{"id":4831,"date":"2012-12-14T09:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T14:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=4831"},"modified":"2012-12-14T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T14:49:00","slug":"the-arcade-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2012\/12\/the-arcade-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arcade Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay. Something major that I was unaware of:<\/p>\n

Even earlier than Pinball Construction Set<\/em>, which (text adventures aside) has popular distinction as the first game creation system, there’s a product for the Apple II and (later) Atari 400\/800 computers called The Arcade Machine<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n

This is a tool for creating simple top-down shooters<\/a> in the Space Invaders<\/em>\/Galaga <\/em>mode, which seems rather narrow — but then so is a dedicated pinball design tool. Going by some screenshots<\/a>, it also seems very flexible within those limitations.<\/p>\n

The Arcade Machine<\/em> was designed by Chris Jochumson and Doug Carlston, the latter being one of the two founders of Br\u00c3\u00b8derbund. Yes, this is an early Br\u00c3\u00b8derbund release — pre-Choplifter<\/em>. That totally makes sense, and it also may explain why although reviewed well this tool has gone so under the radar these last thirty years — as this was just before Br\u00c3\u00b8derbund hit it big and became a major publisher. <\/p>\n

Also going by the back of the Atari box, it seems there was a contest where Br\u00c3\u00b8derbund would reward the best user-derived game with a prize of $1,500 ($3,600 in 2012 dollars).<\/p>\n

So much of videogame history has become obscure. And some of this stuff, you’d expect it would be fairly important.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay. Something major that I was unaware of: Even earlier than Pinball Construction Set, which (text adventures aside) has popular distinction as the first game creation system, there’s a product for the Apple II and (later) Atari 400\/800 computers called The Arcade Machine. This is a tool for creating simple top-down shooters in the Space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1024,1023,40,27],"class_list":["post-4831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-broderbund","tag-game-creation-systems","tag-game-history","tag-videogames","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4832,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4831\/revisions\/4832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}