Racing game runs Windows, crashes (pun)

You’ve seen it on airport monitors, information kiosks, timetable displays and automatic teller machines, and now appearing on an arcade machine near you! I didn’t know arcade machines used real operating system, but apparently this one runs Windows 2000.

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For those of you playing at home, the game is “Wasteland Racers 2071” by TrioTech.

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“If you were in the middle of something”, say playing an arcade game, your coin is now lost.

On one hand, it’s interesting to see arcade developers utilizing the Windows (and presumably DirectX) platform to develop non-PC games. On the other, obviously it comes with certain risks. I wonder if you can download “Arcade.exe” anywhere.

15 insightful thoughts

  1. This actually doesn’t surprise me at all. Many MAME-based arcade units run Windows, often with specs not unlike the typical home machine, aside from the game controllers and the specialty video adapters to drive the arcade monitors. 🙂

  2. Haha this is the funniest thing i ever seen
    i had no idea that they uses windows for arcades
    and well pretty much everything else i noticed on the flickr page
    haha well i guess this serves as a warning
    wouldnt mac and linux have better results
    i mean i would trust those more if i were to run things publicly

  3. It’s funny. But instead of trying to get arcade.exe, maybe it will be better if we can get the operating system the other arcade machines use. If other arcade games never fail, then the other operating system may be more reliable than Windows! Two options: linux or something better and unknown.
    Anyway, World In Conflict worked excellent with Windows! 😉

  4. @zim: Well, I think the source of the failure is to be found in the source code of the game. The operating system which is not responsible for app errors. Another option could be a hardware defect which often results into app errors or bluescreens…

  5. Obviously it’s a problem with the application, not Windows itself.

    And non-Windows machines aren’t immune to this either. I remember an arcade game at a camping in France, over a decade ago, which had software trouble like every other day. That was a Sega machine, iirc.

  6. Zim: “If other arcade games never fail, then the other operating system may be more reliable than Windows!”

    Are you kidding me? Have you really never seen a crashed arcade machine? I used to work in my uncles gaming arcade when I was younger, and most of my days were spent resetting the machines and giving people their money back, none of them used Windows.

    This isn’t a Windows crash anyway, its either the game, or some other 3rd party app.

  7. AFAIK, that’s not Windows 2000. It’s probably some variant of Windows XP with themes turned off and error reporting disabled. I thought Windows 2000 crash dialogs were generated by Dr Watson?

  8. Windows 2000 crash dialogs simply don’t have the white header and have no option to report errors to Microsoft (though the dialog text mentions that an error log was generated for admins)

  9. Well this isnt windows 2000 its windows xp 😀

    Also it doesnt suprise me eather PC`s are cheeper than dedicated arcade boards they already have many environments to create games with and have all the drivers and controller board to run!

    They would usualy use Windows Xp, Windows Xp Embedded, windows 2000 PRO, Windows 98 SE or a form of linux! 😀

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