/vr/ - Retro Games

One thing I love is games like Epoch's Lost in Space Big Maze or Gauntlet, where it uses perspective walls to create a pseudo-3d area for the player to move around in. The way the graphics are all constructed to fit into a single screen is one of the things that absolutely fascinates me about LCD games.

Fighting games too. From Nintendo's Boxing to Popeye, to stuff like Tiger's Mortal Kombat, Streetfighter or the generic fighting game themed one they had for their Stixx line. Being able to represent multiple characters just be using different combinations of parts on the same figure is crazy.

>>5403713
Mortal Kombat's layout, for reference.

Tron here had a pretty interesting design that allowed them to get three different gamestyles out of the same set of objects. Even though this is pretty close to one of those 3600-games-in-one things where everything on the LCD screen is a glorified giant pixel, I think there's still some ingenuity here. Some of the Pac-Man and Bomberman clones too utilized some interesting designs in how like for instance, the player character and the enemies would have to be layered over each other or share parts.

I don't remember much about them. I know I played some generic football (soccer) one, and Donkey Kong Jr and Mario on the mini G&W. Years later I found a site emulating most of them and found it was pretty cool.

>>5404323
I know archive.org now has some of the recent mame-emulated ones, but the only site I know about that has a decent collection is pica-pic.com

>>5404476
Hey that was the one I was talking about, thanks.

>>5403702
This is epic

>>5404481
It's pretty decent, the selection have a lot of simple stuff and not a lot of what I think are much more interesting titles, but it has G&W Zelda which I mentioned before, and Caveman which I owned as a kid so that holds a special place in my heart.

>>5404483
Have you played a lot of the golf ones? What made this one particularly good? I haven't had a lot of experience with golf/football/baseball LCD games and would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

>>5403717
Shit, I have this. I can still hear it now.

Surprised nintendo didnt try to sue Tiger for stealing their GW idea

>>5405030
I'm not entirely clear on the timeline of LCD games, I know game and watch started in 1980, but it was hardly the first electronic games to market which was around I think 1978. Still, Tiger wasn't the only one making games, Bandai and Epoch as I mentioned in the OP, plus a variety of other western and eastern companies of various sizes.

Definitely by 1982 was when the big boom of LCD games began, so definitely Nintendo was a forerunner.

>>5405067
Okay, did a little research and Mattel it seems was the first company to release electronic handheld games (not necessarily LCD, it sounds like they started with LEDs) in 1976 & 77.

In 1979 an LCD game was sold by Milton-Bradley that used interchangeable cartridges, and that same year is when Gunpei Yokoi got the inspiration for G&W by seeing someone fiddle with an electronic calculator on the train, which led to the 1980 release of the first G&W game.

Obviously, Game & Watch was a huge influence on the market, but much like a lot of Nintendo's hit series, they weren't the first of their kind, just really well done ones.

4chan's favorite vidya got an LCD game release as well. This one's pretty interesting for how it incorporates both vertical and horizontal levels in the same playfield.

This is one that I owned that really drew me in because of how expansive the mazes felt, using only a few walls and a scrolling playfield. This image of the back of the blister card is the best example I could find of how the screen is laid out.

And this is klobber, which I mentioned before. I don't know where the one I owned as a kid ended up, but it's one I really wish I could find the screenlayout for. As I recall it was really cool and fun, but sometimes our childhood memories make things seem more amazing than they actually were.

>>5405107
Well damn, for so long I thought they all copied GW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CpeYxtC2Hk

>>5405290
This one doesn't appear to be one of the good ones, sadly. I think this is the kind most people think of when they think of Tiger / LCD games

The only one I had was a Tiger electronics Pit Fighter. It was ok, high kick to win.

>a couple years back, buy the mini Donkey Kong Junior from eBay for $10
>about to recommend it in this thread, as it's fairly cheap by G&W standards
>minimum price has doubled
>people are trying to sell it for $80

>>5405354
I bought the zelda one when it was new and cheap and was dissatisfied with its quality

>>5405316

In general Tiger's games were way too ambitious given the limitations of LCD games, especially since they were too cheap to spring for a 2nd screen. I think Nintendo's have held up better for that reason.

>>5405359
I wouldn't use the term ambitious. I think they're just poorly designed without not a lot of thought put into how to really emulate the game / properties that they represent. I'd love to see the design/programming credits on these things (I largely assume it's the same person doing both jobs) and be able to see if there's a pattern in people who consistently worked on good ones versus the mediocre and bad ones.

>>5405334
>games

>>5405392
Agreed they just put as many "sprites" (how would you call them?) into the screen as they could to appear complex but the simplicity of the G&W titles was almost always superior

>>5405396
The G&W series most had a lot of really simple stuff, though. Though, the more complex stuff did show a fair amount of Nintendo polish. Epoch I feel had a pretty good track record, while Bandai was all over the place and Tiger was a couple of gems hidden by a lot of not great stuff.

>this whole thread

These would make for good $1 mobile game releases. Just add leaderboards.

>>5405414
Post more graphics sheets if you have them or link where you found them, I enjoy them

>>5405425
Veritas is like the only good one I've seen on Android.

>>5405425

Not sure if this is still on iOS because I don't own one of those devices, but I always wondered if this played as good as it looks.

>>5405439
Sure, here's another one. I'm looking through my bookmarks though and I can't remember where I found these. Some of them were from one guy's site who does a lot of stuff with the internals from LCD games.

>>5405439
This one I grabbed of Spriters Resource due to the game's inclusion in G&W Gallery 4

>>5405439
These style ones I grabbed off of the mame version hosted on archive.org, taking a screenshot during the start-up sequence where it lights the whole display up.

>>5405439
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~kiden/syuukan.htm

This site is a pretty good resource as well, but doesn't always have good layout shots.

>>5405463
>>5405460

Sick thanks

My collection

>>5405469
Oh FUCK I had Gold cliff as a kid, the only GW I ever had, I forgot what happened to it and I miss it to this day

>>5405465
np!

Another thing sort of for >>5405425
XBOX Live Arcade used to have a pretty cool dungeon crawler mock-LCD game.

>>5405469
Nice, some pretty good stuff in there. Which are your favorites?

whats going on in this thread

>>5405486
Mario Cement Factory and Snoopy Tennis were always my favorites. I did manage to beat the Crystal Mario, that was rough.

>>5405516
Interesting! Would you like to say a couple of words why you preferred those to the others? Given that collection there, those are probably not the two I would've guessed someone would pick.

>>5404487
is there any porn of this chick shes kawaii af

>>5405526
Snoopy Tennis was one of the first ones I got as a child and always was fond of it.

Mario Cement Factory just had really good mechanics and I was good at it.

I was disappointed by Zelda. It was just the same repetitive levels and I guess I just expected too much.

Of course the original Plan and Tank from Radio Shack was amazing and was the first I ever did get. I remember feeling so good beating it the first time (getting to 1000 points if I recall). I remember being able to get the tank through three times across the bridge which in later incantations of the game you couldn't do.

>>5405543
Totally agree about Cement Factory. I never played Snoopy Tennis before though, I'll have to look into it.

And I can see why Zelda would be disappointing, especially if you were hyped up about it before. I still think it's a really good LCD game, but it is still an LCD game, and the stages can only be switched up so much with the enemies so it can all feel same-y.

Also lol I think I owned that same Plane and Tank game from radio shack at some point. I remember they had like three games and that was the only one that looked halfway decent.

>>5405516
I'm not that guy, but I have Cement Factory, and it's the only Game & Watch game I have.

It's good for a few minutes of "fun" but that's all. It's amazing how primitive those games are. I can't believe they still made new G&W games after the Game Boy came out.

>>5405549
I have the other two Radio Shack games there too and yeah they're both quite mediocre. I was also really good at Pinball. You got used to being able to hit ramps over and over on it.

>>5405556
Well, I didn't get a game boy until the GBC came out. These were all my parents would get me. For a 10-13 year old, they were good for long car trips. I did manage to get a Game Gear around 14 and had a lot of fun with that.

>>5405560
I had a pinball, but it wasn't a dual screen G&W one, it was some single screen vertical one I'm pretty sure I also got at Radio Shack as well. I found it really fun to play, but I'm sure if I saw the layout nowadays It'd be really super simple.

>>5405483
What's the game?

>>5405586
LCD Dungeon System. that was the XL version. The original looked like this.

>>5405586
Also, if you're interested, here's what the bottom half looked like.

>>5405257
They did. The G&W was the first handheld game to use a single chip low cost 4 bit MCU with built in low segment count driver and those retarded masks. No G&W ever came close to the capabilities of the microvision, which used an 8 bit CPU and a dot (more like block) matrix display with many more segments. You might make the argument that brick games copied the microvision but tiger and all that other chinkshit were just aping the G&W.

>>5405570
Yeah, I guess they'd be better than nothing, but they're so crappy compared to the Game Boy or Game Gear.

I don't know about other G&W games, but Cement Factory doesn't have a power switch. It seems to just stay on forever unless you take the batteries out.

>>5405469
Have you thought about selling them? That's potentially $1000 worth of games (and probably more if you have the boxes).

>>5405257
Fun fact: Oreo copied Hydrox.

>>5405610
No, never thought of selling them (don't need the cash). And no, I didn't think to save the boxes from nearly 30 years ago.

And you are correct, there was no way to turn them off. That's why they were called Game and "Watches". I supposed you were supposed to use them like a watch or something.

I would rotate batteries between them as they were a couple dollars for them. The ones for the Crystal Mario were more.

>>5405629
Are there any holy grails out there you'd like to find? Or just any games in particular you have your eye out for? Or are you happy with your collection as-is?

>>5405683
To be honest, I don't even know what else is out there. Once I got the Game Gear and Game Boy later on I really didn't use the Game and Watches as much anymore.

>>5405702
Fair enough! Thanks for sharing your collection and experience with us, though!

>>5405708
Anytime

I had a bunch of Disney ones and a formula game that looked like the triangle one in this pic >>5405469 but orange
the formula game was a surprisingly decent timekiller

goofiest one I've come across was the Symphony of the Night one but I never owned it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-OQ6sA7f4

>>5403702
This was my childhood. 1hr+ bus rides gave me plenty of time to play this.

>>5406358
SotN looks amazing, but I've never found a better layout example than this. I'd love to get my hands on it to see if the gameplay is as brilliant as it sounds, or ends up being a mess.

>>5406512
That's awesome!

B-b-but the meme youtuber told me they were bad!

>>5406512
Traffic in Compton is hell

>>5403715
DAMN!

>>5407136
Unfortunately I think I already posted all of the really complex ones that I have like that, but this one's pretty impressive too for getting the different forms for the different stages in there.

>>5403715
>>5403709
>>5403713

This is an artistic triumph

How are these images able to capture every element at once?

I was suddenly reminded of this gag in Malcolm in the Middle where Dewey finds a crude LCD handheld game and acts so exited like if it was a GOTYAY game.

>>5407718
Usually during power-on these things will display every element at once so you can make sure that the whole screen is working correctly. That's the moment I used to take these shots.

>>5407718
The images are in the MAME ROM. They're literally there all at once all the time on hundreds of millions of machines.

>>5407927
Can't get any easier than that

Space Fight (Tiger) was pretty awesome.

So how come an LCD TV has a bunch of colors, but these are black and white?

>>5403715
Holy shit 8 chars! Im curious how this got programmed and planned

>>5409251
Most likely the same way as all the others. There's nothing particularly special about "8 chars". There were a bunch of nearly identical parts available with a varying ROM/RAM/segment/IO resources. The eva board could handle them all so you'd guesstimate what resources you needed and target that part and then scale up or down the part/design if needed. For the LCD it was just a matter of how much you could fit on one layer. That game isn't even a lot. The part used has 132 segments. But the SM512 has 200. Shit related.

>>5403702
Had that one, 3/10

>>5403709
Had that one too, 1/10

Megaman and Castlevania II were both great, though

>>5407029
Lol, not even close. Rural Iowa. Redneck here, not nigger.

I also had simon's quest but I've lost it. I do still have my childhood SMW watch that still works. I'll try to post a pic of it tomorrow. That one was pretty fun but if you used headphones I'd imagine it would cause permanent hearing damage. Electronic beeps were loud as hell with headphones.

I'm sure whatever microcontroller or whatever these things ran on probably weren't very powerful, but it seems like they still could've managed to make a pretty decent RPG if they really tried. The things even had battery backup for highscores that could potentially be used for game saves. Overworld maps might be pushing it, but a first person dungeon crawler with jrpg style battles would've worked with the display.

>>5410138
They were powerful enough. I made a a time based one time passcode device using the same CPU I used to make brick games. The kind of security devices banks use today for internet banking. That was doing some relatively complicated 256 bit math all the time so power wasn't lacking. But at the time (late 80s) there were no 4 bit MCUs with enough ROM to do any sort of RPG.. You couldn't get a gig of serial flash for a buck in 88. Finding something with a lot of ROM and high segment count was hard. Unless you'd be happy with an RPG that fits in 16k and has a 10x10 pixel display with a few numbers then it couldn't be done. At least with those parts.
I'm not aware of any of those games using a battery backup for high score. The MCU is always powered when the battery is connected and draws a few uA in standby. Using a backup battery would just complicate things and be retarded.

>>5410138
>it seems like they still could've managed to make a pretty decent RPG if they really tried
I'm sure the development time and budget didn't allow for that high of thinking. Still, the FF Pocketstation game and a lot of the various Digivices and other similar vpets out there do show that such a thing is possible, even if those all used pixel-like grids of boxes for their LCD displays.

>>5410138
This one might count.

>>5410243
It's Hunt the Wumpus. That doesn't really count.

>tfw no pokemon tiger handheld with all 151 pokemons

imagine

>>5410363
I saw some hack someone was doing for I think the Dreamcast VMU that was a pokemon thing. But I'm not sure that was going to be very deep in terms of monsters.

>>5410375
VMU had a programmable display, though. Getting all the pokemon onto an actual handheld with those... I don't even know what you call them, the game-specific LCD displays, would be pretty impressive.

>>5410383
Well, remember how many 16x16 sprites the original game had? It was like 6 or 7 to represent all 151 pokes.

Very cool game

Currently repairing one called "Lift Boat" hope i can get it working again but there's a fair bit of damage.

>>5403702
Are there any LCD game emulators?

hopefully one day some repro pcbs can keep some of these things alive. they look quite simple except for the tiny chip that could be a pain.

yeah there's a few online but still early days, It might be difficult to dump the roms idk

>>5411040
Yeah, MAME emulates lots of Game & Watch, Tiger Electronics, Konami and VFD games since it merged with MESS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESOJlZE-dt8

>>5411068
As far as I'm aware, it's the graphics that are the toughest part? I have a bunch of svg files too, but sadly 4chan doesn't allow thow for upload.

>>5411125
My grandparents have one of these! I remember going over to their house as a kid and trying to figure this thing out. My cousin and my brother ended up writing down the pattern and (supposedly) found out where it looped.

I remember playing another LCD game as a kid that involved fishing or something. You had to do some trick to open up a trap door on the right side of the screen but I never figured it out as a kid.

>>5411472
How does this one even work? You listen for tones and then press 1, 2 or 3? Is there even a display other than what looks like possibly a 7 segment display in the point inset? Given the way the rest of the thing looks, it may even just be a single LED to let you know who has the current point.

>>5411472
I remember noticing that certain notable patterns repeated every few games but never cared enough or had enough autism to write them down.

>>5411572
It's an analog "pong" game. Back then not everyone had access to a real pong game, or google.

>>5405107
I had some LCD games in the early 80's that had screens like a apple 2 the black and green but the light up areas were pre put like a tiger handheld.

Here's a game I had in 1984 that was a hand me down
Its called gun fighter I use to play it all the time.

I wish I still had it

The bandai early 80's handhelds were pretty cool.

They would of sold really well in the late 80's if bandai didn't discontinue them.