OTHER TOWER UNITE CONDOS
My contribution to a collaborative virtual space - [TheFragMan]'s Tower Mall. Several different users built stores dedicated to something they really like, and I thought it'd be neat to see the Atari version of an Apple store.
The Atari Store (Tower Mall)
Early 2000's House Some Punk Kids Inherited and Turned Into A Rehearsal Space
Work-in-progress as of 10/2024
Base: House condo
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Full working show-light display in garage. Had a lot of fun with the details on the two bedrooms I've completed. I don't know much about these kids, except the girl's a theater dork and the boy's a stoner goth.
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Look - it's a work in environmental storytelling. Come back when I figure out what the story is.
Cannonball Junction III:
Arcade and Retro Game District
Work-in-progress as of 10/2024
Base: Condo
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There are two things going on here.
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1) Tower Unite uses Libretro to emulate local ROMs in-game on arcade cabinet screens (and via console items that hook up to media players.) Games can be loaded from the menu, or loaded via a physical cartridge item. It's also possible to set up an arcade cabinet to play one specific game.
'm doing all of those things here, and I'm doing it a lot. Conceivably, this could expand to include a world for every console and system emulated in-game, with a vast array of playable games for each, but that would probably cause everyone's graphics card to burn a hole through the desk.
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2) In a weird way, this is the most personal condo I've ever built. Actually, that's not weird at all. I was four years old, once upon a time. There was a small arcade down the street from my house. They had a mini-golf course, and served soft serve ice cream, and the guy who used to babysit me worked there and it was run by a guy my parents knew from church, and it was just the coolest little place. It was called Cannonball Junction. It's where I played Pac-Man for the first time. I can still hear the synthisized voices from the Eight Ball Deluxe and Punch Out! machines, the smell of the soft serve. The tiny little Monaco GP machine, and the Battlezone machine in the corner.
And - two weeks before my fifth birthday - someone burned it down.
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The mini-golf course was untouched, more or less, so that stayed around for a few more years. And then the owner wanted to rebuild the arcade, and the town told him he could only have six arcade machines now for whatever reason, so he built a smallish shack and re-opened as Cannonball Junction II, and it hung around for a while until the big ice cream place down the street opened their own mini-golf course with waterfalls and caves and stuff. Suddenly the little tin loop-da-loop at Cannonball didn't seem so cool, I guess. And - at some point - they went out of business.
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So, this is Cannonball Junction III. I'm reimagining the area I grew up as a "retro game district" - a series of game stores, arcades, and so forth. Right now there's a big sprawling arcade that takes up most of the condo, a little Atari boutique, a glorious NES shop, and a 90s console room that'll probably wind up becoming something else.
