1983 Williams video game promo tape

frobozz

New member
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
30
Reaction score
0
Location
Mundelein, Illinois
I've captured and uploaded the 1983 promo tape from Williams. This was a pretty awful year for Williams games, ugh! But they're all therefore pretty rare, including the almost-never-before-seen-by-any-human-still-alive Devastator! This was clearly before they got direct video capture equipment. It's just a camera pointed at the screen, and time didn't do any favors to this VHS copy of it either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ZSCQockuU

Includes gameplay from Turkey Shoot, Mystic Marathon, Bubbles, Splat!, Speed Ball Contest at Neonworld, Inferno, Sinistar, Devastator, Star Rider, and Blaster in the 30 wave version.

Duncan
 
Thanks for posting this, loved it. Any other information about where this came from? Seems to be a wide range of release dates covered and the players/announcer are pretty bad.
 
Liked the "30 Minutes" special. Sent that to my daughter. I said, "See the hair on those kids? Mine was the same!"
 
Very cool video... Its interesting that they tried to mix it up with various new control schemes, very hard to live up to what came before! I do like Bubbles, but that might because it got me through a vacation week at a very boring family reunion. It was at the convenience store across form our hotel when the game was brand new.
 
Thanks for sharing. Inferno looks cool, I hadn't seen gameplay of it before. Robotron + Crystal Castles seems like a good combo. I'd be interested in trying out those diagonal joysticks.
 
Awesome vid. That's the first time i have ever seen the gameplay for Mystic Marathon and Turkey Shoot. Makes me want to own both. I love Splat! and Bubbles. After Robotron, they are the 2 games i play most on my jRok board. I owned Sinistar, but it was just too damned hard. I really think Splat! had huge potential.
 
Turkey Shoot looks like tons of fun, and it has Turketron!
TurkETron.jpg


Inferno is like evil Crystal Castles!

Devastator is so awesome, why didn't this get produced?!

Star Rider has amazing graphics! Blows me away!

And Blaster is the daddy of Star Fox!

Duncan[/QUOTE]
 
This video confirms what we all suspected: everyone was high on coke in the mid 80s. Some of those themes are so bad! The games do get better as the video goes on though. Sinister is full of awesome, and now I want one :/
 
Thanks for sharing that. It was interesting to see some of the marketing spin on games that I worked on and helped playtest.

ken
 
Devastator looks like it had so much potential.

It definitely looks like it was a completed game, judging by the brief shot of the control panel. I wonder whatever happened to that machine?
 
Mystic Marathon and Sinistar are 2 of my favorite Williams games. Devastator looks cool as does Inferno.
 
At least commercially speaking that was quite the collection of suckage, but they certainly weren't just trying to make boring old me-too games!

I owned an arcade/sub shop at the time and we had both Sinistar and Bubbles. Sinistar did quite well with the male game geeks, while the only way we got Bubbles to make any money was to put it right next to where people waiting for to-go food would stand... so they'd drop a quarter in to while the time away.

I got this from a fellow-ex-Williams employee who found it amongst his stuff.

Oh yeah - Devastator got far enough along for a prototype to go out on test, and it may have even been at a couple of shows, but it didn't do well, the hardware was one-off and flaky, and there were apparently some behind the scenes politics that blew up and killed any chance of the game being made. It was designed by Steve Ritchie, developed independently out in California, and manufactured by Williams. I see KLOV says someone has the board set. Is that anyone here? Have you ever tried to get it fired up?

Duncan
 
Last edited:
Having played Inferno, Turkey Shoot and Mystic Marathon, I can assure you they suck badly.

I must protest on behalf of Inferno! :)

As an owner of an Inferno upright that also goes to CAX each year (it's probably the one you have tried out, yes?), Inferno is a very fun game actually.

It has all of the elements of a classic Williams game...if you make it to CAX this summer, find me and I'll show you some of the cool aspects of the gameplay, particularly when you get to the higher levels and/or enter the demon's mouth to take on the "Inferno" wave itself!

If Inferno had come out during the height of the arcade craze, I firmly believe it would have been as big of a hit as the other Williams biggies of the time...

And thanks for posting this vid!

Jonathan
 
Having played Inferno, Turkey Shoot and Mystic Marathon, I can assure you they suck badly.

Agree completely on Mystic Marathon. Horrible game. And I gave this game enough chances to know my opinion is not going to change. It's just outright bad.

Disagree completely on Turkey Shoot. It's a great game and virtually every person that plays it at my game parties all like it. It's one of the games that gets "non-stop play" at game parties. Now I will say, if you've only played the Turkey Shoot that was at CAX for several years, I can understand why you say it's bad. The monitor was very poorly converged and the boardset seems a little flaky too. I didn't like playing that one at all.

Jury still out for me on Inferno. Only played it a few times. I really want to like this game, but the few times I tried it, it didn't bowl me over. I'm hoping it's a case of "I, Robot", which took me several games to catch on. I hated I, Robot at first, but now I think it's great.
 
Back
Top Bottom