August 2009

  • Polaris Built on Space Invaders Gameplay

    By roskopp on 8/31/09 8:30am
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    PolarisPolarisPolaris 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.

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  • Krull: A Decent Early Movie Tie-In

    By roskopp on 8/25/09 12:02pm
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    KrullKrullFilm 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.

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  • Barricade, Hustle and Eventually Snake

    By roskopp on 8/21/09 4:31am
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    BarricadeBarricadeThis 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.

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  • Big Box, Little Box: Three Great Arcade to Console Ports

    By msarko on 8/12/09 8:51am
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    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: The Original Tube Puzzler

    By roskopp on 8/7/09 7:56am
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    Tube-It screenshot from vgmuseum.comTube-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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