Comments on: Peter Hirschberg

By: Bruce the ex-boss Jenkins

Bruce the ex-boss Jenkins — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:27:58 +0000

I think one of the attributes Jason is unaware of is Pete’s ability at electronics repair. I was his boss back in the late 80s working at a store that catered to restoring trashed video’s and pinballs and selling them to the home market.
He was the only ACE technician I ever had the pleasure to work with and could repair virtually anything set in front of him…. with the only exception being the electro-mechanical pinballs. Those two inch bundles of wires and banks of relays were too much to fathom.
If he didn’t have these abilities the arcade wouldn’t be possible.

By: Rob "Flack" O'Hara

Rob "Flack" O'Hara — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:38:46 +0000

I remember the early days of emulation. Back when I got into emulators (mid-90s or so), there was a wide division between “works” and “works well.” There were several NES emulators that “worked” but didn’t “work well.” Most of them had pretty short compatibility lists. I either had a 486/66 or a 486/100 around that time, which was enough to run a lot of these emulators but not really play the games in any sort of enjoyable manner. Back then it was more like a party trick. “Hey, look what they got the PC to do now!”

NESticle and GENEcyst blew everyone’s doors off. Not only did they play NES and Genesis games at full speed on my 486, but they did it with style (the programs’ pointer was a severed hand dripping with blood). They also introduced the idea of netplay, where two people could play NES games across the Internet. Man, it was crazy. It changed everything from being a parlor trick to actually being able to play the games and enjoy them for simply being games, not for being “emulated games,” if that makes sense.

I remember the early “one game” emulators as well. After growing up with shitty versions of Pac-Man on every console and computer I ever owned, it was amazing the finally see THE game on my home computer. I guess that’s why back then I thought arcade games were so powerful; it was like, why can my PC not play Pac-Man like a real Pac-Man cabinet? And then when it finally could it was amazing.

Like a lot of developments in computers for me I guess I didn’t see the big picture. I never saw that in the future people would be sitting around playing MAME games or NES roms instead of playing new computer games. Sometimes it seems like emulated ROMs are the only games I play on the computer anymore.

Oh, and for Chris … if you ever want to check out a dirty, dingy arcade, that’s the version I have in my house. It’s just like the arcades I remember from the 80’s, half the games are broken and the place is run by a jerk (me).

By: Chris Barts

Chris Barts — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:45:09 +0000

You mention “little things” like the sound of the deflector coil, but these are memory machines and memories hinge on little things. A whole historical epoch is encoded in a single smell or the precise way the sun filters down through spring leaves. Big things are relatively easy to get right and easy to test, but little things take craft.

As for the pictures: All of the games and floors and such are too clean. No arcade I visited was kept that tidy. It’s the “House Beautiful” version of an arcade.

By: Ice Cream Jonsey

Ice Cream Jonsey — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:52:37 +0000

I had seen his webpage, and his numerous home arcade links (and in fact was so impressed that I bookmarked it) but they were all direct links from Usenet. I never knew that he was also involved in vector emulation and that Mattel project recently. He is awesome. I can’t look at pics of his arcade without wanting to get more games.