Arcade Games

In just a few short years, those of us born in the 1980's will be officially uncool. That doesn't bother me so much, as I was never particularly cool to begin with. What does bother me is that all those millennial kids currently enjoying the pop culture spotlight don't really appreciate the difference between the 80's as a span of time and the 80's as a concept. What has basically been reduced to a series of musical compilations, cheekily reductive movies and more bad hair styles than Lionel Richie can remember wearing was actually a very important period in global history. International superpowers fell, free speech in America achieved great victories and the foreboding groundwork for worldwide economic disasters was laid. So, when I say that Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was the best thing made by the 80's, I'm not talking about the time period. Rather, I'm referring to that nebulous collection of alluring pop culture absurdities all those millennial kids will one day know as "The 80's".

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Men Can Be Gamers Too!Fellow gamers, I have called you here today to discuss why there aren't more men among us.  As we all know, most gamers are female.  This is supported by statistics from both the most successful gaming companies in the world (such as PopCap) and the occasional break-out platform specific games like The Sims franchise.
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Double Dragon 3The original Double Dragon game was released in 1987 and it was an important title. A co-operative two player adventure where you and a friend had to brawl your way through a series of thug filled levels to rescue the girl. The isometric view on the action allowed the side scrolling levels some new depth and instead of a flat set you could walk into the environment a limited distance. You could also use weapons like barrels and knives against the bizarre array of punks who attacked. It was fresh eighties cheese inspired by vaguely martial arts styled action films and the gameplay was much admired and endlessly copied. Read more

PolarisPolaris was a super addictive arcade game in which you took command of a nuclear submarine and had to fire missiles to destroy your enemies. It was basically a side-scrolling shooter with blocky graphics and simple gameplay. There were a lot of games with the same control system and mechanics but it seemed especially suited to a submarine shooter.

Taito released this as a stand up cabinet back in 1980, there was also a cocktail table version released later and it was ported for the Atari 2600 as well. It featured colour graphics with simple blocky backgrounds and very basic enemy submarines, boats and planes. The sound effects were simple explosions and a kind of mock underwater sonar submarine sound that is always used in any scene featuring submarines. There were also wee tunes between each level. Read more

KrullFilm to videogame tie-ins have been a part of the industry since the early years of the arcades. One such example which was actually a pretty decent arcade game was Krull. Released in 1983 Krull was an original sci-fi fantasy film about a heroic prince trying to rescue his princess from an evil alien called The Beast and his army of Slayers. His bride is swept away on their wedding day, his family is murdered and he sets out for vengeance. He has to find the Black Fortress which teleports around the place each morning. To help him defeat the forces of evil he also collects a magical weapon which looks like an oversized shuriken, it is a big bladed star which they confusingly called a Glaive. Read more

BarricadeThis is one of the earliest arcade games released and it was based on a beautifully simple but extremely addictive idea. Some of the best arcade games were incredibly straightforward and Barricade has popped up again and again over the years with various alterations but the same gameplay. If you’ve ever played Snake on your Nokia mobile phone then you know what Barricade is all about.

You have a screen with two ever growing lines of blocks. You can change the direction of your blocks but if you run out of space then you have lost. While the new mobile phone versions are designed for a single player the original arcade game was a multiplayer affair. Either two or four players would face off and one would emerge the winner as the others got themselves blocked in and knocked out. Read more

When a game company decides to adapt a hit arcade game for a home console, is preservation really the point? A lot of big box games are ill-fitting for personal systems for one reason or another, so they never make it to the more lucrative world of console gaming. Others get a few minor (or major) tweaks to make them fit in the home market. For a long time this meant toning down the graphics, programming the D-pad to mimic the sluggishness of an arcade joystick and fiddling with the difficulty so it would encourage continued play from enjoyment and not so much from sheer challenge. Most arcade-to-console ports, especially in the heyday of arcade boxes, were low-rent versions of the real thing. The following are ports that actually managed to do it right.

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Tube-It screenshot from vgmuseum.comSome of the best arcade games ever created were simple puzzle games like Tube-It. The name may be unfortunate but it is at least fairly descriptive because the game was all about fitting tubes together. It was originally released by Taito in 1993 but they only brought it out in the arcades in Japan and it was called Cachat. It soon popped up on PCs across the world and made into lots of those classic arcade game collections. It is still an addictive wee title with a nice design.
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WWF Superstars screenshot from vgmuseum.comIn the late 1980’s the World Wrestling Federation was enjoying a golden age. Everyone was obsessed with muscle bound, spandex clad weirdos throwing each other round the ring. Wrestlemania started in 1985 and for the next few years the sport of wrestling would remain in the limelight with Hulk Hogan as the biggest star. In 1989 Technos Japan Corporation saw the potential for a videogame conversion of the license and so WWF Superstars hit the arcades. Read more

Chiller screenshotCould Chiller actually have been the most heinous violent video game of all time? Well the censors certainly thought so when it was released into arcades back in 1986 as a light gun game with a strong horror theme. It was banned in the UK for being gratuitously violent with no redeeming features. That’s probably a fair assessment to be honest.

The light gun was the height of cool in the arcade for a while and spawned a series of dumb “shoot everything on the screen” games. Chiller fits nicely into the category somewhere near the bottom. The basic idea was to shoot and maim as many of the onscreen vermin and human prisoners as possible within the time limit. This was the gaming equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel as all the targets were locked up in mild S&M gear in some kind of torture chamber. Stuck in vices and chains you were free to shoot their limbs off. Read more