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: