Welcome To The Grown Up Gamer's Fantasy Arcade

Image borrowed from IGN.com



I've been witnessing a lot of love for arcade games lately. Both among my mates and in various corners of the Internet that I visit. It got me wondering what I'd put in my own fantasy arcade. Soon enough a blog post idea popped up and I started typing. So without further ado; behold! My fantasy arcade!

First of all there needs to be a pinball machine. It has nothing to do with them being the roots from which arcades sprang, although that is nice to know. The presence of a pinball machine is more about the fact that I just love playing them when I can find them. I always have. I even made one for my junior school open day once. Anyway, although I'm a scholar of neither Star Wars or pinball in general, I'd want a Star Wars pinball machine. There may have been a lot of Star Wars pinball machines, I can't be sure, but the one I'd want has a Vader helmet in the top right corner. I have fond memories of whiling away a week of kids entertainment nights while I was on holiday as a spotty teenager one year with the Star Wars pinball machine on the campsite. It ate a month's worth of paper round money.

So, with the pinball machine sitting on the throne in pride of place on the Cool Wall, who comes next? The classics of course! I can't really lay claim to playing many pre 90's arcade games, or pre 90's games in general. I was six when the Mega Drive was released in the UK, and I didn't get my own until I was around ten. But still, like almost everyone, I've been to tiny pubs on holiday as a kid that had a battered Space Invaders or Pac Man cab in the corner of the room with the Pool table in it. Most awesome among those almost forgotten days was the place with the table top system. You know the type. Just a table with a monitor set vertically under a glass top and a joystick on one side. You could put your can of coke on it while you played games! It blew my tiny pre teen mind. So in deference to those rose tinted days, my fantasy arcade is celebrating the arrival of it's modern day progeny. A MAME cocktail table system, and a bunch of barstools to go around it. That way, I can play almost any 2D arcade game I can think of, with a special emphasis on Pac Man, 1942, and Super Puzzle Fighter. It's like retirement accommodation for still sprightly old games who like to get out and get their funk on every now and then. Anything that can't be played on the tabletop MAME will hopefully be covered by the Neo-Geo cab and a whole bunch of interchangeable carts that lives next door to the Pinball machine. Now we have the classics catered for and a place to congregate all in one handy package. Time to get into the real meat of the arcade now.

I'm going to warn you here, the following list of dream purchases is going to have a fairly heavy SEGA bias. Mainly down to the fact that SEGA games seemed to be everywhere when I was going to arcades as a teenager. The games also seem to have been anthropomorphised too.

First into the arcade, handbrake turning into Racer's Corner with a stunning blonde lady in the passenger seat, is Outrun, because it's got a great soundtrack and is endlessly replayable. It's followed closely by SEGA Rally 2, a game that needs no introduction and one of the titles that taught me all about the importance of countersteering. Powersliding in closely behind and parking next door in a haze of tyre smoke is Riiiiidge Raceeerrrr! Namco's rubber burning gift to the arcade world. Taking fourth place on the racing grid is the awesome Manx TT. The proper rig with two leaning bikes so you can race a buddy. Taking fifth is B.D. Joe and the rest of the crew of Crazy Taxi. By preference, I'd go for Crazy Taxi 3, because it has three cities to choose from, and it lets you use the Crazy Hop in it's version of San-Francisco. Yu Suzuki's wonderful three screen F355 Challenge idles on it's grid spot in sixth, confident that the awesome power of it's three NAOMI boards will power it to the front of the pack. Bringing up the rear, on account of it's enormous weight, is a full blown 8 player setup of Daytona USA 2. Finally, showing up despite being disqualified from the grid of Racer's Corner on account of not actually having any wheels, is the frankly ludicrous Star Wars Racer Arcade with the full scale replica of Anakin's Pod. Purely because piloting a Pod Racer is awesome.

With the grid complete, attention turns to the Fighter's Dojo, where seven champion warriors have burst through the door and have begun sparring on the mats. Super Street Fighter IV eyeballs his big sister, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, from across the floor. SFIII takes no notice, as she is in the middle of an explosive throwdown with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus. Soul Calibur V whirls her swords around in the corner while Tekken Tag 2 and Virtua Fighter 5 chat about their glory days at the forefront of the 3d fighting genre. Watching all of this from the doorway, and silently working out ways to brutally murder them all is Ultimate Mortal Kombat III.

Over at the fun wall, four Player Virtua Tennis 2 has a riotous game of mixed doubles tearing up the Wimbledon lawn. Dance Dance Revolution and Time Crisis are camping it up and wondering why everyone is being so serious. Afterburner buzzes the carrier for the n'th time trying to get the attention of Prop Cycle, but she's not interested. Instead, she leans in and whispers something sarcastic into Bishi Bashi's ear while Point Blank, Jurassic Park: The Lost World and House of the Dead 2 have a gun twirling contest with the safeties off.

Back over on the cool wall the cool-guy shoot em ups huddle protectively around Parodius: Fantastic Journey, the arcade's sunny and boundlessly happy special educational needs kid. Ikaruga and the R-Type brothers say she's one of them, no matter how different she is. Gradius III and Darius are inclined to agree, even though Gradius thinks that Fantastic Journey is actually far more normal than she's letting on and is secretly taking the mickey out of him.

The lights come on, the entrance doors open and the machines settle down into attract mode. Welcome to the Grown Up Gamer's Fantasy Arcade...

Is Sega living too deeply in it's past?

I spotted an intriguing thing the other day. Virtua Fighter 2 running on the 360.

Cool.

Sega is releasing a collection of model2 arcade remasters onto the XBLA and SEN, and it’s a nice touch. I never did get to play Fighting Vipers the first time around. Maybe while they’re at it we’ll get versions of Sega Rally and Sega Touring Car too. Maybe even Manx TT. The thing is, that might be cool and all, and we all know that Sega’s business model at the moment is based around a few strong franchises and a digitally distributed back catalogue, but I can’t help thinking that Sega are going about this in entirely the wrong way.

Sega have a rich history to mine, and since I never had a Saturn it is nice to see some of the stuff I never got to play as a kid coming back. I downloaded Nights into Dreams on release day, and for a game released way back in the mid nineties it’s way better and much more unique than it has any right to be. But here’s a thought, instead of just re-releasing old games from beloved franchises, why can’t those same franchises be resurrected and given new games? Sure it’s a risk, but if it’s done right there’s a chance of a big reward. Sega already have form with this with Sonic Generations.

Generations was applauded as one of the best Sonic games in years. And rightly so. Personally I played it to the (literal) death of my old white Xbox, but the sections I played most were the classic Sonic levels. Sega had finally nailed Sonic in 3D, but at the same time they reminded us about what was so awesome about Sonic in 2D in the first place. So how about Sonic 5, made with the Generations engine, in 2.5D?

Part of what made Generations work with modern 3D Sonic was the occasional shift to 2D. Why not flip it round and have the action of Sonic 5 mostly in 2D but with the camera panning mid level to really show off a setpiece or two. So when something happens like the orca chase, riding rockets, swinging on the vines or hitting the tunnels of springboards in the two Sonic Adventures, we get a camera pan and have Sonic move into the screen for a few glorious, level defining seconds. It might just work. It’s just a shame Sega have said we’ll never see chubby classic Sonic again.

And that makes me sad.

What cheers me up is the thought of other classic franchises treated the same way. How about a new Ristar for instance? It’s still got a gameplay element that’s pretty much unique among platformers, and all those exotic planets would look great run through the 2D half of the Sonic Generations engine.  As a boxed game it would be a lost cause, but as a digital release it could stand a chance.

But why stop there? Why not commission Platinum games to make a new Streets of Rage, or better yet, Shinobi? Why not bring back Toejam and Earl? A new F355 challenge? I’d certainly play that. Brand new Jet Set Radio, Nights, Outrun? Crazy Taxi set in London with sooped up drop-top black cabs and monumentally mouthy cabbies? How about grabbing Playground games (a group of veterans fresh from Forza Horizon who come from several famed racing studios including Bizarre Creations) and setting them to work on a new MSR? Sega do own the IP after all. Could Harmonix make a new Space Channel 5 based on the tech powering Dance Central? You’re damn right they can. Could you imagine how beautiful Ecco the dolphin would be on a current gen machine? Why not team up with EA and Critereon and bring back Road Rash? A new Skies of Arkadia perhaps? I’m stretching it here, but Thunder Blade deserves a comeback, and who wouldn’t play a modern day Quackshot? Think Duck Tales (remember that?) crossed with Uncharted, but with a lower body count and coloured plungers as ammo. Would you like to see Donald Duck battle through Pirate Pete’s sinking ship to rescue Huey, Dewey and Lewie as it pitches and rolls on a dynamic ocean? I’d pay to see that. Yes it’s Disney, but so what?

And then the holy Sega grail. Panzer Dragoon. New Panzer Dragoon shooters would be great, but what we really want is a conversion of Panzer Dragoon Saga. Yes, I know I’ve just ranted about re releasing old games, but Saga is Special. The original source code is lost, so the game is supposed to be un-remake-able. But that might not be the case anymore! Bluepoint games used a reverse engineered game disc as their source for God of War HD. The logic being that the code was in release condition and as free of bugs as possible. If they can do that with a recent PS2 game then maybe it might not be totally impossible that the same could be done with a release copy of Saga?

Just saying. And it would be pretty cool if they could.

Sega can trade off their past easily. They have a raft of great IPs that they can revisit at any time. I’d just like to see a bit of the old Sega imagination, fun and daring in that strategy. Bring back old names by all means, but it would be nice to see those old names given great new games.

And for the love of Christ, would someone please put Yu Suzuki to work finishing Shenmue?