MAME ROW #174 - Q*bert

[obsidianspider]

This is the MAME Random Of the Week #174

The five random numbers for this week are: 1439 1880 221 1237 1853

Click here to vote! Which game do you choose for MAME ROW #174?

1439
Game Name: Q*bert (US)
Company: Gottlieb
Year: 1982
ROM file name: qbert.zip

1880
Game Name: Super World Stadium '92 (Japan)
Company: Namco
Year: 1992
ROM file name: sws92.zip

221
Game Name: Buggy Challenge
Company: Taito Corporation
Year: 1984
ROM file name: buggychl.zip

1237
Game Name: Operation Wolf (US)
Company: Taito America Corporation
Year: 1987
ROM file name: opwolf.zip

1853
Game Name: Subroc-3D
Company: Sega
Year: 1982
ROM file name: subroc3d.zip

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

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!

We will play the winner all next week.

Previous Rounds

[sirhenrythe5th]

The genuine Cabinet of Subroc 3-D is pretty awesome with its periscope, but does not make a lot of fun playing with an emulator (imo).

I have played Operation Wolf as a teen on my Amiga, but in the end it is not a great game. Gun ´em down, that were the 80s with the Rambo-Spirit :)
Also here: playing the genuine Cabinet with its Machine-Guns will make more fun playing than with a Joystick/Gamepad.

Buggy Challenge is kind of boring (therefore "Buggy Boy" is great :D) and as an european i am not into Baseball.
So the legendary Q-Bert gets my vote this time.

[retropieuser555]

I know it's not easy to emulate on the pi as it's a lightgun game but operation wolf is awesome!

[sirhenrythe5th]

@retropieuser555 what do you mean by saying "hard to emulate on a pi"?
"Operation Wolf" (as "Operation Wolf II: Operation Thunderbolt" and "Operation Wolf III") runs great on a Pi, even with the Pi1.
I guess you mean the usage of a Lightgun for these games on a Pi?

[retropieuser555]

@sirhenrythe5th yeah sorry I mean the practical basis of needing a light gun setup of some type (wiimote/dolphin bar, sinden lightgun etc). It's just not the same using the analogue stick as a crosshair, you know? :-)

[IanDaemon]

Q*bert is a great game, but harder to play thanks to its "45° rotated" joystick. It also has the zeitgeist/popular culture impact that "classic" games have.

(My vote goes to Q*bert, an old school "bad boy" with those un-translated death remarks.)

[IanDaemon]

Subroc-3D (1982) reminds me A LOT of Viper (1988) which turns out to be an excellent trackball game in MAME 2003. Here's some YouTube video I found of Viper.

[IanDaemon]

Viper is really fun once you get the analog sensitivity settings adjusted. It's cool that it has a ton of control options in the ROM itself. I've read that the Viper arcade cabinet was criticized for complicated controls, but in MAME 2003 you can set it up to play with one trackball and one button (technically one trackball and two buttons).

In retrospect I guess "Crazy Ali" could be racially insensitive.

[Impman66]

Toughie this time, torn between Q**Bert in the end. Mainly due to it's originality, nobody had seen that type of game before, whereas Op Wolf, despite it's great graphics was (albeit with a light-gun - I mean a light gun!!) just another shoot 'em up.
So again I went old school and voted for Q*Bert.

Weird, when I posted the "" was lost between the Q and B, and it turned the text into italics. The only way round it was to put in two ""'s Oh its done it again! Any ideas??

[IanDaemon]

@Impman66 To italicize Q*bert use *Q\*bert*. Essentially you use the backslash to escape the asterisk in the name.

In the example above I'm using the backtick " ` " (often on the keyboard next to the "1") around the characters to make them visible and highlighted inline without being translated. To put things in a multiple-line code block you can use:

` ` `
Q * b e r t
` ` ` 

Or you can use a blockquote with a single greater-than sign ">" preceding each line.

>Q*bert and then some more Q*bert and then some
>more Q*bert

Here's some info: https://commonmark.org/help/

[Impman66]

@IanDaemon Many thanks for that, didn't notice any issues until after I posted. Strange though how you cant put the * in-between a letter without making it change the format of the font.

[IanDaemon]

@Impman66 You can by escaping it; it's just that the asterisk is a reserved character.

[obsidianspider]

This week's winner is Q*bert

[IanDaemon]

I got 1175 with a four-way "+" joystick (instead of "x"), but I need to do something about these controls. I wonder what I can do besides turning my head/thoughts?

[IanDaemon]

I was able to improve it slightly (2700), but playing with a "+" joystick isn't ideal. (I'm sure this can be beaten easily. I only made it to the second level on my custom MAME cocktail cabinet.)

[IanDaemon]

I'm gonna go get my six inch tall Q*bert cabinet with its tiny "x" joystick.

Surprisingly, I didn't do much better (3875).

[IanDaemon]

I managed to slightly improve (4,950) on my MAME2003 cocktail cabinet (with a four-way joystick) by standing at 45 degrees and turning my head. (It's odd that the high score screen lists the scores "top to bottom" and not "left column-right column", but...oh well.)
[op deleted image]

[IanDaemon]

It's nice than the default scores are so low.

[IanDaemon]

5350

[IanDaemon]

7750

( @BuZz Curious, I can no longer upload pics. Is something wrong on my end? - Cool, it works now.)