Sunday 25 February 2018

Arcade Memories: Out Run et al.

While in general, I am too young and from a region without big gaming arcades back in the time (at least to my knowledge), there were some placed at the ice skating rink of my hometown, presumably many years after their original releases. While there where several ones (one must have been Michael Jackson's Moonwalker), the one that got stuck most in my memory was Out Run, a racing game with the objective to finish a course using a sport scar versus a strict timer.
I do not remember if I just watched others back then or how I fared back then if I tried. But as nowadays you can just play it online, for example on archive.org via streamed arcade emulator, I gave it another run. I could not even finish the first level. Arcade games were serious business, that would not go easy on you (as they wanted your money and where often quite short, this is not even surprising).

Apart from the ice rink, I remember a gaming arcade at the holiday resort in Croatia my family visited several times. There, I saw Ghosts n' Goblins for the first time! I also do remember one other game about a bald guy with a naginata and other Japanese weapons that I have not identified so far. If anyone has a clue of what game I am talking about, I would be really happy if you comment on it.

Stay Epic!

Wednesday 7 February 2018

Photobox: First Tests

During the last weeks, I did some constructing and testing for my photobox project. After a bit of thinking, the box itself was quickly done from an amazon cardboard box, baking parchment and tape.

The trickier part is the illumination. While I got one LED-desk lamp for testing, I was lucky to be able to borrow two illumination units from an expert photographer, leading to a first test:

Zooming in onto the minatures shows some promise:

Definitely a major quality improvement incoming here!


Here is a second test series. First a picture made with my camera:
And one with the phone:

As now the lighting is improved, I fear that also a better suited camera might be necessary...

Also, I am still not sure if I should go for only white light or as in the pictures, a bit of yellow. Seems like I should research a bit about colour temparatures.

Stay Epic (And Tuned)!