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.

It Hurts To Be In Europe

The title makes my mindset about being out of Japan way worse than it actually is, I think Sweden is great, but what I saw today hurt my soul a little bit.

While I was out and about with my family we came across a game arcade so I thought I'd take a look around and see what games they had.  While I was pleasantly surprised with the collection that they had, the condition of some of the machines upset me a little bit.

The above picture shows two different light gun games with the peripherals just casually thrown on the floor.  It's shit like this that makes the damn things stop working properly and any attempt to play the machines after that just feels like a massive waste of money.

I didn't get a picture but at the entrance there was a light gun game where player 2's gun had been ripped out!

Shit like this is part of the reason why arcades are so dead in the west.  In Japan, people treat the machines with respect 99% of the time so everything works perfectly all the time.  If something does go wonky there are always staff on hand to fix it or call a guy to fix it, but in basically every western country broken machines aren't really a big deal.

People fucking with machines isn't the only reason arcades are dead but it's a big factor.  I don't see why it's so hard for these people who go to arcades around Europe to just not go around breaking things, fucking twats. 

Gunslinger Stratos

Well, in a couple of hours I'm hopping on a night bus so I can spend my Saturday in Tokyo Disneyland, but before I start being driven round the country, I thought I'd let everyone know about an extremely interesting arcade game I saw the other day.

What you are looking at here is a game called Gunslinger Stratos.  Judging from the shape of the cabinet, you are probably thinking this is some kind of rail shooter, right? WRONG!

I've not played it yet, there seems to be a lot to have to figure out with this bad boy, but from what I can tell, Gunslinger Stratos is a Light-Gun Arena PVP game.  Sounds fucking nuts right?  How the hell do you have something that looks like the free PC game Gunz, but then operate with a lightgun?  Well it's easy, the lightguns have sticks in them with which you control the character, and then you point at where you want to shoot.

The other thing I noticed about this game, is that your character seems to be fully customisable, but having not played it yet I'm not sure about just how true that is, but no two people in the game centre that day had identical characters.

The action in this game is fucking crazy, once I have a whirl on it I'll try and get some footage but I saw people flipping and wall running and doing all sorts of crazy air dashing nonsense and good lord it looked fun.

I'll try to get some footage over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out!

Lethal Enforcers 3

When I do posts for this blog I try to write about stuff I've played fairly recently or news I've heard about within the last week or so, but all this having a job stuff is getting in the way and if I stick to doing that I'm going to run out of shit to say in the next few days, so today I'm going to write about a game I beat about a month ago.

So I was in this sports centre type place called Spoccha in Japan.  I think it might be worth doing a blog post on Spoccha itself because it's actually a really cool place to go, but the best thing about it is that they have a free-play game centre right slap-bang in the middle of everything.   Usually the games found in this free-play area are old games or shit nobody ever wanted to play.  Unfortunately, Lethal Enforcers 3 falls under the shit nobody wanted to play category.

I'll give you a little background on this series before I go on.

Lethal Enforcers 1 and 2 were old school arcade light gun games that later got ported to things such as the Megadrive (Genesis) or the Super Nintendo.  Now when I say old school, I really do mean old school.  The game had this weird digitised graphic look so all the enemies looked like actual people but aside from that, it was standard light gun game stuff, shoot the baddies and don't hit hostages or fellow officers.  If you play it now the game is kinda ass, but back in the day it was pretty good I guess. 

I would just like to point out at this point, that due to being from a pretty poor family, I never really got into light gun games properly until House of the Dead came out on the Sega Saturn, so I don't have all that much experience playing these really old shooters when they were new, couldn't afford the gun peripheral.

Anyway, back to Lethal Enforcers 3.  I'm going to admit right now that upon playing this game in the free-play game centre, I didn't even realise it was a Lethal Enforcers game until I got home and looked it up.  In Japan it's called 正義のヒーロー (that's Heroes of Justice for the non Japanese speakers) and it doesn't really play like any other game in the series.

Also unlike every other game in the series, Lethal Enforcers 3 is FUCKING BORING!  I played this shit through to completion in the two player mode but holy crap is it a dull game.  There are about 6 stages, all of which are EXACTLY the same.  You and your partner start off and your character begins running and moving your gun away from the screen will make you stop and defend yourself with a riot shield.  If you are playing the two player mode, the game is kind of like a race so whoever makes it to the checkpoint first wins.  When you reach the end of a few check points, you fight an extremely easy boss and then move on to the next bad guy.  Rinse and repeat until the end of the game.

This game has so many problems it doesn't even deserve to be a shitty downloadable game, let alone an arcade game.  First of all, it's not a nice game to look at and not because the graphics are ugly exactly, but everything is just so bland and boring it puts the player to sleep.  Second of all is the difficulty, this game is way to fucking easy.  Enemies don't use cover or anything like that and they'll just stand in open space taking potshots at you (and usually missing) until you cap them in the face a few times.  Also the bosses are a complete joke,  blocking their attacks is so easy that it's actually more of a challenge to actually try and get hit by them, and this leads me into my next problem.  The racing mechanic is fucking stupid and it's a waste of time.  You can beat the level without killing all that many enemies really, as long as you don't stop running forwards, you'll get there pretty quickly.  On top of that, the enemies are so fucking stupid they barely ever hit you so you may as well just be shooting at wooden targets for points.  The whole check point thing really sucks some of the fun out of the game really.

The exception to the difficulty is the final level where the enemies aren't hard because they are more accurate or anything like that, it's just that the level is fucking dark and you can't see shit.  You'll be running along and then BAM! a wall of bullets come at you, but they won't hit you, you just put your shield up and then spray wildly into the blackness and move along.  It's just a pain in the ass to have to do that every few seconds, so it's not really hard, just really fucking tedious.

To cut a long story short, go emulate Lethal Enforcers 1 or something or go dig out your Megadrive and play it with the gun, just don't go hunting down this piece of shit.

Dark Escape 3D Pre-Release impressions

If you remember my post a while back about game centres in Japan, you probably know that I love me some coin-op games.  One thing back from my childhood that I used to play a lot of was light gun games such as Virtua Cop 2, Time Crisis and House of the Dead.  Unfortunately, these games have become a bit of a rarity even in Japan, and maybe I have the case of the old nostalgia goggles but the newer light gun games just don't seem to be as fun anymore.

The last light gun game I had a good amount of fun with was Time Crisis: Razing Storm

A fun little arcade game in the Time Crisis franchise that drops the pistols and lets you go nuts with machine guns killing huge robots and whatnot, it was a solid game and was worth every Yen in I dropped into it.

So while browsing some gaming websites today, I came across Dark Escape 3D, a new lightgun horror game due to hit game centres some time soon I think. Take a gander at the trailer below

My Kanji dictionary is dead so I'm unable to give a full translation of it (given the fact my ability to do Kanji is awful) but you can get the general idea with the visuals anyway.

Just to give you all a little bit more detail, the game is one of those sit-down shooters like Deadstorm Pirates and the machine comes kitted out with vibrating seats, surround sound, 3D Specs and things that shoot air at your face, neck and legs in order to really try and immerse you in the game.  Sure, it doesn't look that scary, but trying to combine the light gun shooter and horror genre together is a cool idea and if done right I can imagine the arcades rendering the old haunted house idea obsolete.

The big gimmick with this game though, is the heart sensor in the gun that makes an attempt to gauge just how scared you are while playing.  Sure, we all laughed at the heart sensor that popped up at E3 a few years back, but I guess now they've finally found a way to put it in a proper game.  Sure it may sound like a crap gimmick, but if you play this game multiplayer, then not only can you test your shooting skill, but also who's got the biggest balls.

When this game comes out and I eventually find it, I'll try and get some footage for it, so watch this space.