It's almost the end of another year, but instead of a melancholy look back at how great arcade games were and how it's a shame modern arcades are a shadow of their former selves, I'm going to talk about how the fall of arcade gaming was inevitable and necessary for gaming as a whole to evolve.
The beginning of the end
PlayStation 1 shared DNA with the Namco
System 11 and System 12 arcade units.
For years, home computers sought the holy grail of the arcade perfect conversion. They rarely, if ever achieved it. Then in 1994 the Sony PlayStation came along, just as arcades were venturing into 3D polygonal graphics, and everything changed. The gap between arcade and home gaming closed with the PlayStation; Namco even used the same hardware for the basis of their System 11 and System 12 arcade machines. Games like Tekken 3, Soul Blade, Ridge Racer, Point Blank and Xevious 3D/G on the PlayStation were virtually indistinguishable from the arcade originals. At this point there was still plenty of life in the arcade scene, but the PlayStation, more than any other home machine to date, was the thin end of the wedge.
The rise of internet gaming
By the end of the 90s the PC had become the dominant force in home gaming. Games like Half-Life, the Quake series and StarCraft became the competitive games to play, at home, over the internet. Rather that 2 to 4 people facing off, PC gaming allowed dozens of players to go at it. This was a much bigger gaming experience than anything the arcade had to offer — and all from the comfort of your home.
Games like Quake III Arena took competitive gaming
to a whole new level.
However, PC gaming had a relatively high barrier to entry. Firstly, it was expensive. PC graphics cards could (and still can) cost as much as a console and if you want to be cutting edge you had to spent hundreds of pounds every year. But the along with PC gamers, the number of console gamers was growing thanks to the PlayStation 2, which not only had the support of all the people who owned an original PlayStation, but also the support of people who wanted an inexpensive DVD player.
These two groups, the PC gamers and the console gamers, came together in mid-2000s, when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 brought high definition, internet gaming to the masses. One game above all set the scene on fire and that was Infinity Ward's seminal first person shooter, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Call of Duty 4 offered console gamers a taste of what
PC gamers had been enjoying for the past decade.
I remember a bunch of us at work watching the "All ghillied up" trailer during lunch and being utterly blown away. Then we saw the video showing the perks and how each player could tweak the game to suit their own play style. This was a deeper, more tactical game than the hordes of Quake games that came before it. Moreover, all you needed to take part was a few hundred quid for a console and a broadband connection, which by 2007, almost everyone had. Gamers played it in their millions and in comparison arcade games were basic and limited.
However, by now console controllers had become multi-axis, multi-buttoned monstrosities that genuinely intimidated casual gamers, people who once upon a time might have played Pac-Man or Outrun.
Modern console controllers are just too
complicated for some people.
Accessible games for all
By now the arcade was all but dead, but it left a bit of a void in the form of casual, accessible games. Enter Nintendo and Apple with two completely different platforms, offering very similar experiences that appealed to those lost masses. I'm of course talking about the Wii and the iPhone.
Is there anyone left who's
not played Wii Sports?
The Nintendo Wii was a huge success with everyone, from kids to "cool" people who previously shunned gaming to old grannies who never worked out how to programme their VCR, let alone play games. In 2006 the Wii was selling out all over the world. The natural feel of motion gaming was epitomised by a game that was bundled with console, Wii Sports. Bowling, tennis, golf, boxing, all simulated to entertaining effect by swinging the Wii Remote in intuitive and instinctive sweeps of the arm. Playing Wii Sports with friends suddenly became a party activity, with groups of people unashamedly hurling themselves (often drunkenly) around their living rooms as they played. Such was the all encompassing and entertaining nature of Wii Sports that for many Wii owners it was the only game they needed.
Cut the Rope, a brilliant little game
that costs less than a Mars Bar
On the less frenetic, but nonetheless popular end of the gaming spectrum, the iPhone's open market attracted literally thousands of small independent developers, making small, accessible games for less than a quid. It wasn't long before Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone platforms attracted those same developers and suddenly everybody with a smartphone was playing games like Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Cut the Rope and Draw Something. Where the Wii got people playing games in public, smartphones got people playing games persistently. And like an arcade game, these were games you could spent a few minutes or a few hours playing, depending on what you wanted.
While there's plenty of duds on the iOS, Android and Windows Phone marketplaces, some of these mobile games look brilliant, play brilliantly and would not have been out of place in an arcade in years past. The experience these games offer and the cost to play them is as close to a modern version of the pocket money gaming of the arcade as you'll get.
The best price is free
If paying less than a quid for a game like Cut the Rope sounded cheap, in the last couple of years a new trend of free to play (or F2P) games has come along. These games are usually either ad supported or include weapons, armour, upgrades and power-ups that you can buy for just a few pence. Either way, the bulk of the experience costs nothing. And these aren't just simple little games. Massively multiplayer online games like League of Legends are free to play and many that did have a subscription, such as Lord of the Rings Online and even World of Warcraft, can be played for free.
League of Legends is incredibly popular and hooks its players by
virtue of its free to play model.
And the point is...?
Multiplayer arcade gaming, circa 1985
Individually, I don't believe any of these gaming trends betters the arcade experience, but as a whole they offer gaming that is deeper, more expansive, more accessible, more readily available and fresher than your typical arcade machine. As much as I miss those days, if I'm honest part of that is down to the period in my life that I experienced arcade gaming, those seminal pre and post adolescent years when so many things imprint on you for the rest of your life, from music and movies to school and friends. Over the last 10 years I've had some of my best gaming experiences ever on home platforms, specifically with games like World of Warcraft, Portal, Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect. And when I want something quick and simple to play, all I need is a browser and an internet connection or my smartphone and I can be playing some amazing shoot 'em up or puzzle game in seconds.
What's more, it's never been easier to find and play classic arcade games, with plenty available on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Wii Virtual Console. So you can have the best of all worlds. Play the deep, challenging online multiplayer games; play the quick and accessible motion games on Wii, PlayStation Move and Kinect; play lots of cheap, fun little games where ever you want and finally, play those classic arcade games if you're feeling nostalgic. The gaming world is your oyster and there is no longer a place in it for fixed arcade cabinets that cost millions to produce and distribute, only to age faster than they can be realistically updated, without actually offering anything that improves on experiences you can have at home or on the move.
To end this year's Boss Fight feature I wanted to talk about the greatest boss in arcade game history. This meant I had to trawl through blog posts and forum threads from all around the internet to get an answer. As you can imagine there is a lot of contention over who is the greatest boss to have appeared in an arcade game, especially as arcade games tended to be so hard that most people only ever saw the first few bosses of any given game. But, after a considerably amount of crowd sourcing, I found the following candidates:
The Giger-esque alien, Dobkeratops from R-Type
The sometimes dead, sometimes alive Geese Howard from Fatal Fury/King of Fighters
The robotic head of General Akhboob from Total Carnage
The toughest old bloke in video game history, Heihachi Mishima from the Tekken
One of the trippiest boss encounters ever, Xiga from Radiant Silvergun
But the name that appeared at or near the top time and time again was none other than Capcom's king of the criminal underworld, M. Bison from Street Fighter.
In the Street Fighter universe, M Bison is the head of the Shadaloo crime syndicate, who are based on a small island off the coast of Thailand. He dresses in the bright red uniform of Shadaloo's private military, complete with cape, which in early games he casts off before fighting. As well as being a crime boss he possesses "psycho power", which among other things allows him to turn his whole body into a flaming torpedo.
The first time I saw Bison in action it was in an arcade in my home town. Some guy I didn't know had beaten a load of people in one-on-ones using Guile and finished off his 20p by beating all of the computer opponents — all except Bison, who's combination of head stomps, double knee presses, somersault skull dives and psycho crushes quickly ended the player insurrection and left a 16 year-old me awe struck. At the time, nobody was talking about performing combos in Street Fighter 2. Instead most player matches focused on well-time special moves. Seeing Bison in action was the first indication I ever saw that moves could be strung together in fluid sequences. It would be years later before I got good enough at Street Fighter to be able to regularly beat Bison and even today, I'd need a good couple of goes with my main, Blanka, before I'd been up to the task.
So why is he such a great boss? For a start, his appearance was both striking and evocative; few people would deny the similarities between Bison's uniform and that of Nazi SS officers. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, his popularity is linked to the popularity of Street Fighter itself, plus the vast number of spin-offs and sequels the franchise has had, meaning even if you didn't face him in the original Street Fighter 2 in 1991, you've probably faced off against him in another game since.
Rather than show a game footage of such a popular boss in action, I thought instead I would show the fight between M Bison and both Ryu and Ken, from the animated Street Fighter movie, which does a pretty good job of demonstrating how much of a bad ass Bison is supposed to be.
And that does it for my boss fight feature. There are loads of bosses I could talk about, not least the candidates listed at the beginning of this post, but I want to begin a new monthly feature next year, so I'm ending it here. Thanks for reading.
Eurocom, an independent UK games developer, responsible for such arcade ports as Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Hydro Thunder, Rodland, Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 4 had to lay off ¾ of their workforce yesterday.
A statement issued by studio Director Hugh Binns to Gamesindustry International reads:
"Eurocom are undertaking a restructuring which I regret to say has meant we've made the majority of our workforce redundant today.
"This includes many very experienced, talented and highly skilled employees, and we'd like to thank them all for your hard work and efforts.
"We've fought to try and save as many jobs as possible, but the steep decline in demand for console games, culminating in a number of console projects falling through in the last week, left us with no option. Eurocom has retained a core staff of just under 50 employees and will be focusing mainly on mobile opportunities moving forward."
Obviously, developers go under all the time, but I mention Eurocom's difficulties because until a few months ago, I worked there and the 3 ½ years I was there were some of the hardest, most humbling and also most interesting years of my working life. There's not many jobs where people wander around the building in shorts and bare feet or have racks full of machine guns in the offices or (my favourite) let their staff install games on their incredibly powerful workstation computers and permit building-wide games of Left 4 Dead, Battlefield and Star Craft 2 at lunch time. There's also very few jobs where 80-100 hour weeks are par for the course coming up to a deadline, but that's the dark truth about the games industry.
Hopefully they can transform their business model and survive the current turmoil in the industry, but it's still such a same so much talent is now out of work. My heart goes out to all of you guys.
UPDMTWE (7/12/12): Despite the best efforts of the directors to move into markets that might keep them afloat, the company announced today that they were bringing the administrators in, so that's it, all over.
If you own an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, then as of next Wednesday you'll be about to buy Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Sonic Fighters (which I'd not actually heard of before) and challenge other Sega fighting fans online. These are all Model 2-based machines and the basic polygon graphics have not aged well at all, much like some early sprite-based games. Anyway, they each cost 800MSP on Xbox or £6.99 on PS3 and demos are available if you don't already know you want them.
So until Wednesday, let's have a quick look at the games themselves, all courtesy of YouTube user Ninjasweetheart:
To end 2012's run of classics, I thought I'd talk about William's 1982 fixed-screen, twin-stick shooter,Robotron 2084. The attract screen for Robotron 2084 sets out the plot as as follows:
"Inspired by his never-ending quest for progress, in 2084 mankind perfects the Robotrons: A robot species so advanced that man is inferior to his own creation. Guided by their infallible logic, the Robotrons conclude: The human race is inefficient, and therefore must be destroyed."
As the player, you must take control of a mutant humanoid to protect the last human family from wave after wave of increasingly homicidal robot monstrosities. Gameplay is as frantic as it gets, with lots of things going on at once. As well as blasting Robotrons and rescuing humans, you need to avoid the indestructible Tanks, blast the immobile Eletrodes before you run into one and stop the Braintrons from reprogramming humans into suicide bombers. In an era when almost all games were rock hard, there's something almost oppressive about the amount of things happening at once in Robotron, but thankfully Vid Kidz made sure the player was well equipped to cope with the chaos, by fitting the cabinet with two joysticks — one for movement and the other for shooting, which meant the player could run in one direction and shoot in another. The idea came about because Robotron creator Eugene Jarvis claimed he was bored of the single joystick controls that every other arcade game used at the time. It certainly provided a unique experience and it did not take long for other arcade manufacturers to adopt twin-stick controls for some of their games, not least Data East's 1984 martial arts game Karate Champ.
This video footage may not show off the game's controls, but it does show dexterity it offered the player, among such hectic gameplay.
I'm going to end this year's CotM by saying I think Robotron has had more influence on this generation of games (i.e. since the Xbox 360 launched in 2005) than any other arcade game. Between Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Nintendo Network, PC and smart phones, this generation has seen the following games that use similar twin-stick, wave-based action to Robotron:
Ballistic (XBLIG)
Base 2 (PC)
Beat Hazard (XBLIG/PC)
Blast Factor (PSN)
Bullet Candy Perfect (PC)
Centipede Infestation (Wii/3DS)
Crystal Quest (XBLA)
Dead Nation (PSN)
Echoes+ (XBLIG)
Everyday Shooter (PSN)
Gatling Gears (PC/PSN/XBLA)
Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Wii/DS)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (XBLA)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (XBLA)
Grid Assault (PC)
Grid Wars (PC)
Grid Wars 2 (PC)
HGE Wars (PC)
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 (XBLIG)
Inferno (XBLIG)
Ion Assault (XBLA)
JoyJoy (XBLIG)
Minitron 2112 (iOS)
Mono (PC)
Mu-Cade (PC)
Mutant Storm: Empire (XBLA)
Mutant Storm: Reloaded (XBLA)
Neon Wars (PC)
P-3 Biotic (PC/PSN/XBLIG)
Pew Pew Pod (XBLIG)
Rainbow Wars (PC)
RetroBlast (PC)
Scoregasm (PC)
Seizonrenda (XBLIG)
Super Star Dust HD (PSN)
Ultratron (PC)
Veck (PC)
Vector Infector (PC)
Voxatron (PC)
Waves (PC)
X-Wars (PC)
And that's overlooking the dozens of other top-down, twin-stick shooters that are more story and mission-orientated, including the likes of Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light, Renegade Ops and the new Alien Breed trilogy. I think part of the reason for this is the now ubiquitous design of console joypads, which all seem to follow the layout of the PlayStation dual analogue controller that first appeared in the late 90s. But for all the advances in the modern games listed above, none of them actually better Robotron's intense action.
Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month we have the return of a classic clone and a bunch of new karting games.
Giana Sisters: Twistered Dreams
Developer:
Black Forest Games
Publisher:
Black Forest Games
Platforms:
PC
Price:
£12.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
Back in 1987, a .Super Mario Brother clone called The Great Giana Sisters was released for a bunch of home computers. It was pretty good, but Nintendo didn't like the uncanny resemblance to their flagship franchise and threatened the developers, Time Warp Productions, and publishers, Rainbow Arts, with legal action. Now Black Forest Games have created a truly beautiful sequel for PC (with Xbox 360 and PS3 versions in the pipeline). There's been a lot of great looking 2D platformers in recent years, such as Rayman Origins, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Trine, but Twisted Dreams could be the best looking yet. Thankfully it backs it up with some fun gameplay too. There's a demo coming on Steam, so check it out.
Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed
Developer:
Sumo Digital
Publisher:
Sega
Platforms:
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, WiiU and 3DS
Price:
£29.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
From one Nintendo clone to another, the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing was a perfectly competent Mario Kart clone. I'm sure that it's no coincidence that about a year after Mario Kart 7 introduced karts that can fly and float, so too does Sega. I'm not going to hold it against them, because I actually think this game looks and plays better than the recent Mario Kart games.
Let's be honest, Formula 1 is a tad boring. The same few teams have been ruling the roost for decades, the racing generally lacks the bump and grind of touring cars or the risks and thrills of rallying. So what better way to spice things up than to make an F1 karting game? Featuring super deformed versions of all the latest drivers, including Lewis Hamilton, Jensen Button, Mark Webber, Fernando Alonso and many more. The game straddles the rules of both F1, with pit stops required to repair your car, and more karting mayhem, with weapons, power-ups and crazy tracks.
Of the three karting games out this month, this is probably the weakest, but if you don't like Sonic or (somehow) Sackboy, then this is a suitable alternative.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
It's difficult to say which SNK Neo Geo series is the best, but I do remember when I first saw Metal Slug in a Mansfield arcade in the mid-90s thinking how incredible it looked. Of the many Metal Slug games there's been, 2000's Metal Slug 3 is generally considered to be the best. As with previous games, you are battling General Morden's army, only discover Morden himself is under the control of the same Martian threat that appeared in the second game. And begins another crazy, over-the-top Metal Slug adventure, in which you battle enemies human, undead, mechanical and Martian alike.
The final boss is the Martian overmind, Rootmars, whom you encounter on-board its giant mothership, in orbit over Earth. You begin by entering a chamber to find Rootmars is hooked up to heart of the spaceship by numerous wires and tubes. When the fight begins, he blasts you with enormous blue energy balls, which get bigger and bigger, until eventually they're taking up about a ¼ of the screen. Blast it enough, and Rootmars' glass dome will explode and your character (Marco Rossi, Tarma Roving, Eri Kasamoto or Fio Germi) runs off screen.
For the next few minutes you run down a Giger-esque corridor, blasting zombie clones, robots and giant, goo-dripping Martian quadrupeds, to finally escape out of the airlock. As you plummet to earth in a SV-001, you get a nasty surprise - Rootmars is not dead and has jumped out of the exploding mothership after you. The battle then rages on, as you both fall through the atmosphere, as this video demonstrates.
In a series that is jam-packed full of incredible boss encounters, there's something about fighting as you free fall that makes this fight with Rootmars the most extrordinary of all.
In 1995, as a response to the success of Taito's Puzzle Bobble series, Data East released Chain Reaction (or Magical Drop as it was known in its native Japan). The game did well enough for Data East to make two sequels for the SNK Neo Geo MVS, under the Japanese name. Thanks to the success of the Neo Geo, Magical Drop II and III were huge successes, even spawning their own clones, most recently Astro Pop on Xbox Live Arcade.
Over the years there have been a couple of non-canonical sequels, Magical Drop F for PlayStation in 1999, and Magical Drop Touch for iOS/Android in 2009. Now, 15 years after the last arcade game, Ignition Entertainment is publishing Magical Drop V, developed by the brilliant Arkedo and Golgoth Studios.
The game is available now on PC, with XBLA and PSN versions due next year. In the mean time, here's the trailer.
Disney's Wreck-It Ralph is an upcoming 3D animated movie about the baddie from a fictional arcade game called Fix-It Felix, who declares at his local Bad-Anon meeting that he does not want to be a bad guy any more — much to the chagrin of Clyde the orange ghost, Bowser, Dr Eggman, M. Bison and Zangief. Yes, you just read that list right and they are far from the only arcade and video game references in this trailer. In fact the references go so far back into the annals of gaming history, it makes me think this has been made by people with a genuine love for the medium. Dad's like me will certainly appreciate the fact they have kids young enough to justify going to see this when it comes out later this month.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of those franchises that refuses to die, even if most people forget it ever existed after it's initial rise to fame in the 80s (when it was known as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles here in the UK). However, following the comic that started in 1984, the original animated TV series ran from 1987 to 1996, a live action series ran for two years after that, a second animated series ran from 2003 to 2009 and just last month, Nickelodeon began its new CG-animated series. And let's not forget that among all that there's been four films, with a fifth due out next year. So amazingly, Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo and (my favourite) Raphael have been around for 28 years.
I was 12 when the Hero— err, Ninja Turtles first appeared and at the time I was a fan of all things martial arts. Add 80s' attitude and references to exotic fast food like pizzas and I was hooked. However, like so many super hero cartoons back then, there was very little actual fighting. Invariably the gang would defeat Krang, Shredder and their lackies Bebop, Rocksteady, Dr Baxter Stockman and the foot soldiers by tripping them into a rubbish bin or splatting them with food. It wasn't the clash of steel or the flash of gymnastic ninjitsu skill I craved. And so it is with a cry of cowabunga that Konami's 1989 arcade game offered precisely that. What's more, unlike like other treasured beat 'em ups, such as Golden Axe and Fight Fight, TMNT let four players go into battle, each with their own dedicated joystick.
The game played like pretty much any other beat 'em from that era, only more frantic, due to four players flitting around the screen. The game consisted of two buttons, one for jump and the other for attack. Pressing them both triggered a special move, but unlike Fight Fight and its ilk, you did not use up any of your life meter to do so. The game also had more emphasis on vertical and diagonal scrolling sections, although the actual characters stayed on the same plane.
To say an arcade game was difficult is a little like saying a heavy metal band's concerts are loud, but Turtles was actually a little cheap. These days people would bitch like hell about bashing away at a boss for as long as the level leading up to him took, only to have him fill the screen with bullets and minions, but it was common enough at the time.
It's probably worth mentioning that TMNT shared more than a little DNA with another four player Konami beat 'em up, The Simpsons. At the time, I'd never seen that TV show, but the similarity between the two games meant I did not need to know it's origins to play it whilst waiting for a space on the neighbouring TMNT cabinet.
Last December I said I thought Sega were the greatest arcade manufacturer of all time, then not a month later I was bemoaning the fact all they are making in the second decade of the 21st century are prize machines. Earlier this month, they unveiled their latest arcade machine and looking at the specs, photos and trailers, I think I may have been a bit hasty.
It's called Dream Raiders and it's a rail shooter with what Sega are calling a "motion platform", which basically means the seat moves. The controls resemble the twin-sticks of Atari's vector classic Star Wars (another rail shooter), with strange glowing domes on top. I can't decide if they're just ornamental or actually serve a purpose. The screen is a big, HD flat panel and it features a surround sound system too, both of which are pretty much par for the course these days.
Superficially, this all looks pretty ordinary, but when I read that it was inspired by the superb Christopher Nolan film Inception, I thought I should pay a little more attention. The basic premise is that each level represents a dream, which the player or players must battle their way through before choosing the next dream to tackle. As such the levels include a dragon hunt, some sort of mine cart through a volcano, a snow mobile chase (which is probably the most Inceptiony of all the levels), a battle with a sea monster, a cowboy world, an alien invasion, an asteroid belt and various other dream-like worlds.
I think Sega have been smart by offering players so much choice right out of the gate. I can see people spend a fair few quid on it, if only to try a different level/dream. The only problem now is finding one to play.
Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month we have a PC shmup from Capcom, which makes great use of lots of borrowed ideas, a remake of a classic top-down racer for PC and an utterly insane platformer from Sega.
Ether Vapor Remastered
Developer:
Edelweiss
Publisher:
Nyu Media/Capcom
Platforms:
PC
Price:
£5.45
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
Continuing Capcom's initiative to publish small independent games, this doujin shmup borrows ideas left, right and centre, yet never fails to make good use of those ideas. The weapon system is similar to Radiant Silvergun, in that there are no power-ups, just 6 weapons assigned to 3 buttons, some of which have to be charged up to activate. The camera switches between several angles during the game, so sometimes it plays like a typical horizontal or vertical scrolling shmup and other times it plays like Sega classics Space Harrier and even Rez. It's a tight and tidy looking game, although admittedly there's not much variety in the enemy types. Nonetheless, there's a demo on Steam and any shmup fan would do worse than to download it.
Death Rally
Developer:
Remedy Entertainment
Publisher:
Remedy Entertainment
Platforms:
PC/iOS/Android
Price:
£7.99
Demo available:
No
What is it?
Max Payne and Alan Wake developer, Remedy Entertainment's original Death Rally was a top-down combat racing game, released 16 years ago for MS-DOS PCs. This remake plays much like the 1996 original, which in turn played much like Bally Midway's Spy Hunter. As the name implies, Death Rally features guns, bombs and various other weapons to help you dispose of the opposition. There's even an arena-style death match mode, which is all about destruction and not at all about racing. The remake manages to retain the feel of the original, but look a whole lot more modern at the same time. If you have a bunch of like-minded friends on-line, this is a blast.
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit
Developer:
Arkedo
Publisher:
Sega
Platforms:
Xbox Live Arcade, PC, PS3 (via PlayStation Network)
Price:
1200MSP/£12.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
Games don't get much more colourful and crazy than this rainbow-gore platformer from Arkedo and Sega. You play as the Prince of Hell, who has had the misfortune of being photographed playing in the bath with his rubber ducky — which is a very un-Prince of Hell-like thing to be caught doing. A quick look at the website where the pictures were published reveals 100 monsters have seen the picture. What can an undead lagomorph lord of the underworld do but kill every last one of them!? And so you set about exploring the incredibly detailed hell world of Hell Yeah! with the help of a jet pack-come-circular saw — yeah, you read that right. When you catch up to one of the 100 monsters, instead of a traditional boss fight, you get a 20 or 30 second-long mini-game, which invariably takes the form of quick time event. They are very fast and you have to understand the aim of these mini-games in an instant if you are to stand a chance of beating them. It keeps you on your toes in this amazingly detailed game. And much like last year's Rayman Origins, Hell Yeah! shows what 2D arcade games could have been had polygons and home consoles not taken over. Check out the demo and prepare for a visual feast.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
It's Halloween this month, so I thought, why not write about a spooky boss? Coincidentally, on Friday Capcom announced that they are porting Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge and Darkstalkers 3 to home consoles. I guess that means this month's boss fight has to be Darkstalkers' own super villan, Pyron.
Darkstalkers is full of typically Halloweeny characters, from the vampire, Demitri, the mummy, Anakaris and of course the succubus, Morrigan. The final boss, Pyron, bears more in common with the balrog from Lord of the Rings, with his minotaur-like appearance and his penchant for shrouding himself in flames.
A balrog from Lord of the Rings
Pyron, as drawn by Thevilbrain
In case you don't know much about Pyron, the Capcom Database has this to say about him:
"Originally, he came to Earth 65 million years ago and created the army of Huitzil robots to destroy life on Earth. It is unknown why Pyron didn't consume Earth back then, though it is assumed to be his lust for more worthy opponents. In the UDON comic, it is explained that Pyron wanted the Earth to "ripen" before harvesting it."
As an opponent, Pyron is a tricky one. At his disposal he has huge fireballs, body-morphing drill attacks, firey spinning blades, pillars of fire and burning force fields that can trap an opponent. Oh yeah and he's ALWAYS ON FIRE!
Here he is in action on the PlayStation version of the original Darkstalkers: The Night Warrior.
Capcom's most famous beat 'em up is obviously Street Fighter, but after that my favourite is the ghoulish Darkstalkers. Ostensibly, the game plays like Street Fighter, just with vampires, demons, Frankenstein monsters and lots of other camp horror monsters, but everything so was over the top and... well, camp, that it had a charm all of its own. One thing I've always found interesting is that there are people who know of the succubus, Morrigan, but not the game that introduced her (and her cleavage) to the world. Anyway, it's been far too long coming (especially considering how many ports, remakes and sequels of Street Fighter games there have been this generation), but Capcom are finally porting Darkstalkers to home consoles. Actually, not Darkstalkers itself, but the sequel, Night Warrior: Darksider's Revenge, and Darkstalkers 3 in one downloadable bundle.
As usual for these sort of ports, Capcom are adding online multiplayer, tutorials and graphics filters to overcome the fact modern TV have twice the resolution of the original arcade machine. So until next year, here's a nice little teaser trailer from IGN:
Despite the fact my release schedule means my Classics are now published at the beginning of the month instead of the end, I wanted to do another creepy classic for Halloween. So this month I've gone for Sega's first ever "video game", Killer Shark, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. This eerie, deep sea, shark-killing light gun game did the rounds in arcades and midways for two years, when in 1974 it made a brief appearance in Spielberg's classic Jaws and Sega suddenly had a hit on their hands.
A Killer Shark cabinet, as featured about an hour into Spielberg's horror classic, Jaws
While Killer Shark was an arcade game, it was not a video game in the traditional sense. In the early 70s Sega made mechanical arcade games, so when Space War and Pong kick started the arcade video game craze, the Tokyo-based amusement manufacturer wanted in. In lieu of a graphical display Sega animated the shark using a mechanical light projection system. According to About.com:
"The secret behind the on-screen shark animation is similar to the ancient zoetrope animation wheels. A series of shark illustrations were printed onto slides and placed sequentially on a circular disk. Light was then projected onto the disk, projecting the shark slides onto a mirror. The mirror reflected the shark image onto a frosted glass cabinet screen. The space between the slides created a flickering effect similar to a film projector. When the player's eye absorbs the light from one frame just as the next appears, it created the appearance of a moving image."
The result was the shark actually had a slightly spectral appearance, which in my opinion only added to the game's atmosphere. Gameplay considered of trying to shoot the shark with the harpoon light gun. When you hit the shark the animation changed to one of the animal bleeding and thrashing about as it died. It was simple, but effect -- so effective that Sega made a follow up called Sea Devil, which was basically the same game with a manta ray. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
With the exception of the game's brief appearance in Jaws, footage of the actual game is hard to find. What I did find was this video, which despite not being in English, does show you the how it worked.
Over the course of this series I've tried to pick the more interesting bosses to threaten the progress of arcade goers over the decades, be it one of the earliest bosses, a controversial boss, an iconic boss, a down-right crazy boss or whatever. This month I've gone for one of the most unexpected bosses, the Evil MC from Midway's gloriously over-the-top twin-stick shooter, Smash TV.
Video games are often inspired by Hollywood and in 1990 Midway took a whole host of movies based on violent game shows -- not least Arnold Schwarzenegger's classic Running Man -- to create Smash TV. The object of the game was simple: You are a contestant on the titular Smash TV game show. In order to win cash and prizes you have to blast your way through wave after wave of mutants, robots and monsters.
At the start of each wave the show's MC scrolls into the top corner of the screen, with a top-heavy bimbo on each arm and says, "Good luck. You'll need it!" As you progress through the game and take down each boss, Mutoid Man, Scarface and Die Cobros, you have no way of knowing what faces you at the end. When the host himself turns up as a giant humanoid tank, spitting bloody eyeballs at you, the pay off is brilliant -- even if he is very similar to the first boss. As you take him down, you take him apart, limb-by-limb, each of which fires off him all direction. After him limbs, you blast off his shirt, leaving him in just a spotty vest. Next to go is his head, but bizarrely that doesn't stop him. After that you finally blow up the blody, only to find there's a second head on top of the tank and the eye-blasting
In terms of unexpected boss encounters, few can top this surprise. Check out the video below to see the Evil MC in action.
Incidentally, Smash TV is yet another example of a game or movie being set in a far flung future year that is now history. In this case, all this carnage and disregard for human life is supposed to take place in 1999.
Many of the games I choose for the 'Classsic of the Month' feature have had some impact on me as a young gamer and Namco's spy-themed side-scrolling action adventure Rolling Thunder is no exception.
You took control of a World Crime Police Organization (W.C.P.O) agent codenamed Albatross as he battled the evil Geldra Organisation, who have kidnapped his female partner, the laughably named, Leila Blitz. Gameplay consisted of running through Geldra's secret New York base, jumping between floors and opening doors to check for power-ups and weapons. The gameplay was pretty simple, but the formula worked brilliantly. I cannot be sure, but I've always thought Rolling Thunder inspired Sega's Shinobi, which had very similar gameplay, but came out the following year.
Rolling Thunder was also dripping with kitsch espionage atmosphere. When I first saw it I couldn't believe how fluid and natural the animation was. Albatross's cool moves and swagger could be likened to Connery's James Bond, while the Geldra minions, called Maskers, would turn to look at one another and follow your movements. It almost looked rotoscoped. Back in 1986, that level of animation was incredibly rare, which meant the game looked better than rival games, such as Shinobi, even though they were made after its release. But atmosphere is about more than visuals, and like so many Namco games from the 1980s, Rolling Thunder had great music too, which sounded like the theme music from that other classic Ian Fleming creation, 60s spy show, The Man from Uncle. Undoubtedly Namco were aping Ian Fleming's various spy creations, but that didn't stop Rolling Thunder having enough personality of its own to stand out from the crowd in a packed arcade.
Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month I have a futurist racer on the Wii, a unique twist on the match three puzzler and what could be the ultimate score attack game.
Fast - Racing League
Developer:
Shin'en
Publisher:
Autumn Games/Konami
Platforms:
WiiWare
Price:
1000 Nintendo Points (£7.00)
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
One look at this futuristic racing game and you could be forgiven for thinking it was a WipeOut sequel, but if you watch the game being played for a few minutes you'll see it also shares something in common with Treasure's sublime shmup, Ikaruga. Basically your racing ships can switch polarity between white and black. The only way to make use of the power ups on the track is to match its polarity. These power ups include speed boosts and jump pads and if you don't hit them you risk not only falling behind but also falling off the track. It's an interesting twist to what would otherwise be an unremarkable game. Graphically, this is one of the best looking Wii games I've seen full stop, let alone Wiiware game and the music is as brilliant as Shin'en's past releases, such as shoot 'em up series Iridion and Nanostray. Playing this, I can't help thinking if this was in an arcade with a hydraulic cabinet, it would be major crowd puller.
10,000,000
Developer:
Eighty Eight Games
Publisher:
Apple AppStore
Platforms:
iOS
Price:
£2.99
Demo available:
No
What is it?
Just as the commercial games market is drowning in first person shooters, the indie scene is similarly drowning in match three puzzle games. Of course one of the most famous arcade puzzle games of all time, Puzzle Bobble (AKA Bust-a-Move) was a match three puzzle, so when a clever and different example of the genre comes along, I can't help but check it out. 10,000,000 is one such game. The game takes typical match three puzzles and mixes in a dash of RPG and infinity running to create something surprisingly fresh. Your character runs along the top of the screen and constantly faces various enemies and obstacles. Below is a grid of objects, which you must match in order to conquer threat preventing you from progressing. This adds both a sense of urgency and the need to plan that will quickly draw you in. As the title of this thread says, it's well worth a look.
Rock Band Blitz
Developer:
Harmonix
Publisher:
EA
Platforms:
Xbox Live Arcade, PS3 (via PlayStation Network)
Price:
1200MSP/£12.99
Demo available:
XBLA only
What is it?
A few years ago rhythm games were all the rage, with developer Harmonix first creating Guitar Hero for Activsion, then switching publishers to EA and creating Rock Band. For the next few years, Guitar Hero (under the stewardship of Neversoft) and Rock Band battled it out for a piece of the market, with each new installment upping the ante. Guitar Hero even made it into the arcade, with industrial grade guitars that weighed more than Karl Palmer's stainless steel drum kit. Quite frankly, it all got a bit ridiculous in the end, with Activision releasing four or five Hero-branded games in the space of a year. So just when it seemed the fad was over, Harmonix, the people who kicked started the whole trend, come back with a game that may have the Rock Band name, but more closely follows the gameplay of their earlier games, Frequency and Amplitude.
For any fan of arcade games and the pursuit of high scores, Rock Band Blitz is the perfect score attack fix. There are no fail states in this game, no difficulty settings, instead you play it to the best of you ability and you will be able to play every song in the game, plus any in your own Rock Band library, but if you want to top the leaderboards you have to learn to juggle each track (drums, bass, guitar, vocals and keyboards) to maximise the multiplier for each. The further you push the multiplier across all of the tracks before you reach each tracks check point and the further you can push the next multiplier. The result is you enforce the difficulty on yourself, purely by trying to do better. It's a fantastic system and possible the purest form of score attack I've ever seen.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
It's my son's 6th birthday tomorrow, so this month's Boss Fight is in honour of my favourite little guy.
Like many dad's from my generation, I play video games with my kids and although his favourites are the Lego games, driving games and anything with Mario in it, I encourage him to play a broad spectrum of games from across all genres and eras. As such he's played a fair amount of arcade games and the first boss we ever faced together was Raystorm's stage 1 boss, Pendragon.
I have a fondness for Raystorm, which is why I play it with my son. At the time of its release Raystorm was a technically impressive game, but as shoot 'em ups go it is a little tame. However, the multi-limbed tank, Pendragon, is a pretty good boss, with lots of tricks up its sleeve. It has a laser turret, missiles and a homing laser and like most bosses it has weak spots you have to target and attack. Raystorm's R-Gray fighters have primary and secondary weapons, but you can only destroy certain parts of Pendragon with each. The challenging part is the way it moves out of view, sometimes exposing one of its weak spots, sometimes shielding them and attacking. If you aren't on the ball you'll either use the wrong weapon or miss your target altogether.
The result of which is that Pendragon takes quite a while to defeat; even if you're really good at the game it can take longer to beat this first boss than the whole of the first level. That is why, despite how average Raystorm is overall, Pendragon is a boss worth fighting.
The London 2012 Olympic Games is well underway and not only is the BBC providing some of the best technology to allow people at home to watch whatever events they want, my family and I were at the Women's Football at Old Trafford just yesterday to see USA face off against South Korea.
I've been in training in my own special way, by playing one of the greatest arcade sports games of all time, Konami's 1983 classic, Track & Field, the first in a series which included Hyper Sports (1984), Konami '88 Games (1988), Hyper Athlete (1996) and Negano Winter Olympics '98 (1998), as well as numerous non-arcade spin offs. The events in each game varied, but for Track & Field there were six:
100 Meter Dash – Running by quickly alternating button presses.
Long jump – Running by alternating button press and correct timing for jump. Hold jump button to set angle.
Javelin throw – Running by alternating button presses and then using action button correct timing for angle.
110 Meter Hurdles – Running by alternating button presses and using action button to time hurdles
Hammer throw – Spinning initiated by pressing a run button once and then correctly timed press of action button to choose angle.
High jump – Running (speed set by computer) and then action button must be held down to determine angle of jump. Once in the air, the run button can be rapidly pressed for additional height.
I'm not sure if this game is the reason the term "button basher" was invented, but it's certainly the game that introduced me to it. Nonetheless, as well as frantic button bashing the game did require considerable skill when it came to timing jumps and throws and actually getting through all six events is not easy.
Often when I'm working on a Classic of the Month feature I'm going on sheer nostalgia, but for this month, I've been putting in a lot of time playing the game, courtesy of the elegant Xbox Live Arcade port. In fact, I've played it so much, I've got all completed all of the events and got the best times and distances I've ever achieved on the game. Don't say I don't do the background work for these articles.
I never wanted to make this into a review site and the few reviews I have done have taken more time (and money) than I'd like, so instead I'm introducing a new, ad hoc feature, Worth a Look, where I take a handful of new arcade-inspired games and put them in the spot light.
This month I have a Space Invaders clone, a Breakout/Arkanoid clone and a modern fighting game that inspired this feature in the first place.
Skull Girls
Developer:
Revenge Labs
Publisher:
Autumn Games/Konami
Platforms:
XBLA/PSN(PS3)
Price:
1200MSP/£10.99
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
If you like Guilty Gear or Blaz Blue, check out Revenge Labs's debut, Skull Girls, which actually hit Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network for PS3 a couple of months ago. There may only be eight combatants, but Revenge Labs have done a great done of making sure they are as different from one another as possible. There's also a pretty solid tutorial mode, which Revenge hopes will teach people who are new to fighters how things like combos, launchers, cancels and juggles work.
Titan Attacks
Developer:
Puppy Games
Publisher:
Steam/independent
Platforms:
PC
Price:
£2.99
Demo available:
Yes/No
What is it?
Almost as soon as it was released in 1978 people started copying Space Invaders' formula. Most of the time developers do nothing to distinguish themselves from the pack, but Puppy Games manage to be both be highly retro and brilliantly redesigned at the same time. As well as the usual wave-based, single-screen action you'd expect from a Space Invaders clone, Titan Attacks includes an upgrade shop, which appears at the end of every level. If you simply want to survive you can top up your shield after each wave, but if you want to power up your tank, you need to save your coppers for several levels. Whether it's worth the wait is entirely up to you.
WoOOPup
Developer:
Bedroom Studio Entertainment
Publisher:
Independent
Platforms:
XBox Live Indie Games
Price:
80MSP
Demo available:
Yes
What is it?
Breakout clones are even more commonplace than Space Invaders clones, but good ones are rare. WoOOPup! by Bedroom Studios is easily the best on Microsoft's Xbox Live Indie Games service. While not as distinctive as Shatter, WoOOPup has very high production values and a few new ideas of its own, including coins that appear when you break a block and can only be collected by the ball, stackable power ups and coin collecting bonus rounds.
That does it for this month. Check the Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
Last month's boss was an antagonist who turns up time and time again, at the end of every level (albeit in different guises). This month's boss is an entire level! It can only be R-Type's level 3 boss, the Gigantic Warship.
Usually bosses have a couple of weak stops that you have to exploit in order to destroy them, but this monstrosity needs to be taken apart piece by piece -- not just to defeat it, but in order to survive. You approach the warship from the back, which means your first challenge is to avoid the main thruster engine, which blasts out hot death every few seconds, but that's not its only rear armament, there are also twin cannons and multiple turrets. The game then forces you underneath the warship, where there's more turrets and a bank of four lower thrusters, each of which have to be destroy individually and a few trash enemies to boot. Once you're past this you come up and around the front of the ship, only you cannot turn around, so you have to make careful use of your Force (R-Type's detachable weaponised pod) for both your protection and the turrets' destruction. This means you have to make sure you either have to start the level with a Force and not die or make sure you collect the yellow and/or red power-ups that appear while you're facing the warship, otherwise you have almost no chance of getting past this section. Once you've come around the front you've got to get past more turrets to blast the distinctly phallic purple engine unit on top. As a kid I never realised just how much this thing looks like a penis, but look at it! It's a long shaft, with pulsating pipes running up its length and a bulbous purple end, which has a sheath that exposes its most vulnerable area. It also moves in and out, spits out gobs of stuff. A pixel cock if ever I saw one and also the key destroying the whole ship. The best tactic is to get your Force wedged next to the engine and let it do the work, otherwise you have to have nerves or steel and surgeon-like control in order to sneak in and blast it with the R-9's wave cannon. Good luck with that.
To end, here's YouTube user Matrixandraia taking the Gigantic Warship apart on the sublime R-Type remake, R-Type Dimensions. I must admit, this guy makes short work of it, but that's down to practice:
Tonight is the final of the UEFA Euro 2012 football championships. After a month of tense competition, only Spain and Italy are left. There's been highs, there's been lows (not least England going out to Italy on penalties), but in the end it's come down to these two. As such when it came to choosing a new Classic of the Month I thought it only appropriate to do a football game and the first one that sprang to mind was Sega's Virtua Striker.
In the mid-90s 3D, polygonal graphics suddenly exploded in the arcade, with Sega releasing the lion's share of 3D games. They gave this series of games a name: Virtua. There was Virtua Cop, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Virtual-On and of course Virtua Striker. Powered by the Sega Model 2, the Virtua games looked incredible when they were first released and in the case of Virtua Fighter and Virtua Striker, they were the first of their kind (Virtua Tennis did not come along until the Naomi boards were released in '98).
The animation was smooth and authentic and the sense of being on the pitch and in the action was greater than any other football game at that time. You only played a two minute match (with no half time and without swapping ends), but the matches were perfectly paced for an arcade game. Like any other arcade game progress required success; there were no long-running leagues or cups here, if you lost your match, your game was over. This gave each match a sense or desperate urgency to score that later football games on home consoles never really had. Played with a friend, that sense of urgency and the need to triumph was even greater.
Virtua Striker may have been surpassed in later years by Konami's Pro Evolutional Soccer series and EA's FIFA series, but at the time it gave arcade gamers a football experience unlike any other.
Right, I'm off, the kick off is in 10 mins and I need to get a drink.
Between modern marketing and the Internet, these days it's relatively easy to keep track of all the sequels, prequels and spin-offs that come out for a video game. Back in the days of the arcade, unless a video game magazine or a friend told you about a new machine, you were stuck with what was in the arcades you visited. And while the histories of certain games, like Street Fighter (which I covered last year) and Tekken, are pretty well known, there are plenty of sequels to classic arcade games which went almost unnoticed. One such example for me is Capcom's classic 1942. I played the original game in the arcade loads and I played 1943 a couple of times, but I had no idea how many versions there were until I started dabbling with MAME in the late 90s.
So here, 60 years after 1942 (if you see what I mean), is my brief history of World War II-themed shoot 'em ups.
1942 (1984)
The formula for 1942 was simple. It was a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up, set during World War II, rather than space, like so many others from that era. You pilot the Super Ace, which looked exactly like a World War II Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Your mission was to blast through waves of Japanese fighter planes on your way to Tokyo to destroy an air base. Shooting down a sequence of red aircraft would deposit a power-up, which could be double fire-power, wide shot or two small escort planes. You could also perform a loop-de-loop to avoid enemy flak, although I never found it be particularly useful.
Despite its sober setting and authentic looking fighter craft, there was something endearing, almost cute, about 1942. Perhaps it was the put-put-chugga-chugga-peep-peep music, which sounds like your Super Ace is struggling against gravity, let alone the Japanese air force.
Its popularity catapulted Capcom into the big league and it would become their first game to spawn a sequel.
1943: The Battle of Midway (1987)
The first sequel arrived three years later. The basic gameplay did not really change, you still had to battle the Japanese air force over the Midway Atoll, you still got power ups from blasting waves of red planes and you could still do a loop-de-loop, if the desire takes you. However, everything was sort of beefed up. The second button was now a special attack (lighting or a tsunami), but which took part of your life bar (a conceit also seen in Capcom's side-scrolling beat 'em ups, like Final Fight and X-Men. The game also removed the traditional three lives and replaced it with a single life bar, which depleted as you took damage, but could be replenished by collecting POW icons. It also added two player co-op, a feature that would stay with the franchise throughout. The music also changed to something more rousing and military-like.
1943 will added two player co-op, timed power-ups and special attacks.
In Japan only, Capcom released an updated version of the game called 1943 Kai, which featured reworked graphics and sound, replaced the P-38 with a Boeing Model 75 biplane and added insane power-ups, like laser guns, which were totally incongruous with the game's WWII theme.
1941: Counter Attack (1990)
The next game in the series came out another three years later, but was set two years earlier. The conflict shifted from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Player 2 now flew what looked like a British-made Mosquito Mk IV fighter and instead of the bomb and loop being separate attacks, they were now a single action, so you avoided flak and wiped the screen of enemies in one action. The game also introduce a powerful homing attack, which had to be charged by holding down the power button — R-Type style.
1941 gave player 2 a Mosquito Mk IV and added narrow canyons to navigate
19XX: War Against Destiny (1996)
A number of things changed with the third sequel, 19XX. For a start, the player was given a choice of three fighter planes; the Super Ace was now identified as a (P-38) Lighting, the Mosquito was more powerful and the new plane, the (Japanese-made Kyushu J7W Shinden prototype) was fast and nimble. Each ship got a unique weapon too. The game also introduced mission briefing before each level, where you got a summary of the boss you'd be facing at the end. Capcom also lifted the medal system from the Raiden series. Tactically, the most interesting change was to the charge weapon. Now, if your charge shot landed you got several seconds of homing attacks on top of your normal primary weapon. When it came to taking down bosses you had to decide whether you chipped away with the main weapon or charged up in the hope it lands and you can then hit it with homing attacks.
A choice of planes and mission briefings were just some of the changes in 19xx.
Between the mission briefings and the post boss cinematics, 19XX really feels like a modern arcade game and it's one of the best in the series.
1944: Loop Master (2000)
Developed by Raizing/8ing (the guys behind Battle Garegga), 1944 is a different game again to its predecessors. The Shinden and Mosquito were dropped and instead the plaayer 1 was given the Lighning and player 2 was given a Mitsubishi Zero. The charge attack no longer had a follow up homing attack, instead you got an aerial assault, which (like the loop) kept the player out of harms way for a brief time. The wingman also played a bigger part, with the power-ups floating down to the bottom corner of the screen to be picked up at the player's discretion. The medals were also replaced with gems.
This was also the first game in the series with continues. When you're plane explodes your pilot jumps out and floats around with his parachute. When you continue, rescuing the pilot rewards you with a selection of the power-ups you had before you died.
The game ran on Capcom CPS2 hardware and it is a great looking game with a widescreen aspect ratio and lots of little details.
The Legacy
So that's my brief history of Capcom's 1940s shmups, but they weren't the only ones at it. Plagiarism in the games industry is pretty rife, you only have to look at how many Pong clones were made during the '70s, so it's not surprising 1942's popularity lead to a few copy cats, some of which were based on World War I and many of which really stretched the authenticity of their setting.
Flying Shark and Fire Shark (1987 & 1989)
Toaplan made a lot of great vertically scrolling shooters (Raiden, Truxton and Batsugun to name just a few), so it's hardly surprising they got into the World War-themed shmup scene. Between 1987 and 1989 they developed two such games, both with World War I themes and featuring bi-planes, Zeppelins, tanks and lasers! Yeah well, the less said about that the better. The games follow almost exactly the same template as other Toaplan shmups, yet somehow were never as thrilling as either Capcom's classic series or their own siblings, including this next game....
Twin Hawk (1989)
Also by Toaplan, Twin Hawk appears to be set in the second World War, just like Capcom's games. On the whole, Twin Hawk plays the same as the Shark games, as well as the aforementioned Raiden series. One novel feature was the ability to call forth a whole squadron of helper planes for a few seconds, after which they systematically dive bomb your enemies -- which seems a little extreme, but there you go. Given a choice of which of Toaplan's World War shmups to play, I'd probably go with the Hawk over the Shark.
This is going piste a bit, but Hardcore Gaming 101 did a great piece on Toaplan's shmups earlier this year, which you can check out here.
Strikers 1945 series (1995 - 1999)
When I first saw Psikyo's Strikers 1945 I assumed it was a follow up to the firs three 194x games, but it's actually a totally different vertically scrolling shmup with WWII fighter planes. While it would be easy to dismiss it as a blatant rip off, the Strikers games do have a few merits of their own, not least the choice of planes available to the player. The first game had the P-38 Lighting (same as 1942), the P-51 Mustang, the Shinden, the Messerschmitt BF-109, the Mitsubishi Zero and every Brits favourite piece of World War II hardware, the Spitfire. For the second game (Strikers 1945 II, also known as Strikers 1945 Plus) Psikyo added the Vought V-173 "Flying Pancake", but by the third game (Strikers 1945 III, also known as Strikers 1999) Psikyo brought the roster up to date, with the F-22 Raptor, F-117 Nighthawk and the AV-8 Harrier jump jet.
I like the Strikers games, but they are totally over-the-top, even more so than Capcom's later 1940s games. Transforming fighter planes anyone?
1942: Joint Strike (2008)
As well as porting the arcade games to home consoles in several Capcom collections, in 2008 Capcom and developers Backbone Entertainment released 1942: Joint Strike for home consoles. The game features gorgeous high definition polygon graphics and like 1944 it plays in a widescreen aspect ratio. Don't let the name fool you though, it plays more like the later games than the original. I assume this because of the combination of the bankability of 1942 as a name and Psikyo's similarly-named series.
1942: Joint Strike is a bit like a super model: great to look at, but not much going on underneath.
Due to the popularity of online gaming these days, Joint Strike had an emphasis on multiplayer co-op, even adding special collaborative attacks that are only available in two player mode. However, the game was underwhelming. It's difficult to say what it is, because they have all the ingrediants, they've just not cooked it for long enough. However, die hard fans of the series may still enjoy it, especially in co-op mode.
Horizontally scrolling WWII games
While it would be a bit of an assumption to say 1942 inspired the following games, they are nonetheless noteworthy as other World War II-themed shmups:
P-47: The Phantom Fighter (Jaleco, 1988)
US AAF Mustang (UPL, 1990)
P-47: Aces (Jaleco, 1995)
Progear (Cave, 2001)
Akai Katana Shin (Cave, 2010)
What I think is most suprising of all is how few World War I or II themed shoot 'em ups there have been full stop and the ones that do exist have been made by the same few developers. There may be a few others I've missed (I suppose I could have included Atari's first person vector rail shooter Red Baron), but this is pretty much all there is. Had I been trying to compile a list of space-themed shmups, I doubt I could have even got half way.
