While I've been doing these top 10s, I've realised some of my favourite games simply did not belong in any of the lists. Then I realised they they shared their own common theme: they were all maze games. The maze game is genre you don't see as a separate entity any more, in fact with one or two obvious exceptions (such as a certain ghost-hunting yellow blob), maze games like the ones in this list had all but disappeared by the early 90s. These games, though, are true arcade classics.
Boulder Dash
I played the BBC Micro B Boulder Dash clone, Repton,long before I played the original arcade game. Where the BBC game was a relatively slow-paced adventure, the arcade game is fast and punishing.
Bomber Man/Dyna Blaster
Competitive puzzle action does not come much better than Bomber Man — or Dyna Blast as it is also known. Again, the idea is simple: plan bombs blow up the surrounding walls and your opponents. Playing against the CPU is challenging, but playing against three others is a riot.
Dig Dug
Dig Dug, the dragon and weird tomato monster inflating maze game from Namco. It's an all time classic that Namco has pushed out on numerous occasions — which is fine by me, because it's brilliant. The moment when the last monster makes a break for it and the tables are turned is akin to collecting the power pill in Pac-Man, only with a distinct sense of desperation, as you scramble to jab it with your harpoon pump before it gets away. It's also one of a couple of games in this list where music only played when you move, which is not relevant, but it's very endearing.
Mr Driller
Namco's spiritual successor to Dig Dug, Mr Driller has a far great puzzle element than its predecessor, but it's also more of a maze game, as you battle through the series of multi-coloured blocks, desperately trying to balance scoring as highly as possible with escaping the level. What's interesting about Mr Driller is it's possible to get quite far just drilling down and doing nothing else. However, if you want more points, you have to go for bigger blocks and more chain reactions. That's when the game gets a lot more interesting.
Burger Time
Data East's Burger Time was one of a handful of food-related games to appear during the 80s. It's also a great maze game, as you control fast food chef, Peter Pepper, along a series of ladders and platforms to assemble truly super-size burgers, all while being pursued by some truly demonic foodstuffs. Seriously, it's brilliant.
Pengo
Pengo might look cute, but that little penguin has no qualms about crushing snow bees (which I'm assuming are very rare) with huge blocks of ice, reshaping the maze around him as as he does so. It's a real cat and mouse game, as you try to simultaneously try crush the monsters, evade their pursuit or simply block their path.
Mr Do
Mr Do offers a blend of Dig Dug and Pac-Man, as the little wizard tries to collect all of the fruit before the monsters get him. And when the going gets tough, Mr Do can whip out his crystal ball and blast the little buggers out of the way. It's a real risk/reward system, as you then have a few desperate moments running like hell while you wait for your one weapon to regenerate.
Marble Madness
Marble Madness is one of those games that almost seems out of place in the arcade. Like Lunar Lander, Marble Madness is a little slow and deliberate compared to most arcade games. It is a true classic and the forerunner to games like Kula World and Marble Blast.
Gauntlet
I never played the Dungeons & Dragons board games nor did I read Lord of the Rings (at least not until the Peter Jackson films came out), but I loved the cartoon and fantasy films like Krull, Conan, Beast Master, Hawk the Slayer and all those other cheesy sword and sorcery films of that era. The opening screen for Gauntlet, pictured above, sold me, even if the game itself was rather lacking the graphical process. So until the likes of Golden Axe and Rastan came along Gauntlet was the quintessential fantasy game to play.
Pac-Man series
The Pac-Man series are absolutely arcade royalty and I'm not sure there's a dud in the pack. And what's more the new games, such as Pac-Man Championship Edition are absolutely brilliant. I'm not sure there's anything else to say.
Let's be honest though, most people fell out of love with George Lucas's meandering sci-fi epic when he started to ret con the originals to fit the contrived story of the lacklustre prequels. However, with Disney recently buying the rights to all things Lucas and getting JJ "Lost" Abrhams on-board to make Episode VII over the next couple of years, Star Wars isn't going to go away any time soon and may even get good again.
Why do I mention this? Well, not only is today today Star Wars day, but this year is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars arcade video games, so I thought I would do a brief history of Star Wars arcade games, starting with one of the most iconic arcade games of all time.
Star Wars
Manufacturer:
Atari
Developer:
Atari
Genre:
Rail shooter
Year:
1983
What better sequence from the original Star Wars film to use for the basis of an arcade game than the seminal Death Star attack run? And that is precisely what Atari did with this magnificent vector graphics rail shooter. The multi-coloured vector graphics may have been incongruous with the film, but they still managed to be incredibly evocative. The game appeared around the same time as another first person vector graphics space game, Elite, for the BBC Micro B. Just like Elite, the way Star Wars looked and moved was closer to "real" space flight than anything else out there. Add in the beautiful cockpit cabinet with the flight stick controls and the digitised voice of Alec Guinness telling you, "The Force will be with you ... always" and Star Wars everyone were in sci-fi heaven.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Manufacturer:
Atari
Developer:
Atari
Genre:
Shoot 'em up
Year:
1984
A year after the first Star Wars game and the last Star Wars movie in the trilogy, Atari switched from vector graphics to sprites and an fixed isometric view for Return of the Jedi. Like latter half of the film, the game switched between the battle on Endor and the battle in space to take down the half-built Death Star (2). The Endor levels consisted of racing through the forest on speeders and blasting up rolling logs and eventually the shield generator in an AT-ST. The space levels put you in control of the Millenium Falcon during the attack run on the Death Star, then the escape. The final level has you swapping between both scenes every few seconds, which is simultaneously exciting and disorientating. Like their first game, Atari filled RotJ with digitised voices and also added a few pixellated cut scenes for good measure.
The video below shows a complete play through, although watching the game from beginning to end will give you a frequent sense of deja vu.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Manufacturer:
Atari
Developer:
Atari
Genre:
Rail shooter
Year:
1985
No, I'm not losing it, the game of Empire Strikes Back may have looked like the original Star Wars game, but wasn't released until a year after Return of the Jedi. The game also used the same vector graphics and cabinet as the original game. The reason for this was simple, Empire was not a full game, but a conversion kit for the original, which included a new daughter board, a new marquee and a decal for the yoke. In terms of game play, it is very similar to the first game, as you might expect. Instead of doing the attack run on the Death Star in an X-Wing, you alternate between flying a T-47 airspeeder (my favourite Star Wars fighter) in the battle to defend Hoth, then escaping the Empire through an asteroid belt in the Millenium Falcon.
The video below is from John's Arcade, who has a brilliant little arcade in his basement. I'm really very, very jealous.
Star Wars Arcade
Manufacturer:
Sega
Developer:
AM5
Genre:
Rail shooter
Year:
1993
Here's where an appreciation of proper nouns is important, because Sega's Star Wars Arcade game is should not to be confused with Atari's Star Wars arcade game. See the difference? Anyway, this game does actually play a lot like the original, but with it being released in 1993 and made by Sega, it benefited from being polygonal, not sprites or vectors. Polygonal graphics were exploding in the early 90s and Sega with their Model-1 board were one of the pioneers of the new tech. It wasn't always done well (looking back at Virtua Fighter 1 now is quite hard), but simple textured polys work great for space ships.
Star Wars Trilogy Arcade
Manufacturer:
Sega
Developer:
AM5
Genre:
Rail shooter/Weapon combat
Year:
1998
By 1998 it was common knowledge that a new Star Wars film was on its way, which would explain Anakin Skywalker's origins, from his rise in the Jedi order to his eventual fall to the dark side. Despite the ham-fisted way Lucas handled the reissue of the original trilogy, Star Wars fans all over the world were still excited about the prospect of a new film. We all know how that turned out. Anyway, I digress. As the name suggests, Star Wars Trilogy featured scenes from all three of the original films, specifically the rebel attacks on the Death Stars in the first and third films and the Empire attack on Hoth in the second film. While these all played out in much the same way as both Sega's and Atari's previous games, this game had a trick up its sleeve. The cabinet featured a force feedback joystick that allowed you to take control of a light sabre in two special stages. The first pits you against Boba Fett in the battle over the Sarlak pit; the second has you facing down Vader himself. Exciting stuff and it's one of those games that does not emulate well, because the force feedback joystick really added to the atmosphere.
Star Wars Racer
Manufacturer:
Sega
Developer:
AM5/LucasArts
Genre:
Racing
Year:
2000
Would it shock any of you if I said I didn't like Phantom Menace? No, I didn't think so. However, the pod racers were a cool (if utterly ridiculous) idea and one that lent itself well to a hectic arcade racing game - which is precisely what Sega AM5 and LucasArts did when they made Star Wars Racer in 2000.
Despite the cabinet looking like Anakin Skywalker's pod racer, the game did give the player a choice of Episode 1 pod racers to play as. While that is a nice idea, I doubt most people could name any of the other racers, with the exception of the villainous Sebulba.
There were many pod racing games on home computers and consoles and to be honest, none of them, not even this arcade version, were as good as WipeOut series on the PlayStation or Nintendo's F-Zero series, both of which did futuristic racing better.
Star Wars Starfighter
Manufacturer:
Tsunami Visual Technologies, Inc.
Developer:
Tsunami Visual Technologies, Inc.
Genre:
Rail shooter
Year:
2003
By 2003 the second Star Wars prequel had come and gone, and Star Wars fans were no happier about the direction these new movies were going in. While Attack of the Clones was marginally better than Phantom Menace it was still a terrible, lumbering, incoherent wreck. Anakin Skywalker was now being played by Hayden Christiansen, whose wooden acting earned him the nickname Manikin Skywalker. Even the presence of the world's most potent actor, Christopher Lee, or the appearance of Boba Fett's dad, Jango, could do nothing to save the film. Also by 2003, the arcade scene was all but dead, with modern consoles like the Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox offering experiences that could match or sometimes even better a typical arcade machine. So it seems hardly surprising that Sega did not do another arcade game. Instead, for the last ever Star Wars arcade game, Tsunami Visual Technologies took us back to Episode I. This time the player got to pilot a Naboo StarFighter in a series of aerial challenges followed by an assault on the Trade Federation Droid Control ships around the planet, in much the same way as many previous Star Wars star fighter games. Actually finding footage of this unexceptional game is tough, especially as there was the similarly named Jedi Star Fighter available on many home platforms. It's not a big loss and to be honest, you'll have more fun playing the 30 year-old Atari game instead.
And so it seems whether it's Star Wars movies or Star Wars arcade games, the quality can go up as well as down, but one thing you can say in favour the classic Star Wars arcade games is that George Lucas has never gone back and ret conned them.nj
But wait, that's not all...
Anyone who's been following Arcade Throwback for a good while will know I love pinball machines almost as much as video games, and there have been a fair few Star Wars pinball tables over the years. In fact, they pre-date video arcade games by 3 years. So as an appendix to the brief history of Star Wars arcade games is the even more brief history of Star Wars pin games.
Empire Strikes Back
Manufacturer:
A. Hankin & Company
Developer:
A. Hankin & Company
Year:
1980
Star Wars
Manufacturer:
Data East
Developer:
Data East
Year:
1992
Star Wars Trilogy Trilogy
Manufacturer:
Sega Pinball
Developer:
Sega Pinball
Year:
1997
Star Wars Episode 1
Manufacturer:
Williams
Developer:
Williams
Year:
2000
Sadly, not only is Episode 1 pinball the only Star Wars pinball table I've played, it was also the last real pinball table I ever played. I found it in an seafront arcade in Blackpool, back in 2002. Based on William's Pinball 2000 platform, the game included a holographic display, which you could interact with by firing the ball at targets on display. It also had a light sabre toy inside the table, which lit up at various points during play. This was before those more authentic light sabre replicas were on the market, so it seemed more special at the time. General consensus is that, like William's only other Pinball 2000 machine, Revenge from Mars, this Star Wars table was not great. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing it in Far Sight's Pinball Arcade.
So there we have it, all of the official Star Wars video games and pinball tables to have appeared in the arcades over the decades. And as rich as this history is, it's nothing compared to history of Star Wars games for home computers and consoles, but I'll leave that to another blog. In the mean time, May the forth be with you - until midnight, then it'll be May the fifth.
It's my birthday this month, so what's better than one classic? Three classics in one, that's what. Capcom's Three Wonders is precisely that, three games on one board, each selectable from the start screen. There's a platformer called Midnight Wanders, a shoot 'em up called Chariot (both staring elves called Lou and Siva) and a puzzle game called Don't Pull. I've never been sure why they weren't separate machines, as far as I can tell they are all complete enough games in their own right, but I'm not arguing. Let's look at each one in turn.
Midnight Wanders: Quest for the Chariot
The story to Midnight Wanderers is pretty typical. An evil demon called Gaia has kidnapped Lou and Siva's female friend, Sena, and turned her into a statue. You must take control of Lou (or Siva if you're player 2) to rescue her. Despite the Tolkien whimsy, Midnight Wanderers is actually a run 'n' gun game. If you ever played Contra, Bionic Commando, Ghosts 'n' Goblinsor Strider the gameplay will be instantly familiar. Lou and Siva run, jump, climb and blast their way through a beautifully drawn fantasy realm. Like any good run 'n' gun game, Midnight Wanderers provides plenty of power-ups to help you defeat its cast of goblins and demonic flora and fauna. Talking of Ghosts 'n' Goblins, just like Arthur, when Lou or Siva take a hit, all their clothes fall off.
So Midnight Wanderers really wears its in influences on its sleeve, but it's still a fun little game and just part of what the total game Three Wonders has to offer.
Chariot: Adventure Through the Sky
Despite being on the same board and a different genre, Chariot is the technically the sequel to Midnight Wanderers. It features the same two elves, only now they're flying the Chariots they acquired at the end of the first game, who are now trying to save a princess who's been kidnapped by Gaia's boss, Lar. As shoot 'em ups go, it plays a lot like Gradius, with the same lush aesthetic as Midnight Wanderers. The Chariots can not only be upgraded, but slowly transformed as you collect power ups. This includes a chain of energy orbs, which behave much like the dragon tail in Dragon Breed or St Dragon.
The game is very stingy, only providing one life. However, by collecting hearts dropped by enemies you can eventually get extra lives. It's an interesting mechanic, but it also makes Chariot very hard.
Don't Pull
Don't Pull is a bit of an odd fit and the weak link in Three Wonders. It's a simple puzzle game, which plays almost identical to Pengo. Instead of Lou and Siva, the players get to control a rabbit called Don and a squirrel called Pull (believe it or not). The object of the game it to crush all of the enemies in the level by pushing (not pulling, let's just make that clear), blocks together. The game starts with the enemies (some of which bear a striking similarity to enemies from other games) jumping up out of sewer grates. If you're quick you can stamp on the grates and stop the enemies from emerging. After that you have to either use the blocks or the limited power-ups on the level. It's a fast paced puzzler and you really have to be on your toes, as you try to avoid destroying blocks or pushing them into positions that will make them inaccessible.
The video below is a monster long play of all three games, played from beginning to end. 90 mins (or there abouts) of classic arcade action. Lovely.
