system in "Street Fighter 2," wavedashing in "Super Smash Bros. Melee," Lara Croft's bust size (arguably?), and what else?
@Compucles That's a good idea. Uh. The creator of Tetris accidentally making an addictive game, to the point where he couldn't finish making the game because he couldn't stop playing it every time he sat down to work on it? Or was there an addictive game before that? Oh, I guess Pac-man, huh?
Pacman had difficulty too and was before space invaders. Reguardless i love invaders!
this episode made me realize taito really loved their tricks with using the monitors, like with what they did for the early Darius games, Ninja Warriors and Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III! Guess that sorta thing goes all the way back to OG space invaders.
Yeah the Darius comparison is great. Love the early Taito stuff
@@slopesgameroom oh also I heard the OG invaders were inspired by sealife, guess Darius really IS a descendant of Space Invaders, haha.
That's a hard to replicate effect.
Black and white CRT's can go quite a bit brighter than color crt's while remaining crisp and clear, and back when they were manufactured you could get brighter phosphors for special uses like a game monitor.
I've never seen the original, but it must be a pretty cool effect.
3 times as bright! I used to work at RCA, manufacturing of a color CRT is significantly more complex than a color one. There are 3 electron guns, and you need a physical filter to block electrons so that the green, red, and blue gun only hit the right phosphor dots. As a result 2/3rds of the the electrons are just pointlessly absorbed. People pine for CRTs today, TRUST ME, you just don't remember how hard they were on your eyes. They were certainly an inferior technology. As soon as LCD screens were available for computers, I got rid of my CRT even though they were tiny, however they were much easier to sit in front of for 8 hours a day.
Space invaders got me into gaming. My brothers friend was the son of pub owners and I remember watching him play this in the pub out of hrs. That was me hooked just by watching. Next came an Atari, first game space invaders, and I’ve been a gamer ever since.
I own a Space Invaders Trimline model. Which is what taito called their cabaret models. So it's the shorter upright. It runs revision 4 with a 5 digit highscore, is black and white with a color cellophane. It uses a two way stick with a leaf switch instead of buttons for control. I haven't seen any other photo of a Trimline model with a 5 digit score like mine. I love Space Invaders
When I was a little kid a lot of quick service restaurants around where I lived had those tabletop arcade games set up as meal service spaces.
They'd add a wooden top with a built in clear perspex panel to the top of the unit so you could eat there and play the game if you wanted too.
The most popular ones were space invaders, pac man, donkey kong and of course super mario brothers..
That's cool, really adds to the entertainment value, even if you didn't play. But I'm sure it got a lot of people to play since you were looking at the demo play as you say with friends or family.
Love your collection in the background. I remember playing polybius back in the day. Don't really remember much after playing it though...
I knew of at least a few other arcade cabinets that use mirrors or Pepper's Ghost (Time Traveler, the 6-player version of X-Men, a bunch of light-gun games, etc) but I honestly had no idea that Space Invaders was like this until a few months ago when I visited a toy museum in Austin, Texas (they also had MvC2, which made me really giddy).
It was quite common back in the 1970s. Most of it was down to the simple fact that they were black and white monitors and if you looked at them they weren't very impressive. So gels were used over the screen in some cases, but they of course looked pretty unimpressive too.
But if you wanted to make a display look more impressive, get rid of some of the glow around the black areas and make things pop a bit more, then you projected onto a glass layer.
@@crunchyfrog555 No, it wasn't really that common.
@@otaking3582 Yes it was back then. It was the early days of video games and there were a number of units that used this from games like Sea Wolf (or their clones) to the clones of Boot hill or derivates. You have to remember there weren't that many games around like this when Space INvaders hit. Most were analogue games stil that didn't use things like CPUs. Graphics were not good so needed to be dressed up.
Slope's Game Room,
Fantastic video! Yeah, I'm patiently waiting my preorders for both Space Invaders and Space Invaders Part II, as well as a TMNT. Now that Numskull cracked the code for the Space Invaders effect, my dream is for an Asteroids Deluxe :)
Have a great one!
vgv
Love the Polybius cabinet lurking in the background.
i ordered my quarter space invaders today and i'm glad it came back in stock because there were no more of the first series with signatures and i was in panic that no more would be produced. this is my second quarter arcade machine. my love for these classic games is still hot and Galaga with Space Invaders are the most important for me. But King of all old classic Video Games is
still TI Invaders by Texas Instruments.
How are you liking it? I have one more sale on ebay to go then I'm ordering mine!
The yellow dot is probably Pac Man with his mouth closed 😂
Hey DJ Slope, thank you for the great and informative video, well-put, as always! I've been thinking of picking up one of these Quarter Arcade machines myself but the TMNT Turtles In Time one, so that's why I can't wait for you to review it, as well!
Any time! Glad you enjoyed the video
When you mentioned Part 2 being basically identical except for color, I imagined if the industry was like that today. Like, if they announced Mad World 2 for Switch and it was just the Wii game with the white space colored in, that'd be so goofy. So fun how time changes things
I think they also used Pepper’s Ghost for the effect of Joe Pesci’s hat being set on fire in “Home Alone,” and the fire/falling timber scene in “The Outsiders.”
Yes they did. Hahaha I remember seeing this
For the problem of the LCD not being bright enough, I expected the solution to be something along the lines of these ideas: Switch to OLED, which is all around closer to CRT-like in appearance and can be driven brighter. Take apart the LCD and replace the backlight strip with something brighter. Use an LCD projector instead, it's just a bright bulb shining through a smaller LCD panel and then some lenses to focus it how you want.
The yellow circle on the coin door was not random; it was a discriminator.
It helped the coin mechanism differentiate between different types of coins (such as quarters, nickels, and dimes).
Each type of coin had a unique size and weight, and the discriminator ensured that only valid coins were accepted.
Standardization:
The yellow circle was a visual cue for arcade operators and players.
It indicated where to insert coins, ensuring consistency across different arcade cabinets.
By following this standard, players knew exactly where to place their coins.
I had a old blue type Space Invader cabinet but unfortunately its had been converted to third party Invader's Revenge I sold it on as it was too big for the house .. its possibly one of the rarest conversion of the old space invaders cab
Always like your uploads Slope. Keep up the good work!
I have no idea what I’m talking about but perhaps the yellow dot was some type of retrofitted light that lit up when the coins cans are full. Or maybe a small, separate speaker or noise maker for when Coins are inserted or a mechanical bell like stricter plate hit with a solenoid???
Since I played Invaders on the original generation arcade cab back in 78 when I was 12, I still prefer the 2-button directional over the joystick. In fact, I even set up my Mame Galaga and Galaxian this way.
I miss playing arcade games like SF2, Mortal Kombat and others along with my friends.
I was always told the yellow dot was 2 things, Pac-Man & let's you know the coin slots still had room for more coins turning off it it was full
I have an original tabletop version with the faux wood. It’s been in my family since the late 80s.
Seen your video on one of these Quarter Arcade Facebook pages last night and complimented there also. Really liked it and liked how you detailed and stated the Space Invaders cabs and the improvements of the Quarter Arcade.
I'm a fan myself with the Numbskull Quarter Arcade and got every one of them. I pre-ordered both the Space Invaders and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ones with the pre-order barstools last summer. Really expensive lol.
Can't wait when they finally come out and what 2024 will bring us.
Keep up the good work 👍🏻
cheers mate :D Yeah, this was a really interesting story to cover and I found out a lot about the creation of the original cabinet too that I had no idea about before
One thing that really irks me about their product and gives it away that it isn't a real cab in photos is the coin door. Looks cheap and plastic, looking at all the other ones I collected, they look like the arcade, till you look at the coin door.
I'm trying to work from memory so I could be well off, but I do believe the yellow dot on the front was a cover to mask off the coin release depedning on what coin mechanisms you had in.
Back in those days it was before the red plastic lit coin slots that you could depress to release a stuck coin, and you had a separate stuck coin button. That's where they usually were.
Ahh. Still have an original Taito upright cabinet. Awesome.
They really do go the extra mile, as do you sir!
I played this so much back in the day
I have the My Arcade mini cab from a few years ago, and it actually does pretty good at replicating the overlay mirror effect
The My Arcade one, I have it, it’s pretty great!
Anyone know if it's possible to diffuse the LEDs in the My Arcade Space Invaders?
I had that. I didn't like how you'd have to be practically looking down from the top of the machine to see the whole field. If it were straight on looking in I would have kept it. Maybe the mirror was off in the particular unit I had? I dunno. I wanted to love it.
The table was amazing.
Haha that jenky cup thing over the switch and having to use controls backwards...was just awful haha but super creative and you put way more effort into that than I ever will in a game so kudos sir haha great vid as always
Hahaha appreciate that :D
OMG you have *2* 1/4 arcade Polybius! That's brilliant. Shipping to Canada will basically double the cost of anything I can order from these guys so I'm in awe.
I thought for a minute it was goig to be the way the difficulty increased as the originals speed up came from a quirk of the hardware rather than specifically being programmed in, it does look like a pretty faithful recreation from what I remember of the part 2 I used to frequently play at a pub in Hemsby, well done Numbskull.
Couldn't the emulated version on the switch replicate the look by just simply chroma keying out the black and making the sprites partially transparent so you could see the fancy background through the emulated play space?
Also the peeps trying to replicate/miniaturize the cabinet could simply get a resin 3d printer LCD "or make their own by removing the backing from a black and white LCD" and simply put a more powerful light behind it, invert the polarization of the screen, making the dark areas of the screen be the "on" pixels masking off the black area's.
Any news on the release date? Just Geek still says November 2023...crossing my fingers on that one.
Still can't wait for the Elevator Action pre-order (and let's see some prototypes for Rolling Thunder! *crosses fingers on other hand*).
I just hope they've fixed the scaling issues on the Taito cabinets...Bubble Bobble is quite the mess.
Thank you for the review!
I remember the yellow dot! I'm pretty sure it was just a sticker on the metal. No idea what it was its significance, or why it was there.
Re: the mini-upright SI Part 2.. I'm a little taken aback that it uses the color version in there.. if it was 100% faithful to the original Taito SI2 upright cabinet, Only the UFO area and the Shields/ship areas would have the colored strip and everything else would be monochrome white (as you can see in your shots of the arcade original). SI Part 2 COCKTAIL was the version that was in full color. That said.. it still looks nice. I'll take it.
I'm super happy the SI Part 2 background artwork is intact. For decades it seemed the only one the internet knew about was the Midway SI Deluxe artwork (which is arguably inferior), which is all fine and good but the one I grew up playing was the Taito versions and SI Part 2 bright red sky and blue moon seemed like a lost treasure. That background artwork wasn't even in Mame until relatively recently.
My friend Rebecca 'Burger Becky' Heineman was the first ever video game championship champion thanks to this game. She went on to be a huge name in the video game industry, helping create the Fallout series among others.
I've preordered my TMNT quarter arcade already! Roll on December 15th!
That's pretty cool, they really went out of their way to get it accurate to the real machine
The anger when I was playing Donkey Kong and Pac Man at age five but unable to play ANY Space Invaders 1 or 2 due to the monitor viewing angle and me not having a step stool. Viewed from below where I touch the controls I could only see a blank screen.
HAHAHAHA As a disney nerd Peppers Ghost was the first thing I thought of when you discribed the display!!!
Great minds think alike :D
Grim, grimin ghosts come out to socialiiiiiiiiise
My space invaders had a two way mirror glass, not a plan glass. Making the invaders brighter The back uv white light could be brighter and not swamped the invaders. 😮
4:33 what is the background music called? I like it
I have 3 from numbskull and i will absolutely buy more with Pong, Tmnt and Robocop coming also possibly Donkeykong.
Whats the background music on this? I recognise it but can't place it. It's driving me nuts lol
Pendulum - Granite
@@slopesgameroom Yes! Thank you! Whacking that album on now lol
I really don't see the difficulty Numskull had with Space Invaders. There have been a lot of amateur mini-cabs built over the past few years that looked pitch perfect and solved the "mirror problem" relatively easily.
Numskull had to come up with a solution that was easy and cheap enough to be used in high volume manufacturing.
lmao love the way it ends, u just JINXED yourself 😂
I mean, My Arcade replicated the way the original Space Invaders works pretty well with their Micro Player Premium.
On the one I had you practically had to be looking straight down from the top of the unit to see the whole screen. I sold it. Maybe the mirror in that unit was off? I dunno.
Why can't I find these anywhere!? It's infuriating!
TAITO spelled backwards is OTIAT, and if you say it fast 5 times it makes sense.
goddarn wow ok 340$ for that Space invaders.....that's crazy
The best breakout style game is alpha bounce on the 3ds
Are there any other games that use the Pepper's Ghost effect? They now have the knowhow to do it right.
I know it's not exactly arcade. But one of the best examples I remember seeing (besides time traveler) was the "pinball 2000" range of pinball machines. They even made a really good documentary about it
The others most notable (to me at least) would be Asteroids Deluxe, Omega Race, and Tron Deadly Discs.
I just got both Invaders today and I love what numbskull has done. I do notice that part 2 looks a bit washed out. The Invaders and the bases look like they're behind the planet. The original looks much better in that respect. The sound on both is underwhelming. I remember Space Invaded could be heard over all the other games at an arcade.
I was going to order the original, but that's nice insight to know. Thanks.
I’ve heard this before from others. Good to know since I was originally going to order part 2 but might just go for the original instead.
Why get a new shelf for the new one when you can go all in on a fancy pedestal in the middle of the room!
GRANITE 👀 nice song choice
It's such an awesome yrack
Love me some Pendulum!
It seems like an OLED display would have been ideal
He said coin slot lol
You can get an even smaller version of this for $60, the My Arcade Space Invaders Micro Player. It does the mirror effect as well. 4.7" x 7.2" x 7.2"
Qix and Zoo Keepter Quarter Arcades?
Did you see them at the end
Ooo ok
I was pretty hyped for these arcade machine and recently opted to buy Ms. Pacman and Bubble Bobble. While I do appreciate craftsmanship in regards to the cabinet, there are some design choices and quality control issues that were total dealbreaking for me. First of all the display panels used for these are of the worst crap quality I have EVER seen. At the slightest angle the colours get washed out and almost impossible to see. In Ms. Pacman the emulation was bad and there cuts in the sound while the intermissions were played. In Bubble Bobble everything just looked horrible as I guess the resolution was to blame. For the prices, which was even very high if everything was great, these were not worth it by a long shot. Naturally I returned both.
I had a Space Invaders Deluxe in 1990-91. Shouldn’t have sold it.
Space Invaders is one of those older classics that never appealed to me. Pac-Man, sure, especially Ms Pac-Man which was far superior. Space Invaders was just the same game every time. It was predictable and didn't have much in the way of tactics. The same goes for Centipede which I always felt was rather meh but at least there the player has SOME freedom.
I don't get it, he started talking about the original gaming cabinet and then suddenly he was showcasing some sort of miniature model of the full size game. Makes no sense.
sponsored?
I wish
Too bad Numskull priced me out of their products. Can't justify that or the 2 TMNTs. least New Wave Toys is still reasonable.
Wow a youtube video about Space Invaders with video footage of Space Invaders being played correctly. 99% of the time when someone shows Space Invaders, reviews it or whatever they have NO IDEA what the correct way to play it is and just plink at the aliens randomly. And if you do how to play it this is very, very irritating.
Received Numskull Space Invaders with COIN and ARCADE STOOL... the ARCADE STOOL is made of entirely PLASTIC... cheap... For the amount of money spent on it, would expect better quality... waited 4 years for this ☹ 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎 👎
NOT FIRST NOT FIRST NOT FIRST....shit...