1: Omega Race was awesome. The one I played was controlled by a weird, stubby, metal joystick that I always felt was remaindered from some other thing.
2: My son and I have talked a lot about how my understanding of games was shaped by the design decisions of the quarter-eaters. All of them -- all of them -- ultimately came down to "F*ck You - Pay Me" and were built, after allowing a certain teensy adrenaline rush for success, to drive out anyone but the savant. So many fine examples exist, but can anything match the cruelty of "Dragon''s Lair", "Cliff Hanger", or "Asteroids" once that little beepy ship showed up? As the arcades faded and the consoles took over, the latter at first embraced this cruelty of design, in no small part because they were porting arcade games. As time went on, though, they seem to have realized they already had the player's money and didn't need to create the next cyber sodomy machine. In fact, they found players might like not playing a game that made them want to melt their controllers.
