Play Meter

By Robin Minnear, The Game Doctor
Take the ball and run
This month an interesting question
popped up . Just how feasible is it to
adapt home video game computers
(HVC) to the commercial market?
I know it's been done here and
there . but to my knowledge no one is
operating on a large scale with
consumer units as commercial units .
After all . why should an operator
ignore the possibility of adding
reprogram mabie
video
systems
whose cost is returned in a fraction of
the time of regular video systems .
There are multiple games in color
that not only appeal to the "war
game" crowd but lend themselves to
a more sophisticated audience -
games like chess and backgammon
or creative games that are modern
day color versions of the old
"Etch-A-Sketch ...
The move to bring truly repro-
grammable video systems to the
commercial market must be made by
the operators . Even though the
technology has existed for years. the
manufacturers have avoided the
subject.
To date we have been exposed to
several reprogrammable commercial
systems. but the cost has still
increased at an unreasonable rate.
The savings in such designs have
only benefited the manufacturers and
made the job a little easier for the
service companies.
Whatever your beliefs. if you
decide to involve yourself in convert-
ing HVC's to commercial units. you
PLAY METER, August, 1978
should approach
thought. It can be
and you may
something that
understand and
Here are some
it with a lot of
deceptively costly .
come up with
is too hard to
hard to play .
things to consider.
Game concepts
As a successful operator (I hope)
you are probably the best qualified
person around to judge player-
appeal.
It's better to choose a HVC system
that has only a few games on it
instead of many . It's also a good idea
to start with already successful
games . The best games are also ones
that need few instructions.
By choosing a HVC that has
cartridges that store more games,
there is little cost involved when you
want to change games . This way you
can custom-fit the games into the
atmosphere of your locations .
Color or B&W
I think that a properly-put-together
color game is the best way to go .
Portable color TV's are cheap and
would add to the player appeal. I'm
playing with a nine-inch color TV
made by "Sharp ." It's compact and
has the added feature of an
earphone jack. This is handy because
you can easily mount an external
speaker without attacking the TV
PCB . There is also a warranty that
can't be obtained in the normal video
market.
However, you may wish to
experiment with a B&W TV in the
beginning .
What to look for in a HVC
Beware! Some HVC's have in -
ternal power-on resets that would
enable people to obtain free plays by
plugging in the AC cord . These are
nearly impossible to alter and make it
impossible to operate in a normal
location .
It's best to choose a HVC that has
games that end . Some units never
end , only reset when you wish to
start over .
Some sort of start switch (reset) is
necessary to interface with a coin
switch .
One way to get around this is to
have your coin switch trigger a timer
relay which in turn activates the
player controls. This way you're
selling a unit of time . This lends itself
to games like chess , backgammon ,
and doodling so the player can
continue their game by adding more
coins .
Whatever your preference is, I
encourage you to look into this
subject more seriously . The possibili-
ties are amazing .
You can be sure that there is going
to be more detailed information
soon .
I invite anyone who has ideas or
experience in this area to provide
some inp ut.
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