STARCADE!, TV’s first video arcade game show, featured competition on video arcade games between two players (or 2 teams of 2 players each) vying for the Grand Prize, usually a video arcade game of their very own. Contestants on STARCADE! competed: 1) by answering questions about video arcade games; 2) by identifying video game by their game screen; and 3) by playing video arcade games. Prizes included robots, computers, electronic games and video arcade games.
STARCADE! showcased the very latest video arcade games and the classics such as “Space Invaders.” The video game manufacturers provided their brand new games, some still in prototype, for inclusion on STARCADE! as a playing game and/or a grand prize. Today the games of STARCADE! are ‘the classics", the original ‘cute’ games that stressed fun and competition. In all, some 200+ games were featured in game play and/or on the Name the Game board on STARCADE!
Time Pilot is a game where Geoff's tips could have been better. Yes, for a normal play through, parachutists are worth the most. Since they keep increasing. But in a short timed game, you are only getting to two at the most anyway. So the most you would get for them is 2000. Which makes shooting the entire formation that comes out with the parachutists better. You get 2000 for that every time, plus all the points for shooting so many planes quickly. And you can usually keep the parachutist on screen while you are taking out the formation and get them anyway.
It pains me to see people immediately go from one Super Power Pellet to the other, wasting the both right away. And yet it happened on this show all the time.
Seeing that Rhonda was the shooter queen, I'm surprised she didnt pick Star Trek. i guess that game was just too intimidating for those that hadnt played it.
Zookeeper is all about jumping. The entire time. You WANT the animals to get out so you can get multi-jumps for big points. On the first board, it doesn't matter much. But you can rack up a lot of points on the second board. And later on, you can go for the elusive million point jump. Done it many times.
The ending was unexpected. How often do episodes end with him playing? If i was really curious I'd rewatch this episode to see where the extra 30 or so seconds came from. Usally they were quite tight (although i guess some of that is from editing?).
Was the second player able to watch on a monitor what the first player was doing? It seems like in some games that could have been a huge advantage to see what you're able to achieve in the allotted time and/or what to avoid doing.
i've started watching several of these episodes, now that I have found them. Thanks. One thing i've noticed, so far, is that the grand prize video game always seems to be some lame video game, no well-known games like pac-man, galaga, etc.
Starcade definitely bought into the laser disc hype, which was a shame since most laser disc games were just plain terrible. Bot to play, and to watch someone play. Just a bunch of shiny backgrounds, but with such primitive game play that it was like playing a 1970s game.
Astron Belt and Begas Battle are a good example of why laser disc games other than Dragon's Lair and Space Ace failed. The game play was straight out of the 70s, just with shiny graphics. We didn't care about shiny graphics them. We wanted new, modern game play.
Most games they don't start the timer until the player has control. But here in Pole Position (and on another show for Mappy) they started hte countdown 3-4 seconds before the player could move. So unfair.
@@SpacePortArcade They've also done it for the final bonus round. And once, it definitely mattered as the player just BARELY missed the score to reach.
If one of them used the hidden warp on level one of Crystal Castles they would’ve won instantly because the warp gives 160,000 points if I remember correctly.
If one of them used the hidden warp on level one of Crystal Castles they would’ve won instantly because the warp gives 160,000 points if I remember correctly.
I can't imagine how hard it must have been to play Wacko. A Trackball to move and joystick to shoot is a terrible control combination, and really unnecessary for this game. It's not like a Centipede or Missile Command where you really need fine movements. It should have been a simple Robotron 2084 style two joystick game. And I bet that is why it never really got that big. My local arcades had almost every game on this show at some point. But never Wacko.
I think this is literally the ONLY time I have ever seen the contestants using the Crystal Castles warp. IT always drove me nuts watching them not do it, even after Geoff told them about it. Especially when the second contestant didn't do it after the first didn't. If one does it and the other doesn't, it is a guaranteed win. No other game on this show came close to giving you 140,000 points in the short time you had to play.
