Supernatural Experience in the Arcade?

My wife, daughter and I spent a few hours at CP last Saturday. While we were there, I think I had genuine Supernatural CP experience!

People who have read some of my posts in the past are familiar with the area of the Main Arcade I call "The Dead Zone". It's at the very far end, down past the bowling alley game, past the air hockey, down by the pinball machines. Near the last door out of the arcade to Kiddie Land. The Dead Zone is where they have a bunch of old arcade machines that I remember from when I was a kid at CP in the 1960's and 1970's. The Seawolf Game, and the Tank Destroyer Game, and the Airplane Missle Attack Game, and other stuff. Many of these are non-functional. Some are lit up, some have "Temporarily Out Of Order" signs on them, and have for years. Every year I go down to that end, and try to put quarters in the machines and relive the old days. Usually, it is a no go. Sometimes I even lose the money.

Until last Saturday night. The Seawolf Game, a machine which hadn't been working for at least 4 years, was lit up! I walked up to the machine, and the video display was indeed working. Seawolf was always one of my big favorites to play on our family yearly trip to CP.

For those unfamiliar with the Seawolf game, I will elucidate: The player looks through a periscope sight, which swivels. You have a FIRE button. There are 4 torpedo tubes. You press the FIRE button to fire torpedos at target ships which cross your screen at varying speeds. Floating mines can destroy your torpedos. It is all black screen and white graphics. Simple silhouettes, probably early sprite graphics. Cutting edge in 1973.

Not only was the display lit up, it was displaying a HIGH SCORE, a YOUR SCORE, and a prompt which said PUSH BUTTON.

So, I pushed it, and the game started! Here, after almost 30 years I was playing this video game which had been purportedly dead, and I was playing for free! How cool was that? I thought someone must have left a quarter in the game and walked away.

Well, the game ended. No bonus overtime for me. Well, it had been a long time since I had fired torpedos! The screen displayed YOUR SCORE, and HIGH SCORE, and PUSH BUTTON.

Whoa! …PUSH BUTTON?

So I did. And the game started again! Oh man, how cool! So this game, which I had been checking every year, and hadn't played in nearly 30 years, suddenly crawls back from the great silicon-beyond and starts gives me free games! I played game after game, until I got a crick in my neck. I guess I was a lot shorter in 1973!

I have no explanation as to why this machine was giving out free games, except to say that during Halloweekends at Cedar Point, just about anything can happen!. It must have been a Ghost In The Machine!

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*** Edited 10/17/2006 4:29:22 AM UTC by Tank***

It was good seeing you Saturday!

About the arcade, we went through the back section as well killing time since it was too busy to ride. I can't remember which game it was, but Lance played a game for free.

I couldn't believe my eyes Saturday night! While sitting across the midway from Magnum's entrance and watching TTD trains fly by, I saw a bird get splattered by a train! Right when it comes into view it is lit up by the camera flashes. i saw something in front of the train and then poof...feathers flying around. The bird (what was left of it) landed about 10 ft from us. I never thought I would personally see this happen. It was really cool! I wish I would have been filming the trains!

Well...

Did you take the bird home or what?

Does he look like Gomez or Adam? ;)

Now if it had been hit by Magnum....

*** Edited 10/17/2006 7:41:16 PM UTC by JuggaLotus***

I thought about scraping it up for a midnight snack!

I've seen a couple of close calls on Magnum before. Once in front seat, a seagull waited to the very last second to move out of way.

That's why I don't like the front seat. I'll take 1-3 and let those first 2 rows intercept anything like that.

So in essence, you're giving them the bird?

if you want to play the real Sea Wolf, as well as THOSANDS of other arcade games get MAME. Mame is an emulator that runs the original roms from the real machine on your computer. It is not a PC/Mac version, that looks like the real thing, but IS the real thing.

Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missle Command, and lots more. Some newer games like Daytona USA dont work ryet, but will in time.

Pong and Stunt Cycle are not emulated, as they did not have a CPU, but rather used descrete circuits. Thus no true emulation is possible.

The $20 joystick you get at Wallmart that plays Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man is very good, but not true emulation. Actually it is, but not the original arcade game. It is actually emulating a Nintendo NES, and it is a new version of the games for that hardware.

Once you get Mame running, check out PinMame and play all the Pinball machines from your youth. The actually playfield is odviosly not emulated, but for the Solid State games that had the digital displays, that part is emulated. Awesome stuff.