Archive for the 'Games' Category

Today I received an arcade game I eBayed last week. Taito QIX from 1981 - the same year as my birth. This is the first game in its genre. You are about to help a little “pixel guy” to build boxes, with which you want to encapsulate the evil “line monster”. When the monster is shut in into a narrow enough room, he will die and you will be taken to the next level. Some other games have inherited this concept and developed it further, for example the succeeders of QIX - Super QIX, Twin QIX and Volfied, but also other games like the Gals Panic series.

Volfied is one of my favorite games ever, and of course, I also have that game PCB. I played it alot back in the days. As QIX was popular when I did not even know how to say mama, I did not have the chance of playing it very much. Actually, I have only emulated it with MAME, which is pretty much of a shame. Finally, I will get the chance of doing what I should have done the year I was born.

I will be leaving to Oskarshamn tomorrow, so unfortunately, I will not be able to test the game until I return to Västerås in about two months. That means I have no idea wether it works or not, but the boards look great. Eventually, I will put this game in a dedicated cocktail cabinet. Yet another work in progress, in other words. Click the picture below to enter the photo gallery with a couple of more images.

Yesterday, a friend gave me a cool gadget. It is a two player coin-op soccer-like game, fed with Swedish “25-öringar” (SEK 1/4, which is approximately EUR 1/40). Those coins were canceled at 1985, but my wild guess is that this game is quite a bit older than that. The game is completely mechanical, which means there are no digital technology involved. Not one single IC chip. The gameplay, coin mechanism, score counter, timer and controls are completely mechanical. It looks like it should be powered with four batteries, probably 9V each. However, it looks like someone has been trying replacing the batteries with some external power source, but I wouldn’t bet it worked. Over all, most of the mechanics seem to work. The springs, however, seem a little weak, which is probably natural, regarding to their age. And of course, all agile parts want some lubrication.

The playfield is made of flexible plastic. You have a ball with which you want to hit your opponent’s goal cage. If you do, your score meter will increase by one (from 0 to 11 maximum). After inserting a coin, the ball is released and a timer starts counting. When the time is up, the middle line of the playfield will rise a bit, closer to the top glass. After that, when the ball is shot from one side of the playfield towards the other, it will get stuck on the middle line. When inserting another coin, the score counters will reset to 0, and the ball will again be released. You control the game with a shoe connected to a gun. You can rotate the gun to move the shoe about 90 degrees (45 to each direction from the straight forward angle). When pulling the trigger, the shoe gives a quite rapid kick. Enough to make the ball rolling to the opponent’s side, and hopefully hit the switch at the bottom of the goal cage.

I will definitively try to make this completely operational. It looks like it is supposed to have table legs, like a cocktail cabinet. This game would be a very nice piece of furniture, especially in working condition.

One funny thing is that I cannot find anything about this game on the Internet. Do you know anything about it, or can point me to some web page with relevant information? I’d like to know when it was manufactured, how many units were out there, how many units is possibly left today, information about other similar games, etc. All kind of information would be valuable. Thank you, Maetz, for giving me this nice object of geek culture!

Balluz is a small and simple puzzle game where you have to match pair of balls by their colors. I started writing it 2005 and eventually, I will extend it. There are indeed some lacking features. However, it is playable in current state, but not with any suger on the top. And no cherry.

The game board has an even number of colored balls, where exactly two balls share each color. These balls are arranged in one inner and one outer ring. When you start a level, the balls are randomly scrambled. Using different tools, your task is to arrange every ball so that each one in the inner ring has the same color as its corresponding partner in the outer ring.

Downloading and Installing

Download the source code of Balluz v0.01 pre-alpha (November 19 2005). To execute it, you need to have Python and PyGame installed. For help on installing Python and PyGame, consult the documentation of respective project. After having installed them, you can simply extract the Balluz archive anywhere you like. From a UNIX like environment, you can do it this way:

tar -xvpjf balluz-version.tar.bz2

where version is the version of the archive you have downloaded. If you are using Microsoft Windows, you can use WinRAR. Run the game by stepping into the program directory and execute the file balluz.py

GP2X Port

There is a third party port of Balluz for the GP2X handheld gaming device, made by someone who call himself “Barnesy”. You can find it in the GP2X file archive. Just to clarify, I have nothing to do with this ported archive, and I cannot give any GP2X specific support. However, I believe the game should run pretty much out of the box, since the GP2X has a Python and PyGame port. Maybe there is some resolution issue, as the graphics seems to be changed in the GP2X port.

Welcome home, my dear Polaris! I got this arcade cabinet with marquee and game PCB by a friend (thanks, Tobiase!). It is much of an object for renovation, which is probably one of the reasons he gave it away . However, it will be a fun project, and I’m sure the game will shine like a star when it’s ready.

As mentioned above, I also got the Polaris PCB, an original game by Taito from 1980. Yes, the game is one year older than me! I feel like being its little brother, and I’m perfectly pleased with that. Here follows a photo of the PCB.

Further, I would like to do something to the control panel. The printing is in quite bad shape and it would really need a polish. Do you have any idea how I can fix this? I am prepared to grind it completely clean and repaint it black, if I only find out a way to add the green, blue and white parts to look original. However, I won’t touch it until I’m sure I can make it look perfect.