{"id":227,"date":"2007-08-11T19:17:12","date_gmt":"2007-08-12T02:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=227"},"modified":"2007-08-11T23:27:16","modified_gmt":"2007-08-12T06:27:16","slug":"california-extreme-2007-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/?p=227","title":{"rendered":"California Extreme 2007 rocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a very good show this year. I mean, it’s always a good show, but I really had a blast this year, played a lot of games that you simply can’t find anywhere else or enjoy in their original incarnations. Tempest <\/em>is not fun unless you’re playing the color vector version with the analog spinner, and the volume up rather high– the way God (or at least Dave Theurer<\/a>) intended. Mad Planets <\/em>is another one of those “original or nothing” beasts. And I literally got a blister from playing The Grid<\/em><\/a>, Ed Boon’s 6-player deathmatch game that never came out for any home systems. XBLA would be perfect for it…<\/p>\n

I was also stoked because for the first time they had a trivia contest, much like World Series of Pop Culture<\/em> but several magnitudes geekier. Everybody I’d hoped to meet and play with had not arrived, so I joined up with two other mercenaries looking for a team and we formed…The Mercenaries. Mike was a pinball expert, Thomas was a vid guy, and I thought I straddled the line, leaning toward vid. Well, I wound up answering (or not answering) the pinball questions, and Mike wound up getting stuck with vids — so we lost quickly (but not as quickly as the team that had shirts printed up). But it was great to be among my people.<\/p>\n

Every year, I see something I’ve never seen before or play a game I’ve never played. This year, two weird ones caught my eye. First is UltraPin<\/a>, a digital pinball emulator. Basically, it’s a MAME machine with flippers, and a giant HDTV installed on its end, with a rendered, forced-perspective playfield. Pretty weird, and not as realistic as I’d hoped. I love pinball but don’t have the mechanical skills to maintain a machine, so I was kind of hoping this would kick ass. But it doesn’t, at least not yet. I could never get used to the playfield’s perspective, could never find the sweet spot to make it look real. I kept moving closer, or stooping down, figuring there is an optimal viewing angle and I just had to try to find it. Anyway, here’s a cellphone pic:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The other oddity was a hack of Tapper <\/em>that changes the bartender to Moe and all the patrons to Simpsons <\/em>characters. And the bandit that shakes up the beers for the bonus round? Bart, of course. A quick pic from the attract mode:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

California Extreme<\/a> continues tomorrow and you can buy one-day admission on site at the Tech Museum (Parkside Hall) in downtown San Jose. If you’re around these parts, please go and support the cause (and have fun). This is a total fan-based labor of love and a crucial part of geek history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a very good show this year. I mean, it’s always a good show, but I really had a blast this year, played a lot of games that you simply can’t find anywhere else or enjoy in their original incarnations. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/dan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}