You have really outdone yourself by tracking down the original folks, getting their enthusiasm captured in live recording (albeit rough sound quality), and an amazing transcription that made comprehending all the old company names and acronyms much easier. Truly fantastic, and I came in with almost zero knowledge about the system and it’s history!
@exidy-yt
6 ай бұрын
Same here! I am super impressed with not only how well done this video was, but by how truely capable this hardware was! It could have been an absolute game changer with proper support and advertisement. Mattel wouldn't have had a chance at 2nd place and this team have gone on to much greater things.
@Pimpeaux
Жыл бұрын
This is such unbelievably professional journalism considering the ultra-niche subject matter. I hope you eventually gain the credit you deserve for everything you've done to preserve video game history, and eventually, I hope you pave the way for generations of gaming historians to come.
@RichardTroupe
Жыл бұрын
I listened to your interview on the Video Game History Foundation Podcast and instantly came here for the video. This was a brilliantly produced and well-researched historical documentary on a lesser-known, yet influential, sphere of gaming. Well done!
@faenethlorhalien
Жыл бұрын
For 1978, the games looked more than decent!
@ShmebulockYT
Жыл бұрын
The wait was worth it. The most comprehensive KZitem video on the Astrocade right here! Congrats
@absolutezeronow7928
Жыл бұрын
Great video. Definitely seeing parallels to the later Colecovision as far as blurring lines and the homebrew scene for that. The SG-1000 could also be used as a computer (SC-3000) with a particular keyboard. The MSX was as you know a computer that used cartridges so that also could be blurring lines too. Was definitely worth the wait.
@feralstorm
Жыл бұрын
I remember visiting ABC hobby store in Evansville Indiana several times in my youth, as it was my late father's home town that we would return to for the holidays, and ABC was the hobby shop of his youth. We would go there for model kits and such, but I found the Astrocade stuff so interesting, as that was the only place I had ever seen it back then.
@themidcentrist
Жыл бұрын
The Astrocade is the most beautiful piece of home video game hardware ever made in my opinion, and I am fortunate enough to own one of these beauties. To mitigate hardware reliability issues mine has added heat sinks on the CPUs and I make sure it gets lots of ventilation using a laptop cooler while being used. I can say that Incredible Wizard is even more amazing when seen in person. I love the Atari 2600 and own several of them, but the Astrocade wipes the floor with it when it comes to eye and ear candy and is very impressive for a system that came out at nearly the same time. Methinks the console was not successful because it was a little too much like the Neo-Geo for it's own good - a powerful but expensive console that targeted a niche audience and wasn't sold at places like K-Mart or Sears.
@goldenphonautogram6141
Жыл бұрын
47 MINUTE ARCHIVE VIDEO!!!!!! CHRISTMAS CAME EARLY!!!
@exidy-yt
6 ай бұрын
I had absolutely NO idea that the DNI/Bally hardware was so capable for it's time! What a heartbreaker. This could have been the foundation for something REALLY special, a complete joker in the deck of the 2nd generation hardware race had it been properly promoted at the time. a 256 colour palate was unreal for the time, not to mention extremely hi-rez (for the time) object graphics. As a computer especially it could have destroyed the PET, Apple II and Tandy products of the time. If Jack Tramiel had gone after DNI instead of Apple at this time he could have acquired hardware more capable then the VIC-20 ended up and maybe the C64 would have been Z80 based instead of 6502! Oh man can you ever play 'what if?' in your head knowing what this video has revealed. Thank you for the excellent work done here! Well worth a subscription for this alone, not to mention the rest of the Archive vids! You should have 1million+ subs for sure.
@BeyondTheScanlines
Жыл бұрын
What an excellent watch! The Professional Arcade/Astrocade is a system which is a big hole in my experience (as a lack of a PAL version shows), and the independent scene which grew out of the BASIC carts is genuinely a rather neat development. It's a genuine shame it never got the traction it truly deserved, as looking at some of the titles, it really could have held its own against the post-VCS generation machines. This genuinely has my curiousity piqued. I'm not sure it's one I can justify acquiring, but I'm going to have to mess about with it emulated at some point.
@AtariArchive
Жыл бұрын
Ballyalley’s KZitem channel has some guides on how to set up the system in MAME and run BASIC programs through there, which is probably the easiest way to start messing with the machine! Other than programs for the 300-baud interface, anything else should load up in the emulator.
@DontCallMeScooterrr
Жыл бұрын
Maybe it was just a happy accident for the hardware, but the balloon pop sound effect in Clowns is amazing. Great video!
@allenhuffman
Жыл бұрын
I only saw this system at a department store, and they had Wizard of War running, so it’s nice to learn more about it. I only saw this, and the Fairchild, on display - never knew anyone who owned one.
@MattPilz
Жыл бұрын
Now these are the kind of deep dive retrospectives I love! Amazing job putting this together I can only imagine the amount of work behind it including the excellent interview conversations with founding members. Hands down the most definitive Bally history video ever made. I agree with Mike Morhaime that Bally BASIC is phenomenal for what it had to work with. I've enjoyed exploring the tech behind Bally and even used Astro BASIC to enter the popular Christmas Snowflake challenge last year and it received some great praise from the organizer (who had never heard of Bally before) and others. Being able to interface with the joystick and analog wheel as well as the three voice music all from within BASIC itself is something not found on many other BASIC flavors from that era. I'm heavy into Mattel Aquarius homebrew and that system released five years later but still lacked many features seen in Bally (and likewise only had 1.7K of usable RAM).
@iamhandy-man
Жыл бұрын
Wow--this was very well done. You showed so many games I hadn't known about before, and the history was excellently covered. Thanks for your hard work on it!
@marafolse8347
Жыл бұрын
I just want to thank you so much for making this. There is so little quality information easily accessible (much less presented so nicely) out there these days about the second gen. I think the Astrocade is one of the most fascinating aspects of the era, up there with Gameline and the Coleco Gemini!
@CaptainWrong
Жыл бұрын
This was a great overview. I was always so impressed with the Bally back in the day, but I never saw one in person. In fact, I still haven't. Ironic, considering you just told me there was hobby store locally (Indianapolis) that was a big hub of the enthusiast scene. To a budding computer nerd and video game fan, this always seemed like a dream machine. And for 1978 tech, this is an impressive machine still!
@lookslikekevin
11 ай бұрын
I loved the Bally arcade. Of course I did having been born in 1964 in a Detroit. Dad was a pharmacist entrepreneur and basically adult child. I spent most of my adulthood similarly defined. Coming off the heels of the original pong console and a huge Panasonic vcr that probably weighed about 50 pounds. So the quick and dirty saw me with my Bally basic computer cartridge and a cassette deck. My sister considerably older than me had graduated msu and worked in advertising for the Oakland Press. She wrote a radio commercial for…..my dads soda pop and a to z shop. I programmed the Bally to perform music to her script. Yes….I should have stayed in technology….but I became a pharmacist and everything else became hobbies. I suppose I didn’t consider this a computer yet but in hind site it was. The Atari st was my first computer however I used it as part of my kawai 5 synthesizer basically as a sequencer. My wife lost research paper after paper in it’s unreliable functionality. I sold it only to blunder into the IBM PC one. Then a sams club 386 pc to a home build system obtaining all the parts through the back of magazines. All this suffering lead me to the second iPod as the first one had horrible reviews. While I was picking it out I impulsively bought a new product design. The Mac mini. And it just worked. I’ve been reluctant to use anything other than Apple. You would think I would have bought stock.
@theforcefield23
6 ай бұрын
This is the best video I've seen on the Bally Professional Arcade. The interviews were really informative. Thanks for making this!
@shawncarter7188
Жыл бұрын
Always click on these as soon as they're posted. Thank you for your channel! The research you do is impressive!!!
@JKRetroGaming
Жыл бұрын
Awesome video. Thanks for sharing
@Phediuk
Жыл бұрын
Outstanding work; this is by far the best video on the Professional Arcade on YT.
@marvdaniels5603
Жыл бұрын
Great work, Mr. Bunch!
@GORF_EMPIRE
Жыл бұрын
Excellent video on an excellent machine.
@johnhancockretro
Жыл бұрын
Very informative video! As a huge fan of the Astrocade, thank you for making this.
@jpbishi
Жыл бұрын
Yesssss! I didn't realize this was up next. I had a weird hankering for Astrocade content a week ago and looked for videos on its history but mostly found hardware reviews. This hits the spot!
@cursedal
Жыл бұрын
Great video, very informative. One issue I have though are the game sound effects playing alongside the voiceover. It's an odd choice and makes it significantly harder to understand the lower quality interview recordings
@vidarlystadjohansen9829
Жыл бұрын
This channel is amazing!
@alvanderklipp4171
Жыл бұрын
Instant subscribe-what a great doc! I came in not knowing anything about any of this but hooked right away. Really great job doing research and threading together a decades-old story.
@anactualmotherbear
Жыл бұрын
Really excellent Annex episode. Your ability to go so deep into these subjects for each and every little part of the history is why I am subbed to you.
@thepld
7 ай бұрын
Always inspiring to hear about women succeeding in programming! I better research Ms Fenton to tell my daughters about how they too can succeed as women in the industry
@natethefighter
Жыл бұрын
Behold, Kevin's magnum opus
@nathanrussell2158
Жыл бұрын
This was my first game system I ever played. Got an NES in 86 with ROB. Kind of skipped Atari.
@ka8s1
4 ай бұрын
Checkmate was the original tron light cycle game.
@nwriter777
10 күн бұрын
There's a kind of sad, cosmic irony in how the Astrocade almost had the first home ports of both Space Invaders AND Pac-Man, only for their parent company to license those out to their rival, Atari.
@nwriter777
10 күн бұрын
12:01 Also, "Vid-Custer's Last Stand".... kinda gross how Custer's name was still seen as something heroic or sympathetic as late as the 70s-80s.
@AtariArchive
10 күн бұрын
If it makes you feel better, I think Atari cut around Midway entirely and went to Taito and Namco directly to license those home ports!
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