Arcade Rarity: The Unreleased "Vertexer" by Taito.
I've written at great length before about my love for sprite scaling pseudo-3D arcade games. The simple fact is that early polygonal 3D looked like garbage. These sprite scaling games like Sega's Super Scaler series or Taito's System Z games gave the sensation of speed and 3D movement, but retained the tried and true aesthetics of 2D pixel art.
Vertexer is one of the last games of this type. It came too late in fact, ultimately canceled before release. It's a shame too because of how ambitious it was. By the looks of it, evidently it was an attempt at F-Zero X or Wipeout style gameplay without a single polygon in sight.
On top of all that, it was going to utilize the IDYA motion cabinet system, which would move the player in sync with the action on the screen (similar to the sit-down versions of After Burner and Galaxy Force II)
As you can see, the cabinet fully enclosed the player. Ever been on Star Tours at Disney World? Imagine that, but for one person, and interactive. Are you hard yet? I already was when I began writing this. In the 1990s there would've been little else as immersive as this.
Today only 20 PCBs of this game are in the wild, four of them owned by Japanese collectors. As yet, no Mame compatible rom dump has been released, so us plebeians will have to wait some time yet before we're able to fire up Retroarch and play this baby. Until then, feast your eyes on this gameplay video from actual hardware:
That sprite art! That speed! Some day I hope these motion cabinet games can be accurately simulated in VR. There's just so many historical gaming oddities like this, lost to time, that we now have the power to re-create in fascimile.
Though conceptually ambitious, Vertexer wasn't the most visually advanced sprite scaling game. In some ways it looks simpler than Slipstream, or even Power Drift. Maybe it's just the allure or the forbidden, as it's unreleased and only accessible to a small number of collectors. Vertexer, I'll get my hands on you one day!
Stay Cozy!
I still find sprite art amazing, when done well.
Same here. I was impressed by the art in Shovel Knight recently.
Haven't tried that one, I've been burned out on this kind of art, after all the games were 8bit a couple of years back. But I still appreciate the art occasionally :)
I love that you dig up this old forgotten stuff that I didn't even know existed. When you mentioned Afterburner that brought back memories too. I think for awhile that was my favorite arcade game.
It would be a shame to use it considering how much of a collectible item it is... When you get your hands on it, you just wanna admire it :)
I bet it can't be elusive forever but seems like the one that got away. Hope the story turns out differently
The idea of “Vertexer” is exciding, it’s like navy plane simulator. I would definately enjoy it.
That game actually looks like that newer steam game Redout? It really sucks that some of these collectors won't allow any rom dumps. There is a beavis and butthead arcade game that the owners won't let anyone dump. Can't understand it...
I guess when they spend so much to own it, they want to be the only one who has it. An unfortunate but common attitude.
Arcade machines wow what time! i can remeber when i played contra, soccer and more using just a coin to play some minutes good moments. Regards
It's a bummer that stuff like this is so scarce and impossible to play/try, you'd figure that one of the owners would have ripped the game onto some sites for people to download, though I guess that requires a lot of effort on their part.
Also, this is totally off topic but I have been honestly feeling obsessed about talking about it. Have you ever played Kholat or looked into the Dyatlov Pass Incident? I just played and reviewed Kholat, and I wasn't even aware the game was based on real life events. The real life events of the incident are beyond strange, man. Basically 9 hikers in Russia in 1959 all died under fucked up circumstances and the evidence on their bodies is super weird and makes no sense. Lots of conspiracy theories floating around but no explanations on what could have possibly happened.
If you get a minute look into it and give me your opinion on it. I'm really curious of what others takes on it are.
That's strange indeed. I'm inclined to say a wild animal attack, as it's consistent with the missing eyeballs and tongue. Wolves or a bear maybe.
They suggested that as a theory, but could find no animal tracks anywhere near their campsite or near their bodies which were several hundred feet away from it. There's no damage to anyones tissue beyond the woman of the group having her eyes/tongue cut out either. They also didn't know why all 9 of them would leave the campsite and flee when they were all secured within their thermal tents. It's literally the strangest fucking shit, man. I feel like I need to make a post on it or something, because all I wanna do is discuss this weird shit, lol.
If it continued snowing, why would animal tracks still be visible? Maybe it was a human murderer though, which would explain the mutilation but lack of bite marks on their bodies.
That could be possible, but why was there abnormal amounts of radiation on only the bodies and not the area around them too? Another thing is that most of them were alive for hours after they tore through their tents, and yet none of them attempted to try and start a fire even though there was plenty of kindling supplies around them and they were engineering students who probably could have figured out how to start a fire. They found one body clinging on to a branch with his other arm locked in riga mortis in a position that looks like he was hiding his head/face from being assaulted. Again though, no physical wounds and he just died from hypothermia.
I really feel like it had to be something fucked up with the Russian military doing weird shit in that area. It's about the only thing I can think of, but there's so much weird/odd shit in that situation that I just can't make heads or tails of it.
Sorry, by the way for talking about this random shit on your post. Feel kinda bad, I'm just fascinated and felt like talking about it with my friends from Steemit, and you're not on twitter or Steemit.chat for me to harass with my shenanigans :P.
No problem, it's really interesting stuff.
Freezing people do strange things, like paradoxical undressing:
https://www.livescience.com/41730-hypothermia-terminal-burrowing-paradoxical-undressing.html
It's a thing. Doesn't explain a lot of the other weirdness that happened in this instance though. Could just be Russian mischief / military experiments. Could be aliens were hungry. Probably not possible to know for sure in this case now.
I've used motion cabinets at arcades before...everytime I feel like I'm going to puke lol.
This game reminds me of super Mario cart and the rainbow map where you drive on the rainbow. It is fun to remember all the old games that were so enjoyable.