Id 1980s arcade video game

[Andreas Kohlbach]

F'up2 afc.

Watching a German TV show taking place partially in a bar I noticed not
only the pinball machine (that is Nitro Ground Shaker from 1980), but the
video game left to the door. Please see <Loading Image...>
(I leave it for 72 hours).

The episode of the show was likely shot January 1982, so the game might
be from 1981 or earlier. Anyone can identify it?

[Ant]

No clue! What TV show as that? CCed other newsgroups to see if they know. ;)

Also, try asking in https://www.reddit.com/r/Arcades/,
https://www.reddit.com/r/arcade/, https://www.reddit.com/r/mame,
https://www.reddit.com/r/cade, etc.

Post by Andreas Kohlbach
F'up2 afc.
Watching a German TV show taking place partially in a bar I noticed not
only the pinball machine (that is Nitro Ground Shaker from 1980), but the
video game left to the door. Please see <http://96.20.145.113/what_game.jpg>
(I leave it for 72 hours).
The episode of the show was likely shot January 1982, so the game might
be from 1981 or earlier. Anyone can identify it?

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Andreas Kohlbach
F'up2 afc.
Watching a German TV show taking place partially in a bar I noticed not
only the pinball machine (that is Nitro Ground Shaker from 1980), but the
video game left to the door. Please see <http://96.20.145.113/what_game.jpg>
(I leave it for 72 hours).
The episode of the show was likely shot January 1982, so the game might
be from 1981 or earlier. Anyone can identify it?

Seems I have no luck.

Although I did scale in (not just zoomed) at
<Loading Image...> I doubt anyone can ID it. The cab
(it's not even a cab) is non-standard, and still too blurry.

One person guessed it could be Space Invaders.

Also got the name of that German bar. But Google had no
matches. Otherwise i would had tried to contact the current owner (may be
children) if he knew what video game there was 41 years ago.

I'll remove the screen shots in 36 hours.

F'up2 afc again.

[Theo]

Post by Andreas Kohlbach
Seems I have no luck.
Although I did scale in (not just zoomed) at
<http://96.20.145.113/zoomed_game.jpg> I doubt anyone can ID it. The cab
(it's not even a cab) is non-standard, and still too blurry.
One person guessed it could be Space Invaders.

It's interesting that there's no advertising graphics on the cabinet. I'd
expect that a regular cabinet would have that to attract people. The Space
Invaders cabinets have that written in large letters.

It's just a display mounted in a brown surround, and then a desk with some
buttons and graphics. But that doesn't seem to have any writing on it
either.

I would guess it could be something mocked up by the TV set designers: take
a CRT monitor (eg a broadcast one that's synced with the TV cameras, if it
ever needs to 'work'), add a desk with a few buttons and lights, and then
mount in an anonymous cabinet. The advantage of being anonymous is you
don't need to worry about product placement laws, or problems if the
manufacturer doesn't like their product being filmed in an unfavourable
situation.

Alternatively, maybe it's a real cabinet but they put blank brown vinyl over
the logos for anonymisation.

One other thought is that it's not an arcade game, but a video slot machine.
That would explain the various flashing lights on the desk and the buttons
but no joystick. The plain cabinet may be because they didn't need to
advertise (when turned on they could be easily recognised), or laws about
advertising of slot machines. In the UK at least, slot ('fruit') machines
were more common in bars than arcade machines.

Theo

[Douglas Miller]

My first thought was "Asteroids", which didn't have a joystick - only buttons to turn, thrust, and fire. Might have been 4 buttons, though (left/right turn). I also seem to recall that it had the monitor mounted on its side (portrait instead of landscape). Could be an early version, or some cheap copy-cat.

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Douglas Miller
My first thought was "Asteroids", which didn't have a joystick - only
buttons to turn, thrust, and fire. Might have been 4 buttons, though
(left/right turn). I also seem to recall that it had the monitor
mounted on its side (portrait instead of landscape). Could be an early
version, or some cheap copy-cat.

Thank you. Might indeed be Asteroids now that I think of it.

[Johnny Billquist]

Post by Douglas Miller
My first thought was "Asteroids", which didn't have a joystick - only buttons to turn, thrust, and fire. Might have been 4 buttons, though (left/right turn). I also seem to recall that it had the monitor mounted on its side (portrait instead of landscape). Could be an early version, or some cheap copy-cat.

Astroids have 5 buttons. Left, right, thrust, fire, warp. You could get
away without the warp button, but the other four are essential.

So no, I'd say this is definitely not Astroids. And the vertical CRT is
way odd. I was looking around some, without really finding anything
matching.

The artwork above the controls looks maybe like something western, or
desert, which could suggest something like Gun Fight, but the controls
don't seem to make sense at all.

The controls seems to only have three buttons, which could suggest
something like Sea Wolf, but then again, the artwork is nowhere near.
Also below the buttons looks like different targets with some
information. Five of them. Might make sense for something like Sea Wolf,
but again, so many other details suggest it's not.

If there was a thrust lever in there, I would have said Lunar Lander,
but I can't see one. The buttons would make sense there.

The vertical CRT could suggest some breakout variant. Also, it would
increase the chance that this was some vector design.

But in the end, I'm stumped for now.

Johnny

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Johnny Billquist

Post by Douglas Miller
My first thought was "Asteroids", which didn't have a joystick -
only buttons to turn, thrust, and fire. Might have been 4 buttons,
though (left/right turn). I also seem to recall that it had the
monitor mounted on its side (portrait instead of landscape). Could
be an early version, or some cheap copy-cat.

Astroids have 5 buttons. Left, right, thrust, fire, warp. You could
get away without the warp button, but the other four are essential.
So no, I'd say this is definitely not Astroids. And the vertical CRT
is way odd. I was looking around some, without really finding anything
matching.
The artwork above the controls looks maybe like something western, or
desert, which could suggest something like Gun Fight, but the controls
don't seem to make sense at all.
The controls seems to only have three buttons, which could suggest
something like Sea Wolf, but then again, the artwork is nowhere near.
Also below the buttons looks like different targets with some
information. Five of them. Might make sense for something like Sea
Wolf, but again, so many other details suggest it's not.
If there was a thrust lever in there, I would have said Lunar Lander,
but I can't see one. The buttons would make sense there.
The vertical CRT could suggest some breakout variant. Also, it would
increase the chance that this was some vector design.
But in the end, I'm stumped for now.

Thank you and all the others. I declare this as unsolvable and removed
the screenshots from the server.

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Theo
I would guess it could be something mocked up by the TV set designers: take
a CRT monitor (eg a broadcast one that's synced with the TV cameras, if it
ever needs to 'work'), add a desk with a few buttons and lights, and then
mount in an anonymous cabinet. The advantage of being anonymous is you
don't need to worry about product placement laws, or problems if the
manufacturer doesn't like their product being filmed in an unfavourable
situation.

I doubt. The game had nothing to do with the plot, and was never shown
again after.

Suppose it was shot in a real pub, not changing anything for filming.

Like the pinball (1980s Nitro Ground Shaker) which just happens to sit
there. At the beginning of the episode you could hear the sound of the
attract mode without being a plot element.

[Eli the Bearded]

Post by Andreas Kohlbach
Seems I have no luck.
Although I did scale in (not just zoomed) at
<http://96.20.145.113/zoomed_game.jpg> I doubt anyone can ID it. The cab
(it's not even a cab) is non-standard, and still too blurry.
One person guessed it could be Space Invaders.

Looks like it has two option buttons and a paddle. It doesn't look like
it has a coin slot. Maybe some obscure "home" console has been been
shoe-horned into a custom cab?

I find IMDB is good for that sometimes for that, people showing off by
populating the Trivia section. TV shows get less attention, and non-US
TV shows probably get really short attention, but worth a peek.

Two video games are identified in the trivia for _Terinator II_ (1991),
Misslle Command and Rampage. In 1983's _Joysticks_ (a terrible film):

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085764/trivia/
When Greydon Clark approached game company Midway about using the
image of Pac-Man in the film, he also requested that they allow him
to feature a yet-to-be-released game in order to increase the film's
appeal. The game Midway chose to feature was Satan's Hollow, which
is played in the face-off between King Vidiot and McDorfus.

But none of the games are identified in the pinball heavy _Heavy Traffic_
(1973).

Elijah
------
_Joysticks_ could be a good T&A film if it had more T&A