Hi All,
Bit of an odd topic, considering games have moved away from the 'short' arcade formula to a more long-term, epic formula but I was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of any good books on those classic arcade game designs.
Simple games like the classics such as Donkey Kong, Defender, Galaga, etc. are all (at first sight) extremely simple and straight forward but usually have one or more multiple difficulty ramps that are all there to take a player's money. Like I said, odd request.. While some of this stuff is pretty straightforward, just curious if this has been documented anywhere..
[edit: bumped into this
http://gamifique.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/5-game-design-theory-and-practice.pdf, which goes into the mechanics of centipede in chapter 4, which is an interesting read. Despite the simple mechanics, it's extremely well balanced]
-Z8