Why arcades never stood a chance

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.

GW

Boss Fight - The Greatest Boss of All Time

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.

MTW

Big staff cuts at yet another UK developer

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.

Triple threat of Sega fighters coming next week

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:

Virtua Fighter 2 (PS3)

Fighting Vipers 

Sonic Fighters

MTW

Classic of the Month - Robotron 2084

Manufacturer:	Vid Kidz/Williams
Design	Eugene Jarvis, Larry DeMar
Genre:	Fixed screen, twin-stick shooter
Year:	1982

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.

MTW