Tag: arcade games

2002: Arcade Games are Alive and Well

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We live in an age where the default assumption about video games is that they will be big-budget affairs with star-studded voice casts, more pyrotechnics than a Michael Bay movie and, indeed, a budget to match. The reason for this is that many of the games that become household names — Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto — very much fall into this category, at least partly due to their marketing budget, but also due to their perceived "quality". Games have moved on since their roots in the '70s and '80s, or so the popular theory seems to go, and we should be looking to our interactive entertainment for challenging creative works that offer interesting new spins on social themes; deep emotional narratives; and innovative play mechanics.

As someone who grew up roughly alongside the birth of gaming (give or take a few years; I wasn't quite around for Pong) I think I speak for many other members of my cohort when I say that the above is all very well and good and should be celebrated when it's done well, but sometimes all you want to do is shoot or punch the shit out of some things without having to think about anything too complicated.

Astebreed is a great shooter with a ton of immediacy but a rewarding amount of depth for those willing to learn its intricacies.
Astebreed is a great shooter with a ton of immediacy but a rewarding amount of depth for those willing to learn its intricacies.

One of the things I've been gratified to discover about the PlayStation 4 as a gaming platform is that it appears to be becoming an excellent home to a wide variety of arcade-style experiences as well as the big-budget, big-name games of today. The PC has been happily championing this sort of thing for a while thanks to its well-established digital distribution systems, and the Xbox 360 looked for a while like it might be assisting in the revitalisation of the "arcade-style" experience thanks to Xbox Live Arcade (which started to disappear up its own arse once things stopped costing 400 or 800 Microsoft Spacebux and instead took 1200 as the "default") but I feel like this is a field where the PlayStation 4 in particular is really starting to come into its own.

While I'm still ploughing through Omega Quintet on PlayStation 4 (I'm approaching the Platinum trophy now, at last!), the last few games that I've bought and really enjoyed on the platform are all short, arcade-style, score attack-type titles that are just plain fun. None of them are trying to say anything particularly deep and meaningful (with the possible exception of Astebreed, which has one of the densest half-hour narratives I think you'll ever find in a video game) and are instead focused on the simple joy of play: the thrill of taking on seemingly insurmountable odds, the fun of seeing scores climb into the millions, the satisfaction of beating your friends.

Blue Estate is pretty much a PS1/Dreamcast-era lightgun shooter, making good use of motion controls to approximate the arcade experience.
Blue Estate is pretty much a PS1/Dreamcast-era lightgun shooter, making good use of motion controls to approximate the arcade experience.

The games in question — and doubtless there are more, but these are the ones I've been particularly enjoying — include cinematic Japanese shoot 'em up Astebreed, Western bullet-hell shooter Jamestown+, the Defender-inspired Resogun, the inordinately satisfying rock-bursting shmup Super Stardust and lightgun-style rail shooter (a genre I thought was dead) Blue Estate. If you're looking for a quick fix of gaming and don't have the time or inclination to sit down and start chipping away at something more substantial like an RPG, I can happily and confidently recommend all of the above; they're fun, they have a ton of immediate appeal but a lot of hidden depth, they're easy to understand and teach to others (and, in most cases, have some form of multiplayer mode) and, for those concerned about such things, they're cheap.

Smoky, beer-scented arcades may well be fast becoming a thing of the past, but the arcade-style experience still very much lives on at home on PS4… and on Vita too, for that matter, but that's probably a whole other day's post, so we'll leave that for another day!

#oneaday Day 940: Insert Coin

When I was young, I loved arcades. There was something magical about going to one of those dingy rooms, inserting your pocket change into a slot and playing games that were far beyond anything home computers and consoles offered. The arcade experience was all the more "special" here in the UK, as traditional game arcades tended to only be found at the seaside. As a resident of a landlocked county growing up, a trip to the seaside was typically a sign that it was "holiday time" — and, consequently, "arcade time."

I liked the arcade experience so much I regularly tried to recreate it at home. I liked playing games that specifically called the feeling of playing an arcade game to mind — I recall Stratos on the Atari 8-bit being one of the earliest examples, later followed by the (rather poor) Atari ST ports of titles like Turbo OutRun and After Burner. I also loved the original Starfox/Starwing for how much it felt like it could have been an arcade machine — everything about its presentation called to mind a "50p a go" sit-down machine that was actually hooked up to my television. Especially the noise it made when you pressed Start on the title screen. (Seriously. I loved that game almost entirely for how arcadey that noise was.)

For some reason, though, I've never owned an arcade stick — the ultimate accessory in making your home gaming systems feel authentically arcadey. I think it's been partly due to the fact that I've never been particularly good at fighting games — the primary reason most people get such a peripheral. But with Persona 4 Arena and Dead or Alive 5 coming soon, I figured it was time to take the plunge and give one a try, particularly as it would also likely prove to be a fun addition to the "bullet hell" shmups I like playing, too.

The stick I eventually settled on — after the whole CeX/PS3 Street Fighter IV stick debacle, now thankfully resolved — was the catchily-named Qanba Q4RAF. I can pretend to know what I'm talking about when I say that this stick has Sanwa components and is dual-modded out of the box to allow compatibility with PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. The latter feature is the primary reason I chose this stick — it's not the cheapest, but given that I wouldn't have to buy additional sticks for the other systems if I found myself enjoying the more authentic "arcade" experience, it seemed like a sensible option. I have it on the good authority of the Internet that Sanwa components in an arcade stick are A Good Thing, too, so there's that.

I spent a bit of time trying it out today. In Street Fighter IV on the PC, it performed admirably, and allowed me to reliably perform a Shoryuken motion without any difficulty whatsoever — something I have always had trouble doing on a pad, and particularly on the Xbox 360's dreadful D-pad. Just the positioning of the buttons made a lot of moves significantly more comfortable to perform, too. So while I am no expert at virtual fisticuffs as yet, I feel that using the stick will certainly help me to get better.

I also tried it out with Deathsmiles on the 360, one of my favourite shmups. Here, the stick really came into its own, allowing easy shooting in both directions as well as access to the game's other functions. The digital stick proved a lot more sensitive and accurate than I expected, too, allowing for very precise movement amid the hails of bullets. I'm looking forward to trying it out with titles like DoDonPachi Resurrection, Akai Katana and Gundemonium Recollection.

Finally, I tried it with Scott Pilgrim on the PS3. Again, it worked well, with the chunky controls and clicky stick feeling very much like the way this game was intended to be played. A successful test all round, then — and absolutely no issues in switching between the three different platforms.

I'm a total convert, then — and now very much looking forward to the experience of playing Persona 4 Arena properly arcade-style. Hell, just looking forward to playing Persona 4 Arena. Damn, I miss those characters.