Talk:Galaxy Game/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 16:08, 24 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I know, I know, I am falling further behind and here I go taking on another one. The good news is I have a lot of free time over the next few days and should be able to wrap all of these up. Indrian (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, let's get this one knocked out, then I will double back and do the early games parent article.

Lead

"It featured a blue fiberglass casing with the PDP-11 inside one of them" - Does not make sense. I assume that this is supposed to indicate that each monitor was housed in its own casing, one of which also contained the computer.
"and the capability for four monitors to play multiple games simultaneously" - The monitors don't play the game, should probably be "to play multiple games simultaneously on four monitors."

Wow, that whole sentence is a garbled mess, isn't it. Reworked as two sentences to address both issues. --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Background

"while exploring the steam tunnels and buildings of the campus" - Pitts was certainly fond of exploring the steam tunnels and breaking into university buildings, but breaking into the AI lab was its own endeavor one evening; the current wording makes it sound like he was actively exploring other locations on the night he discovered SAIL.

Tweaked to say it was a hobby he had, not something he was in the middle of that night (perhaps if he broke into the building from a steam tunnel...) --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Pitts often played against Hugh Tuck, a friend from high school" - In the previous sentence, you mention that Pitts is playing with other Stanford students, so the implication here is that Tuck was a Stanford student as well. We should probably mention that he was a Cal Poly student. (I know you state this later, but it probably needs to be moved up here.)

Done. --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a toggle switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad" - Looks like a copy/paste from the Spacewar article. Galaxy Game, of course, has a different control scheme. You have the correct controls below, so this sentence can probably just be excised.

Whoops, yeah, I did copy-paste after you copyedited Spacewar. Dropped the mention of the old control scheme. --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Development

"started with a US$4,000 Data General Nova computer which they thought would be powerful enough to run the game; when it turned out to not be" - Technically, a Nova is powerful enough to run the game, and Data General even did just that. What it was not powerful enough to do was run four to six games at once, which was necessary to make the game profitable.

Yeah, I haven't started looking deeper into the development of Computer Space than what is here; it's implied in some sources that they couldn't get it to run it at all, though I know it was done by at least one other programmer before them. Adjusted here and a few sentences later to say that they needed to run multiple games simultaneously to make the cost worth it, and they couldn't find a way before they worked out the custom solution instead. --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Two things that should probably be worked in here somewhere, both of which can be found in the Galaxy Game entry of the "All in Color for a Quarter" blog. First, the display adapter was built by a third person, Ted Panofsky. Second, the story of locating joysticks for the game, which were not yet common outside of military applications, is also worth telling here.

Hmm, I guess I was thinking that cheap joysticks could be found for electronic crane games and the like, and they went military because they wanted something sturdier, but I don't know the history of electronic arcade games enough to know if that's plausible it's probably worth mentioning in any case. Added the Panofski bit, the joysticks, mentioned where they got the coin acceptors, and threw in a bit about the joysticks being modified in the 2nd version. --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And that's it. The article is in really good shape and should get promoted in no time. I'll go ahead and place this On hold while changes are made. Indrian (talk) 15:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Indrian: responded to everything inline, think I've gotten it all. Thanks for reviewing! --Pres N 16:43, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Everything here has been addressed, and I just completed a copy edit, so we are good to go. Well done once again! Indrian (talk) 23:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]