From: CYBERYOGI =CO= Windler Newsgroups: rec.games.video.classic Subject: Vandalized joysticks in shopping centers... (was "Remember your first videogame experience?") Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 12:01:41 +0200 My first memories about videogames were when my mother took me(in a baby car- riage?) to shopping centers and people fired with rifles on 31cm B/W TV sets showing a moving white block and making blipping noises. The 1st game I personally played was "Pole Position" on a 6-switch Atari VCS 2600 in the German shopping center "Horten".I remember that I helt its joy- stick the wrong way(fire button at right-down instead of top-left) first time and someone told me how to hold it right.These "computer centers" of shopping centers were always terribly crowded and one had to stand in a queue often for an hour to get a chance to play once ot twice. I spent half of my childhood ;) in these computer centers and I remember that the VCS2600 joysticks very often got cracked off,the soft-plastics tops got teared off by vandals,cables got damaged or at least the contacts were broken, though there were many scrappy joysticks where one direction didn't work etc. and on a long grey metal table with 6(or so) fixed game consoles we players were exchanging the joysticks that way that games with only 2 directions or no need for a fire button got the corresponding scrappy joysticks with only these funktions working.Often the joysticks of the Coleco controllers were broken,though we plugged in an Atari one instead.But while this one had no keypad,for starting games it had to unplugged again(very arkward...).Also the 2nd fire button was missing.On the C64 there was a very strange and arkward method to simulate a joystick by clamping down certain keys with a piece of paper and pressing other combinations of keys for the directions and fire. I also remember that the rubber buttons and mini-joysticks of handheld games and chess computers were of oft teared out by vandals,and also the LCD dis- plays were sometimes smashed.They tryed several messures against this,inclu- ding one sort of terribly loud whisteling alarm device that always whisteled when someone turned a computer off or touched the alarm sensor a bit too much. This particular alarm device was removed quite quickly afterward,because it continously made false alarms and though stressed the nerves and ears of the shopkeepers. They also once tried to put electro-mechanical timer clocks into the socket supplies where the home computers were plugged in to make it impossible to run games for longer times by shutting down the power for 15 minutes every 15 minutes or so,but we players learned quickly how to fumbled with our hands in the cable gap of the locked display cabinets to unplug or readjust these nasty things. MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU! *============================================================================* I CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler I I (teachmaster of LOGOLOGIE - the first cyberage-religion!) I I ! I *=============================ABANDON=THE=BRUTALITY==========================* From: CYBERYOGI =CO= Windler Newsgroups: rec.games.video.classic Subject: Re: Vandalized joysticks in shopping centers... (was "Remember your first videogame experience?") Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 17:51:53 +0200 intv5200@aol.com (INTV5200) wrote: >Wow! What a great post. First, I had no idea about these "computer centers." >Were the games free? Think of all the quarters I could have saved if I grew up >in Germany. "Computer Center" was a common German term(invented by "Horten"?) for the de- partment/floor of a shoping center where one could buy computer stuff.Playing the games there was free,although sometimes also a few coin operated arcade videogame machines were standing within shopping centers. >Second, I am proud of these kids being so hard core! And similarly like an american indian native child learning the sounds of all the different birds etc. in his environment,I learned to recognize all the me- lodies and sounds of the video- and computer games of that time and tried to play them on my music keyboard. I'm a cyberage-child,born in the year of Pong... >And I >thought I was rough on my games as a kid. I've done the colecovision joystick >swap before, but the C64 keyboard thing?!! That is raw! The tip how to play without joystick was once published in a German computer magazine("Happy Computer"?). William Moeller wrote: > > CYBERYOGI =CO= Windler (windle_c@informatik.fh-hamburg.de) wrote: > > : The 1st game I personally played was "Pole Position" on a 6-switch Atari VCS > : 2600 in the German shopping center "Horten".I remember that I helt its joy- > > There used to be a store in Wattenscheid called "Horten"s but it is now > out of business. It was not there when I first went to my Grandparents > home town. The store is now occupied by another department store. I always > thought that that was a single store. Was it a chain? Or, are you speaking > about the same store? Horten was one of the biggest German shopping center chains.Now they have been bought up by the "Kaufhof" chain. MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU! *============================================================================* I CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler I I (teachmaster of LOGOLOGIE - the first cyberage-religion!) I I ! I *=============================ABANDON=THE=BRUTALITY==========================*