Star Castle Arcade Machine

[verbusen]

Rip Off was a great game. I could play that one a long time for a quarter too!

[xmnemonic]

fascinating

[eater275]

Very cool, thank you so much. Brings back memories of best friends, bmx bikes, and no damn care in the world. Life was real good at 10.

[MrDjh66]

I used to play this and tempest at eddies pizza in northport ny after roller skating great times!

[QUIZFILTER]

@MrDjh66 Hell yeah!! Video game arcades & pizza parlors!! Bring it all back!!

[msegov]

I spent many quarters at the local 7-Eleven playing this game back in the 80's. Thanks for the memories...

[PaulbylPaulbyl]

Thanks for uploading this. This was one of my favorite video games at the arcade in 1980 or maybe 81, along with Asteroids. You are pretty good at this game too. Way to go!

[jcroach]

Did Atari base Yars Revenge on the 2600 on this game? Gameplay is somewhat similar.

[xpez]

such a well designed game...with minimal lines that convey power, energy, ferocity, danger etc...awesome game...

This game was intense!

[laney50w]

Man, I LOVED this game back in the day! Thanks for posting!

[techdaddy01]

Vector craphics did this. The Glowed... beautiful and fun game to play! This game, BattleZone, Tail Gunner, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Space war, Asteroids.... the list goes on. They were all great games.

[christo930]

Awesome game. But how do you keep it in good repair? From what I have read, this game was co-designed electronically by jr technicians and really prone to failure. I tried getting one of these machines and was told they are next to impossible to find in working order and very difficult to repair and then fail again anyway. I was told this by a number of professional restorers.

[NardDogz]

@christo930 I've been lucky with mine in that it hasn't failed me yet. Good thing too, and my electronic skills are pretty basic. I can recap power supplies and monitors, measure voltages, try swapping out ICs and other parts, etc. but not go much too further than that. Often this works, but for other problems, I send stuff out for repair. Mark Shostak at cinelabs is the guy for these machines!

[Bigfriendly15]

Starcastle is one of those classic arcade games that kinda got lost in the shuffle over time. Don't ever remember it getting ported over to home systems. Several years ago I was visiting an old friend in the St. Petersburg Fla. area and we went to a Dave& Busters type of place. In a small corner they had a few classic games and Star-Castle was one of them. It was a blast playing it again after so many years!

[Tamanozke]

Do all the graphics really glow like that or was that how it was filmed?

If they glow like that, this has to be one of the prettiest looking games ever.

[xpez]

@Tamanozke the bright lines on the monitor set off by the black background and the type of CRT display naturally causes an interesting kind of glow and tracer artifacts...its a timeless aesthetic in my opinion...

[QUIZFILTER]

@xpez Yeah theres always been something so cool about that classic arcade display look, I agree... timeless... DAMN I miss those arcade & pizza parlor days & nights so much!!

[RobNLynchburgVA]

I loved this game.

[Xpert74]

Never heard of this game before, but it looks great! After doing some research I found that it has only ever been ported to the Vectrex. I've gotta get one now... or maybe an arcade machine, heh

[ShaneIrwinPhoto]

I used to love this game back in the day! Now I realized why I sucked at it. I never thought of the bouncing back and forth attack strategy. Very nice.

[DJCandyManMike]

This was the first video game I can remember playing. I hope to one day get an arcade cabinet of it.

[thebailey67]

2 people have never played a single game.

[DamageRenamo]

Gawd! I remeber on the weekends at the arcade it was like a party at the arcade there would be people crammed around the most popular games at the time slippin' their creds into the game waitin' their turn. Was only 8 at the time but what a golden age of the arcade! Lived in the 'cades til they started to die around the early '90's but this game will always remind me of the best of the best!

[maxthunder72]

It's a pleasure seeing this game played by someone who actually knows what the hell they're doing.

[northbreed1a]

Superb! The best arcade game ever. Thanks for taking the time to upload this video!

[NardDogz]

@northbreed1a Glad you enjoyed it.  There are several more videos now to watch, including someone who has mastered it.

[therush420]

Maximum Overdrive sent me.

[p4horror]

Oh well, at least you got to kill that ship one last time.

[XxL3GiiTD33ZYX]

shyt i wasnt even born wen this game came out but wen i was old enough to actually knw how to work a game i was addicted to this.. not like these modern games, all they want is money for a shitty game. Good Gameplay

[guyinfl99]

God I loved this game and it brings back such childhood memories, when me and my brother would try to scrape up quarters to play these machines. A local restaurant had a small arcade in the back room, and sometimes when our mother gave us money to walk to the Mcdonalds next to the restaurant, we would take half the money and spend it in the arcade and share our Mcdonalds. Our mother would have killed us if she knew but the arcade was like heaven back then.

[tomcamp6023]

Used to go up to the corner burger joint. Order a large Fries and a coke and put my quarter up on the machine and have one good time with a few other friends and then hop on my Honda XR75 motorcycle and book home. Cops didn't care back then. You were free to do what you wanted as long as you did hurt someone. Great times!!

[GaryMcT]

I have one of these at home now!!! Still a great game.

[luvindogadis411]

Loved this game in the arcades back in the 80's. Still one of my favorites.

[vk4akp]

I so want ot play one of these b4 they are lost to history!. Sj of the RCC. shazam.zapto.org .-.-.

[MrMegaFredzeppelin]

This was one of my favorite games back in the day

[Haseeb2]

Good job man.

[silicon212]

STAR CASTLE FTW! I used to play this so much when I was 12 ...

[sprint234]

great video. this was one of my favorite games. Along with Defender, Bezerk, and Asteroids.

[Hot80s]

i recall alot of these ended up in bars, men enjoyed getting shit-faced and playing this & then drive home without a worry.

[NardDogz]

@Hot80s Heh I can believe that... most of them that I see have control panels pitted with cigarette burns

[Roger161]

Hell Yeah !! STAR CASTLE BABY !!

[Roger161]

@Roger161 : Gotta love all the other video games playin in the background !!

[pendejadafcc]

I really don't wanna go through updating romsets, do you know of a way to download the right emulator or roms to prevent missing.. rom images or whatever?

[jurrasic]

Bad luck on that second-to-last castle, bud! Excellent play of a dang hard game. Back in the day i don't think i got much past the 4th castle, but then i never really tried to master this one, unlike its vector brothers Red Baron and Starhawk that got most of my quarters. :)

[Pablo113]

Awesome game, I remember it from back in the day! I miss the 80's!

Pablo

[B44WDC]

loved dis game as a kid !!!!!! as welll

[Cloudwalker60]

I loved this game ... I once spent 11 hrs playing the game ... had almost 2 million points and over 330 ships left when I gave up ... hands were stiff from the repetition ... corner to corner was the key ...

[illadvised50]

Oh my god, the sounds! This brings back memories. What a great feeling it was walking into an arcade. $5 dollars in hand and hours to kill! lol

[Rambleredhead]

This was my favorite game and I wish I could find one to play again - it was a great game of my youth!

[atarileaf]

Wow, you're a lot better than I was at this game. Great video :)

[NardDogz]

I'm pretty average. Somewhere on youtube is a video of a guy who was going for the world record with a zillion spare ships, until his machine crapped out on him. It shows the corner-to-corner flyby attack technique which is needed to get that far.

[genegene002]

WOW! I was 8 years old when this game came out and I loved it! I still remember the joy I had the first time I took out that inner ship! Thanks for the memories! :)

[NardDogz]

Same here. I remember seeing this machine for the first time as well! It has a lot of personality for such a simple game.

[Jafromobile]

@genegene002 Same here. Damn, this video really takes me back... I pumped soooooo many quarters in this. Stole most of them from Dad's piggy bank because I was a sneaky little bastard. Never a quarter in that thing.

Would do anything to buy one of these relics... or a table-top style Defender or Stargate.

[Navdan87]

This was a fantastic game!! Thanks for the post!!

[yaywhewclips242]

Does anyone remember the regional dept. store called "TWO GUYS"?? It used to have an arcade inside the STORE!! Not only did it have this classic game. But, it had 3-4 SKEE BALL machines!! Along w/ various Pinball and arcade machines. TWO GUYS was on Hudson Ave. near E. Ridge Road (in Rochester NY) where Super WAL-MART is now. It was kinda of a crappy dirty store. But they had a good cheap toy dept.! (CLOSED 1982)

[DarkCylon]

I remember Two Guys. They had at least one location in southern California. I don't think most people this side of the country know them.

[tim300cx5]

tk for the real shit

[GDLarcade]

Thanks for the video! Always like to see people remembering and enjoying the classics. On the hard ROMs I'd say that you'd probably get around 20k-21k with that strategy. Around 20k the sparks start getting really aggressive, which makes it tough to play that way. Looks like you've got pretty good control so you might break 21k though.

[NardDogz]

Thanks for the comment. The head-on attack, retreat, repeat pattern is based on what I remember other kids using on the machine back in the day.

Still have to try the corner-to-corner fly by attack approach that others are recommending here!

[surfexp]

There was a plastic in front of the tv with colored circles to create zone(3-4 circle).Wow lots of souvenirs!!!!

[surfexp]

Well, i use to play this game in early 80'. But it was monchrome, and i dont see any around here! Mine was for one player only!

[kodiak1966]

I spent hours on this game in the early 80's.Same with missile command and defender.I mastered all three games after a few months..needless to say I must have spent 500 on each game lol

[Lars2121]

This was my favorite arcade game growing up......I think I plugged enough quarters into this game to put my kids through college!! LOL!! Thanks for posting this!

[NebraskaGrunt]

were you playing in a jungle?

[NardDogz]

You must be referring to the background audio track. That is called "Arcade Ambiance" by Andy Hofle. If you do a search for it, he has different versions for different years.

This is what a packed video arcade sounded like around 1981.

[Komet163B]

Back in the day when these machines were in the arcades, most that I saw produced a really cool sound effect when the rings regenerated. This machine in the video doesn't make the sound, nor did one that I personally played in 1997. My original 1980 manual doesn't mention this mysterious but very cool sound effect.. My guess is that it was added in 1981 produced machines and the 1980 built machines didn't have it. Anyone else remember the ring regeneration sound effect??

[Komet163B]

The Apple II clone game, called "Galaxy Gates" replicated this ring regeneration sound almost perfectly. The rest of its sounds sucked though and were inferior to the arcade machine.

[NardDogz]

Hmmm, I don't remember that. You might try listening to infarc's machine on the video response and see if it does that. His machine apparently has a newer rom set and does a few things differently.

[rotarydialz]

Yeah, that pattern was awesome. We used to wedge a folded straw in the thrust button. Fly on the diagonal and strafe the castle on each pass. It got boring after a while but I loved the sounds.

[rsp196607]

A friend scored 1,186,000 points on this game and then quit with 97 ships remaining. This took him about 5.5 hours.

He had developed a pattern. He drove the ship in a straight path that wrapped alternately across the upper left and lower right corners of the screen, and he turned the ship to fire at the castle on each pass.

The game's level of difficulty rolled over about every 100,000 points, but its points-count and ships-count didn't roll over.

[NardDogz]

Thanks for the info. I'll have to give that a try. I do remember kids tying up the machine for hours back in the day but was never sure what their secret technique was.

[Komet163B]

Yes the pattern you describe will work indefinitely on the early ROM version. The late ROMs speed up the movement of the homing sparks fast enough to foil this pattern, it will not work.

[cfx5000]

The sound this game makes reminds of every arcade I ever visited during my childhood.

[infarc]

Posted up a video response. Your Star Castle behaves differently than mine does, specifically after you kill the central cannon, your score does NOT indicate the number of remaining ships, and also seems to rush through that sequence a little too quickly. The central cannon "fireballs" seem to be a bit slow on yours as well, although that could just be perception. I am curious if you have an odd ROM set or something?

[NardDogz]

Wow! It's great to see a SC in a real operating arcade. Awesome. Ground Kontrol in Portland may still have theirs, but last time I saw it the monitor was so dim it was essentially unplayable.

Regarding the play behavior, I booted MAME and found that the older romset plays like my machine. The rev 3 (starcas) romset matches your video. So mine must have never have been upgraded! I have a spare working boardset and am now wondering what set that has. Thanks for posting this! Sweet arcade!!

[poppatyre]

I bought a mint star castle machine for 200 bucks a few years back. can't remember my high score but i ruled. then some kids ripped the guts out of it when i wasn't home and put a nintendo inside. sigh...

[67nootka]

Ahh, this brings back great memories.

I loved this game back in the day!

Enjoy the sounds as much as anything else.

[scir91]

this reminds me of SOLAR QUEST on the Vectrex system

[Maxxarcade]

The monitor in that machine is nice and bright. Was it always in a home setting, or just lightly used?

Cinematronics games are probably the only ones I've never seen in person. They seem rare in my neck of the woods.

[NardDogz]

The game was on a route at some time. It had a lock bar installed across the coin door, and plenty of cigarette burns on the control panel. Luckily it survived those days pretty well. Yeah, dim CRTs are common with these machines, especially Amperex brand ones. The CRT is the video is NEW. Collector Tony Girasoli (discsoftron)directed me to the supplier. I seem to see plenty of dead CT vector games, it's the working ones that are alot less common! I will have a vid of my Space Wars up soon.

[Supersaiyan79]

Nice color vector graphics. I haven't seen this game before.

[NardDogz]

From the video, it does look like color vector graphics, doesn't it? Actually, it's a black and white game with a plastic color overlay. In an brightly lighted arcade, Star Castle machines really would stand out from other machines with their bright blue screens and red/orange bullseyes in the center. This was Cinematronics biggest hit before Dragon's Lair... popular around 1980-82. CT vector machines were harder to maintain than most others, so they soon became a rare sight in arcades. Thanks