Kiosks

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scotland
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Re: Kiosks

Postby scotland » October 7th, 2016, 9:49 am

Image

A prototype of a Cumma Metawriter kiosk circa 1984. The idea was to use reuseable cartridges in a coin op. Retailers don't have overstock that was a serious concern, and consumers get selection and reduced price. Pretty ugly story concerning Nolan Bushnell, the penchant for not wanting to credit people below the top that pervaded more than one industry, and this kiosk, but you can read and decide for yourself if you search for john michael battaglia interview on digitpress. Battaglia wrote manuals and boxcopy for Atari for a time. He died a few months ago.

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scotland
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Re: Kiosks

Postby scotland » November 17th, 2016, 2:07 pm

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Presenting the Sega Dreamcast.

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scotland
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Re: Kiosks

Postby scotland » November 13th, 2017, 8:25 am

This came up on Reddit yesterday

Image

Here is a video of what it looks like turned on - its playing Flagman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inBT-LyQ0uM&feature=youtu.be

One theory is that it was made for a trade show, another to show potential retailers to convince them to stock Game & Watch. It doesn't appear to be an actual store kiosk, or there would have been more of them.

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 9:31 am

Arghh! All that game playing! What agonizing, back-breaking work. Nah, just kidding! When I would take a break, I used to call up my friends and say: "Hey, you'll never believe what I have to do to make money these days. I play video games all day, and I write about them." Then I'd laugh and get back to work. Or play. The two blended together into such a harmonious, indistinguishable whole that, for me, work was play, and play was work.

http://www.digitpress.com/library/inter ... aglia.html

Fun interview; thanks for pointing it out Scotland.

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 10:19 am

Related: Atari considered turning the 5200 into an arcade machine.

Here's the proof: http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives ... bartop.pdf

They did make a game for it, Barroom Baseball, but I don't know if any actual consoles survive. Here's info on Barroom Baseball: http://www.atariprotos.com/5200/softwar ... arroom.htm

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scotland
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Re: Kiosks

Postby scotland » November 13th, 2017, 11:20 am

In 1983, the arcades are in full swing, and there are lots of excellent arcade games for people to play. The only attraction here is that the idea is for a 5200 bar top playing Real Sports Baseball - which is a game the Critic has as his favorite baseball game of the 2nd generation. A professional version of the 5200 could overcome some of the controller issues of the consumer version, but you're still talking a home unit competing with arcade machines a few steps away. The only reason to even consider this is for the quality of Real Sports Baseball, and the lack of competition for sports games in the arcades of the day.

However, there were baseball games. In 1976, Midway had Tornado Baseball, and Atari had baseball too. There is a pretty big gap, but in 1983 Sega came out with Champion Baseball. Its just a 1 player game, but I've never played it, but I could guess it would have been a better choice for a bar.

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7306

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 1:26 pm

A thread at AtariAge suggests the Bar Top 5200 was designed for Latin American markets, where similar 5200-based-arcade machines were already popular, but I can't find evidence of that just skimming Atari's memos.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/64502- ... try1207602

Anyways, Nintendo turned the NES into a couple of arcade machines, the PlayChoice-10 and the VS. System, so it wasn't entirely a bad idea.

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 1:39 pm

http://atariage.com/company_page.php?Sy ... mpanyID=94

http://atariage.com/company_page.php?Sy ... mpanyID=93

Reading about the Cumma Metawriter reminded me of Xante, which had a similar business model. AtariAge's Xante page mentioned another similar company, Romox, which had re-writable cartridges. Unlike Cumma, both of these companies actually released games, tho the games are very very rare. Any one have a pic of their kiosks?

These systems remind me of the more-successful Famicom Disk System. Here's an article about it with a scan of a flyer. The flyer has a pic of the FDS in-store Kiosk. http://www.famicomdisksystem.com/

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 2:36 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhRqDlGmrK8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuyL6xEf8BI

While trying to find pics of Romox's kiosks, I found these videos of Atari 2600 & 5200 Kiosks. Look in the background and you can see a few other Kiosks in this guy's collection. Pretty cool.

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pacman000
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Re: Kiosks

Postby pacman000 » November 13th, 2017, 3:32 pm

AtariAge has this scan posted on their fourm: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/155998 ... try3291581

It's an article about Xante with a pic of their kiosk, the Xanex Production Station or XPS. Looks like an 70/80's idea of a futuristic mini-computer. (Minicomputer is an older term for a cabinet or desk-sized computer, as opposed to room-sized mainframes.)

Still looking for a Romox kiosk. Sorry for all the posts. Sometimes I get my mind set on something and can't put it down. :)


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