Classic of the Month - Chase HQ

Manufacturer:	Taito
Genre:	Racing
Board:	Taito Z System
Year:	1988

There were lots of behind-the-car racing games during the 80s, such as Pole Position, Power Drift, Continental Circus, TX-1,  Cisco Heat and of course Outrun, but if truth be told, there was not much difference between them.  Taito mixed things up considerably in 1988 with Chase HQ, which gave players an objective beyond simply crossing the finish line first.  Instead, you played a highway patrol officer, who gets to pursue criminals as they drive their luxurious getaway cars.  In true Miami Vice-style, you get a pretty hot car yourself, that 80s icon, the Porsche 928.  At the start of every level the perp is already well ahead of you, so you have to dash through traffic to catch up with them.  To break up the action, you also have to make sure you take the right junctions to stay on the criminal's tail.  Make a wrong turn and you lose them.  Once you do catch up to the target, you have to ram them off the road, in a sort of driving boss battle. What actually makes this game special and more than just an over-the-shoulder version of Spy Hunter is its lack of weaponry; the action is somehow more visceral. Curiously, it's a formula that was not copied very often.  Taito themselves released a couple of follow ups in the arcade, Special Criminal Investigations (1989) which added more targets and guns and Super Chase: Criminal Termination (1992), which switched to a behind-the-wheel view of the action.  It wasn't until 2006 that Taito released a true sequel, Chase HQ 2, which reverted to the old formula and (rather anachronistically for a modern game) full-motion video.  Sadly, the sequel was never ported to a home platform, so the chances of seeing it are rare. The closest thing on current hardware is probably Criterion Games' Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit for PC and consoles.

MTW

What is attract mode?

What month I talked about screen burn and how arcade manufacturers started to add attract modes to their games to help prevent this, however, that wasn't the primary function of an attract mode. As the name suggest, attract mode was to attract players. Pretty obvious, huh?

Usually attract modes would alternate between a demonstration of the game, the highscores, profiles of the characters or vehicles and the story of the game (if indeed there was a story). They often said "Game Over" or "Insert Coin(s)" and were sometimes silent, although usually that was controlled by a dip switch.

Now, I like to include videos in my posts where I can find them, so imagine my delight when I discovered a someone on YouTube calling themselves Narox has uploaded a series of 41 videos on Capcom attract modes, including such classics as Captain Commando, Three Wonders, Dark Stalkers and loads from the Street Fighter series. If you don't know what attract screens look like, you will after this:

Can I be honest? I like just leaving this video series playing in the background. Ahhh, nostalgia. 

MTW

Radiant Silvergun comes to XLBA

I heard a rumour Treasure were bringing their legendary debut shmup, Radiant Silvergun, to XBLA, but I had no idea it was ready.  What's more, it'll be here tomorrow.

If you haven't played Radiant Silvergun before, it goes out of its way to give players a unique shoot 'em up experience.  There are no power ups, instead you get seven modes of fire, activated by pressing different combinations of the three buttons.  It also features a brilliant colour-coded point system based on the order and patterns you kill (or avoid) enemies.  There's a nice overview of the mechanics on Hardcore Gaming 101 here.

The XBLA version features local and online 2-player co-op modes, both the original arcade version and Saturn version of the game (with its frankly superfluous animated cutscenes), an option to enable Ikaruga's scoring system and multiple display filters - some of which do a great job of making it look high def.

So until Wednesday, let's have another look at the trailer they released last year.

Smells like arcade spirit

Online competitive gaming is all well and good, but there's something about standing beside your opponent, with a crowd of onlookers cheering along, that Call of Duty and its ilk simply cannot capture.  Arcades used to provide that kind of experience and it's something I miss - even if I frequently embarrassed myself at the time.  Since the recent Evo tournament, a bunch of us from work have been getting together at lunch to play Super Street Fighter IV (a perk of working in the games industry).  We're all Street Fighter nuts, each with our favourite characters, whom we've practiced ad nausea for years, if not decades.  So, with Hori EX2s (some modified with Sanwa parts) and Mad Catz Fighting Sticks at the ready, we battle it out - but not for glory, we're trying to learn from one another.  Street Fighter IV's focus system is deep and involved mechanic, which might even rival Virtua Fighter's complex fighting system.  I must confess that despite playing SFIV for two years, I hadn't really understood the focus system.  I had used it from time to time as a counter, but it seemed rather slow and cumbersome compared to Street Fighter III's parry system. Thanks to a Spanish DeeJay master, I am starting to appreciate how focus can be cancelled, in order to block an attack and immediately follow it up with something more devastating than the focus attack.  There's also the rather trickier tactic of using focus to cancel specials, in order to avoid committing yourself to a move that either will not hit or lead you into danger.  It takes a lot of practice, not only to learn but to unlearn old habits from 20 years of play.

Oni, one of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition's new characters

All of which has got me thinking, should I mod my Hori EX2?  The fighter hardcore will probably be astonished that, as someone who claims Street Fighter is his favourite game of all time, I haven't built my own joystick using Sanwa parts, but to be honest, I get on well with my Hori.  I use it for all my arcade ports and emulation, not just Street Fighter and other than thinking the shaft is a little short, it handles great. 

Hori EX2 - not the best arcade stick you can buy, but pretty damn good.

However, I am thinking an 8-way gate would be good for performing quarter circles movements, rather than the EX2's original square gae.  Sanwa make one called the GT-Y (pictured below), which can, with a little effort, be fitted to EX2s and cost less than a tenner.

A Sanwa GT-Y 8-way restrictor gate

But then Virtua Fighter and Tekken players will say square gates are better for 3D fighters, as well as games like Pac-Man and Tetris.  So what to do?  For now, I'm going to sleep on it.

MTW