Whilst down in Cornwall this last week i was pleasantly surprised to find that the Arcade scene was still alive, >gasp< especially surprising as my last encounter with an arcade in Cornwall (though many years ago) ended with me walking past and not playing the countless old cabinets of games i'd played a million times before.
There's only so much arcade Hang-on you can play in your life, i thought.
Like i said, it was a very pleasing surprise to find many newer games to get my teeth into and i played most of them quite a few times over the week, especially as my girlfriend insisted to pushing 2 and 10 pence coins into those damn coin-game things! Here, in no particular order, is what i thought of the games i played;
SEGA RALLY 3
For some reason i had no idea there was a SR3 game even in existence, let alone in Newquay! Being a huge fan of both the first 2 games, this was a huge must for me to play; the graphics looked fantastic on the 60-odd inch HD screen (though very similar to the home Sega Rally console game on PS3 and XBox 360) and the cockpit and hand-break set-up brought back familiar, joyous memories. I couldn't wait to have a go once the kids had all finished and moved out the way...
So imagine my horror when i found playing the game to be a slightly flat and slightly disappointing experience. It played too similar to the console games in my opinion; Sega Rally 2 was a monster of an arcade game, with speakers either side of your head and engine noises that boomed through your skull. SR3 did not have this, making the whole experience seem dumbed-down and less exhilarating; i was gutted.
The cabinet, apart from this huge flaw, was nicely made; the screen, as already mentioned, was crisp and clear. Everything felt sturdy and strong in my hands, however this showed up another of the game's flaws - the handling. Where as you felt like you had the steering wheel of a real WRC car in your hand, on screen it was more like driving a boat. The car skated across the road like it was monsoon season in Indonesia and was no-where near as satisfying as the prequels or the home version. I felt myself all too often over-correcting the dodgy power slides and bouncing up the following straights.
Overall, SR3 left a bitter taste in my mouth and a sad tear in my eye; my favourite arcade racing series was suddenly an also-ran.
EA NASCAR ARCADE
Ah, now this was something that put the smile back on my face! I'd played NASCAR back home in Hereford but hadn't seen it anywhere else. When i first played this i was hooked immediately and pumped £4 straight in - those 10 minutes flew like they hadn't done on an arcade machine since Sega Rally 2 first appeared and when i arrived at the camp site my jaw hit the floor upon seeing it in the on-site amusement arcade. I was in heaven!
I played this pretty much every night after a night in the pubs of Cornwall. It became my ritual to go out, get half-cut on cider, come back and buy a take-away before the chip caravan shut then play this. I am no very good at it and win pretty much 70% of races i play. The trick (duh!) is to stay out of trouble and you're pretty much guaranteed to win. Simple.
This game shouldn't be this much fun; it's based on a form of motor racing where you only turn left, the game is made by EA (what they hell do they know about arcade gaming?!), You're almost certainly going to win if you don't crash and on some of the circuits you can drive from flag to finish without lifting off the throttle or hitting the break peddle. What EA did get right though was the rubber-band effect the cars have. Starting at the back of the grid on each race you find yourself flying past the opposition, the game almost wants you to win. Then once you're at the front for the last half a lap you find them all flying up towards you. The racing is always close and losing never leaves you feeling cheated, more like "next time, i can do this!"
I have to say, this game is genius!
HOUSE OF THE DEAD 4
I love the HOTD games, and #4 lived up to my expectations. What i liked about this over the other games was the gun shaking motion used to interact with the game. Primarily you have to shake the uzi to re-load the magazine. Better still though, you had to keep shaking it whenever a zombie grabbed you. Sometimes you never got the chance to do this though as often you get knocked to the floor and have to shoot your way back up to your feet, with the camera angle simulating the feeling of being helpless on the floor to a T.
Other additions i enjoyed included the rather large first boss (see video above) and the zombie animations which were superb. The gun itself was a nice surprise - don't think i'd seen an uzi used as an arcade peripheral before - and the shaking to reload was novel and helped the movie-styling’s of the game, even if it did mean my 2-handed grip brought the gun so close to me that i hit myself in the head when reloading. Overall, a pleasing sequel and good fun!
SILENT SCOPE EX
Hmm. I'd played this a long time ago and never really got on with it. The seemingly slow pace of sniping (or what should be slow paced what with it being sniping!) doesn't really appeal to the action-arcade junkie in me. Or atleast it didn't until Sunday evening.
All the other arcade games were occupied by kids so i had to go on this (the gun was too high up for the majority of them to reach!) - at 50p a credit i was forced to have 2 credits from my pound, meaning i played this for twice as long i normally would have. In the end, i ended up paying £3.50 to see this all the way to the end. The story - for whatever reason - sucked me right in and the gameplay was tailored just perfectly. Where the arcade nature of the game meant stages had to be completed in a decent time, the difficulty curve was tailored so well as to allow me to enjoy the first few stages and get used to the gun without costing me credits.
Boss encounters usually entailed having to shoot them in the head whilst they attack you in a variety of different vehicles and gun emplacements, the highlight for me being the boss in the Russian gunship, similar to the one in Rambo 3. Brilliant fun and a surprise hit, i finished Silent Scope EX in about 11 minutes and had a small group of watchers by the end of it all!
RAMBO
Now this was an odd addition to the arcades. Though the films and the characters themselves lend themselves to games and arcades perfectly, i was not expecting to see this at all. And it as HUGE, being as wide as it was tall and the guns being huge replica machine guns. It looked the part for sure, though i was sceptical for a few days since the demo didn't actually show any gameplay and no-one was seen playing it either. At all. Something was up.
My fears were unfounded. The game started out with a stage based on the final scene in Rambo 3, where Rambo and Trautman have "surrounded" the Russian army and have to escape with the Afghan's help. The game throws enemies at you and each has a timer above their head to let you know when they are about to shoot at you. I liked this as it meant you had some warning as to when you need to take them out before you're hit but didn't mean the game told you everything - the timer is small enough for the player to have to search each enemy individually and make calculated decisions on the fly.
The gun felt rugged and had some good kick back when being fired and the machine gun gameplay fitted the mood to the 80's action film mold perfectly. Pin-point accuracy was not required though skill was still needed to ensure you killed the right bad-guy to ensure you're not shot. It made the game fun to play for people of all skill levels without being 'dumbed-down'. Sega really had made a great game and did themselves no justice what-so-ever by not showing how good this game was on its demo sequence.
Overall, a great action shooter and one significantly different to the likes of HOTD4 and Time Crisis.
TIME CRISIS 4
Another great shooter in one of the best gun-game franchises of all time. Good sequel with great graphics and faultless gameplay. The pedal/hide feature is still something that makes this series stand-out from the crowd.
NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND
A fairly good racer that suffers from its relationship with the over-used franchise. Need for Speed has never been as good since the days of NFS3.
FAST AND THE FURIOUS
Utter utter dross. Avoid this racer at all cost, a really average racing game on all fronts.
FAST AND FURIOUS: SUPERBIKES
Not bad - the bike cabinet was nice and it felt good to lean your way through the courses. Winning each race gave you an extra credit. Enjoyable!
GUITAR HERO
Guitar Hero 3, without the good songs (no G'n'R, no Metallica, no Slipknot, no Iron Maiden) and with a crap guitar where the green button worked when it felt like it. Awful arcade game!!
MORTAL KOMBAT
WOW! I found this in a cabinet of older arcade games and was hooked! Being a huge fan of MK i was utterly surprised to see this (i'd never actually played arcade MK1 before!) and even more pleasantly surprised to see how well it played after being used to the Mega Drive version. It is fair to say that on this basis, the Mega Drive version played arcade-perfectly. I played Mortal Kombat for quite some time and thought this was my 2nd favourite game of the holiday, just losing out to NASCAR.
Of all the holidays i've had, this one was as special for its own reasons and playing some good arcade games was one of the main ones. I urge you all to seek out the arcades near your home and appreciate them for what they are; arcade gaming has had its hey-day, let's make sure it doesn't have its last day too!
I played the sega rally 3 arcade cabinet last Thursday at a convention I was attending. I've never played the previous versions of it, but I liked it, and was somehow good at it.
Too late around here ... pretty much all the arcades where I live are dead and gone.
You'd think with all the new technology they have at their disposal now, that the more physical arcades could bring them new life. Did you see the new stuff from Microsoft that uses your entire body as the controller? ... why not put that in the arcades with some nice arcade-only titles? Imagine Karate trainer machines in dojos!, Boxing and Kickboxing trainers at the Gym!, and why haven't they made a REAL GUITAR style arcade machine that actually teaches you how to play guitar while having fun doing so instead of this Guitar Hero crap? Or piano game that rewards you for playing, Fencing trainer, Cop trainer, A realist DirtBike machine, Helicopter trainer, Airplane trainer, all sort of flight trainers, JOB training machines of all sorts for new employees, Satanic ritual games, Christianity games, all kinds of religious quiz arcades, Painting and Sculpture trainers, Pop quiz machines, Classic Memory button machines, Test your might/carnival style machines of all kinds, there's plenty of stuff that they could do if they really wanted to breathe life back into the arcade scene. They should really learn to think a bit more out of the box.
MBK - all fantastic ideas let down by the amount of money they'd bring in - very heart-breaking indeed. The power home consoles bring these days means that arcade games are being made redundant. What saddens me more than anything is that the arcade-console link has gone backwards; where as once everyone looked forward to playing console conversions after playing the superior version in the arcade first, nowadays arcade games are actually conversions of the home game. Looking at the games mentioned above, 60% of the games (not including MK!) came out on consoles either first or at the same time. This would have been unheard of 15 years ago. The idea behind this is that when games are released simultaneously on all systems, profits are maximised. And indeed the only time when they are not released at the same time is when more money has been paid to prevent it!
W3R3W00F - That is sad - i get to play a fairly decent range of games (though not strictly an arcade) in Hereford's bowling alley. Though that's 30 minutes away so i don't visit that often
We have the Fast and the Furious arcade game at work. It causes no end of distraction to chavs who's otherwise be hanging around annoying me and the rest of the staff, so I guess it has an upside.
On another note I seem to remember the Pod Racer arcade version was pretty good...
There's a restaraunt 8 miles from my house with a couple machines. Nothing special.
But it has a Neo Geo arcade cabinet, which I came to love when I was younger. I dished out quarters into Metal Slug every chance I got, but my favorite arcade game of all time is still Bust-a-Move! I love that game!
All those complicated arcades would be millions to invest in and make, and they would assuredly fail commercially since the day of the arcade is past. You DO see airplane trainers, cop trainers, helicopter trainers, military trainers, etc. But only the military can afford them and they're usually rather large. And how many people really want to train to be a cop in an arcade game? They'd rather just play simple shooting games like they already do.
And microsoft's new system isn't complicated and accurate enough for things like karate training. That would need force feedback. I'm sure someone somewhere is experimenting with it, but it's nowhere near consumer level. Real Guitar Hero... well there's a reason they made guitar hero have only 5 buttons. Not everyone can get their hands to work on a real guitar. A mainstream game where you play professional guitar songs is absurd. A training suite that teaches you chords slowly maybe.
I agree Marko, it's sad that arcades aren't having their place with the same level of passion they used to have. I gues it has to do with this: many arcade companies are where the money is at! where? on xbox360 and ps3... so they all spend their time and money to make games for those platforms. And we all know how hard it is for all of the developers to come up with a decent game for those platforms. It takes ages before a game can be released. Look at Alan wake for example. Then look at halo or halo 2.
So it's sad that the arcade scene does not have developers at it, making cool games for it using newer technology to deliver us a better playability value in the now better graphical worlds. Like it has been said. Technology has come far, but the arcades are not getting the attention it should! instead they're focusing on other platforms... and the arcade developers have joined newer companies for these platforms or created new companies for that matter or joined with other companies to compete with other big ones... it's all about the money! unfortunately... please correct me if I'm wrong in any of my statements...
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