automaticdoor75

This article covers a rarely-seen but interesting arcade game: Wyvern F-0 by Taito. This game used a unique graphics system to produce a presudo-3D effect.

Has anyone else heard of this game?

I read a lot of Harlan Ellison (worked on The Outer Limits, 80's Twilight Zone, Babylon 5), and I was wondering what people thought of this quote from him:

[S]cience fiction is the only 100% hopeful fiction. That is to say, inherent in the form is, "There will be a tomorrow". If you read a science fiction story, it says, "This will happen tomorrow". Now that’s very positive, that’s very pragmatic, "We’ll be here tomorrow. We may be unhappy, we may be all living like maggots, but we’ll be here." So that means it’s 100% positive.

Ellison has even said that his short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is optimistic, because in the climax, there is still room for self-sacrifice and defiance to authority.

I guess it comes down to whether you think a bleak future is better than no future at all.

Shameless plug for my work if you like Ellison or want to learn more: https://ndhfilms.com/ellison

Hi @retrogaming,

Here's our Spring issue for 2024.

Retro Gaming articles in this issue:

• Coverage of ATG Expo 2024 in Waco, TX by AT Gonzalez. He saw an original Soviet-era Tetris computer.
• Grappling to New Heights: Roc’n Rope’s Unintentional Birth of the “Wire Action” Genre by Leland Tursi
• Views From the Road: Cricket's Draft House & Grill in Waco, TX
• Reader responses to last issue's article on the reverse-engineering of Sinistar.

Cover art by Chris Bordenca

A review by YouTube channel SoftwareAgentsHQ. I like the game's smooth sprite animation.

This is an article by SynaMax about reverse-engineering the arcade classic Sinistar. Sinistar is one of the most technically-impressive arcade games of the 1980's, and one of the first to use voice sampling. Using MAME and 6809 assembler tools, he took the entire game apart, and put it all back together better than ever. He even discovered the origins of the famous 'Sinistar roar' sound effect.

He was also able to restore the original title screen from the game (see picture), found in the 1982 prototype.

Hey, RetroGaming,

I'm excited to share this issue of Quarter Up with you. Writers from all over the country contributed to this last issue of 2023.

Our retro game article for this issue is about the reverse-engineering of Sinistar. Sinistar is one of the most technically-impressive arcade games of the 1980s. Our writer SynaMax took the entire game apart, down to the assembly code, and put it back together better than ever. He even discovered the origins of the famous 'Sinistar roar.'

The awesome cover art is by Anna "Pencilforge" Frohling.

I am trying to understand an idea that Richard Stallman proposed to promote music "in the age of computer networking." This is from an article titled Ending the War on Sharing: https://stallman.org/articles/end-war-on-sharing.html

We could support musical artists with public funds distributed directly to them in proportion to the cube root of their popularity. Using the cube root means that if superstar A is 1000 times as popular as skilled artist B, A will get 10 times as much of the tax funds as B. This way of dividing the money is an efficient way to promote a broad diversity of music.

The law should ensure that record companies cannot confiscate these funds from the artists, since experience shows they will try. To speak of "compensating" the "rights holder" is a veiled way of proposing to give most of the money to the record companies in the name of the artists.

These funds could come from the general budget, or from a special tax on something vaguely correlated with listening to music, such as blank disks or Internet connectivity. Either way would do the job.

What I'm having trouble understanding is whether the artist (musicians in this case) is getting paid per-listen, or if they are getting paid as a percentage of the total fund.

Is the idea that if an artist was responsible for 8% of the songs played on a platform, they would get 2% of the funding?

Has anyone else read about this idea? I wish it had been explained a bit better.

EDIT: I emailed RMS and he replied. Here is how the cube root system would work. I have labeled the quotes for clarity:

RMS: I am assuming a program managed by the state, which measures the popularity of each musician and distributes a certain pool of money among them.

auomaticdoor75: Let's use a very simple example: let's say there's a treasury that will pay out $10,000 to three different artists. Artist A was responsible for 67% of the songs played on the platform, Artist B was responsible for 20% of the songs played, and Artist C was responsible for 13% of the songs played. Using your cube-root idea, how much money would each artist receive?

RMS: The cube roots are 0.8750340239643772, 0.584803579016074, 0.5065797363612384 Add them and you get 1.9664173393416897.

The A gets (/ 0.8750340239643772 1.9664173393416897) = 0.444988968749288 of the total.

B gets (/ 0.584803579016074 1.9664173393416897) = 0.29739545482845087 of the total.

C gets (/ 0.5065797363612384 1.9664173393416897) = 0.2576155764222611 of the total.

I do not say that the cube root is the perfect function to use. It gives an example of how such a system can work. A different function might be better.

So, it seems like you find the cube root of each person's percentage of the web traffic, divided by the sum of all the cube roots. The resulting quotient is that person's share of the treasury.

Some retro arcade material in this fourth issue:

• The history of Nibbler, an early precursor to the "snake game" genre
• A promo of next month's Houston Arcade Expo

Hi, RetroGaming,

Here's the arcade content in this issue of Quarter Up:

• The legal woes of Ms. Pac-Man
• The legacy of the early Taito game Chack'n Pop, from arcade flop to unofficial company mascot
• A Zaxxon cabinet spotted at an RV park in Lander, Wyoming

Let me know what you think.