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Alex St.John at Austin CGDC

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David Springer

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Feb 10, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/10/98
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Well I got to meet him and have a private conversation for a few
minutes. I can see why Microsoft hired him as a game evangelist,
he's quite a charismatic character.

Anyhow, in his seminar he spent most of the time harping on
the benefits of porting regular PC games to the "Public PC".

Public PC is basically a wintel box, no keyboard, a few types
of controls for various games racing, fighting, flight, etc,
3D accelerator, networked, and a coin slot. Your basic
arcade machine only standard Wintel hardware inside.

Question: Have any of y'all heard of this and what's your
take on it ?

There's more information and a free API/SDK for linking up with
the coin slot and various other unique features of a public PC
at http://www.nani.com

I was considering porting some of my games to a variation called
a bartop PC, which only has a touchscreen.

David Springer
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Frank C. Earl

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Feb 11, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/11/98
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On 10 Feb 1998 08:08:04 GMT, spri...@matrix.eden.com (David Springer)
wrote:

>Well I got to meet him and have a private conversation for a few
>minutes. I can see why Microsoft hired him as a game evangelist,
>he's quite a charismatic character.

Damn shame that I couldn't be in several places at once at the CGDC,
David. I wanted to see his session- but there was that Pentium-II one
that Dave Dyson and I wanted to see that was at the same time. That
was pretty useful in and of itself to us.

[Public PC stuff snipped...]

>Question: Have any of y'all heard of this and what's your
>take on it ?

Heard of it. Personally, I think it's a "six of one, half dozen of
another" type thing. For at least some things, it's a good thing- for
others, the PC hardware isn't up to snuff. I doubt that dedicated,
special coin-op hardware's going to drop off the face of the earth
anytime soon or be displaced wholesale out of the market space by
Public PC.

>There's more information and a free API/SDK for linking up with
>the coin slot and various other unique features of a public PC
>at http://www.nani.com

Saw the vendor display. The boxes that were there were-
interesting...

>I was considering porting some of my games to a variation called
>a bartop PC, which only has a touchscreen.

That'd be cool- but would you have enough of a market to merit the
port? I've not seen your games yet- what makes them special compared
to the current crop of barside card games that are already out there?


--
Frank C. Earl
Earl Consulting Services
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Minh Truong

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Feb 11, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/11/98
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David Springer wrote in message <6bp1t5$h22$1...@boris.eden.com>...
>[snip]


>
>Public PC is basically a wintel box, no keyboard, a few types
>of controls for various games racing, fighting, flight, etc,
>3D accelerator, networked, and a coin slot. Your basic
>arcade machine only standard Wintel hardware inside.
>

>Question: Have any of y'all heard of this and what's your
>take on it ?

>[snip]

That's very interesting, IIRC, BillyG was pushing a very similar
configuration for arcade consoles. How's St.John associated w/ PublicPC?
Maybe, St.John's trying to scoop BillyG? Remember St.John didn't leave on
good terms?

Well, my big question is how viable is Windows95 as a console gamming
platform. I think one of the difference of home gaming and arcade gamming
is that people who play arcade games expect the game to be perfect, ie. no
short, unexplained pauses, when Windows goes off and do its own thing. Is
there something you can do in Win32 if you can assume that nothing's going
on in the background? Is there something that one can do NOW?


Mirkurius

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Feb 12, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/12/98
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>Well, my big question is how viable is Windows95 as a console gamming
>platform. I think one of the difference of home gaming and arcade gamming
>is that people who play arcade games expect the game to be perfect, ie. no
>short, unexplained pauses, when Windows goes off and do its own thing

Not positive, but I believe that this platform is based on Win NT 5.

Mirkurius

DILLUSIONS

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Feb 26, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/26/98
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Alex St. John is also the keynote speaker at the upcoming IGDN Austin Game
Developers Conference on March 14th.

For more information check out the IGDN web site at www.igdn.org.

Gordon Walton
IGDN
www.igdn.org

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