MAME ROW #29 - Jungler

obsidianspider

This is the MAME Random Of the Week #29

The three random numbers for this week are: 1349, ~~1227~~ 494, 841.

1227 is Ojanko Club, a Mahjong game, and was removed from consideration

Click here to vote which game you choose for MAME ROW #29

The result of the poll is posted on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday for experimentation.

1349
Game Name: Phantom II
Company: Midway
Year: 1979
ROM file name: phantom2.zip

494
Game Name: Embargo
Company: Cinematronics
Year: 1977
ROM file name: embargo.zip

841
Game Name: Jungler
Company: Konami
Year: 1981
ROM file name: jungler.zip

What is the MAME ROW?

MAME ROW stands for MAME Random Of the Week. We randomly select an arcade game from the 0.78 MAME Reference Set to play on the week. The idea is to play games we've never played before, interact with other forum members, post hi-scores, share game strategies, fun facts, and (the most important) HAVE FUN!

Notes:

We usually post hi-scores screenshots after playing with only one credit. If you used more than one credit, please mention it on your post.
There's no need to use RetroPie to join the MAME ROW! You can play it on any platform you want.

Every Monday we create a topic at the "General Discussion and Gaming" forum section with the 3 random games to be voted. And on Wednesday we check the result.

These "rules" are constantly being improved!

Previous Rounds

meleu

@obsidianspider random.org wants to take us back to the late 70's! :)

Let me see where I left my Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath discs... (duh! they are all on spotify! :) )

edit: as a side note, I've just noticed that those 3 bands are from England. Same country as the main RetroPie contributors. :-)

lilbud

@meleu I have the vinyl of those bands, somewhere.

backstander

@lilbud
I also have the vinyls for all the Led Zeppelin albums except "The Song Remains the Same"! I also had cassette tapes of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath but I gave them to a friend that still used a cassette player lol. I also gave him most of my old VHS tapes (I can't watch VHS tapes anymore and I can't listen to cassette tapes either lol).

@meleu you can't forget Pink Floyd!

lilbud

@backstander Still have a cassette player. And I just got a vinyl player for last christmas.

The only vinyl that is mine is:

Born to Run
Darkness on the Edge of Town
The River
Born in the USA

And the Undertale soundtrack on vinyl.

The rest belongs to my parents.

meleu

@lilbud said in MAME ROW #29:

@backstander Still have a cassette player. And I just got a vinyl player for last christmas.

You've reminded me the Dope movie! :-)

The main character is "retro-freak" teenager.

Not exactly an amazing movie, but it's funny.

Here is the trailer:

lilbud

@meleu have you read Ready Player One?

meleu

@lilbud said in MAME ROW #29:

Ready Player One

Nop. Is it worth it?

When I was a teenager I was a big fan of cyberpunk literature. Like Neuromancer, Idoru, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc, and the RPG Shadowrun (not the videogame, that kind of RPG that we have to read the rules on books, etc. Don't know how to specify it in English :) ).

I've watched the recent Ghost in the Shell movie (Scarlet Johansson) and left the theater thinking "It was a good movie, but if I watched it as a teenager I would think it was the most wonderful film ever produced". Summing up: it's a good movie for those who like the cyberpunk culture.

lilbud

@meleu Yes, it is an amazing book. It is about a teen in the year 2040. Everyone lives in a virtual world since the collapse of the modern world and oil. The creator of this world dies and leaves a treasure hunt for the people to find. The winner gets possession of the world. But all of the clues require knowledge of 80's video games and pop culture.

I need to finish watching Ghost in the Shell, (The original.) I was watching it and my computer crashed about 10 minutes in and i never got back to it.

caver01

@meleu @lilbud I second the recommendation for RPO. Great book. Going to be a movie soon, but as always, the book will probably be better.

lilbud

@caver01 The movie seems to be turning out pretty good.

meleu

@lilbud said in MAME ROW #29:

I need to finish watching Ghost in the Shell, (The original.)

Perhaps this is the stimulus you need to overcome that difficulty in reading from right to left and read the real original: the manga. :-)

buddyscott

@meleu said in MAME ROW #29:

Perhaps this is the stimulus you need to overcome that difficulty in reading from right to left and read the real original: the manga. :-)

That is a huge difficulty. I went through most of berserk before I realized I was reading the panels wrong. XD

UDb23

@meleu I liked the original Ghost in the shell anime a lot. It was something completely new at that time in terms of story and "live action" movie style.
Successors and series anime weren't as good as the first.

Looking at the trailer the Movie now in cinemas looks really interesting.

In terms of Ghost in the shell gaming as far as I know a PSX and a PSP game exist.
Haven't tried these yet.

obsidianspider

While it lacks sound Phantom II clearly paved the way for a lot of the newer vertical shooters we've come to enjoy. The graphics are simple, but the radar element is pretty cool.

Embargo is basically Snake that just about everyone has played on a Nokia phone, though the comments when you die are sometimes pretty funny.

Jungler is a maze game like Pac-Man but you can shoot your enemies. Ironically the only game this week that has sound has sound that gets annoying after a while and I end up turning it down.

backstander

@obsidianspider
I haven't had a change to try any of them out but after watching the video of Embargo, the gameplay kind of reminded me of a bad implementation of the Tron lightcycles game. I couldn't tell what was going on in the Phantom II video but now I can see that it is a radar effect! From just watching the videos, I was thinking of voting for Jungler but I couldn't tell that the sound effects will get annoying after playing for awhile. I might give them all a try tonight after work and maybe I'll actually like Phantom II.

@meleu @UDb23
The original Ghost in the Shell anime had some great CGI effects. It use to really annoy me around that time when I watched anime and they would mix hand drawn cells with CGI but GitS actually did it well and it was probably one of the first animes that didn't annoy me lol!

obsidianspider

@backstander Yeah, from video alone, Jungler is a clearly more advanced game, but now that I've tried them I'm a bit torn between that and Phantom II

obsidianspider

One vote, and it's mine?!

backstander

@obsidianspider
Sorry, I didn't get any time last night to try out these games. I think my video card in my main PC has died. I worked on it off & on for about an hour and finally gave up and just played Bomberman '94 for the TG16 until bed time. I think either Jungler or Phantom II would be okay with me.

meleu

I think Jungler won: