Dragon's Lair comes to Xbox Kinect Arcade

Digital Leisure seem intent on squeezing every last drop out of Don Bluth's legendary LaserDisc arcade game, Dragon's Lair. According to the game's Wikipedia page, it has been released on 65 different home platforms since 1984 and now you can add a 66th with the Xbox Live Arcade version released today. Unlike the PS3 version released in 2010, this version is also available in Europe for the modest sum of 800 Microsoft Points, which works out at around £6.50.

Like this PS3 version, this is in 16:9 widescreen and looks better than ever before. As well as being able to play it with a traditional controller you can also play it "controller-free" using an Xbox Kinect. I don't have a Kinect, so I can't tell you what that's like. Instead here's a trailer:

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Game Over

On Monday, 1^st September 2008 I walked through the doors of one of the UK's oldest independent developers and my career as a technical author in the games industry began. Today I left that developer and the games industry by those same doors.

Believe me when I say, however complicated you think games are to make, they are a lot, lot more complicated than that. I have never felt so out of my depth as I did during the first couple of years. People throw around the phrase “mind blown” all the time, but during the first week my mind was blown in a such a tangible way it was like a fuse had actually popped in my head. Just Google 'global illumination', 'radiosity', 'inverse kinematics', 'cloth dynamics' or 'particle physics' and you'll see what I mean. Nonetheless, the past 3½ years have been quite a roller coaster ride and I wouldn't change a thing. I got my name on the credits of 4 released games and 2 others that are still in development and I've worked with guys who helped create some genuine classics, including Blur, Warhammer Online, Timesplitters, GTA, The Sims, Tomb Raider, Lemmings, Micro Maniacs and James Pond.

Sadly, there's little or no future for me in the games industry and I am unlikely to ever return. When I started I had dreams of becoming a designer or maybe even a producer. That idea quickly went out of the window when I discovered “crunch time” meant working 12 to 18 hour days for months on end in order to get everything done on time – a problem I was spared in my role.

And so it's time to come back down to earth, stop bumming around in jeans and a T-shirt and get a “grown up job”. I start my new job at the beginning of June, which not only shows there are jobs out there if you look, but also gives me some time to play few more games before I start.

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Boss Fight - Goro (Mortal Kombat, 1992)

What could possibly be worse than fighting a homicidal martial arts master? Only fighting one with four God damned arms! Enter Mortal Kombat's penultimate boss and one of gaming's most recognisable bosses, Goro.

Mortal Kombat's lore is both deep and cliched. If you care enough to read up on his background you will learn that Goro is the Prince of the Shokan race and the Mortal Kombat champion for 500 years. He serves Shang Tsung, the Mortal Combat grand champion, who in turn serves Shao Kahn, the ruler of Outworld who is hell bent on defeating the Earthrealm (i.e. us).

At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat was famous for it's digitised combatants. Goro was also digitised, but from a 6" tall claymation model. This meant he moved like a Ray Harryhausen model in Sinbad or some other 60s fantasy adventure flick. Atari went on to use this technique for all of the prehistoric combatants in their own digitised beat 'em up, Primal Rage, in 1994.

I will be honest and admit I'm not much of a Mortal Kombat fan. For me, it was a pretty primitive game compared to Street Fighter II, King of Fighters or Fatal Fury. Nonetheless, the four-armed monstrosity, Goro, was a suitably ridiculous boss and one which, on paper, was a pretty intimidating figure to have to fight. If you are dumb enough to get within range of his massive arms, Goro will pick you up with his lower limbs then batter you with the upper ones, an act that will rob you of a decent chunk of your health bar. If that wasn't bad enough, Goro can also fire over-powered magical projectiles. Despite these facts, in the original game beating Goro was not as difficult as his forbidding appearance would have you believe. Simple sweep kicks are enough to defeat him. If you play a character that has their own projectiles he's even easier. Sub-Zero always seemed pretty effective to me, as this video demonstrates:

To end this month's boss fight let's take a look at Goro in the terrible Mortal Kombat motion picture. Despite being quite frankly shit, the film is still considerably better than Jean Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter film. This sequence sees Mortal Kombat's movie star Johnny Cage take on Goro and show the brute what happens to people who break his stuff.

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Nostalgia Trip - Songs from the 90s (Arcade)

Last weekend I talked about the songs that take me back to my childhood, playing games in the arcades of Caister and Great Yarmouth in the mid-to-late 80s. This week I thought I would talk about songs from the 1990s that remind me of when I was in higher education and frequenting various arcades around Mansfield and Nottingham. This period was from 1992 to 1996 and coincides with the Britpop explosion, a time when I discovered more music than ever in my life. Whittling this list down to 10 was tough and I ended up editing it numerous times, even after I first published it. As such there are loads of bands I loved from that era that didn't make the list, including Supergrass, Suede, Bluetones, Elastica, Reef, Kula Shaker and Pulp. In the end, these are the 10 songs that I most associate with those care free years, when I would hang around arcades during the day playing Street Fighter 2, Tekken, Sega Rally and Time Crisis, then head to the nearest student pub in the evening to drink myself into oblivion.

Say Britpop to anyone and two bands instantly spring to mind, Blur and Oasis. I liked them both, but in the beginning Blur's greater back catalogue meant I listened to them more. Nonetheless, it was 1994's "Parklife" album that really propelled them into the spot light and my favourite track from that was not "Boys and Girls" and certainly not the silly title track, but this one, "End of the Century":

By the time "What's the Story?" was released in 1995 Oasis felt like the more credible of the two Britpop giants, as Blur became increasingly twee. The first time I heard "Don't look back in anger" I was pulling into the university car park in my Peugeot 309, listening to Radio 1. I remember the DJ saying it was like the Beatles, which meant nothing to me at the time, but Oasis did ultimately introduce to the Fab Four's peerless music.

Now we've got that out of the way, it's time for a bunch of Britpop acts with female vocalists, all of whom I fancied the pants off at the time. Let's start with the cutest of them all, Louise Wener and Sleeper with "Inbetweener":

Next up, a band made up of Butch Vig, producer for Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Smashing Pumpkin's "Siamese Dream" and a wee Scottish lass who looked like she would eat you alive, man or woman. It's Garbage with "I think I'm paranoid": 

Echobelly were a great band and "King of the Kerb" is one of my all time favourite songs from the era. Why they were not bigger I will never know: 

Born from the ashes of The La's, Cast's 1995 debut "All change" was one of the very best albums released during the height of the Britpop scene and is brimful of great singles. Despite this fact, I can't find an official video, only a video of them performing the brilliant "Alright" on the now defunct Top of the Pops. Ahh, the memories:

Technically, Ash were not part of the Britpop scene because they were Irish, but like so many Britpop bands they debuted in 1995 and so they are often swept up with that pack. They recorded their debut album, "1977", when they were just 18. Despite their youth, it was brilliant body of music, full of memorable tracks, perhaps none more so than "Girl from Mars":

A band I absolutely loved in '95 and which hardly anyone else remembers is Honeycrack. Founded from the remains of the Wildhearts, Honeycrack's songs were full of witty, quick-fire social commentry. This is the first single I ever heard, although again, I cannot find an official video of it. No matter, the music is more than enough: 

One of the biggest British bands to emerge in the 1990s was Welsh rockers the Manic Street Preachers. The first time I heard any of their music was actually in a computer game shop in town in 1993. They were playing the whole of the "Gold Against the Soul" album, so I got to hear most of it before I bought it myself a few weeks later. This is "La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)":

I'm going to end this trip down memory lane with a band that emerged in the 90s and whose music still sends shivers down my spine today. If I was ever asked to pick my absolute favourite album of all time, it would be "The Bends" by Radiohead and this is the first song I ever heard by them, "Just": 

And there you have it, the two decades where arcade games were a big deal and the music I listened to in and around those venues. Thank you for indulging an old gamer. Hopefully some of you out there have similar sense of nostalgia for the 20 songs I chose. 

MTW

Twilight Zone licenced for Pinball Arcade

I've spoken recently about Far Sight Studios superb efforts to bring classic pinball tables to the masses with Pinball Arcade, but because so many classic tables are licenced it's easy getting them made. I recently read an article in GamesTM about how the Addams' Family table is being held up because they not only need the licence from Bally, but also the Addams' Estate and every actor from the film. And that then causes other issues, because sadly Raul Julian passed around almost 20 years ago.

Well today on Facebook, Far Sight announced they had acquire the rights to make another one of the most popular and highly rated tables of all time, Bally's Twilight Zone, but licencing issues have raised their ugly head again. Here's what they had to say:

"We have good news and bad news to report on the issue of licensed tables. We’ve finally succeeded in negotiating all of the licenses we’d need to bring the Twilight Zone to the Pinball Arcade. This is unquestionably one of the greatest pinball tables of all time (and is currently #1 in IPDB’s user rankings). However the licenses are VEY expensive- so expensive that the table probably isn’t commercially viable. Some of you have suggested a Kickstarter project to raise money for the license costs and we’re considering this. We’d like to ask your opinion- is this a good idea? If we did it what should the rewards be for backers, and at what contribution levels? We’d appreciate your thoughts!"

What do you think, would you be willing to fund development of the conversation via Kickstarter?

MTW 

Nostalgia Trip - Songs From the 80s (Arcade)

When I started this blog a year ago I talked a lot about the games I used to play, the places I used to play them and the nostalgia I have for them. The one thing that kick starts my nostalgia more than anything else is music. Because most of my time playing coin-op games was on a camp site that had a bar and nightclub as well as an arcade, there are a lot of songs from the 1980s that I associate as much with gaming as I do the games themselves.

With that in mind, here (in no particular order) is my top 10 songs from the 80s arcade, starting with the song that somehow conjures up more memories of those happy days better than any other, not because I particularly liked it, but because it was played everywhere! It's the Material Girl, Madonna, and "Get into the groove".

The Old Hall arcade always had a juke box in it and when I could stop myself shovelling 10ps into one of their many games, this is one of the songs I would play. It's the band with the beards,  ZZ Top and "Legs". See if you can spot Space Invaders and Berzerk machines in the video:

I am a big Van Halen fan, but for me it started with Sammy Hagar and "Why can't this be love" from their 1986 album "5150". This was another juke box favourite of mine back in the day, even if it's not a David Lee Roth track:

Here's another track that I played on the juke box from time to time. As you can probably tell by now, in the mid-80s I was into my hair metal. The passion and drama of "Still of the night" by Whitesnake made me want to be a rock star. Instead I got into IT. Oh well:

The Old Hall's night club was quite relaxed and since you had to be a member to use the camp site's facilities  they allowed kids on the dance floor.  Their DJ was open to requests and one song I remember asking for on several occasions was Sly Fox's epic "Let's go all the way".

The Old Hall night club may have let kids one the dance floor, but my folks still wanted me home before it got to late. Back in our caravan we could often hear the music and the opening drums from this track were unmistakable. This is 80s electronica at its best. This is the '88 remix of New Order's "Blue Monday":

When the Beastie Boys emerged in 1986 I was just 11 years old and I didn't really know what they were singing about. What I did know is that "(You gotta) fight for your right (to party)" was a great song to shout along to:

If movies like Last Star Fighter and games like Star Rider felt like the future to my adolescent self, then Sigue Sigue Sputnik and "Love Missile" felt like music of the future. Shoot it up, comrade:

There were some great films with great pop sound tracks in the mid-80s, but for my 10 year-old self, the best one was  "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, taken from the 1985 smash hit Back to the Future. I wanted to be Marty McFly so bad I even took to wearing a (grey) body warmer over my denim jacket that year. Classic stuff.

And I'll end with one of the biggest bands of the decade, Duran Duran. There's tonnes of their songs I remember playing in those days, but I'm going with the one that hooks into another piece of 80s nostalgia, Roger Moore as James Bond. What a combo:

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Classic of the Month - Black Hole

Manufacturer:	Gottlieb
Genre:	Pinball
Board:	Gottlieb System 80
Year:	1981

Following last month's release of The Pinball Arcade for home consoles and smart phones, I thought it was about time I did another pinball Classic of the Month. This month's pin game of choice is the game I played the most in the video port, Gottlieb's 1981 classic Black Hole.

Black Hole's inverted lower playfield

Almost everything about this table is non-standard, from the asymmetrical layout at the bottom of the table to the lack of specific goals and of course the lane on the top-left that takes the ball (and the player) into the "Black Hole" itself.

Instead of the usual two flippers, with inlanes and outlanes surrounding triangular bumpers, on the right-hand side there are two flippers, one directly above the first, with no outlane; on the left-hand side there is mushroom bumper (or "pop bumper", as Gottlieb refer to them), with not so much an outlane, but a gap that leads to the drain. The middle of the playfield is one of the most barren you'll see for a relatively modern table. This is because in there middle there is the Black Hole — an inverted, lower playfield which has its own separate scoring system, that adds on to your main score from one ball to the next. And because this playfield is inverted the flippers are at the top  and the the ball falls "up" (see right). The first time you end up in the black hole you are guaranteed to lose the ball, even if you know about the inverted playfield, because it's a mind-bending feature. In fact, Black Hole was the first table to have an inverted lower playfield, which along with its 50¢ price point, which helped make it one of the most popular tables in the States in its day.

Playing Black Hole is a constant cycle of hitting the BLACK HOLE drop targets in sequence, then getting the ball into the Black Hole for the bonus. Getting a good score is almost like an endurance challenge, because there are not really any short cuts and the multi-ball is pretty tough to unlock. Don't expect Black Hole to keep chucking high scores your way though; even a score of a few million is a feat.

For me, Black Hole evokes as strong a sense of nostalgia as any arcade game and for one simple reason: the sound. There's no music to speak of, instead there's a rhythmic and near-hypnotic electronic beeping that loops constantly while you play, which sounds like some kind of sci-fi sonar. I can remember hearing it in arcades in my childhood, even though I didn't play it until much later.

Getting to play any pinball table is neigh-on impossible, so I urge people check out Pinball Arcade, especially as it's available on every gaming platform that matters.

It's always tricky to get decent videos of pinball machines, but nonetheless, here's the original Black Hole in action. This video includes a brief look at the spinning black hole motif on the top of the table, which is curiously inanimate in Far Sight Studio's conversion.

Finally, this table was not affiliated to the 1979 Disney movie, which you might guess from the lack of V.I.N.CENT, B.O.B or Maximilian (boy, that thing was scary as a kid) robots in the art work. Just in case you were confused.

MTW