Follow-Up: The Games At My Arcade 1/2
As a follow-up to my previous article about how I’m excited to have an arcade, I thought I would also do some rundowns of some of the games that I’ve played there thus far.
As far as I’m concerned, the single biggest concern for an arcade game is “game feel”, that nebulous concept. You know how it feels good to make Mario run? His acceleration as he breaks into a run in the old games? His waddles and hops in the 3D games? That’s game feel; that moment the game’s controls connect with you.
Arcade games have the unique advantage of not having to use a standard video game controller, but the custom controllers and cabinets don’t mean anything if they don’t gel with the game and put you in its world. I wanted to highlight some games that are after this goal, for better and worse.
Star Wars Battle Pod
Did you ever hear about “the Gundam pod?” Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna (Bonds of the Battlefield) was a giant robot shooting game that’s played inside of a fully enclosed bubble-type cabinet that engulfs the player’s field of view with a massive dome-shaped screen.
The intended effect was to put the player in the cockpit of a giant robot, and it worked beautifully. Though this machine doesn’t move, the gigantic screen immerses you so deeply that the visual suggestion is enough to make your brain feel like you’re moving, like VR without a headset.
The anime-authentic controls — a throttle and a control stick — gave you control over a Mobile Suit that controlled in the slow, deliberate stomping fashion of a Mechwarrior suit. Mechwarrior fans in particular would have loved Senjou.
A localized version of something like Senjou would be great, but unfortunately that massive team effort actually calls for one machine per player. Online matches usually involved ten players. This setup was common in Japan, but is unlikely to happen anywhere in the States.
So as much as I want to sit in a giant robot, the Star Wars Battle Pod is a scaled down “you’re a dumbassed American, so you won’t appreciate our amazing Gundam game” kind of affair. The wonderful dome cabinet is still intact (after Senjou died off a bit I imagine a lot of those machines were turned into Star Wars pods), but the game is reduced to a basic on-rails shooter with excessively simple design and just three two-minute stages.
It still feels great to sit down in the dome cabinet, and a flying rail shooter obviously conveys that false sense of motion perfectly. I can’t recall if the dome had a fan in Senjou, but it does here and despite there being no air to blow in space and all that it feels amazing to tear down the Death Star trench.
The big problem is that unlike Senjou, Star Wars has zero staying power and no reason to give it another try except to top the high score list. This isn’t exactly the most engaging high score game, so that isn’t much of a proposition either. Simultaneously among the most impressive and least played machines in the place. A game to play exactly one time.
Hummer
As in the big GM car. One of many lost licensed Sega arcade games that have never been ported to console. (I’m also fond of Rambo, which came out not too long after this.) With this one in particular, it becomes clear why as soon as you take a seat: this wouldn’t be half the game it is without the amazing deluxe motion cabinet.
This game isn’t messing around: it won’t budge if you don’t buckle up your very real seatbelt. When you rev your engine at the starting line, the whole machine tilts up and shakes, ready to go. It never stops jumping from there.
Hummer is as much of an amusement ride as it is a racing game: there is even a “passenger” option for 1-player play, solely for the enjoyment of the spectator in the other seat.
The game itself is meant to be played by smashing everything in your path: this in turn fills up a boost gauge, and you will hit the most satisfying button I’ve ever seen to send your monster car flying forward like a rocket.
The goal is to keep lining up boosts over and over again by smashing everything on the track. If you get really good at it you’ll never stop boosting… and only then can you win the race against your computer-controlled opponents. (I’ve only made it to 7th place thus far.)
The really cool thing is that if you do well, the ride gets even wilder for you and your passenger as you’re boosting and crashing through everything. The gameplay and the gimmick are intimately linked. Not even Sega’s best or most ambitious motion cabinet, but a triumph nevertheless.
An “Extreme” edition exists: it throws more stuff onto the track so that there is never something on the screen that you cannot smash.
In this arcade, it is placed back to back with Dream Raiders, another Sega ride game that is Hummer’s polar opposite in quality.
Dark Escape 4D
Terrible and not worth your money for even one play, even though I kind of want to play it again. So let’s talk about it.
Ever hear of a guy named William Castle? He was a showboating producer/director who sold his campy horror films with clever and imaginative gimmicks. He’d put vibrating motors into the seats in a movie about the Tingler, a monster that crawls into your spine. He’d fly a skeleton on wires over the crowd. He’d give you your ticket money back if you were willing to endure public humiliation at the “Coward’s Corner”. His was the power of sheer novelty.
The Dark Escape cabinet itself is curtained off: you can’t see inside at all and the art is all “BEWARE, ALL YE WHO ENTER” bluster and a list of gimmicks: fans, a vibrating seat (the Tingler!), 3D glasses, and a heart rate sensor that reads your FEEEARRRR. There is no indication of what’s inside, only a dare to come in and try it. This is a William Castle videogame.
My friend and I didn’t know what we were getting when we got in the booth; imagine our disappointment when it was just the same old zombie shooting.
We came in expecting jump scares with zombies popping up in front of our faces and so on, but what we did not expect is that the game has no sense of timing at all. It never stops trying to do jump-scares. It became a laugh as every single hallway, every crack in every wall, housed yet another zombie jump scare. Sometimes one zombie jump scare would get cut off by a second zombie jump scare! It was so ridiculous that the game’s terrible execution killed off any atmosphere the cabinet could have provided.
All that being said, one night I did hear a woman screaming at the top of her lungs in the Dark Escape booth for about 15 minutes, so it worked on somebody. Or, you know.
Super Table Flip
I pretty thoroughly outlined everything about Super Table Flip in the previous piece, but let’s revisit it.
It’s such a simple concept and such a small game that the crazy cabinet is a big part of the joke. The table controller is the only means you have to control the game, and your role is kind of passive by nature, banging the table in disapproval until you finally send it flying. The rest of the joke is the mournful ballad that plays as the table goes up (“he flipped it~ he really flipped it”) and the game counting up your damages in yen.
You don’t have to be very violent with the table to get the desired in-game effect, and the table is more delicate than most players expect. You aren’t expected to role-play an angry dad that faithfully. The machine at Round 1 is constantly breaking down.
There’s a group that brings this game around the country to anime conventions, and they actually adorn Super Table Flip with English-language decals and signs specifically telling players that they don’t have to hit it very hard. Even so, by the end of an anime convention weekend it’s a given that somebody breaks it.
This is also the case with Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko: Drum Master) machines: I remember getting in line for it at a con and watching the screen puzzledly as the drums didn’t seem to be working. A staffer noticed and whispered resignedly: “Dude, don’t bother. They broke it like an hour in.” So that’s probably why you don’t see a lot of Taiko machines in the States.
Taking this aside even further, there is a Taiko knockoff by Andamiro at this arcade that replaces the drums with heavy plastic rocks that it basically dares kids to hit as hard as they can. Let me tell you, kids aren’t playing the video game. They’re hitting that thing.
There’s an updated version of Super Table Flip that this arcade doesn’t yet have: it’s a tie-in with the 60s baseball manga/anime classic Star of The Giants, which is exactly the kind of thing that the frustrated old people in this game grew up loving. The best gag is the home run derby mode.
END (1/2)
I talk a lot and this one got a little wordy, so I opted to split it into two. The next part talks about the driving games and the conspicuous oddballs Gunslinger Stratos and Magician’s Dead.
