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Starcade Review
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- Written by: Webknight
- Category: Webknight's Video Game Corner
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I recently visited a retro arcade in the Twin Cities called Starcade.
They are located at:
Keg & Case Market
928 7th Street West, St. Paul, MN 55102
Admission is:
- 4 Years & Under: Free
- 5-11 Years: $15
- 12 Years & Up: $20
- 65 Years & Older: $15
One of the nice things that they have available is that you can rent the entire arcade on Mondays or Tuesdays for $600 for 2 hours. (Each guest is then $10 per person)
They are one of the largest arcades in Minnesota with over 200 Cabs from the 1970's to the 2000's with classic games like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Gauntlet, Missile Commander, etc, etc. All of the set to free to play.
The time that I spent there I was with a couple of friends and they found two games they had not played in years: Robotron 2084 and Sinistar. I found two that I had not played in ages: Dragon Spirit (I couldn't make it past the first level) and Dr. Mario (I got the high score on that one.)
The one thing that I really liked about the place was the admission price, which was good for the entire day (as long as you leave your wristband on) you can go home, go out to eat. Whatever you wanted to do and then you could come back and play until closing.
During my time there I found that only a couple of Cabs were out of order. However, there have been times where I have visited arcades that most of the Cabs were not in working condition. Another good thing that I found at Starcade was that the monitors for all of the Cabs seem to be in pristine condition. Unfortunately there have been times when visited other arcades I had found older Cabs where the monitor had a lot of wear and tear damage that was visible.
On the cleanliness front the place was very orderly and spotless. As for the number of Cabs that they had in the place I never felt cramped and I believe that it had a nice balance between the number of Cabs and space in between them.
They have non-alcoholic beverages available and a small pizzeria. It was a little pricey, but the food was decent and the soft drinks were from the main soft drink companies, along with a nice diverse amount of indie soft drink makers. There are also a number of other places to eat nearby if you wanted something beyond what was available in house.
Overall I consider Starcade a quality retro arcade that can keep the younger crowd entertained, while providing the older crowd with the shot of nostalgia they were looking for.
The Luminiferous Æther Continued
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- Written by: Silas DeShane
- Category: The Disciplines & Differentiations of Mechanology
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The Michelson–Morley experiment was an attempt to measure the motion of the Earth relative to the Luminiferous Æther, a medium that permeated space, which was thought to be the carrier of light waves. The experiment was performed between April and July of 1856 by the physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley at what is in your world the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and published in November of that year.
The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the luminiferous æther, or the ætheric wind as it was sometimes called. The result was negative, in that Michelson and Morley found no significant difference between the speed of light in the direction of movement through the presumed æther, and the speed at right angles.
But, on my world Sir James Bartleby Wittscombe, in an experiment done after the failure of the Michelson-Morley Experiment in 1856, proved that the M-M test only invalided the rigid, mechanical æther that was hypothesized in the first part of the 19th century on my world.
The modern facts of the æther in my universe is that it is a dynamic fluid, and those facts came out of his experiments. Wittscombe's experiments explained how the Michelson-Morley Experiment's results were from having the æther near the surface of the Earth moving along in conjunction with the planet. Thus locally there was no difference in the speed of light along the different paths of the interferometer because the æther was stationary relative to the experiment.
Wittscombe's main experiment pointed out that the formulas of electrodynamics, formulated by Maxwell, and the formulas of perfect fluid hydrodynamics are identical. He quotes Sir Horace Lamb's book, Hydrodynamics:
There is an exact correspondence between the analytical relations above developed and certain formulae in Electro-magentism... "Hence, the vortex-filaments correspond to electric circuits, the strengths of the vortices to the strengths of the currents in these circuits, sources and sinks to positive and negative poles, and, finally, fluid velocity to magnetic force." Hydrodynamics, Sir Horace Lamb, page 210. It was first published in 1866 on my world, on yours it was published in 1895.
The problem with the math was that the convective derivatives are non-linear and solving the equations required far more numbers crunching power than was available in the early 19th century on your world, and on my world they were not solved until the Babbage Analytical Engine was invented and perfected.
So the Ætheric equations that we use today on my world are linearized, simplified forms that make the the math not just easier, but doable. That's why the æther theorists of the early 19th century on your world had such a hard time, they did not have the Analytical Engine to help them solve the equations.
Godspeed, Silas
Heat - Pedal to the Metal Review
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- Written by: Webknight
- Category: Webknight's Board Game Corner
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Glossary:
1. Boost Cards - Boost cards have a + symbol on them and they introduce a random element that may be good or bad for the player when played.
2. Heat Cards - Heat cards represent the strain on the player's vehicles engine when they push it too hard. Heat can only be gained by shuffling the player's discard pile into their draw pile.
3. Speed Cards - Speed cards have a number value on the card. This indicates how many spaces the players vehicle can move on the track.
4. Spinouts - Spinouts are when the player takes a corner too fast and do not have enough heat to make up the difference. The player resets their gear shift to first gear and position their vehicle at the at the corner line.
Overview:
The objective of the game is to complete two laps around the track. There are four race tracks that come with the base game, while there are two other tracks available in the expansions. However, there are players who are designing their own custom tracks to use in the game.
Each track has a certain layout that have corners in the track that requires the player to navigate without going into a spinout. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Slow down to the speed marked in the center of the turn.
2. Spend heat to make up the difference.
Each player receives a player board that has an illustrated sequence of play on the top, with three boxes for the draw, engine, discard pile underneath. To the right of the boxes is a gear display, to show what gear your vehicle is in.
While the draw and discard piles are pretty obvious, the engine pile is where the six heat cards that the player starts the game with are located. The player will want to keep as much heat as they can in the engine pile. Both to spend when needed, and to prevent their hand from becoming full of heat cards that they cannot discard. The player can only use cooldowns to get heat out of their hand, which will be explained shortly.
When the game begins the first action that the player does is draw seven cards from the draw pile that they add to their hand.
In the next action the player begins in first gear and may shift up one or two gears. Later in the game the player may shift up or down one or two gears per turn.
If the player only shifts one gear they do not have to spend any heat, but if the player shifts two gears they have to spend a heat card. The gear that the player's vehicle is in is the number of cards that the player can use that turn. After all players have selected their cards and placed them face down they are then revealed and the player can move the number of spaces shown on their cards played, or use them to react to any special cards that have been placed.
Actions:
1. Boost - Pay 1 Heat and the player may draw until they get a Speed card. Once the Speed card is drawn the player moves their vehicle forward a number of spaces equal to the Speed number on the card.
2. Adrenaline - If the player has moved last, or second to last with 5+ vehicles, the player can add one Speed and moves forward one Space. Also, the player may use a cooldown action to return one heat back to the engine pile.
3. Slipstreaming - If the player is directly behind or beside another vehicle they may slipstream to move two spaces and pass the vehicle in front of them.
4. Corner Check - If the player is making a corner check, they compare their current speed to the max speed of the curve and pay 1 heat card for every speed factor that they are over that limit. The player may ignore any speed gained by slipstreaming.
5 Discard - The player may discard as many cards as they wish, face up. However, non-discardable cards have an X symbol in the upper right and left corners.
6. Replenish Hand - The player may return any cards that have been played to the discard pile, then draw back up to seven cards. But, if the draw pile is empty the player shuffles the discard pile and adds it to the draw pile.
Now I need to discuss cooldowns. Cooldowns allow the player to discard heat cards back to the engine pile. Cooldowns are available when the player's vehicle is in first gear, 3 cooldowns, 2nd gear, 1 cooldown, or through the adrenaline action.
The average play time is 30-60 minutes, but the first playthrough may take roughly one and a half hours.
Unfortunately, I have only played the base game. But the next time that I play I will add some of the advanced rules in the game, like the rule to modify vehicles or add weather conditions to the game.
The Luminiferous Æther
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- Written by: Silas DeShane
- Category: The Disciplines & Differentiations of Mechanology
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Before I can speak on the disciplines of Mechanology I must speak on the basis for Mechanology even existing... The Luminiferous Æther. In both of our worlds the study of the Luminiferous Æther continued down the same path, up until the Michelson-Morley Experiment... and that is where our worlds diverged.
On my world science experiments in light diffraction and interference determined that light behaved like a transverse wave. However, a wave could not exist without a medium to transmit it. The theorists of my world, Young and Fresnel, proposed that the universe was filled with an invisible substance they called the 'æther'. This æther had remarkable qualities that made it both rigid yet intangible, strong yet tenuous. Lord Kelvin, one of the foremost scientists of your Victorian age, as well as my former world, described it thusly:
"Now what is the luminiferous æther? It is matter prodigiously less dense than air; millions and millions and millions of times less dense than air. We can form some sort of idea of its limitations. We believe it is a real thing, with great rigidity in comparison with its density: it may be made to vibrate 400 million million times per second; and yet be of such density as to not produce the slightest resistance to any body going through it." (From a lecture on the Wave Theory Of Light, delivered at The Academy Of Music in Philadelphia, Under The Auspices Of The Franklin Institute, On my world it was given on September 29th, 1878, while on your world it was given by Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) on September 29th, 1884.
Added to that Professor Etienne Moreau hypothesized that the æther, like the matter and energy of the universe, was not evenly distributed because of its interaction with matter caused thin patches, vortices, and even compact clumps. He theorized that the interaction of matter, energy, and the æther meant that the former could be used to manipulate the latter. Nicola Tesla turned Moreau's theories into practice by formulating his 'Movement Cycle' and 'Release Cycle', which described the relationships between the three. That, in turn, allowed him to build a working Æther Propellor and opened the solar system to exploration and exploitation by the human species.
In my next journal entry I will discuss the Michelson-Morley Experiment and how our two worlds diverged in their interpretation of it.
Godspeed, Silas
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