MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: From 1986, one of the world’s first ‘experiential’ arcade games ??

>>Back around 2006 or 2007 when former Atari programmer Dave Sheppherd (also involved
>>with Night Driver then) had visited old MAME.net forums and answered questions from
>>various folks, I had asked if there was any relation of the sitdown cabs used for
>>both Highway and Night Driver.

>I vaguely remember that thread. Wish there was an archive of the old forums' posts somewhere.

I saved the old MAME.net post, but it's probably on my older computer. I was lucky enough that Dave had answered my Highway cab question because dozens of other questions were only asking about 1990s games and those kept Dave busier of having to respond to all those dozens of questions. iirc the reason Dave had visited MAME.net site and answered questions for that one week only was because he was one of the Atari guest panelists that was visiting a CA Extreme event show back in either 2006 or 2007 to answer questions from the CA Extreme event attendees.

I asked Dave another question on MAME.net forum about another 1970s era game that he was involved with, but it was overlooked amongst the dozens of 1990s era game questions.
A future DU update announcement should have promising news about the 1970s era game...but keep fingers crossed that the data will still be readable and can be preserved.

>>Dave had explained that any sit down model cabs that were still in Atari warehouse
>>inventory would be used for Night Driver instead of Highway.

>Interesting. I wonder if that means that there were some early-production Night Driver
>cabs in brown instead of the regular black. If memory serves, both were fibreglass with
>the colouring moulded-in, so wouldn't really lend themselves to repainting.

They may have had a fixed number of sit down cabs and the popularity of Night Driver required Atari to purchase more sit down cabs from the manufacturer.

>>There was an upgrade
>>option for operators to convert Highway cabs to play Night Driver. With Dave's
>>explanation on old MAME.net forum, that confirmed of why I could no longer find cabs
>>that were playing Highway because many operators converted sit down cabs to play
>>Night Driver.

>Hm. Didn't realise that Night Driver was offered as a conversion; I always thought it
>was only available as an original cab. Interesting.

Maybe not like the 1980s conversion / upgrade packages that were available by companies, but probably where operators could swap out Highway pcb for a Night Driver pcb plus any any components needed in order to get Night Driver running in a Highway sit down cab.
It seemed many of the former Highway sit down cabs running Night Driver would not have any of the Night Driver decals or stickers on the sit down cab. I remember asking a worker or two at some arcade that had the Highway cab and why it had Night Driver instead...and the arcade worker wouldn't know what I was asking about.

>> I know that when I was in Disneyland's Starcade in summer 1977, I spent most of my
>> time that day playing Exidy's Circus.

>That cab was there well into the 80s, too - and I want to say that I can remember seeing
>it there in the 90s (upstairs), but could be mistaken on that one. My recollection was
>that it disappeared for a few years, but came back around the time in the early '90s
>when the Sega hologram games were in there. Starcade seemed to have a really unusual
>approach to how games would rotate in and out: a game would be in there for years,
>disappear, then reappear several years later.

On Disneyland's Main Street penny arcade, they had a couple of pong clones amongst many of the mechanical and EM type games and rifle games. I recall Sega Tic Tac Quiz cocktail table being either at the Main street arcade or more likely at Starcade. My cousin believed it was at Starcade, but I think it was at the penny arcade and not Starcade.

Starcade did have either Exidy Car Polo or maybe it was Sprint 4 on the upper floor in late 1970s.

I am certain Disneyland did not have Exidy Death Race nor the film reel version of Nintendo Wild Gunman during 1970s since those were considered not appropriate for the advertised "Happiest Place on Earth".

All the more reason I preferred Knotts Berry Farm's Buffalo Nickel arcade where Knott's family had no problems with having 3 WG cabs and 1 Nintendo Shooting Trainer all lined in a row during late 1970s years from 1977 through 1978 along with a couple cabs of Exidy Death Race.