POSTS
Space Invaders and Machibuse
By hisham
No, nothing to do with another daytime television show about speed house remodeling or a popular regional dish (machboos.) Rather, Space Invaders and Machibuse here refer to classic arcade games.
Those of you who have not played the original games might still have come across the many versions and clones of Space Invaders and Pac-Man (Machibuse is the original, Japanese name of the pink ghost Pinky in Pac-Man. Incidentally, Pac-Man was originally called Pucman in Japan.)
Recently I’ve added retro arcade and console games to my Home Theater PC (HTPC). What’s neat about the setup is that one can start off by playing Space Invaders or Pac-Man and then try an Atari 2600 console version of Pac-Man to see what made it so awful (and a reason for many of us to have spent our allowance on the better arcade versions despite owning a 2600.) Then one can fast forward a little and play the arcade version of Mortal Kombat or R-Type, and after that skip all the way to the present time with the latest in PC gaming; Quake 4 or Defcon.
Compared to today’s games, retro games are lacking in terms of graphics and sound quality. Yet they still maintain their playability and provide a good break from the photorealism of today’s offerings every once in a while.
Note: For arcade emulation, MAME is available. For consoles, there are many console-specific emulators out there, although the MESS project is attempting to combine multiple console and computer emulators into one program, like MAME does for arcade machines.