CYBERYOGI =CO= Windler's

Historical Videogames

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I am collector of historical videogames and homecomputers. Especially I enjoy very old games like Atari VCS2600, Vectrex, Atari XL etc., and I am interested in "zoner" games, i.e. certain monotonous high speed skill games those are capable to create alterated states of mind.

last updated: 2025-12-15

             
             
             
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my collection: (a brief & very incomplete overview)

Atari
VCS2600 (most console versions, many carts, modified VCS clone with 288 games built into by me, Compumate keyboard), VCS7800, C380, Lynx, 400, 800XL (with recorder and 1050 floppy), 65XE (the prettiest 8bit Atari - with external keyboard and lightgun), 260ST (1MB added by me, self- made diskette drive)

Commodore
Amiga (heavily modified A500 electronic brain built into wooden cabinet), VC20, C64 (model I with 1541, Datasette, Magic Voice speech module), C16, C116 (yes, the rare rubber keyboard thing)

Sinclair
ZX80, ZX81, PC8300 (ZX81 clone), ZX Spectrum (with Microdrive, Interface I)

Nintendo
NES (with "Fitness Center" mat, many carts), SNES, Gameboy I, Gold Leopard King GLK2003 (NES based educational computer in AT keyboard case), various other NES clones (Supercom with lightgun, Ending Man, Dendy Junior, China 2008, Spectron etc.)

Sega
Megadrive + Master System Converter + 3D glasses + lightgun, Multi-Mega (portable Megadrive/ Mega-CD console), Saturn

other videogames
Colecovision, Intellivision (many carts), Interton 4000 (with most carts), Philips G7000, Phillips Odyssey 2001, Unimex Mark IX (2 lightguns), Vectrex (many carts), Mr.Altus (Arcadia clone), MicroVision (with boxes, 5 carts), several TV-tennis (Pong) console variants, many LCD games

other homecomputers
Mattel Aquarius, Bit 90, Yamaha CX5M music computer (with full size piano keyboard and 5(?) music carts, but no working MIDI-IN)

The things I grew up with are marked in yellow.

important notes:
Nothing is for sale unless I explicitly mark it so. Besides videogames I am also interested in multivoiced squarewave music- boxes or such (e.g. toy-) music keyboards, but only when either sound or design is something unusual or when they are old (1980th or older). I live in a tiny apartment (which is already full to the ceiling...), though by space (and money) reasons I really can't collect everything. Collecting videogames also is not my meaning of life, therefore don't be disappointed when I refuse to buy large things you may offer me (especially when they are already well emulated).

Especially I am fascinated by the musics, sound effects and the graphical style of Atari VCS2600 and 8 bit homecomputers, as generally by squarewave and similar electronic musics. Below are some texts etc. by me about historical videogames.
 
 
 
 

Is downloading historical videogames PIRACY???

Why we blast...?!
Read here about virtual brutality and the sweet secrets of zoners...
ZONERS-the newsgroup file
other texts
(These are mostly old newsgroup articles.)
Phoenix("RFT & Robotron" version)
a 'real- existing' arcade game from the German Democratic Republic!

title screen of RFT Phoenix_another RFT Phoenix screenshot

These are MAME screenshots extracted from the ROMs of a broken "Phoenix" arcade game PCB. Read here and here (newsgroup articles) about the game hardware and how I discovered it.

Here are the WAV samples from the melody module of the game PCB:

PhxRsam1.zip (melody samples triggered by the game hardware)
PhxRsam2.zip (rest of the melodies/ chimes from the IC)

PhoenixR.zip

This is the ROM set from the game; I renamed the files to run on the MAME arcade emulator. The game is not officially supported by MAME yet, though the samples are not played by the actual versions. The best you can get is to download an old MAME version (MAME 36rc1 or older) and rename 2 of the samples from set PhxRsam1.zip to play them within the game (instructions are within the ZIP file).

driving simulator history

Vehicle simulators were the ancestors of virtual reality. I research about the barely documented origins of driving simulators.
 
Reiner Foerst's
Nürburgring

Learn here about the world first 3D car racing arcade machines and their maker. Reiner Foerst was the inventor of simracing. I finally identified the whole series with a little tech info. [updated 2025-12-15]
Hard Drivin - an analysis
This is my comparison and technical analysis of the classic "Hard Drivin" game series and variants, detailedly discussing the editor of "Hard Drivin II", glitches and game engine behaviour.
Youtube

I have collected many videos about early simulators. I tried hard to search for historical footage of early professional gear, but unlike gaming and other classic computers, particularly driving sims seem barely documented and pictures mostly untagged.

  • first driving simulators [playlist]
  • driving simulator & flight sim history [playlist]
    • note: Playlists are sorted by topics - scroll down to see others. Some arcade machines here are not strictly simulators (e.g. lack 1st person view) but were included as technical milestones to compare graphics. While until about year 2000 professional simulator's moonpriced cutting edge CGI was far ahead of home gaming devices, nowadays many look inferior - likely because labour of programming that highly detailed 3D graphics for a singleton or niche product became more expensive than its fast realtime rendering "supercomputer", that now everybody can buy off the shelf in shopping centers. Fahr-Simulator 2009 by Astragon (aka Driving-Simulator 2009) is a German driving simulator game for PC. Tons of glitches permit crazy stunts and offroad trial tricks, those are much more challenging than what the game design intended.

    So I made several glitchriding videos of it, showing tricks and how to explore hidden places of its surreal empty world. They are like playthrough beside there is no predefined goal for speedrun. These films are well edited (movie style), so do not skip the intro movie. Some are longer, and of course you can skip or fast-forward, but then you may miss some of my message texts.

    links
    www.classicgaming.com [archived]
    large site with links about historical videogames. Many other interesting sites are reachable from here. (I neither have time nor space here to add and maintain lots of links on my own site, though I recommend also to look there to find other ones.)

    Arcade@Home
    everything you need to get happy with the MAME emulator... - and much other emulator related stuff.

    MAME forum
    the official forum of the MAME emulator.

    http://www.darkmazda.com/emu/mame/ [archived]
    This had been a download site for various specially hacked old MAME emulator versions, including MAME-EX2 which supports modified historical arcade games.

    PONG: The official site devoted to the Pong story...
    I am a cyberage-child - born in the year of Pong! Read here everything about Pong and how it came into being...

    ASMA - Atari SAP Music Archive
    Here you can find a fantastic archive of over 2000 pieces of Atari 8bit POKEY music and players, as well as converter programs for creating own POKEY tunes on Atari XL and emulators. When you use the WinAmp SAP plugin (recommended), please adjust your WinAmp equalizer like this and save it as a preset for authentic Atari performance. (With neutral EQ settings the timbre is way too thin and hissy and has little resemblance with the sonorous bassy drone of the real thing.)

    WinFellow
    Here you can download the best PD Amiga emulator for Windoze. E.g. on my AMD K6 300MHz PC I can even use music programs from Amiga 500. (Forget WinUAE; its sound stutters terrible.)

    ALE - Amiga Legal Emulation
    Here you could completely legally download many historical Amiga games and other stuff. Unfortunately this site was closed by the operator by lack of time, but there is a message that it may reopen later.

    The Work of Nonfiction: Simulator Games in Germany [PDF]
    a great thesis text by Derek Thomas Price about the German simulator gaming subculture, including strange fun simulators, glitchride stunts etc.

    Youtube:
    videogame history [playlist]

    early video-, arcade- & computer games and their history. This focusses mainly on old and lesser known games, those were milestones in technology or gameplay.
     
                   
                   
                   

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