Obscure Arcade Games, Presented By Gary

Used to be there were many thousands of different arcade games that you could find nearly, in arcades, convenience stores, grocery stores, gas stations and sometimes even just on a street corner. In the US (the country that originated arcade games somehow), those days have been gone for a long time, unless you count video poker machines as arcade games, and I don’t, as doing so would send me into a profound depression.

More than that, arcade games in the days of their ascendance had a breadth and variety that no other style of video game has ever had. Even home microcomputers, to my eyes, didn’t see games as ludicrously peculiar as arcade games could be, especially in their early days.

Somebody on Youtube with the user name GaryRetroGamer has made a three videos showing off obscure but interesting arcade games from the 80s, ranging in length from 20 to 25 minutes, 127 games from 1983-1984 (25 minutes):

133 from 1985-1986 (22 minutes):

and 100 from the late 80s:

To help you track down individual games, the ones in each video are presented here, in order. Please excuse errors, these lists were compiled with the aid of text processing tools. (For any bashheads out there, of particular use: cut, tr, wl-paste, wl-copy)

1983-4

Dr. Micro, Exerion, Guzzler, Harem, High Way Race, Hoccer, Hopper Robo, I Robot, Intrepid, Joinem, Joyful Road, Jump Coaster, Kick Boy, Lover Boy, Markham, Marvin’s Maze, Money Money, Mouser, Mr. TNT, New Sinbad, Nova 2001, Phozon, Popper, Raiders, Regulus, Roc’n’Rope, Saturn, Scrambled Egg, Senjyo, SF, Sinbad Mystery, Sky Lancer, Star Jacker, Stinger, Super Doubles Tennis, Super Glob, Tin Star, The, Traverse USA, Tropical Angel, Uncle Poo, Van, Vastar, Yamato, Acrobatic Dog Fight, Appoooh, BanBam, Bank Panic, Battle, Ben Bero Beh, Bull Fighter, Bullfight, B-Wings, Champion Boxing, Cheyenne, Chicken Shift, Chinese Hero, Circus Charlie, Complex X, Country Girl, Crater Raider, Crowns Golf, Cycle Mabou, D-Day, Demolition Derby, Do Run Run, Dragon Buster, Drakton, Driving Force, Eeekk!, Eight Ball Action, Equites, Field Day, Fighting Basketball, Fire Battle, Freeze, Future Spy, Gladiator 1984, Goalie Ghost, Great Swordsman, Grobda, Gyrodine, Hero, Hole Land, Hunchback Olympics, Imago, Itazura Tenshi, Jack Rabbit, Jumping Cross, Jumping Jack, Kamikaze Cabbie, Kick Rider, Kick Start, Liberation, Lode Runner, Mad Crasher, Mister Viking, Mr. Kougar, Mysterious Stones, Ninjakun Majou No Bouken, Off The Wall, Pandora’s Palace, Peter Pack Rat, Pinbo, Pirate Ship Higemaru, Progress, Revenger ’84, Roller Jammer, Rumba Lumber, Sea Fighter Poseidon, Seicross, Snacks’n’Jaxson, Snake Pit, Son Son, Spatter, Star Force, Super Bag Man, Super Basketball, SWAT, Three Stooges in Brides Is Brides, Timber, Tube Panic, Two Tigers, Wai Wai Jockey Gate, Wanted, Wily Tower, Zaviga, Zwackery

1985-6
4-D Warriors, Alien Sector, Arm Wrestling, Bogey Manor, Boulder Dash, Canvas Croquis, Cerberus, Chanbara, City Connection, Combat, Cop 01, Crazy Rally, Crowns Golf in Hawaii, Doki Doki Penguin Land, Field Combat, Finalizer, Flashgal, Galactic Warriors, Go Go Mr. Yamaguchi, HAL21, Heavy Metal, High Voltage, I’m Sorry, Ikki, Knuckle Joe, Lady Master of Kung Fu, Lizard Wizard, Lode Runner III, Lot Lot, Mat Mania, Mayhem 2002, Metal Clash, Mirax, Motos, N.Y. Captor, Penguin, Performan, Pinball Action, Pitfall 2, Porky, Powerplay, Raiders 5, Repulse, Samurai Nihon, Sarge, Scooter Shooter, Sega Ninja, Shanghai Kid, Shoot Out, Shot Rider, Sky Destroyer, Sky Kid, Special Forces, Spelunker, Splendor Blast, Street Heat, Submarine, Super Speed Race Junior, Tank Busters, Team Hat Trick, Teddy Boy Blues, The FairyLand Story, Typhoon Gal, Wink, Wiz, Wyvern F, Argus, Baluba, Battle Lane! Vol 5, Big Event Golf, Body Slam, Brain, Calorie Kun vs Moguranian, Chiller, Clash Road, Clay Pigeon, Competition Golf Final Round, Danger Zone, Darwin 4078, Empire City 1931, Fire Trap, Flower, Gardia, Genpei ToumaDen, Gigas, Gladiator, Guardian, Halley’s Comet, Hopping Mappy, Joust 2, Kiki KaiKai, Land Sea Air Squad, Legend, Lock, Lost Castle In Darkmist, The, Mania Challenge, Max RPM, Merlin’s Money Maze, Mighty Guy, Mission 660, Mr. Goemon, Night Stocker, Ninja Emaki, Noboranka, Omega, Power Drive, Prebillian, Rack + Roll, Rafflesia, Red Robin, Return of Ishar, The, Riddle of Pythagoras, Robo Wres 2001, Rock ‘n Rage, S.R.D Mission, Shackled, Sky Kids Deluxe, Slap Shooter, Soldier Girl Amazon, Space Position, Spiker, Stompin, Super Stingary, Thunder Ceptor, Tokio, Top Gunner, Top Secret, Toypop, Transformer, Ufo Robo Dangar, Up Scope, XX Mission, Youjyuden

Late 80s
Aaargh, Act Fancer, Bakutotsu Kijuutei, Battle Shark, Black Panther, Block Hole, Bonze Adventure, Buccaneers, Burning Force, Champion Wrestler, China Gate, Chopper, Chuka Taisen, Crazy Climber 2, Crime City, Crime Fighters, Cue Brick, Dead Angle, The Deep, Demon’s World Horror Story, Devastators, Devil World, Diamond Run, Don Doko Don, Dr. Topper’s Adventures, Dragon Punch, Dragon Unit Castle of Dragon, Dynamite Duke, Enforce, Extermination, Exterminator, Exzisus, Fast Lane, Final Round, The, Finest Hour, Gang Wars, Garyo Retsudent, Ginga NinkyouDen, Gold Medalist, Gondomania, Gorodki, Hachoo, Hard Head, Hippodrome, Hot Chase, Hyper Crash, InsectorX, Kabuk, Kageki, Kitten Kaboodle, Konek, Kozure Ookami, Kuri Kunton, Kyros, Legend of Hero Tonma, Legend of Makai, Legion, Mad Gear, The Main Event, Marchen Maze, Maze of Flott, Metal Freezer, Metal Hawk, Mirai Ninja, Mustache Boy, Mutant Night, Night Striker, Ninja Kazan, Ninja Kid II, Ninja Mission, Pig and Bombers, Plump Pop, Poker Ladies, Psychic 5, Psycho, Python, Rabbit Punch, Racing Hero, Raimais, Reikai Doushi, Rompers, Shingen Samurai, Skull & Crossbones, Sky Robo, Snezhnaja Koroleva, SOS, Spark Man, Special Project Y, Star Guards, Street Smart, Super Ranger, Shadowland, Tough Turf, Trick Trap, Tricky Doc, Trio The Punch, Ufo Senshi Yohko Chan, Viper, Wild Fang, Wit’s, Wonder Momo


Nerdly Pleasures Breaks Down The History of Wizardry

NOTE: WordPress has malfunctioned and isn’t allowing me to use the Visual Editor right now, so I’m writing this with the code editor. I don’t have much experience with this, and I don’t know how to add images using it other than a featured image (which might not even show on the web). It’s a good thing I can write HTML code.

Wizardry was the first popular (actually, mega-popular) CRPG, though as with many CRPGs from the time it’s much forgotten about now, even if its legacy is truly gigantic. It is indeed fortunate that Digital Eclipse has released that modern remake of Wizardry I, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, which is a lot more than you can say about Ultima, Phantasy, Might & Magic or a bunch of other games.

Nerdly Pleasures has posted a detailed history of the original games and their microcomputer ports, breaking down versions, features and bugs. It reminds of a number of interesting things, like that the original Apple II Wizardry would write to the Scenario Disk if you defeated a certain encounter, and thus make it permanently impossible to encounter it again on later playthroughs. Or that character growth was badly broken in the original PC version, with stats going down when they should have gone up. Or that the Commodore 64 version came out so late that it not only includes support for the C128’s extra memory, but even Commodore’s bankswitching RAM expansion modules.

I have come to realize that I much prefer the gameplay in these early CRPGs to those of more recent takes like Skyrim. The simulationist depth of those founding games has largely been replaced with gamish fluff, and in place of the imagination that the first CRPGs asked players to bring to the experience, everything has been made literal, explicitly rendered on your screen just as you’re supposed to perceive it. I know this comes across as nostalgia talking, but I don’t think it necessarily is. There’s a whole approach to making RPGs that has been lost, and I think we’re all poorer for it.

Drew Mackie’s 101 Facts About Mario

Mackie’s Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games often covers Nintendo-related topics, and this one is much more so than usual: a barrel-full of trivia related to Mario, his games, and his friends, enemies, rivals and hangers-on, spread out across seven long pages, all glorious text with some images and other media scattered through.

From the pages: a flyer for the original US arcade release of Donkey Kong. SNORT! HELP! FIGHT!

Most of it is new information, including a fair bit of arguing against perceived elements of Mario lore, like his getting his name from a Nintendo warehouse landlord. I’m personally glad that one of the many sources cited is Matthew Green, deceased game journalist and the maintainer of the (also deceased) blog Press The Buttons. Wherever you are Matt, I hope there’s lots of great games to play.

Also from the article: the cover of “Popeye Magazine for City Boys,” an odd Japanese publication. Mackie suggests the photo may be one inspiration for the appearance of Mario.

There’s a bunch of stuff there. It’ll take you quite a bit of time to work through it all, but honestly? It’ll still be much faster than if it were all presented in a two-hour Youtube video, so count your blessings! Wait, they’re already counted: 101, a hundred-and-one blessings. How holy!

One more image borrowed from the post: a phone card with Mario and Peach sharing the scene with their vaguely-Arabian counterparts from Doki Doki Panic.

Using COBOL As A Shader Language

Yep, what’s in the title apparently can be done.

COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, and is an extremely verbose language designed purposely to be understandable to managers. Everything in COBOL reads like it does, which makes it hard to work with. A fair portion of the financial world still runs on COBOL, in some cases using programs nearing their 60th year of existence. And someone wrote a way to use it write code for Vulkan.

Here’s the Github repository. The About blurb says it’s the shader language you didn’t know you needed. With due respect, that’s because no one ever needed it, but it’s still a fun thing that exists.

I admit, it’s weak to use a screenshot of a Github page in a post about a shader language.

There appear to be no examples of output online. I had a look at building it myself, but my distro doesn’t seem to have the necessary programs to do that. Would any of you care to give it a try?

The 8-Bit Computer Implemented in K’NEX

It’s an oft-forgotten fact that the workings of the modern computer don’t require electronics. All of the basic logic gates can be implemented, although much more slowly and prone to malfunction, with physical Newtonian parts.

Shadowman39 has been working hard to implement an 8-bit computer entirely out of parts of the building set K’NEX. He’s just released his fourth progress video (18 minutes):

Here are the previous videos in the series: Part 1: the ALU (15 minutes), Part 2: Registers, RAM and Data Transfer (18 minutes) and Part 3: ROM, Program Counter and Jumps (20 minutes).

This isn’t the only K’NEX-based computing device out there, but it seems to be the most complex and capable of doing actual work. I do hope that none of the little plastic parts on the inside of that multicolor computational Borg cube doesn’t break a tooth, because replacing it seems like it would be nearly as hard as fixing a cylinder in an engine block.

Sundry Sunday: The Gameoververse Pilot

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Glitch Productions has made a number of well-loved bits of Youtube culture, most notably so far: the concluded Murder Drones, the nearly-done Amazing Digital Circus, and the forthcoming Knights of Guenevere.

Their newest pilot is heavily game-themed, so you can probably expect to see it return to Sunday Sunday eventually. Called “The Gameoververse,” it follows a team of hero-types that go out into the video game cosmos to prevent the good guys from winning, I think on the grounds that, if they win, their worlds cease to exist due to the player turning the game off or some such. Yeah, pretty much a similar premise to Reboot, if we’re honest, though there’s nothing wrong with that. (Wouldn’t the game world also cease to exist if it’s too hard and the player gives up? What about roguelike game worlds, that are generated anew whether the player wins or loses? Let’s see them make a Nethack episode, that would be something….)

Here is that pilot (32 minutes):

Gameoververse (Wikipedia) was created by RubberRoss, and existed before as a web series from 2009, though with substantial differences. Notably the new version has music by former Rare musician Grant Kirkhope. We look forward to seeing, should the pilot be picked up, the continuation of its story.

Three-Up From Pannenkoek

Everyone that counts loves Pannenkoek, whose two Youtube channels pannenkoek2012 and UncommentatedPannen are probably the best, certainly the best-known, videogame internal explainers on the internet. They somehow made people care about an obscure Super Mario 64 challenge to get through the game in as few A button presses as possible. How can that even be?

Not only do they explain, I won’t say effortlessly, but effectively how tiny implementation consequences in the foundational 3D platformer, but along the way they explain a bunch of useful computer science concepts. They are a wonder, and if Nintendo ever paid attention to their fan communities for purposes other than suing them or making them pay licenses to use Their Content, they would hire them like a shot. But they don’t, and they won’t*.

Whenever Pannenkoek publishes a notable new video I usually try to draw a little extra attention to it here, but it’s been a little while since the last one. So here’s three shorter ones, all permutations of the topic of 1-up Mushrooms.

From 12 years ago: 1-up Checkpoint Locations, all the places you can go to increase your already swollen extra life count from 72 to 73 (7 minutes):

There are a few 1-ups in the Bowser levels that aren’t always there. It turns out the game can be set to make them appear only if you’ve already gotten the key from a particular Bowser fight, and that’s what’s going on there. It’s explained here: (1 minute)

And the longest one at 12 minutes, why do some 1-ups flicker before disappearing? Along the way it painlessly explains object activation, visibility and spawning, and the six types of 1-ups:

* A few more contractions, all nonsense: bron’t, fron’t, plon’t, hron’t, vnon’t.

A Bunch Of C64 Music Remixes

Still working on various other things, but fortunately I found out today about remix.kwed.org, which is kind of a version of OCRemix that focuses (but I don’t think is exclusive to) Commodore 64 music remixes. These aren’t also not all played by a C64, but are remixes of songs from them, so, not all chiptunes. If you need a jam to get you started, try this remix of M.U.L.E.

One of those things I mentioned is, I’m getting a table at Vintage Computing Festival Southeast 2026 in Atlanta! And they said they wouldn’t mind if I did another presentation on the history of Loadstar, so it looks like I’ll be doing that again too! If anyone reading this is in Atlanta July 31, or on August 1-2, please drop by and say hello!

PlayChoice-10 Punch-Out Is Different From Cartridge

It’s a weird thing to change, but there is a slight difference between the version of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! in the Playchoice-10 version than any other version of the program. As explained on the NES/Famicom game’s page at The Cutting Room Floor, when you start a game in Playchoice Punch-Out, it asks you to enter your initials.

Image from The Cutting Room Floor

It does this because of a couple of other changes: the player is identified by their initials before each fight, and it saves a high score table for each fight that’s displayed when the game comes up in attract mode.

While we’re on the subject of Playchoice differences, on dual-screen Playchoice-10 machines, the top screen is used as a simple UI for selecting games and tracking how much playtime you have left, but it also displays instructions for the game. The instruction screen for Metroid contains a simple map of the first area. (Cutting Room Floor article with image)

Just a minor thing today, as I’ve been splitting my time between other projects. I may have mentioned the Punch-Out fact here before, but if I have it’s been awhile.

Six More Great Indie Games For All Skill Levels

The weekly indie game showcases highlight the many games we check out on the channel. Please reach out if you would like to submit a game for a future one. All games shown are either press keys, demos, or games from my own collection.

00:00 Intro
00:14 Voin
01:50 Dimensionals
3:28 Cairn
5:09 Claire A La Mode
6:33 Epiphany City
8:33 Shady Knight