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| Why were mirrors originally used in so many early cabs? |
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| idsane:
Got ya. Did any use magnifiers to make the screen look bigger or were they all just reg mirrors. Cheyenne... I just rediscovered that game for the first time in 20 years, love it! |
| CheffoJeffo:
--- Quote from: idsane on April 13, 2011, 11:38:47 am ---Got ya. Did any use magnifiers to make the screen look bigger or were they all just reg mirrors. Cheyenne... I just rediscovered that game for the first time in 20 years, love it! --- End quote --- The Exidy 440 games are some of the most fun that I have ever played and CKF is dead-on about the reason for using the mirror. |
| idsane:
I am playing it with the mouse but having a full original cheyenne game would be awesome if one ever popped up on craigs |
| CheffoJeffo:
Then you add an Exidy 440 Multiboard (if you can find one) and you can play all of the great Exidy shooters. |
| RandyT:
--- Quote from: CrazyKongFan on April 12, 2011, 06:32:32 pm ---Yeah, I agree with Bender. Alot of the games that did this also have a backdrop the image projects onto, giving it a more realistic look (like Space Invaders, Omega Race, Asteroids Deluxe, etc). --- End quote --- Any normal games which used a mirror, did so strictly for overlay purposes. I've seen games with mirrors on a black backdrop, but that was more than likely because the overlay portion was missing, damaged, etc... There is a benefit to doing this, however. In an environment with a lot of ambient light where the source isn't directly behind the player (like a big window to the outside), the monitor is more immune to washout, as it's face is deeply shrouded. --- Quote --- I think some of the shooting games may have needed it due to the close proximity of the gun. --- End quote --- Pretty much. Technically speaking, you don't need a lot of distance, as long as you can make the targets small enough to appear to be in the distance. This is easy to do nowadays, because common resolutions in use are much greater and small targets can still be well defined. Not so much with the lower res monitors of that era, so they really needed to push them back optically to keep detail in the imagery. One of the neat things about those shooting games was the fact that the monitor face actually appeared to be further away than was possible, given the physically shorter depth of the cabinet. That's something which can only be done by putting a large(ish) monitor way down deep in the base of the cabinet and using a fold mirror. It's also important to note that these mirrors were probably what is known as "first surface" mirrors (or at least they should have been). These are mirrors that have the reflective surface on the same side as the light they are reflecting, which eliminates ghost images, as well as the ~4% per reflected surface loss in brightness. |
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