Arcades: How Far They Have Come

So recently I received an email that was asking me about some of my favorite classic games and the changes in the technology I've been using within gaming over the years.  There's plenty I could talk about since gaming in general has come a long long way since the old 8 and 16 bit era but the area where the advancements in tech feel the most noticeable is in the arcade.

Arcades are not too much of a thing in the west, especially not in the UK.  As a young lad growing up in Manchester the best I could hope for in the ways of coin op was a few barely functional machines in a local bowling alley on cinema lobby.  For quite a while though the only things I played in arcades were fighting games and side scrolling beat 'em ups so for a while my impression of an arcade machine was nothing more than a screen, a stick and a few buttons.  This all changed when my mother took me to a place called Sega World that was in London

Sega World was the my first real experience with a proper arcade.  It was located in London and was 5 floors of arcade joy that has now been shut down.  Last I checked it was replaced with something called Fun Land but if I'm not mistaken that's been shut down too, but I've not been back to England, let alone London, for about 5 years so I might be wrong about that.

Anyway, my young mind could barely handle all the awesome that was in this place and this is where I first discovered the rail shooter.  Big machines that didn't have a stick or little buttons to push but huge screens and big guns attached to them which you had to use to shoot enemies.  The one that grabbed my attention in particular was The House of The Dead because shooting zombies was way more interesting to me than blasting people in titles like Virtua Cop.  I even got my first taste of arcade multiplayer experience on that same day.

Near the end of my time in Sega World that day me and my mother returned to the floor where all the light gun games were located.  I was hoping to get one last go on The House of the Dead before we set out but there was someone playing already.  Instead of just giving up and walking away like I would do nowadays I just stood there and watched this guy play and I was fascinated by it because he was getting to parts of the game that my young self could have never of dreamed of getting to while on my mothers budget of £1 coins.  In that game there are 4 stages, and when he reached stage 3 he notices me and my mother watching, probably assumes we are waiting for a go and then offers the 2nd players gun to me.  I excitedly grab a few coins from my mother and start playing with this complete stranger and it all culminated in us finishing the game.

The rush of excitement as the games final boss, Magician, went down was intense and once the credits had finished rolling we shook hands and split ways.  I don't remember anything about that guy aside from the gaming experience but he really made my day.

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Fast forward to 2016 and now I'm living in Japan where arcades are pretty common.  I have about 4 all within 15 minutes of my apartment building and comparing coin op now to what it was back then it's incredible to think just how far these machines have come.

One thing I was always a fan of was rhythm game and things like touch screens have done a lot for that genre.  A few years ago I thought stomping all over a big metal pad was cool but now I'm using touch sensitive keyboards with hand sensors above them in games like Chunithm or just playing with the game screen itself in titles like Syncronica

If rhythm games aren't your thing then fighting games have huge followings and a lot of them can be played online from the arcade itself.  Generally speaking internet connectivity has really changed the game centre for the better with people now being able to compare stats or track progress against other players.  This also extends to have accounts that are stored on IC cards which means that as you play you can unlock more content for your games. There are new WiFi systems out there like Luma, a startup I was just introduced to. They have a surround home wifi system that was built for advanced connectivity among the multiple devices online, with added security that allows any obstacles that might block your signal and keep you from playing to be removed.

My Cards have seen a lot of use

My favorite use of these cards is for a game known as Code of Joker which sort of plays like Magic the Gathering.  An online trading card game exclusive to the arcade, the IC card stores your profile with not only things like your wins and losses but your entire card collection and decks.  Stick to cards for a moment, for those who prefer their trading card games in a more physical form there's Kantai Collection and Sengoku Taisen.

Kantai

These games involve either collecting the cards to be scanned by the machine in Kantai or placing them on a table and moving them around in a more RTS style of game play in Sengoku Taisen.  If I could go back in time and tell my young self that trading card games would be available in arcades I think my head would have actually exploded.

Just to finish up this post and bring it back to the old House of the Dead comparison, one of my favorite light gun games in modern times is Gunslinger Stratos

While it may look like a sort of space age version of the old rail shooter this game is actually a 3on3 online 3rd person shooter that plays sort of like Unreal Tournament or something.  Movement is controlled with the sticks on the backs of the guns and you can change weapons by holding them together and slotting these sort of magnets into each other, it's crazy.

I could talk for HOURS about all the fancy new stuff in the Japanese arcades but then this post would go on for way way too long.  It's mental to think just how far the coin op experience has come in such a short amount of time and quite frankly, I'm super glad that I'm living in Japan and am able to experience all these things as they are released.

Coin Spiral

I stopped seeing these things around in my teens so maybe if you're younger than about 24 you might have never have seen these things.  I know they aren't video games but my schedule got all crazy busy again so I'm just going to write something quick that I remember from my childhood.

Arcades weren't exactly a common thing for me as a young British lad.  The only proper, full on arcade that existed to my knowledge growing up in England was the London based Sega World but even that eventually shut down and faded into obscurity.  Up north where I was from arcades didn't really exist at all per se.  There was still coin-op but they existed as small banks of machines found in bowling alleys and cinema lobby's.

What England had an awful lot of though is shitty little side attractions.  The most common one are those coin dozer things where you have a big thing pushing a large amount of coins towards the edge of the play field and you put a 10p in the machine in the hopes that once that gets added to the pile it'll push a bunch of coins off and allow you to play more.  Aside from that, grotty UFO machines filled with cheap, unwinnable kak and similar games were available but the machines were usually in bad condition and you wouldn't want to touch the joysticks or buttons anyway.

But there's one thing that really sticks out in my mind from these shitty mini-arcade things and it's the coin spiral bank thing pictured above.  The idea of this thing is that you'd put a 10p piece inside the slot and just watch the coin spiral round and round on its side into the hole.  Nothing electronic, just simple physics made it work and there was nothing more to it than literally wasting your money. 

As a small kid though coin dozers and UFO machines used to piss me off.  These things that LOOK like games but are actually just cheap excuses to steal your change.  Proper arcade games, even coin guzzling titles like House of the Dead etc. didn't piss me off because even though they were out to take as much money as possible, blasting things with a light gun was a ton of fun for me when I was small.  This thing however managed to be nothing more than a colossal waste of change and it wasn't pretending to be anything more than just that.  You'd put 10 or 20p in it, watch it go and then it was done, you got your little thrill and the thing wouldn't ask for more or tempt you with unwinnable prizes.

Anyway I don't really know what I'm fucking on about, I just remembered these existed during my work day and wanted to write something about it. 

The House of the Dead Memories

Today is a slow day, so let me tell you a story about one of the reasons why I love arcade games so much.

A long long time ago, back when I was just a kid and stuff like the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were the best things I could get my hands on, going to the arcade was a big deal for me.  We're talking about a time when everything I used to play was 16 bit RPGs or platform games, so going into an arcade and playing something that was 3D and didn't use a standard control pad blew my goddamn mind.

So one day, I'm in London with my family since my dad had to do some work down there or something so to kill the time my mother agreed to take me to Sega World.  Now I've blogged about that place before, but holy shit it was amazing.  For a British child who loved video games, Sega World was gaming Mecca to me.

Anyway, one genre of game I really enjoyed playing back then was the rail shooters.  I really enjoyed using the light guns and there wasn't really a lot for my stupid child brain to figure out, I just had to point at the baddies and fire the gun.  House of the Dead was one of my favourites at the time, I loved the levels and when you died you got that cool little map that showed you how far you got.

Anyway, I'd had my session on House of the Dead and I went to some of the different floors to play other stuff like Fighting Vipers and Metal Slug and after the day wore on a bit I returned to the shooting floor to see if there was any other rail gun games that I hadn't played yet.  Then I saw this guy playing House of the Dead, way WAY older than I was and obviously a lot better than I was.  He was really far, to a point in the game that I had never even seen before, I couldn't help but just stand there and watch.

Once he beat the 3rd chapter he turned to me during the results screen and asked if I wanted to hop on with him.  My mother gave me a pound coin and I slammed that shit in and started shooting.  Now in hindsight I was probably fucking this guys game up, it becomes harder with 2 players and I probably wasn't pulling my weight, especially in the boss gauntlet.  We pushed on and made it through to the final level and then fucking Magician appeared.

When this motherfucker pops up he has NO weak point (apart from the blatantly exposed cables on his arms and legs, but I was young, whatever) and I lost my shit.  I had no idea what to do, my heart was going a mile a minute and my hands were shaking pretty bad.  We endured his attacks and shot wildly at him and eventually the last sliver of health dropped off and we beat the game.

We didn't really say much after that, I just thanked him put the gun back in its holster and then we went our separate ways.  That said, his kindness in letting me join him for the final stage to share that excitement as we fought the final boss is something that has stuck with me to this day, and it's a reason I enjoy going to arcades so much.

I've only really been to a proper arcade in Japan recently, but even to this day they still have that great environment and the people are quite friendly.  The games are also quite cheap and a lot of places do deals like 2 credits for certain games on certain days.  I'm glad there is one part of the world where coin-op is still a thing, I think gaming would be a lot worse off without it.

Sega Saturn Peripherals

Like every console, the Sega Saturn had a number of extra bits and bobs that you could buy to enhance your gaming experience.  So for those that didn't own a Saturn, I thought I'd give a bit of a mention to the ones that stood out.

Well the first one I never actually owned back when you could still buy Saturn games in the store.  It was known as the 3D controller, and as far as I know its main purpose was for playing Nights: Into Dreams.  The differences between this pad and the regular pad as the addition of an analogue stick and some changes to the shoulder buttons.  The reason it was made is because if you've ever played Nights on a regular pad, it can wear on the palms after a while, so it was made to make playing that game more comfortable.

The next peripheral I want to talk about is the Super Cobra light gun.  Light Guns are not exactly uncommon for consoles, even the NES had a light gun, but this thing was an absolute beast of a weapon.  It was heavier than any other light gun I had used up to that point, and constantly shooting outside of the screen in House of the Dead felt more like lifting weights than playing an arcade rail shooter.   Also it was cool as fuck, whenever you pulled the trigger, the lights down the side would light up, back when I was a kid, that was the coolest shit.  Also it was compatible with the Sony Playstation so I think you could play Resident Evil: Gun Survivor with it.

The final thing I'll be talking about is another peripheral that I didn't own at the time, and this little thing is known as the Sega NetLink.  A lot of people give credit to the Dreamcast for being the first console with online features, but they would be really wrong.  If we're just talking about Sega, the Mega Drive had an online feature that didn't really take off, and then the Saturn the the NetLink, and while it only worked for a few games at ran at a whopping 28.8kb/s, it still worked to get you playing games online before the Dreamcast and its fancy 56k turned up.  It also came with a browser and auto connected you to an IRC channel as far as I understand the information I found on the internet.  After giving the wikipedia entry a quick read as well, the reason I probably never owned the damn thing is because it cost a massive $200, something I or my family would not have been willing to buy at the time.

The Saturn had some other cool bits of kit, but these are the ones that stood out in my memory, a quick google search can get you a complete list of all the peripherals available if you care that much.