I'll post a separate thread on those later. Recapped all the monitors, converted Popeye back to Donkey Kong, etc. There's all fully functional now, minus minor cosmetic stuff. So my son and I used our time at home to restore those four games. Then Covid happened, and I've been home for almost a year (my last business trip was March 2020). I wanted to fix them, but was busy with business travel, etc. I bought them 20 years ago, and they degraded over the years: Popeye, Millipede, Nintendo Unisystem (with Dr Mario) and Kung-Fu Master. Even animated explosions could be handled beautifully by laserdiscs.I had four games in my garage that were in various stages of disrepair (mostly broken). Thus player controlled elements could be laid on top of the FMV backgrounds. This left the power of the arcade hardware to tackle game play elements.
#Galaxian 3 khinsider movie
LaserDiscs were the home movie predecessor to DVD, so this format was more than capable of delivering high quality video. The laserDisc players had the ability to provide far more realistic backgrounds than anything working off the typical arcade hardware. This is somewhat similar to the Dragon's Lair arcade game that also used LaserDis to provide backgrounds while the processor controlled other aspects of game play, like moving sprites around the screen. In addition to the multiple screen, used to simulate one continuous play area, Namco's System 21 hardware ran the actual game, while dual LaserDisc players provided background imagery. Each gamer has the same controller that enabled a unique on-screen site with which they could target and fire upon enemies. Up to six players were all teamed up on the same game and mission. Unlike Galaxian, where you control your ship's movement and firing, Galaxian 3 teamed up 6 people to shoot at a variety of enemies. So, I suppose arcade operators with $150K to spend would be delighted to purchase the smaller footprint of the Theater 6 design. In that format it was even larger and could handle 28 people simultaneously, in a hydraulic gaming arena, who were positioned in a circle. Theater 6 got it's start earlier in 1990 as a theme park attraction. One such game was "Attack of the Zolgear" which ran on the Theater 6 system. To make it more attractive, they rolled it out, in 1994, as their Theater 6 system that could host a variety of different games. Namco was aware of the massive floor space requirement and high cost ($150,000). Galaxian 3 was huge! It seated up to 6 players who all faced multiple projection screens. Imagine if one arcade game took up 16 square feet! You could probably fit 16 upright cabinets, in a back-to-back row, in that space! All the cabinets in an operator's arcade had to pay the company bills.
Remember how the multi-game NeoGeo MVS cabs allowed 6 games in one cabinet? As arcades faded from glory, floor space was at a premium the same way "shelf space" is to retailers. But it's far different from most arcade game you encounter - in every way. Galaxian 3 was originally an arcade game made by Namco in 1994 and sometimes called Galaxian 3: Project Dragoon. Next I came to the origin of that PlayStation game.
Galaxian 3: The World's Largest Video Game The popularity of home video game consoles was the demise of Entex who folded in the early 80s. To remain competitive they created two cartridge-based tabletop electronic games in 1981, called Select-A-Game and Adventure Vision. Indeed there was and Galaxian 2 was an electronic single-game handheld (popular in the late 70's and early 80s) released in the US by Entex Industries (1981).Įntex produced LCD, LED and VFD-based electronic games, some based on arcade games as was the case with Galaxian 2. If there's a "3", it stands to reason that there must have been some sort of interim device. My next thought was that I never heard of Galaxian 2 either. It seems this was a 1996 Japanese release and was never released in North America. The original PlayStation was the first console I owned that had a significant number of arcade releases on compilation discs from Williams, Midway and Namco. While digging around on the web I came across Galaxian 3 for the PlayStation. I'm a huge fan of Galaga, but despite it being a Namco creation, I've never really considered Galaga a sequel to Galaxian (a personal oddity of mine) as others have.