Tony's Arcade

It was time to have a little arcade tournament at Tony’s Arcade. Some smack-talk had been going around about who was better at Tempest, who could beat who, etc. It was also time to give EDOT a thorough shake down, now that it was fully operational. Some e-mails were sent, calls made, and games were turned on. After the party began, we had some competitions going on (like Rob trying to beat the high score on Tron at the upper right). Nothing was more heated than the competition between Rob and Ken on Star Castle. Ken played Star Castle for nearly an hour straight getting the high score of the party. Then Rob decided enough was enough and hit a new all-time high score on Star Castle. Believe me, it was awful to watch.

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The Environmental Discs of Tron (EDOT) has another added feature beyond the extra controls and lighting effects. Speech! Throughout the game, Sark laughs at you, taunts you, and yells phrases such as, “Bring in the logic probe!” I’m not sure if the voice is David Warner‘s, but, there is a slight British accent in the digitized voice of Sark.To generate the speech in EDOT, a separate circuit board — the Bally Squawk and Talk — is used. This circuit board is capable of playing compressed, digitized speech stored on ROMs as well as generate sound effects. The Squawk & Talk wasn’t working when I received the EDOT. This post details what I had to do to get Sark back to his old taunting self.

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