In some ways it
still is, a Cartridge system can still cost you as much as
a Playstation 2! The thing to remember is some of those carts are pushing
1 Gig! With the oldest ones still being in the 50 meg range.
It's really absurd...
Not really, they've never been produced in high volume, and there are a lot
of very good, visually appealing games, even by todays standards.
>I'd
really like a cabinet with Puzzle Bobble/Bust a Move. I'm spending too
>much money on that game.
As of yesterday my wife is officially addicted to
that game!
Thankfully, last week, my favourite pool hall modified its cabinet, so that it
is now a bill-op in addition to a coin-op. =)
Do yourself a favor, investigate MAME. I invested $220 yesterday on a PCI
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon and a second USB Gravis Gamepad Pro. It took a
couple hours, but my old PII/333 that had basically been retired as a Linux
box, is now running Windows (ugh!), and is sitting in the living room
connected to our TV (without a monitor). Really need a faster system with a
better disk though, as some of the games need a lot faster processor, but
it's about good enough for the Neo Geo stuff. Puzzle Bobble and Puzzle
Bobble Again rock on this system! Now the only problem is getting my wife
off of it.
Modern games just fail to attract me. I was raised on
sprite games, then it
all died out in the course of a year. I'm sitll wondering why.
Overall, I'd just as soon have a really good game with seriously dated
graphics (TacOps on the Mac & PC comes to mind, and I think the original Mac
versin is old enough to be on topic). However, I do enjoy good 3D fighters
with totally killer graphics.
Zane