End of the Arcade

Well, it's almost the end of 2010, which has got me thinking about the end of arcade gaming. There are still plenty of arcades around, especially at seaside resorts, in motorway services and in theme parks, but they are no longer filled with shoot 'em ups, platformers and beat 'em ups from the likes of Capcom, Taito, Midway or SNK.  Sega has managed to hang on, thanks to their generally more elaborate cabinets still attracting attention, so games like Sega Rally, Manx TT, Daytona USA, Ghost Squad and House of the Dead can still be found.  Likewise, Namco's Time Crisis and Final Furlong and Konami's world conquering Dance Dance Revolution are still common sights, but most of these machines are pushing a decade old now and usually in pretty poor condition.

Dance Dance Revolution - bringing teenage girls to arcades since 1998.

What killed the arcade? 

General consensus is that it was the rise in home gaming during the mid to late 90s. For starters, there was the birth of the 32-bit, polygonal games consoles, the Sony PlayStation, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo N64. These machines were capable of providing the best conversions gamers had ever seen, with even the latest games migrating relatively unscathed. Plus they offered their own unique, often more cinematic experiences, with games such as Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. As for the hardware in the consoles, it was often based on the same hardware as current arcade machines. A case in point was the Sega Dreamcast, from 1998, which was essentially a home version of the Naomi system board.

Sega Naomi logo

There was also more and more gaming hardware emerging for the PC, with major leaps forward including the 3Dfx Voodoo graphics add-on card. By the end of the 90s, the PC had left arcade games far behind, with increasingly more powerful hardware and landmark games like Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament and Half-Life offering a new breed of fast paced, competitive gaming.

The Quake series was one of the first to popularise online competitive play.

Another issue was pricing. Back in the 80s, a credit on an arcade game would cost you 10p to 20p, with only light gun games and hydraulic cabinets costing more than that. At the time, the average price for an 8-bit video game was around £30 (with console games generally costing more than computer games). Fast forward to the end of the 90s and average price for a console game was still only around £35, while the bottom price for a credit was 50p, with some arcades charging as much as £2 for games like Silent Scope.
This rift seemed to get worse during the current console generation, with some really good indie games costing less than a tenner and smart phones offering some decent gaming experiences for the price of a Mars bar. In short, arcades priced themselves out of the market.

My own time with arcades - at least the time when I sought out arcades as my primary gaming fix - was while I was at university in 1995. As well as frequenting the arcade in town, the city centre where I studied had a fairly well stocked Namco Station arcade. Between lectures, a few friends and I would spend our spare time playing Tekken, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis, Area 51, Virtua Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha, Mortal Kombat 3, Sega Rally and few others I can no longer recall. Sega Rally was certainly the biggest draw for my friends and we would take it in turns to race against each other on the twin-seat cabinet.

Sega Rally was the last arcade game I played a lot.

Happy days, although it arguably contributed to my premature departure from uni. After that, I too drifted into PC and console gaming and I have only visited a handful of arcades since. I guess that made me part of the problem, but in my defense - and in defense of all lapsed arcade gamers - I don't think we ever thought it would end like this. Once arcades failed to deliver gaming experiences above and beyond home machines, their appeal waned.

Is the end nigh?

Reportedly the biggest arcade in the world, Funspot in New Hampshire, USA, is still going strong but there are also retro arcades popping up in America.

Fun Spot in New Hampshire, USA, is apparently the biggest arcade in the world.

In Japan arcades are still huge, with fighting games being the biggest draw.  Virtua Fighter 5, Super Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 are as big now as their predecessors were in the 90s. And new fighting games include such as Guilty Gear and BlazBlue continue is this proud tradition. Shoot 'em up developer CAVE also appear to be unstoppable, with games likes Progear, Espgaluda, Deathsmiles and numerous sequels to DonPachi appearing in arcades since the turn of the millennium.

Club Sega in Akihabara is one of the most famous arcades in Japan.

And every few years, you'll get wind of another arcade starting up and doing well, partly because of retro nostalgia, but also because the owners have modernised their pricing structure, offering blocks of time, rather than charging per game or coming up with gimmicks like offering tournament nights.

But what about here in the UK?  There are two noteable arcades in London.  First there's Funland in the Trocadero Centre,  Piccadilly Circus and also a Namco Station in County Hall on the South Bank, but elsewhere things are not so promising. Even places like Alton Towers, which has about a dozen mini-arcades, has no traditional arcade games. And if video arcade games are suffering, pinball machines are defunct entirely. You don't even see them in bars any more. You'd think they would have survived better, thanks to there more mechanical and elaborate designs, but sadly they died out with the video games that they paved the way for, back in the 70s.

The truth is, arcades games on the whole have had their day. They are no longer scattered around the country in random locations and there are unlikely to ever be again. When a smartphone can play games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut the Rope, and the internet gives people access to all the emulators and ROMs you could ever want, only the most die hard fans of the arcade will ever miss them.

MTW

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More Info

• Funland, Trocadero's website: http://www.funland.co.uk/entertainment/Games
• Namco Station, County Hall website: http://www.namcostation.co.uk
• To find out more about Funspot see: http://geekoutnewyork.com/2008/06/funspot.php.
• To find out more about the Japanese arcade scene see: http://www.retrogarden.co.uk/features/big-in-japan-a-look-at-the-japanese-arcade-scene/

 And if that isn't enough, check out Arcade Mania: The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers by Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft and Jean Snow.  It's available from Amazon, priced £7.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/4770030789

Classic of the Month - LifeForce (AKA Salamander)

Manufacturer:	Konami
Genre:	Shoot 'em up
Board:	Konami GX400
Year:	1986

Life Force (also known as Salamander) is a Gradius spin-off, which introduced a number of changes that would later be incorporated into the main series.  These included a mix of both horizonal and vertical scrolling, two-player co-op and a revision power-up system, where by enemies dropped specific weapons, rather than the playing selecting weapons from a menu.  Not that my 12 year-old self was aware of any of this when I first saw it.  I was too busy gawping at the crazy visuals, from organic landscapes that grew around your star fighter, to blood covered teeth or solar flares bursting from the floor and ceiling to tentacle-covered brains trying to attack you.  I later discovered that these kind of effects and environmental hazards were common to the Gradius series, but seeing it for the first time will stay with me forever.

MTW

Movie review: Tron Legacy

The Tron arcade game was one of my formative arcade experiences. I first played it in a neon-lit arcade on a caravan site by the sea when I was 9 years-old. All the other games in the arcade were great, from Centipede to Pac-Man to Time Pilot, but Tron looked like something straight out of my sci-fi fantasies. It was a perfect storm of age, imagination, atmosphere and location. Despite seeing the trailers, I didn't see the film until a few years later. It didn't disappointment and much like Last Star Fighter it felt like a glimpse into the future of gaming. Now, almost 30 years later, Disney have released the long-awaited sequel, but in a world where high definition gaming and 3D movies are common place, has Tron lost its edge? Given I don't normally have an excuse to review movies, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Bruce Boxleitner, still a
handsome SoB

The plot to the original movie film was little more than window dressing and the same can be said for the sequel. Following the events of the first film, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) takes over ENCOM International and makes it the most successful software company in the world, partly due to his games, including one based on the heroic Tron program, who helped him escape the binary clutches of the errant Master Control Program. Despite his success, he continues to visit the computer world within the company's mainframes. With help from Tron and also his own CLU program, Flynn builds a grand new world inside the mainframe. Then then one day in 1989, he mysteriously disappears, leaving his friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and his young son, Sam (Owen Best/Garrett Hedlund) behind. As the decades roll by, Alan and Sam take a back seat in the running of the company, but it's clear neither of them have forgotten about Flynn Senior. So when Alan gets a message from Flynn that apparently came from his old office at the (now abandoned) arcade, he sends Sam to investigate. Sure enough, the arcade is empty, but when he goes to play a Tron machine, Sam discovers his dad's old tales of the world of Tron were real.

Flynn's Arcade, mothballed like most arcades these days

And so, as you might expect and have probably worked out from the trailers, Sam ends up in that same world, which is now under the control of Kevin Flynn's doppelganger, the program known as CLU. This is a bigger, brasher adventure in the world of Tron, starting with a gladiatorial battle which makes the games in the original seem... well, like Gun Smoke compared to Call of Duty. Sam is not alone in this world and soon meets a program called Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who is your typical free-spirited femme fatale — and rather pleasant to look at in her tight, black plastic leggings. Ahem. Together they battle CLU's drones and uncover the plot that lead Sam into this world and the mystery behind Kevin Flynn's disappearance.

Sam and Quorra go for a drive in one of Legacy's many new vehicles

The first thing to be said about this film is that it looks gorgeous — even when Quorra's not in shot. There are no Star Wars prequel-like redesigns, that effectively ret con the whole aesthetic of the original. Instead, it looks precisely like a HD version of the original, with the changes to things like the light cycles being respectful towards their ancestry. What is disappointing is the 3D. In a world of such stark contrasts, it seems the 3D technology fails to provide much depth perception. Basically, there's no enough detail to actually give the scenery and characters much visual depth, unlike Avatar, which is a rich, colourful and densely populated world. What's even better than the visuals is the music, provided by French house masters, Daft Punk. They even make a cameo, in what for me is the best scene in the film.

When Flynn makes an opportune appearance in that same digital night club, just as Sam and Quorra about about to get their hides tanned, I genuinely had a little bit of a nerdgasm. Overall, the acting is a little flat; Hedlund is your typical pretty-but-bland Hollywood actor, who is outshone by every other actor in the film, including Wilde. The best performance is probably given by Micheal Sheen, who plays club owner Castor, but then Sheen is one of those actors who always delivers the goods.

If you're going into this with a love of the original, but at the same time accept that it was a rough diamond, I reckon you'll enjoy this follow up. It's far from perfect and could actually be accused of being a little unambitious, but it isn't the sort of train wreck we've seen in recent years when people have tried to cash in on classic films (Lucas, Wachowski brothers, I'm looking at you!). For everyone else, it's one of those films where the trailer tells you everything you'd need to know, both about the world of Tron and whether or not it's for you.

And because the soundtrack is so brilliant, here's Daft Punk's single from the OST, "Derezzed".

MTW

Darius returns in widescreen HD

Back in the summer, Taito announced Darious Burst: Another Chronicle and now it has finally been released in arcades... in Japan. 

As a cabinet I think it looks incredible.  I know we all have widescreen HD TVs for our Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s, but still, given the atmosphere of an arcade, I think this will be quite an experience, with 4 players ducking, dodging and blasting their way through the waves of enemies.

But enough of looking at static images, here is Taito's (Japanese) trailer:

MTW

Irem Arcade Hits comes to PC

Arcade legends Irem, in association with DotEmu, have brought out a collection of 18 classic coin-op games called IREM Arcade Hits.  The full list of games is as follows:

1. Ninja Spirit
2. Gun Force
3. Gun Force II
4. Superior Soldier
5. Undercover Cops
6. In The Hunt
7. Blade Master
8. Battle Chopper
9. Legend of Hero: Tonma
10. R-Type Leo
11. Image Fight
12. Mystic Riders
13. Hammerin' Harry
14. Cosmic Cop
15. Kung-Fu Master
16. Dragon Breed
17. Vigilante
18. Air Duel

They've even produced a nice little video to highlight what you get for your money:

Priced €9.99 (approximately £8.60) compilation is download only, but DRM free.  For more information visit: http://www.dotemu.com/en/download-game/24/irem-arcade-hits

MTW

Dragons Lair comes to PSN

Dragon's Lair was simultaneously one of the most revolutionary, shallow and infuriating arcade experiences of all time. I remember being wowed by it's cartoon visuals back in the early 80s, but a few plays revealed that there was not much of a game underneath. Despite this fact, Dragon's Lair has been ported to pretty much every platform you can imagine, to 8-bit computers of the time, such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 to modern handhelds including Nintendo DSi, Android smartphones and iOS platforms. It has now been ported to the PlayStation 3 via Sony's PSN downloadable service in the US. Judging by the screenshots and videos it looks like the closest the game has ever come to matching the visual quality of the original LaserDisc arcade game and it's just as impressive to look at today as it was 27 years ago -- it's also just as repetitive and annoying. Nonetheless, this is an important piece of arcade history and if you don't mine forking over $10.

Here's the trailer:

MTW

Classic of the Month - Ms Pac-Man

Manufacturer:	General Computer Corporation/Midway
Genre:	Maze
Board:	Namco Pac-Man
Year:	1981

To celebrate the release of the superb Pac-Man Championship Edition DX on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, I thought I would make this month's classic the original... sequel, Ms Pac-Man.  Actually, before I continue, I should right a wrong: Ms Pac-Man was not an authorised sequel.  It started life as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man called Crazy Otto, developed by General Computer Corporation (GCC).  They sold the rights to Midway who turned Crazy Otto into Ms Pac-Man.  Obstensibly, the gameplay is identical to Namco's 1980 original, but there were a few changes (after all, it was based on an enhancement kit).  They included:

• Faster speed
• Double the warp gates
• Solid colour walls
• Fruit that moved through the level, via the warp gates
• Different and more random ghost patterns
• Three intermissions, showing the how Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man meet, fall in love and then have a ikkle baby Pac-Man.

The game was a huge success, which lead to Namco turning it into an official part of the Pac-Man series, which, as CEDX proves, is still going strong today.

You can play an official version of Ms Pac-Man on Xbox Live Arcade.

MTW

Pac-Man's 30th birthday party

Owning a classic arcade machine has always been a dream of mine. You can cheat and stick a PC running MAME inside a cabinet, but I'd rather be authentic. Sadly, actual classic arcade cabinets are expensive, cumbersome and prone to breaking down. Thank god for Namco and their determination to celebrate Pac-Man's 30th anniversary in style. Back in July I posted about Pac-Man Battle Royale, which looks great, but I'm far more excited about this, Pac-Man's Arcade Party, because it's much more than a Pac-Man game. Namco have put together 13 (count 'em) of their best old games into one new machine. So if you have about £2000 spare, you can get in a single machine, the following Namco greats:

• Pac-Man
• Ms Pac-Man
• Pac-Mania
• Galaxian
• Galaga
• Galaga 88
• Dig Dug
• Rally-X
• Mappy
• Xevious
• Rolling Thunder
• Dragon Spirit
• Bosconian

That's better than the Namco Plug & Play TV Game I have. 

Anyway, here's a little video by those candy men of arcade games, BMI Gaming:

It's just a month to Christmas. What's the chances I can persuade the wife to buy me one?

She says I have two hopes: Bob Hope and no hope. Oh well.

MTW

50 Greatest Arcade Cabinets

Whilst idly browsing the internet tonight, I came across this article on I-Mockery from a couple of years ago. Every fan site likes to do compilation of their favourite things, but I-Mockery takes that to an impressive level with their compendium of the 50 greatest arcade cabinets of all time.

The article includes photos of all 50 machines, which although small, do give you a sneak peak of the wonderful designs of both the side art and the mechanical aspects of the machines.

While I think there are a few glaring omissions (no Space Harrier or G-Loc 360) and I'm not sure about number 1, it is a great reminder of what made arcade machines so special. They weren't just games, we had games on our Commodore 64s and Sega Master Systems, they were tailor-made, mechanical works of art.

Check out the full article here: http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/50arcadecabinets

MTW

Creepy Classic of the Month-Splatter House

Manufacturer:	Namco
Genre:	Side-scrolling beat 'em up
Board:	Namco System 1
Year:	1988

It's Halloween tomorrow, so for this month's classic I thought I would talk about something spooky and what better game to talk about than Namco's controversial beat 'em up, Splatterhouse.  The game was heavily inspired by teen slasher films of the decade, most notably the Friday the 13th series and the plot is as cliched as it gets.  A teenage couple, Rick Taylor and Jennifer Willis, get caught in a fierce storm and take shelter in West Mansion.  Little do they know crazed parapsychologist, Dr West, is rumoured to have used the mansion to perform hideous experiments, earning it the nickname "Splatterhouse".  Once inside, the kids are attacked by demons, Rick is killed and Jennifer is carted off to become the monsters' gruesome plaything.  The game begins with Rick being resurrected in the mansion's dungeon by a Jason Voorhees-style ice hockey mask called the "Terror Mask" or "Hell Mask" (depending on the territory).  As Rick, you must punch, kick, hack and bludgeon your way through the mansion to rescue your GF before it's too late.

That might sound like a perfect excuse for a gory extravaganza, but sadly this month's game does not really
deserve to be called a classic.  The truth is the only reason anybody played Splatterhouse more than a couple of times was because they got off on its pixelated horror. As a beat 'em up, it's pretty dull, but as a Halloween game, it's worth 20p for a bash.

Splatterhouse was remade in 2010 as a 3D action adventure for home consoles - and it was every bit as crass and dull as the original. 

MTW

The Remake Debate

Street Fighter II

A couple of weeks ago I discussed whether or not fans of arcade games should use emulators and ROMs to play their favourite classics.  It's one of arcade gamings hottest topics and one where the arguments will continue forever more.  One of the other hot topics is remakes.  Now before I continue, I should point out the differences between ports, remakes and reimaginings.

• Ports are where the art assets, sound banks and code from one games machine are merged with code written to work with another games machine. 
• Remakes are where new art, sound and code is used to create to a new game that matches the original as closely as possible.  Often remakes take advantage of more powerful hardware, but where possible the gameplay is left intacted.
• Reimaginings are neither remakes nor sequels.  They are new games, with not only new art, sound and code, but new ideas about how the game should play.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

All three have their pros and cons.  Ports should be identical to the original game, however things often have to be changed to work with the limitations of the target machine, which can render them unplayable.  Remakes should look and play great, however purests may not like to see their favourite games changed in any way.  Reimaginings are the ones most at risk as derision, for exactly the same reasons as movies based on books that change characters and plot elements.  What all this comes down to is the further you stray from the source material, the more likely you are to upset the very people most interested in playing it.

After Burner II

Now, you may think I'm against remakes, but quite the opposite.  Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation
Network are home to a number of fantastic remakes, which in my opinion not only look and sound great, but serve as wonderful homages to the original.  Some of the best examples include:

• After Burner: Climax 
• Arkanoid Live
• Bionic Commando Rearmed 
• Final Fight: Double Impact (which contains Final Fight and Magic Sword)
• Outrun Online Arcade
• R-Type Dimensions (which contains R-Type and R-Type II) 
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.

After Burner Climax

So next time you are presented with a remake of one of your favourite old games, give it a go, you may even find it gives it a whole new lease of life.

MTW

Krome closure threatens Game Room future

Krome Studios, the developers behind Microsoft's underrated Game Room service, are in big financial trouble and have confirmed they will be closing their doors on Monday 18th October.  Krome were once Australia's biggest game developer, responsible for Ty the Tasmanian Devil, several Spyro games, some Star Wars conversions and, most importantly to retro junkies like myself, Microsoft's Game Room.

Microsoft have not yet confirmed what this means for Game Room, but rumour has it there are still several Game Packs yet to be released (we're up to 10), so even if Krome are the only ones who can produce that stuff (which doesn't sound right to me), Game Room isn't dead just yet.

The Emulation Debate

To MAME or not to MAME, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of legal persecution or to take arms against a sea of pirates, and by opposing end my arcade gaming, to die having never played Go Go Mr Yamaguchi.  Erm... anyway, emulators have been around for ages and for some, it's only way they've experienced certain classics.  But what is emulation all about and is it legal? Let's dig a little deeper and find out.

Emulators: Software in disguise

Emulators are not just programs that play old arcade or console games; their code mimics the functions of a piece of hardware, such as the motherboard from an arcade machine, so that programs written for the emulated hardware can be run on totally different hardware. Generally speaking, in order for an emulator to work well, the hardware it's running on has to be significantly more powerful than the original hardware. This is because it takes time (specifically memory load times and CPU clock cycles) to load and run each command in the emulator. In order to translate the functions of the original hardware to the new hardware, the faster the processor and memory, the quicker this translation can take place and the more smoothly the game will play. Emulating one processor on another is one thing, but the processor running the emulator also has to emulate the graphics chips, sound chips and I/O (input/output) board of the emulated hardware. So, the more complicated the hardware, the longer the translation takes. As such, the quality of the emulation varies. Generally speaking, 8 and 16-bit machines based on Intel 8080 and 8088 processors, the Zilog Z80 processor or Motorola 6500 or 6800 processors can be emulated pretty well. The difficulty comes with 32 and 64-bit machines based on the Motorola 68000 series or MIPS Rx000 series processors from the mid-90s onwards. The result is slow frame-rates, which no amount of power can overcome.

The most celebrated arcade emulator around is the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or MAME for short. As the name suggests, MAME can emulate dozens of different arcade machines, but it's not the only one out there.  There are a number of others that emulate just one or two arcade boards, often resulting in better emulation for those machines. Such emulators include KAWAKS, which emulates Capcom CPS1, CPS2 boards and the SNK Neo Geo and ZiNc, which emulates Sony ZN-1 and ZN-2, Namco System 11/12, and Konami GV/GQ arcade hardware.

 

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Playing from memory

In order to play games on an emulator, you also need need the data that was stored on the arcade machine's ROM chips.  This information has to be "dumped" into one or more files, usually in a binary format. These collections of binary files are then collectively known as a ROM image. There can be dozens of files required for a single, simple game, all of which need to be correctly named and kept together so that the emulator can load all of the data successfully. Thankfully, modern emulators can often play ROMs as compressed Zip files, so you don't have to worry about losing track of individual binaries.

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What good is power without control?

Whether or not the graphics and sound can be emulated effectively, games with bespoke control schemes do not translate very well. While games that only used a joystick and buttons work fine, especially if you have something like a Hori EX2 Fighting Stick, and even racing games tend to fair quite well, games with specialised controls, such as rotating joysticks (a la Xybots or Search and Rescue) or games with paddles can be almost unplayable. One such example is the legendary Tron. While the light cycles levels play fine, a typical dual-analogue controller does a terrible job of emulating the paddle needed to aim the turret on the tank battles and Tron's arm in the I/O tower or MCP Cone levels.

While it is easy to think pinball tables, with their two buttons and a plunger, would be easy to emulate, few pinball emulators do a good job of emulating the pinball table's crucial third control mechanism: nudging the table. There are degrees of both subtlety and force that skilled pinball players just cannot obtain by flicking an analogue stick.

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Insert piece o' eight to play

It's easy to forget that most arcade games are owned by companies that are still trading and as such they still under copyright protection.  It's also easy to justify downloading and playing games through an emulator, because in many cases there is no other way to play a lot of these games. But none of this matters in the eyes of the law. Just because someone leaves a classic car in a garage and never drives it, doesn't mean you can take it and claim it's the only way you could enjoy such a vehicle. Put simply, emulation is piracy and the recent rise of the HD port, you never know when a company is going to reprise an old franchise.

So what can an old gamer do?

The games industry as a whole has reached an exciting point in its life.  Never before have we had so much choice. In the last few years there's been a resurgence of interest in retro gaming and now there are loads of legal emulation services, most notably Microsoft's Game Room for Xbox and PC and the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Arcade, both of which offer games from as little as a couple of quid. Admittedly neither service has an exhaustive range of games, but by purchasing arcade classics  from a legitimate source, you can play safe in the knowledge you have done the right thing.

MTW

Classic of the Month - Dig Dug

Manufacturer:	Namco
Genre:	Maze
Board:	Namco Galaga
Year:	1982

I have a confession to make, I didn't play Dig Dug until I got it as part of the Namco Arcade Museum for the GameBoy Advance, back in 2003.  When I first played it, I wrote it off as a Mr Do clone and didn't go back to it for years.  I know, I know, as an arcade fanatic, I should be ashamed of myself, but we all make mistakes.  I have since played it on Xbox Live Arcade and a Namco Plug 'n' Play TV system and realised that there was a lot more to the game than first meets the eye.

The basic gameplay is simple enough.  As Dig Dug, you have to tunnel through 255 screens, killing the Pookas (the red blobs in scuba goggles) and Fygars (the fire breathing dragons) that dwell underground.  There are two ways to kill these creatures: by tunneling under rocks and letting them drop on the monsters heads or by sticking them with a harpoon pump thing and inflating them until they pop.  That all sounds simple enough, but Dig Dug has a number of unique gameplay tropes.  First, Dig Dug can walk through partially inflated enemies.  Since it takes a few seconds to make them pop, partially inflating them can buy you the time and distance to finish them off safely.  Secondly, there are lots of different score attack mechanisms built into the game.  First, rock kills score more than pump kills.  Secondly, the depth at which an enemy is killed increases your score, hence the yellow, orange the red banding to the levels.  Finally, the points you score from killing a Fygar depends on your position - facing them scores more than attacking from above or behind.  All this means that if you are a highscore junky, Dig Dug can be a seriously competitive game.

In 1985 Namco released a sequel, predictably called Dig Dug II.  Back them most sequels were simply more of the same, but Dig Dug II tried to be different, shifting perspective to a top-down view.  Now when you dug down, large sections of the landscape collapsed into the sea.  Sadly, it wasn't as much fun as the original. 

MTW

Dreaming of the 90s

A couple of months ago I posted an article called 'Dreaming of the 80s', which were undeniably the years when my love of arcades (and gaming as a whole) were formed. However, my love affair with arcades did not end there. No, hanging around in arcades, the 90s was just as important a decade as the previous. So to complete my arcade gaming history, let's head back to the decade of Madchester, raves, Britpop, alcopops, the Spice Girls, the internet coming to the masses and George Lucas's screwing up Star Wars, the decade that also saw me go from school boy to working man.

Turn of the decade

My arcade gaming in the 1980s was limited to the Old Hall and the arcades along Yarmouth's sea front, but by the 1990s lots of things were changing; my older siblings (who are all 9-13 years older than me) stopped holidaying with my parents and as a result I lost my main mode of transport into Great Yarmouth for a few years. This meant I had to make the most of Old Hall's arcade, but by now they had stopped installing new games on a regular basis. I remember them adding Golden Axe, TMNT and Galaga '88, but they still had Galaxian and Gryzor all the way up until 1993, which is when I last stayed at the site. Nonetheless, the first time I played Street Fighter II was in a Yarmouth arcade (I think Circus Circus) in 1991 and it was this game above all others that I pursued over the next decade, both in the arcade and at home.

The Capcom Years

As I said, I did a lot of growing up during the 1990s, which meant I started visiting the arcades of my home town, some 5 miles from where I actually lived. There were only two proper arcades in town. First up there was Shipley's Amusements, which was mainly a fruit machine joint, but did have a handful of arcade games, including Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting and an SNK Neo Geo MVS, containing such classics as Metal Gear, Neo Turf Masters, Magician Lord and Art of Fighting. Then there was a Cashade Amusements on the far side of town, which was a decent-sized arcade, but it was also dark, smokey and full of scary looking older kids. There were also a couple of video rental shops and the local computer shop that had a handful of machines in them. It was these quieter mini-arcades that my friends and I visited the most.

Title screen for the black market Rainbow Edition.

Because of Street Fighter II and Final Fight, in the early 90s my favourite manufacturer was Capcom. Street Fighter was everywhere and between Capcom's frequent updates and the numerous hacked versions of the machines, including Rainbow Edition and Accelerator, there most arcades had a couple of versions of the game. If you never played Rainbow Edition it was completely bonkers. Among the numerous changes in the hacked ROMs there was the ability to change character mid-fight by pressing 1Up and 2Up Start buttons, fireballs for Honda and some other non-projectile characters, high speed lariats for Zangief, super slow fireballs for Ryu and Ken, low and wide Dragon Punches, akin to Sakura's Dragon Punch found in the later Alpha games and the ability to keep jumping until eventually your character reappeared at the bottom of the screen.

But it wasn't just Street Fighter and Final Fight I loved from Capcom. One of the video rental shops also had  the over-the-top super hero beat 'em up Captain Commando, a game that I never saw again, but which was great fun to play with three friends. Mack the Knife was my favourite character, although there was something appealing about playing as a robot controlled by a dummy-sucking infant.

 

Namco Station, Nottingham

Nottingham's Namco Station, now just fruit machines

In 1995 I began a degree in Computer Science at Nottingham Trent University. It was a disaster. The syllabus was fluffed up with unrelated modules such as German, European History and Chemistry. I quickly lost interest and started hanging out with some mates from a different course when I should have been in lectures. We used to kill time in one of two venues, a Riley's Pool Hall and a Namco Station in the city centre. This was a proper gamer's arcade, with loads of brand new machines, including Street Fighter Alpha, Tekken 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Time Crisis, Area 51, Sonic Blast Man and cockpit versions of Sega Rally and Daytona USA. By this point games cost a quid a go and unlike the 80s it was my own money. God knows how much of my uni grant I spent on Sega Rally in particular.

The End

I dropped out of uni in the summer of 1996 and my time frequenting arcades quickly came to an end. From then until now I've only been in an arcade a handful of times, usually when I go to a theme park or seaside resort. Mansfield's Cashade was bulldozed one day in the early 2000s, along with a few shops, and replaced with a shop, restaurant, bar and nightclub complex. Rumour has it Nottingham's Namco Station closed down it's games section in May 2007 -- I'm surprised it lasted that long. It sounds as though towards the end it was just Tekken and Virtua Fighter keeping the dream alive.

MTW

Michael Jackson's arcade

We all have fantasies about what we would spend out money on if we were multi-millionaires.  Super cars, mansions and luxury yachts are par for the course and sure, that stuff would all be great, but one dream I've had since I was a kid was to have my own arcade.  The machines I would put in it have changed over the years, but long-term favourites such as Street Fighter, R-Type, Gradius, Sega Rally and Space Harrier have always been high on the list.  And it seems I am not alone; the late king of pop, Michael Jackson, owned such an arcade.  Now you can say what you like about his personal life, but his private arcade was truly the stuff of dreams, as this incredible virtual tour demonstrates:

http://pinsane2.com/pinorama/events/MJ_09/kr/michael_jackson_arcade_entry.html

MTW

Classic of the Month - Space Harrier

Manufacturer:	Sega
Genre:	3rd person rail shooter
Board:	Dedicated Sega hardware
Year:	1985

"Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get ready!"

Everybody's got a favourite arcade manufacturer and for me it's probably Sega. As much as I loved games like Street Fighter 2 and R-Type, Sega created so many iconic games and cabinets.  Perhaps the most iconic of all was Space Harrier.  Let's have a look:

It would be fair to say the deluxe hydraulic cabinets were just a gimick, but we're talking about arcade games - a gimick was all you needed to get people to shovel in another 20p.  Sega produced lots of hydraulic cabinets over the years, the ultimate of which was the deluxe G-Loc cabinet, which was a gyroscope that could spin 360 degrees in every direction - but they were incredibly rare.

As a game, Space Harrier was bloody quick.  In typical arcade style, getting anywhere in took real skill and your best chance of playing the game properly was on a standard cabinet.

Now I started this blog with the opening line from Space Harrier, but reading it does not compare with hearing it, so here's a 2nd video containing the sample and a better view of the actual action.

If you want to play Space Harrier legally, the closest you can get is the Sega MegaDrive Classics Pack 1 on Steam, which contains the MegaDrive version of Space Harrier II.  I realise that's not the same as the arcade version and the lack of voice samples is disappointing, but that really is your best bet these days.

MTW

Homage Review: Hydorah (PC)

Gradius was never released on PC, but if a version had been it might have looked something like this.


Hydorah, a freeware indie shmup that was released a couple of months ago.  I know this is meant to be an arcade blog, but with new arcade games so few and far between, us old school gamers have to seek out arcade-like experiences where we can - and few modern games capture that feeling quite as well as Hydorah.

Visually it looks like an late 8-bit or even early 16-bit game; sonically, Gryzor87's brilliant soundtrack sounds like something from a late 90s CD-based game, but with an evocative chiptunes aesthetic.  The gameplay is not at all original, but let's be generous and call it a homage to classic shoot em ups.  What's important is that the levels design, enemy patterns and weapons are well thought out and the controls are as tight and responsive as you could ask for.  When you die in Hydorah you know it's your mistake, not the game being cheap or flaky.  I highly recommend it and since it's free you have nothing to lose.

Plays like

• A lot like Gradius

Highs

• Beautiful homage to retro graphics and gameplay.
• Great balance of design and challenge.
• Fantastic sound track.
• Free! 

Lows

• Poor controller support.

Download the game for free here: http://www.locomalito.com/juegos_hydorah.php. If you like it, please donate so Locamalito can continue making these brilliant little games.
Also, check out Gryzor87's fantastic soundtrack, which is also available as a free download from Bandcamp.com here: http://hydorah.bandcamp.com/album/hydorah-original-soundtrack.

New arcade machines coming this autumn

Time for another BMI Gaming show reel. This time some highlights from their fall (autumn) 2010 catalogue. It's great to see that while arcades are no longer gaming meccas, they do still survive, with new titles from all our favourite manufacturers, including Namco and Sega, as well as up and coming manufacturers like Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix.

MTW

Pengo returns and brings 7 friends with him

If someone asked you to think of a classsic Sega arcade game to spruce up and re-release today, but one which hasn't already had a makeover in recent years, you might suggest Space Harrier or Zaxxon or Fantasy Zone.  You probably wouldn't suggest 1982 ice block pushing puzzler, Pengo, but that's the one Sega choose.

As the screenshot below shows, Sega have kept a very retro look for this remake, with no polygonal graphics, HDR lighting or particle effects.  However, pay attention to the aspect ratio - this is a 16:9 game, some that definately did not exist back in the 1980s.

This new Pengo game is also supports 8 players, each battling for points and control over the three power blocks.  It could be interesting - assuming we ever get to see it here in the UK.

Classic of the Month - Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike

Manufacturer:	Capcom
Genre:	Beat 'em up
Board:	CPS3
Year:	1999

It's fair to say when Street Fighter 3: Fight for the Future first came out a lot of people were disappointed.  It looked great, with way more frames of animation than we'd ever seen in... well anything and the new parry system added an extra layer of tactics that put it above any other 2D fighter at the time.  However, the selection of characters was lacklustre.  Although Ryu and Ken returned, none of the new characters were as seminal as Guile, Chun Li or M. Bison.  Things improved with the first update, 2nd Impact.  Yun and Yang were split off into two separate characters, Akuma return as a secret character and two new characters were added: Uriel, brother of end boss Gill, and Hugo, a pro wrestler and ex-Mad Gear gang member (as in the gang Guy, Cody and Haggar take down in Final Fight).  More important that the new characters, 2nd Impact added EX Specials, which were more powerful versions of specials moves, that were performed by hitting two buttons instead of one and used up part of the Super Arts metre.

But what's a Street Fighter game without multiple updates and in May 1999 Capcom released Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.  Now Akuma was selectable from the get-go, first lady of fighting games, Chun Li, returned and four new characters were added: Karate school girl, Makoto, was hard to learn but devastating in the hands of a master; Remy, a French fighter who bore an uncanny resemblance to King of Fighters regular Iori; Q was a mysterious trenchcoat wearing figure, remaniscent of comic book characters The Question, Mr A and Watchmen's Rorschach; the final new addition was metamorphasing alien, Twelve, whose ability to mimic other characters' moves formed the template for Street Fighter IV's main antagonist, Seth.

3rd Strike was undoubtedly the game Street Fighter III should have been from the get-go, by the time it came out over here in the UK, arcades were already few and far between.  The game was ported to several home consoles, including the Dreamcast and Xbox.  Rumour has it Capcom are releasing it on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but I'll believe that when I see it.

To end this month's CotM, here is perhaps the most famous Street Fighter video ever.  Filmed during the EVO 2004 fighting contest, this is Justin Wong vs Daigo 'The Beast' Umehara and an incredible display of how powerful SF3's parry system could be. The Beast is Unleashed:

As a Street Fighter nerd, that video still gives me goosebumps.  Incredible stuff.

MTW

Want to buy a new arcade machine?

Whilst researching for this blog I came across a company called BMIGaming.com, who are an international arcade and amusement retailer. There might not be many classic arcade machines on their site, but looking through their extensive range makes you realise how many arcade machines are still produced. The site is broken down into a dizzying number of categories. You can choose from:

• 3D games
• Air hockey
• Basketball
• Bowling
• Boxing
• Change machines
• Coin pushers
• Crane machines
• Dart machines
• Foosball
• Jukeboxes
• Kiddie rides
• Motion simulators
• Photo booths
• Pinball machines *
• Ping pong
• Pool tables
• Redemption games
• Shuffleboards
• Touchscreens
• Vending machines
• Video games *

* Obviously, these are the ones Arcda interested in.

That is way more categories than I could have come up with off the top of my head. Needless to say, browsing their website is like being a kid in a candy store.

Every few months they released a show reel of the new machines that are coming out, which I will add to the blog, but they also release lots of demos of new games, which you can see on their You Tube channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bmigaming

MTW

Nostalgia Trip - Dreaming of the 80s

My parents have always been caravaners and for years we went to the same, dull caravan sites, where there was nothing for kids to do.  Then in 1984 we went to one called Old hall, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and it was much better than the sites we had been going to; it was a 5 minute walk to the beech, it had a small farm, an open air swimming pool, a bar, a nightclub and an arcade.  I was 9 when we first went to Old Hall and although I had played games on my brother-in-law's Atari 2600 and my older brother's BBC Micro B, this was the first time I got to play an arcade game.  Over the next eight years or so, we went back to Old Hall every summer.  Over the years the games changed and the arcade itself changed location on the site, from behind the nightclub, to the games room in the pub to finally ending up in a brightly-lit brick conservatory-come-reception, pictured below:

The Old Hall, Caister-on-Sea, contained the first arcade I ever visited.

The Old Hall is still there, but the camp site, farm, pool and arcade are gone. It's now a restaurant and health club.  It's a shame, but I can't say I'm surprised. When I last visited around 1994 they just had a few, rather old machines left. A sign of the times.

Sun, sea and shoot 'em ups

As well as the small arcade in the Old Hall's arcade, there were also the numerous arcades along Yarmouth's seafront.  The Flamingo, Circus Circus, The Mint, Silver Slipper, Golden Nugget, Majestic, Caesar's Palace, I visited them all, often switching arcades every pound or so in order to find the games I wanted to play.

Circus Circus, formerly the Yarmouth Hippodrome, was my favourite arcade in the 80s

The Flamingo, still one of Yarmouth's biggest arcades

The Mint wasn't big, but did have a number of niche games in it.

I only got to visit these arcades when either my parents or my old older brother took me, but they still formed a major part of my early coin-op gaming. It's for this reason that I think I associate hot summer days as much with playing Golden Axe, Space Harrier or Wonder Boy as I do beaches, sun bathing and ice creams.

Yarmouth's arcades still exist, but like most arcades these days all that's left are a few light gun games, driving games and dancing games.  The rest of the space is now occupied by fruit machines, quiz machines and claw games.

Night-time nostalgia

In order to write this blog, I've been thinking about those holidays and those arcade more than I have done in decades.  And here's the funny thing, for the past week I have actually been dreaming about Old Hall.  Not specifically its arcade, but the site in general, from the pool to the grassy area where the kids played football and frisbee, to the pub and club, where they even let under 18s have a bit of a bop around - as long as they stay out of the bar.  Great days and when my own kids are old enough, I hope to take them on holidays they will remember for the rest of their lives.

 MTW

Homage Review: Shatter (PC, PS3)

Think of a game, new or old, and chances are you can trace its roots back to a previous game. The lineage of New Zealand developer Sidhe's bat, ball and block game Shatter is clear to see.

When you see Shatter the chances are you'll think it's just an iteration on Arkanoid, but of course Arkanoid was an iteration on Breakout, which in turn was an iteration on Pong, which, remarkably, can trace its roots back to the one of very first video games, William Higinbotham's Tennis For Two from 1958. But don't let that put you off.

At the beginning of the game you are just a bat, trapped in a cell of one of the many matrices in Sector 14G of the Kinetic Harvest Zone, knocking a ball back and forth against a spark plug to make energy. Then there's an anomaly, the spark plug breaks, your ball shatters the walls of your cell and you escape. And so begins a 4-6 hour journey as you break blocks and even battle bosses in your fight for freedom. It's not much of a story, but it's different.

I've said Shatter's lineage is clear, so let's just quickly check off all the routine stuff:

✔ Bat
✔ Ball
✔ Bricks to break
✔ Power-ups

But I said don't be put off by its generic genes, Sidhe, have gone out of their way to inject some innovation into the genre. For a start, the first few levels are horizontal, like Pong, rather than vertical like every over Breakout and Arkanoid clone. Over the course of the game you'll be batting from all sorts of crazy angles. As usual, your balls represent your lives, but in Shatter you can initiate multiple-ball mode by firing another ball at any time, sacrificing a life in the process. It's a risk, but in the right circumstances it can really pay off. Any balls that are left over at the end of the wave go back to being lives on the next wave. Next thing of note is the fragments (known as Shards) that float around the screen when you break a brick. These can be collected to slowly build up a power meter. When the meter is full you can unleash a few seconds of hot laser death called a Shard Storm, which is very handy when it comes two Shatter next innovative feature, the boss fights. I may be overlooking some obscure Breakout clone or other, but I have certainly never seen bosses in  other games like this before. They every half a dozen waves or so and in typical style they represent the end of each world. Among Shatter's 10 bosses there's a snake made of giant blocks, there's Shatter's version of David and Goliath as you face off against a giant bat, and even a boss you have to fight in 360°.

As you can tell by how you active multi-ball and blasters, Sidhe have also tried to be different with Shatter's power-ups too. There's no glue-ball or extra-wide bats here. Other power-ups include a Shard multiplier, an unstoppable ball that will break any type of block and a manoeuvre ball power up, which leads us to Shatter's biggest innovation: your bat's ability to suck and blow. This serves multiple purposes. For a start, it can be used to collect power ups. Next it can be used to direct your ball towards its target; when you have the manoeuvre ball power-up it's even possible to blow the ball back before it ever reaches your bat. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can use it to collect the Shards, which in itself puts you at risk of unwittingly changing the ball's trajectory in the process. Other tricks up Shatter's sleeve include blocks that drift towards your bat, knocking both the ball and the bat itself out of position. There's a lot going on, but with a decent multi-button mouse it's all perfectly manageable and unlike other games in this genre, Shatter is generous with its allocation of lives, so rather than being defeated within a few levels there's a good chance you will finish it and free Bat-1138. After that the game unlocks a host of new modes, including boss rush mode, but whether you'll want to play again is questionable.

Video games rely on iteration to improve and often the game that introduced some brilliant new idea was not the best example of it. So yes, Shatter plays like Arkanoid and every other game derived from it or Breakout, but it is also the best version of this genre I have played since Taito's 1986 classic.

Aside from how good Shatter's gameplay and visual are, I must also mention its gorgeous techno soundtrack, composed by Module. If you like ambient dance music, you will absolutely love the music in Shatter -- it's actually good enough to listen to on its own. With that in mind, here's the music video for world 6, Amethyst Caverns. Yes, they made a music video for the sound track -- it's that good:

Plays like

• Breakout
• Arkanoid

Highs

• Feels like a significant iteration of an otherwise well-worn genre.
• Brilliantly-realised boss fights.
• Great visuals.
• Even better sound track --one of my favourites of all time.

Lows

• Not much replay value once you finish it.

Shatter is available for PlayStation 3 on the PlayStation Network Store or for PC via the Steam service, priced £6.99.

Also available for purchase is Module's soundtrack, priced around £3. If you just want to preview it, you can listen to the whole thing on Bandcamp.com here:  http://sidhe.bandcamp.com/album/shatter-official-videogame-soundtrack.

Arcade Throwback reviews

I've been thinking, 'What's a games website without reviews?' So with that in mind, I want to write the occasional review for Arcade Throwback. The trouble is, new arcade machines are few and far between, so I will need to review things like ports, remakes and any other new, arcade-related games I encounter.

It's common for review sites to put a score at the bottom, but I think that's pretty much meaningless, so inside I'll end my reviews with two bullet point lists, one for the highs and one for the lows.

Look out for upcoming reviews under the http://arcadethrowback.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Reviews label.

MTW

Pac-Man returns to the arcade

If you asked a non-gamer to think of a video game hero, the chances are they'll give you one of three answers: Lara Croft, Mario or everyone's favourite yellow sphere, Pac-Man.

Namco Bandai gave the old fella a new lease of life back in 2007 when they released Pac-Man Championshop Edition for Xbox Live Arcade.  Sure, Pac-Man has appeared on lots of home platforms, but really he belongs in the arcade and Namco Bandai have realised this and released a brand new machine, Pac-Man Battle Royale as part of his 30th anniversary.

Revealed to the public at the 2010 Amusement Expo in Las Vegas last month, Battle Royale has a similar asthetic to Championship Edition, but is a four player cocktail cabinet, where the players can not only eat the ghosts, but each other too.

The cabinet looks brilliant too.  It's uses an LCD screen to keep down the bulk and with its four cup holders, it's clearly been designed to live in bars as well as arcades.

I have no idea where I can get to play this in the UK, but I can't wait to give it a go when it's released next year.  For now, here's a video demo from a guy calling himself The Atarian:

Classic of the Month - Space Invaders

Manufacturer:	Taito
Genre:	Shoot 'em up
Board:	Dedicated Intel 8080-based hardware
Year:	1978

When I decided to do a monthly spotlight on classic arcade games, it was difficult to know where to begin.  In the end, I decided to go for the first arcade machine I can remember seeing, Space Invaders. I was 7 or 8 and my family were on holiday in Cromer. We went to a fish and chip shop and there by the counter was Space Invaders. I didn't know what the game was called, in fact I don't think I fully understood what it was, but I remember the artwork -- because it gave me nightmares. Those hulking, faceless beasts, stomping through a mountain range (or was it meant to be the moon? I still don't know) looked nothing like the simple sprites in the game, but it was an iconic image nonetheless.

 
The first time I actually played Space Invaders was on my older brother's BBC Micro B a few years later and it was several years later still that I made the connection between the game I played at home and the arcade machine with the scary monsters on it.

Over the years, Space Invaders has had several updates, most noteably Space Invaders '91 and Space Invaders Extreme - the latter of which is brilliant.  For now, let's just remind ourselves of the original, courtesy of YouTube user Laoch111:

MTW

E3 2010

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest trade show in the games industry calendar, is over for another year.  While E3 has never been about arcade games, I do work in the industry, so it only seems right that I should comment on this annual extravaganza.

The big three, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, all had new technology to announce this year, most of which was based on either motion-controlled gaming or 3D.  As a result, it felt as though there was not as many actual games announced this year compared to previous years, although there were still over 800 games at the show in some capacity or another.  Let's have a look at what Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo had to show us all.

Microsoft
Where as Nintendo and Sony offer very similar kinds of motion control, Microsoft have headed off in their own direction with Kinect.  This is basically a very clever camera system that allows you to play games by moving your arms, legs and in some cases, your whole body without actually holding anything.  As Microsoft's press release says, you are the controller.  And this isn't just technology for playing virtual volleyball, Kinect also works with the Xbox 360's user interface and even allows users to control movies with hand gestures.

Will Kinect for Xbox 360 be the next evolution in gaming?

To go hand-in-hand with the Kinect, Microsoft unveiled their new, smaller version of the Xbox 360, which features a special connector on the back for powering the camera.  People with original 360s will have to find space on their extension leads to connect the Kinect to the mains.

After being on the market for five years, the Xbox 360 gets a facelift.

As for games, there were plenty of Kinect games announced, most of which harped existing Nintendo Wii games, including such obvious clones as Kinect Sports and Kinect Party.  If you're one of those old fashioned sorts who likes to hold on to a controller while you play, Microsoft haven't forgotten about you.  Among the upcoming core games were Gears of War 3, Fable 3, Halo: Reach, Crackdown 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Sony
Sony had the most new tech to show off this year, with both a motion controller and 3D.  Their motion controller is called the Move and as I mentioned at the beginning, it closely resembles a Wii remote.  It even has its own version of a Nunchuk, called a Navigation Controller.  What the Move has over the Wii Remote is direct positional tracking, with the aid of the PlayStation Eye camera and a glowing, rubber ball at the end of the controller.  Sources say it is significantly more accurate than either Kinect or Wii Motion Plus, but it's still difficult to shrug off feeling it's just a copy cat.

Montion control and motion capture combine with the PlayStation Move

As for 3D, Sony are pushing this technology hard, with both their 3D TVs and 3D games and 3D movies on the PS3.   Some games they showed in 3D included Gran Turismo 5 and Killzone 3, both of which should be first class titles.  However, for a family to enjoy this admittedly impressive technology in their home, everyone will need a set of polarised 3D glasses.  Combined with the cost of the TVs, the initial investment to enjoy this technology runs into the thousands.

3D TV is coming, whether we like it or not.

Nintendo
In recent years, Nintendo have been accused of abandoning core gamers.  However, at this year's E3 they seemed keen to prove this attitude is wrong.  They showed some interesting new Wii titles, including a new Zelda game that uses Motion Plus, Sin & Punishment 2, NBA Jam, Epic Mickey, a new version of GoldenEye, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Mario Sports Mix, Conduit 2,  a new Donkey Kong Country game and loads more.

Kirby's Epix Yarn has a brilliant art style, where everything is made of bits of wool.

The biggest news coming out of Nintendo, if not the whole show, was the unveiling of the 3DS.  This is their first new handheld since the original DS back in 2004 and it's packing quite a punch.  It now has an analogue stick, the power of a GameCube and glasses-free 3D.  It's also backwards compatible with the current range of DSs.  The press all seemed really impressed with this technology, which I find interesting, because so many of them are against other forms of 3D.  As far as Arcade Throwback is concerned, we wish this technology had been available back in the heyday of coin-op gaming, because it is precisely this kind of experience that used to make those old games so different from home gaming.

Despite looking similar to the DSi, the 3DS is a very different beast underneath

Consoles live or die by their games and Nintendo have already announced Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil, Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Dead or Alive, Ghost Recon, Ninja Gaiden, Ridge Racer, Saint's Row, Pilot Wings and the long awaited return of Kid Icarus.  I reckon that lot will stand the 3DS in good stead.

Summary
Overall it was an exciting show and proof games still have a lot to offer.  I think the new slim Xbox looks great, although I'm not yet convinced about Kinect.  As far as motion-controlled gaming goes, I think Sony has the best idea by combining everything the Wii remote can do with most of what Kinect can do.  It's worth clarifying that the glowing ball at the end of the Move controller gives the system something clear and definite to track.  Kinect, on the other hand, will always have to guess where your hand is in relation to the rest of your arm and the surrounding environment.  As for games, I think Nintendo has really cranked things up this year.  I can't quite believe how many core titles are on the way for the Wii, but at the same time I can't help feeling they should have done this three years ago; I know far too many gamers who have abandoned the Wii because of the vast number of shallow party games and bogus fitness games there are on the system.  Let's hope some of them can be tempted back with this crop of "proper" games.

So what was my pick of the show?  Easy, the 3DS.  The idea of playing 3D games without having another pair of glasses on top of my prescription lens is very appealing, but I need to see one in the flesh before I'll believe the 3D is as good as everyone says.

For more information on the show, see http://www.e3expo.com

MTW