arcadia is crack for classic gaming nerds

August 5, 2003 2:56 PM

Those of you with crazy multi-tasking skills might want to check out Arcadia, where you play four different super simple games at the same time. Extra points for the stylishly retro chunky pixels look, which brings me right back to happy afternoons spent with my 2600!
posted by lia (18 comments total)

Hee hee! Very cool. Wish I'd know from the beginning that the green bump things were harmless grass rather than horrific natural speedbumps, though.

I can't help but think of the scene in D.A.R.Y.L. where he's watching/playing 8 different TVs at once.
posted by cortex at 3:31 PM on August 5, 2003

*secret crush on lia springs to life*

I'm pretty sure everything in the road is hazardous... 'cept for the rainbow orbs, which are good for you in every game apparently.
posted by Witty at 3:45 PM on August 5, 2003

Speaking of the 2600...
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:58 PM on August 5, 2003

Just ran into this a few moments ago. It discusses Arcadia to show how our kids are turning into social and spacial multitaskers and that it is changing the way we think, from kids who carry on multiple instant message conversations to those to watch TV while doing thier homework.

Videogame Virtue
Playing computer games doesn’t shorten kids' attention spans—it helps them to manage competing demands in the new era of "continuous partial attention."
posted by daHIFI at 3:59 PM on August 5, 2003

Wow, and here I thought I had mad multi-tasking skills. I suck!
posted by willnot at 4:13 PM on August 5, 2003

I quit after 11 trillion points. Literally, 11 trillion points.. I love the scoring system, and the fact that it doesn't get harder as you progress. And how many points do you need to get to level 15? Sheesh.

I also love that in Jumpy McJump a squirrel is holding the flag at the end of the level.
posted by Hildago at 5:12 PM on August 5, 2003

Yeah, I quit it too. Too simple. I had like 43 pong guys and 39 jumping guys left. I was hoping for something like River Raid + Ms Pac + Yar's Revenge + Superman.
posted by gluechunk at 6:07 PM on August 5, 2003

(lia lives! hi lia!) [/chatroom]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:30 PM on August 5, 2003

This is almost as insane as Wario Ware Inc.
posted by donth at 7:57 PM on August 5, 2003

It's like I was born to play this game. I zoned out for a good 45 minutes. When I came to, I had broken 10^15 with no end in sight.

Thanks lia.
posted by Galvatron at 10:26 PM on August 5, 2003

i'm at about 33 trillion on the easy level (after about 40 minutes. thank god there's a pause button. too bad there's not a mute button -- i had to turn down my sound).

The trick is that there's a "bug" in the pong game -- sometimes it launches it straight out instead of at an angle -- after this happens, you only have to move the paddle every once in awhile, but you've got to pay attention this most of all, 'cause that's your ace -- the one time i lost the ball because of greed (was going for a rainbow), the balll launched at an angle and the game got MUCH more hectic (although probably manageable with a real mouse -- i'm using a laptop touchscreen). fortunately for me, after losing about 4 or 5 pong balls, it launched straight out again.

anyhow, when you've got the pong covered, the only thing you really have to pay attention to is the little jumping guy. the car stuff doesn't seem to get hectic enough to be concerned, and even if you lose a couple it's not really a big deal. the little connect 3 game in the corner, as hildago mentions, doesn't really get more difficult as far as AI, so you can win everytime after you figure out the three patterns that might happen after you drop the chip in either the 2nd or 3rd slot.

anyhow. yeah, 33 trillion and i'm STILL at level 14 (wizard in training) my guess is that 50 trillion is when it rolls over, but i don't know if i'm going to play that long. we'll see.

curse you for stealing 45 minutes of my life, lia.

(and thanks!)
posted by fishfucker at 12:18 AM on August 6, 2003

What happened to Rover? :(
posted by snarfodox at 12:38 AM on August 6, 2003

ok, 100 trillion (100,794,664,641,528) and i'm still at level 14. my guess is you need 1000 trillion, which hopefully has some sort of cool name like "googlegon".

Is that 100 trillion? i don't deal with trillions too much in my work or finances, so i'm not sure what it looks like.

also: not an astrophysicist.
posted by fishfucker at 1:05 AM on August 6, 2003

So much for coming here and bragging about getting 186 billion.

(Dunno about the online version, that didn't work with my browser, this was with the free download .exe, which lets you choose randomly from a bunch of games, so I wound up with Jumpy McJump, a baseball game, a sidescrolling space game and the racing one...)

This would be a *lot* harder if you needed to do more than click the mouse to control each game...
posted by arto at 2:35 AM on August 6, 2003

Damn my lack of decent Connect Four skills!
posted by Katemonkey at 2:50 AM on August 6, 2003

so i'm at the 1000 trillion, and still no level 15. maybe, just maybe, i could play until 10000 trillion (the points really start to fly by, even though the difficulty doesn't increase) but then you'll all know i've been completely dorked by this game, instead of just merely suspecting it.
posted by fishfucker at 3:11 AM on August 6, 2003

fishfucker.... what's your operating number? I'm sending a squad up.
posted by Witty at 8:54 AM on August 6, 2003

ok, so i took the game off pause this morning and within about 10 minutes got to 1860 thousand points, when THE COLLISION RECOGNITION ON THE PONG GAME STOPS WORKING!!!! ARGH!

balls just go straight through my paddle! even then, it still took about a minute for me to lose the 99 lives built up in that game, but all my work was for naught. I would've quickly got to 10,000 trillion, i think and then WE WOULD HAVE KNOWN.

anyways, it won't accept my high score because it says "it can't handle scores that high" and I should "try another difficulty level" because i'm a "big fucking pansy" for playing it on "the easy level, you stupid loser!"

oh well.
posted by fishfucker at 12:42 PM on August 6, 2003