The best part of these videos is Jeremy explaining the plot of classic arcade games like Qbert with all the seriousness of a professor describing War and Peace
That whole "amateur programmers designing an altered Space Invaders" thing is still a thing, by the way. In a mobile app development class we all learned how to code Space Invaders and then our assignment was to change something about it. I ended up swapping most of the graphics and sound and creating a very *very* simple version of Nazo no Murasame Jō.
most of the mobile games industry is "copy the popular thing and change a tiny detail" too. Few are original. There's even a market for selling games to other studios so they reskin them and pump out a different flavor version of the same game and hope to get a cut by flooding the market. It's like they never learned from the Atari thing.
I remember trying to make Star Trek-themed Space Invaders in BASIC when I was like ten. Unfortunately this was pre-Google and all the references I had access to were introductory-type stuff that barely touched on graphics, and after a few days of watching the Enterprise very slowly XOR itself across the screen I threw in the towel.
Fascinating stuff. I tried to investigate the Multivision yers ago and gave up. I'm glad somebody is finally digging into Sega's pre-Genesis hardware history in such depth.
Hey Jeremy, thanks once again for a great and informative video! Take it from an Internet Stranger who will likely never meet you: you and your work are appreciated!
Well, Othello makes for a nice companion piece to the Atari Archive's episode on the March 1981 Atari 2600 game Othello. Looking forward to both the proper SG-1000 game from 1985 and the NES Works episode that includes Othello. And look at that, a Multivision game allegedly developed by Konami that beats the NES version (Q*Bert). A one-time lucky punch there.
I had a very traumatic day I don't want to go into it but I was so glad to see you made a new video. I find your videos to be the most relaxing videos on youtube making me nostalgic for a time when I wasn't even born
I wish Tsukuda Original were still around. Still desperately finding ways to port a digital version of Othello to new platforms. I'm imagining those Doom ports to cash registers and fridges, only they're genuinely trying to sell them.
In the haze of the early days of video games I can almost see the idea behind this- video versions of Othello are popular, so this is "Hey, this plays Othello AND these other games, what a value!" It didn't work, but people were trying anything.
Q*bert is iconic, even though the game came out so long ago now. Just a few words about it specifically-- * Parker Bros' C64 version is very nice and arcade-like, * The best console update is the wonderful SNES game Q*bert 3, which has music by The Fat Man and new characters created by Q*bert's original creator * The thing about Q*bert that makes it especially challenging is, starting with Level 3, blocks jumped on that have been changed to the correct color change away from it, necessitating a lot of extra jumping, especially when you're forced to change colors to avoid enemies. Level 3 is a wall for many players, and it only gets harder from there * A while ago -Q*bert's creator- someone unknown released to the internet an unreleased sequel from the old days, "Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*bert," which is even crazier.
All things considered given the weird detours of this episode of notSegaiden.. (the early 80’s where nobody knew what they were doing in the computer business I find fascinating) That’s a pretty impressive version of Q-Bert. Dare I say, the most impressive pre-84 home version
I had to watch that MSX commercial segment 3 times for my brain to absorb what I was seeing. And then two more to not be distracted from what you were saying over top of it.
Is your Space Mountain rom faulty or something? Those missiles in the death star section should be easy enough to dodge by just steering away from them, they're not supposed to home in on you or anything. There's lots of videos on RUclips of people playing this game and clearing this bit without any issues, so I don't really get what's going on here. That black thing that looks like a + sign isn't a second targeting cursor, it's the exhaust port indicator - to beat the section you line your targeting cursor exactly up with it (needs to be pixel perfect, which sounds harder than it is), then fire. You'll hear an explosion and be kicked back to the space section as the "scene" number in the top right increases. Every level plays the same as the first and they never get any harder.
Uploaded a video to my channel where I play through the first 12 levels. The game does actually get a bit harder after a while, not just literally but also partially because you start zoning out because of how boring it is.
I love your reviews, and so do a bunch of my friends. I've been watching since before you changed the series names. My only critique is that the on-camera audio sounds a bit quieter and more muffled than the other segments. I'm guessing that's because you're using two different microphones. Check your waveforms; even if the audio can't sound exactly the same, I think your videos would benefit from at least bumping up the on-camera audio levels to match the rest.
@@JeremyParish Fun fact: For a long time I thought ELO's Strange Magic was called Space Magic. Wow so it just worked out eh. I always remember TVs and monitors strobing like crazy when you try to record them. I guess the frame rates on camcorders just match. Neat!
I would guess that NTSC camcorders record at the same rate that NTSC televisions run (59.whatever fps), so they sync up naturally. The issue would be with motion picture cameras (24fps) or modern devices that film at an even 60fps. I had a lot of trouble when I was filming with my HD camera, which I ended up solving by shooting at an offset angle rather than directly, though I couldn't explain why that worked.
@@JeremyParish That was also a problem with old VGA monitors, since their default refresh rate was 70Hz. They could be configured to operate at 60Hz, but that produced a noticeable flicker that made them literally painful to work with (I speak from experience here.) That's also why playing PC games in emulators such as DOSBox often results in a lot of screen tear.
Glad to see your face no longer letterboxed, but I'm still not a fan of the VHS effect, especially in contrast with the crisp gameplay footage. I'd honestly prefer it all be crisp. When you showed off the Othello machine, it was hard to tell it had a blue back.
This is exactly my issue with this choice as well! I love this series, and of course Jeremy can do whatever he likes... but from a serious academic/archivist perspective (which is the vibe this series has always offered), we're talking style getting very much in the way of accessibility/information now. "Let me show you what these things look like" *picks medium that makes it basically impossible to distinguish visual differences*. Ugh.
@@JeremyParish That's fair, and I appreciate the images. I love your work Jeremy, and really believe in your project (video games are cultural artifacts that deserve to be studied/analyzed/catalogued as much as anything else!). Just the historian in me that sometimes gets the better!
The reality is, these videos are a first draft. The real point of this project is the books-videos are for hashing things out and refining the work. If I can't try out different approaches and ideas here, I may as well just go straight to print.
Every time I play Q*Bert arcade I dance when I beat a level. There is this irresistible music that plays. Last time I checked they still had a stand up machine at a theater in Wenatchee WA. My son gets embarrassed when I dance. He tries to act like he doesn't know me. Anybody got any advice on how to play STarwars Trilogy Arcade? Looks like a pain in the @!#$$ to setup. Some say Mame some say Supermodel. I'm guessing you want to play with a mouse....Sindin light gun would be cool.
I am loving these ultra-niche deep dives! Are you considering looking at the Epoch Cassette Vision / Super Cassette Vision libraries? That seems to be the other notable game platform in Japan during this early Famicom era.
You didn’t mention the later levels in Q Bert when you have to jump on each cube twice and if you do it a third time it changes back to its original color. That $?@#! Was frustrating!
Do Q*bert arcade machines typically allow for repeated extra lives? Because I feel like the game is one of the easiest of the generation. I think once you get to level 6 the stages just repeat themselves, and as long as you can avoid making too much of a mess of the board you can play essentially forever. (If you make a mess of a board and run out of discs, though, then yeah, time for another quarter.)
Hey Jeremy you should take a look of the Dina 2 in 1 console, is a clone system of both the sg 1000 and the colecovision because the hardware is so similar
I looked into it when I began SG-1000 coverage, but it doesn’t seem worth the investment when the only exclusive software I can find evidence of is a built-in ROM.
@@JeremyParish There was a version from telegames that was sold for $40 at the time (1988) and apparently they became rare partly due to a tornado which swept through Telegames' remaining stock in 1994.
"This is the Star Wars Holiday Special of video games." There's honestly a part of me that wants to say that's too harsh. I actually said "Ouch!" out loud when you said that. But that does look like an absolutely atrocious game.
The best part of these videos is Jeremy explaining the plot of classic arcade games like Qbert with all the seriousness of a professor describing War and Peace
True, and this coming from a 43 year old that played these as a 4 year old without being told what to do! That was how video games used to be.
Qbert has a “plot”?
@@Poever Yeah, that's a joke! Games really didn't have plots as much as much as they had a simple premise to move sprites through.
The new aged VHS aesthetic is giving me serious Max Headroom vibes. Also, perfect Star Wars Holiday Special reference there.
the production in this series is just SO GOOD
That whole "amateur programmers designing an altered Space Invaders" thing is still a thing, by the way. In a mobile app development class we all learned how to code Space Invaders and then our assignment was to change something about it. I ended up swapping most of the graphics and sound and creating a very *very* simple version of Nazo no Murasame Jō.
most of the mobile games industry is "copy the popular thing and change a tiny detail" too. Few are original. There's even a market for selling games to other studios so they reskin them and pump out a different flavor version of the same game and hope to get a cut by flooding the market.
It's like they never learned from the Atari thing.
I remember trying to make Star Trek-themed Space Invaders in BASIC when I was like ten. Unfortunately this was pre-Google and all the references I had access to were introductory-type stuff that barely touched on graphics, and after a few days of watching the Enterprise very slowly XOR itself across the screen I threw in the towel.
Space Mountain: "If our game is wretched enough, no one will bother suing us for infringement!"
Amazing how good it makes the SG-1000 look lol
Like Qui-Gon said: There's always a bigger fish, and there's always a worse take on a piece of gaming tech.
@@JeremyParish There's only so much a Zilog 80 CPU can do!
Fascinating stuff. I tried to investigate the Multivision yers ago and gave up. I'm glad somebody is finally digging into Sega's pre-Genesis hardware history in such depth.
in the Space Mountain stages you're supposed to line up your sight with the + sign (literally what the manual calls it) and shoot it
I think the Holiday Special looks a hell of a lot better than Space Mountain.
Hey Jeremy, thanks once again for a great and informative video! Take it from an Internet Stranger who will likely never meet you: you and your work are appreciated!
Well, Othello makes for a nice companion piece to the Atari Archive's episode on the March 1981 Atari 2600 game Othello. Looking forward to both the proper SG-1000 game from 1985 and the NES Works episode that includes Othello. And look at that, a Multivision game allegedly developed by Konami that beats the NES version (Q*Bert). A one-time lucky punch there.
„Seriously f***ed“ is an apt description, even for a consumer electronics device released in the one country that loves Othello/Reversi the most.
That commercial at a minute in is wild. Can’t say I was expecting tiny people giving a seig heil to a sega console this morning.
Sega heil.
it's me. I was the one excited for the othello mutivision video. :>
Love love love the sg-1000 series
when i was a kid, my siblings and i were way too amused by the bleeping cursing in q-bert
I had a very traumatic day I don't want to go into it but I was so glad to see you made a new video.
I find your videos to be the most relaxing videos on youtube making me nostalgic for a time when I wasn't even born
This is a "gaiden" topic to another "gaiden" topic. I love this
Wow, that version of Q-Bert looks quite nice for the time.
hes the angry othello fellow
I would say mildly perturbed
@@JeremyParish
He's the mildly perturbed,
Videographically absurd,
Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeerd
Oh hey a fellow kaiba fan
Very interesting. That Q*bert actually looks great for the time.
I wish Tsukuda Original were still around. Still desperately finding ways to port a digital version of Othello to new platforms.
I'm imagining those Doom ports to cash registers and fridges, only they're genuinely trying to sell them.
True, Othello was like the Sudoku of its day.
they had a fitting fate bought by Bandai
+1 for that lofi/vintage camera or filter you're using. Looks awesome!
(It's not a filter)
@@JeremyParish I should have known better than suggesting that.
In the haze of the early days of video games I can almost see the idea behind this- video versions of Othello are popular, so this is "Hey, this plays Othello AND these other games, what a value!" It didn't work, but people were trying anything.
This looks so old/new.
Q*bert is iconic, even though the game came out so long ago now. Just a few words about it specifically--
* Parker Bros' C64 version is very nice and arcade-like,
* The best console update is the wonderful SNES game Q*bert 3, which has music by The Fat Man and new characters created by Q*bert's original creator
* The thing about Q*bert that makes it especially challenging is, starting with Level 3, blocks jumped on that have been changed to the correct color change away from it, necessitating a lot of extra jumping, especially when you're forced to change colors to avoid enemies. Level 3 is a wall for many players, and it only gets harder from there
* A while ago -Q*bert's creator- someone unknown released to the internet an unreleased sequel from the old days, "Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*bert," which is even crazier.
Amazing and fascinating episode!! You're the man, Jeremy!
All things considered given the weird detours of this episode of notSegaiden.. (the early 80’s where nobody knew what they were doing in the computer business I find fascinating)
That’s a pretty impressive version of Q-Bert. Dare I say, the most impressive pre-84 home version
Wow! Incredible choice! LOVE when you get into obscure stuff like this! :D
The real Space Mountains have had Star Wars themeing!
I look forward to these every week
Reminded of seeing an Othello board game on the shelf of a school classroom I was in back in the 80's.
I had to watch that MSX commercial segment 3 times for my brain to absorb what I was seeing. And then two more to not be distracted from what you were saying over top of it.
Is your Space Mountain rom faulty or something? Those missiles in the death star section should be easy enough to dodge by just steering away from them, they're not supposed to home in on you or anything. There's lots of videos on RUclips of people playing this game and clearing this bit without any issues, so I don't really get what's going on here.
That black thing that looks like a + sign isn't a second targeting cursor, it's the exhaust port indicator - to beat the section you line your targeting cursor exactly up with it (needs to be pixel perfect, which sounds harder than it is), then fire. You'll hear an explosion and be kicked back to the space section as the "scene" number in the top right increases. Every level plays the same as the first and they never get any harder.
ok
Uploaded a video to my channel where I play through the first 12 levels. The game does actually get a bit harder after a while, not just literally but also partially because you start zoning out because of how boring it is.
Nice references to both ROM downloads and the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Love it, truly the strongest console was the Othello Multivision all along
I love your reviews, and so do a bunch of my friends. I've been watching since before you changed the series names.
My only critique is that the on-camera audio sounds a bit quieter and more muffled than the other segments. I'm guessing that's because you're using two different microphones. Check your waveforms; even if the audio can't sound exactly the same, I think your videos would benefit from at least bumping up the on-camera audio levels to match the rest.
Othello Multivision....just when I thought I knew most of the consoles available, I learn I'm not even close.
Are you recording your on-camera segments with an actual old camera or did you use editing tricks to make the video quality look oldish?
How'd you get your camcorder to sync with your TV?
Space magic? I don't know, I just point and shoot, man.
@@JeremyParish Fun fact: For a long time I thought ELO's Strange Magic was called Space Magic.
Wow so it just worked out eh. I always remember TVs and monitors strobing like crazy when you try to record them. I guess the frame rates on camcorders just match. Neat!
I would guess that NTSC camcorders record at the same rate that NTSC televisions run (59.whatever fps), so they sync up naturally. The issue would be with motion picture cameras (24fps) or modern devices that film at an even 60fps. I had a lot of trouble when I was filming with my HD camera, which I ended up solving by shooting at an offset angle rather than directly, though I couldn't explain why that worked.
@@JeremyParish actually... Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It seems so obvious now that you put it into words.
@@JeremyParish That was also a problem with old VGA monitors, since their default refresh rate was 70Hz. They could be configured to operate at 60Hz, but that produced a noticeable flicker that made them literally painful to work with (I speak from experience here.)
That's also why playing PC games in emulators such as DOSBox often results in a lot of screen tear.
Glad to see your face no longer letterboxed, but I'm still not a fan of the VHS effect, especially in contrast with the crisp gameplay footage. I'd honestly prefer it all be crisp. When you showed off the Othello machine, it was hard to tell it had a blue back.
This is exactly my issue with this choice as well! I love this series, and of course Jeremy can do whatever he likes... but from a serious academic/archivist perspective (which is the vibe this series has always offered), we're talking style getting very much in the way of accessibility/information now. "Let me show you what these things look like" *picks medium that makes it basically impossible to distinguish visual differences*. Ugh.
If only I showed photography of these objects. Oh wait, I do
@@JeremyParish That's fair, and I appreciate the images. I love your work Jeremy, and really believe in your project (video games are cultural artifacts that deserve to be studied/analyzed/catalogued as much as anything else!). Just the historian in me that sometimes gets the better!
The reality is, these videos are a first draft. The real point of this project is the books-videos are for hashing things out and refining the work. If I can't try out different approaches and ideas here, I may as well just go straight to print.
That's completely fair, and I'm all for trying different ideas. I'm just not sure that this one hits the mark.
Every time I play Q*Bert arcade I dance when I beat a level. There is this irresistible music that plays. Last time I checked they still had a stand up machine at a theater in Wenatchee WA. My son gets embarrassed when I dance. He tries to act like he doesn't know me.
Anybody got any advice on how to play STarwars Trilogy Arcade? Looks like a pain in the @!#$$ to setup. Some say Mame some say Supermodel. I'm guessing you want to play with a mouse....Sindin light gun would be cool.
I like the static over the video.
I cannot imagine anyone caring about Othello this much
I am loving these ultra-niche deep dives! Are you considering looking at the Epoch Cassette Vision / Super Cassette Vision libraries? That seems to be the other notable game platform in Japan during this early Famicom era.
Yep, but I still need to find a few SCV games complete in box... they're difficult to source.
I was always jealous of my friend Cass' Othello system.
How would the VHS parts look if they were in 4:3..?
Sega should have released othello in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮
You didn’t mention the later levels in Q Bert when you have to jump on each cube twice and if you do it a third time it changes back to its original color. That $?@#! Was frustrating!
Do Q*bert arcade machines typically allow for repeated extra lives? Because I feel like the game is one of the easiest of the generation. I think once you get to level 6 the stages just repeat themselves, and as long as you can avoid making too much of a mess of the board you can play essentially forever. (If you make a mess of a board and run out of discs, though, then yeah, time for another quarter.)
Hey Jeremy you should take a look of the Dina 2 in 1 console, is a clone system of both the sg 1000 and the colecovision because the hardware is so similar
I looked into it when I began SG-1000 coverage, but it doesn’t seem worth the investment when the only exclusive software I can find evidence of is a built-in ROM.
@@JeremyParish it's not worth it if that is the only thing exclusive to it
Especially when the Dinas up on eBay are going for $300-400!
@@JeremyParish There was a version from telegames that was sold for $40 at the time (1988) and apparently they became rare partly due to a tornado which swept through Telegames' remaining stock in 1994.
Guzzler is on the Switch now.
Are the VHS tapes getting worse with every video? :D
This had vid had everything including the Holiday Special
Space Mountain is like... family to me.
Sounds like a difficult relationship
@@JeremyParish You can read that into Harrison Ford's line delivery, I'm sure.
They made a dedicated Othello console and they didn't make it black and white?
you're really diggin' in those crevices with this one
!@#$ awsome video
"This is the Star Wars Holiday Special of video games."
There's honestly a part of me that wants to say that's too harsh. I actually said "Ouch!" out loud when you said that. But that does look like an absolutely atrocious game.
Hmm... Atari Archive made an Othello bideo recently. You two sync up a lot
Do plan to cover all Nintendo games
Segaiden gaiden? Ok I Will bury my hope for Nes Works!
I'll find a tiny violin for you.
@@JeremyParish thanks!
I like the CRT filter sectons, save for when it comes to when holding the hardware.
"Let me show you what these things look like" *picks medium that makes it basically impossible to distinguish visual differences*. Ugh.
Welcome to my world!
“Oh just get on with it!” - Some fish from spongebob
Im kidding tho all your videos are great. Keep up the great work man.
Othello:
It's Go, but for babies
😂
Its not an X-Wing, its a Cross Fighter. Yeah, thats the ticket.
"... Go for babies."
Baduk player detected.