Oh Capcom, you are spoiling us

Arcades may be dead, but many of the top manufacturers from back in the day are striving to reinvent and rejuvenate their old franchises for modern systems and new players. And arguably, of all the old guard to try to keep their games relevant, Capcom has been the most successful. As well as porting classics with their Arcade Cabinet collection and giving us numerous remakes, such as Bionic Commando Rearmed and 1942: Joint Strike, they've also brought a number of franchises back to life, most notably Street Fighter IV. And this month, they've teased us arcade throwbacks with two new treats. Check out the videos below:

I skipped the last update for SSFIV, but I'm rather looking forward to Ultra, not least because Elena was one of my favourite new characters in Street Fighter III. And as for the Strider remake, I'm getting quite a Shadow Complex vibe from it, but that is by no means a bad thing, as Shadow Complex was awesome, but we'll need to wait for that one until next year.

Top 10 sports games

It's a scorching summer here in the UK, so it seemed like the perfect time to talk about Arcade Throwback's top 10 sports games.

Track & Field/Hyper Sports

Here I go, starting the show with a show stopper! Konami's Track & Field series is legendary and there are more games in the series than most people remember. In 1984, a year after Track & Field, there was Hyper Sports, which is the first one I played. Then there was Konami '88, International Track & Field (1996) and Negano Winter Olympics '98, as well as numerous spin-offs on home consoles. For most people, myself included, it's those first two games, that kick started the whole button mashing sports genre, that really stay with us. 

Tecmo World Cup '90

There were no football fans in my family, so first time I got into the beautiful game was during Italia '90, when I was 15. And what England fan didn't caught up in the moment when Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne's emotions got the better of him during our semi-final game against Germany? Even my mum watched it! Anyway, the football game to play that summer was Tecmo's World Cup '90. The simple controls made for a fast paced game that anyone could pick up and play and it remains one of my favourite video game interpretations of the sport.

F1 Grand Prix

Video System Co. Ltd's F1 Grand Prix could have gone in my top 10 driving games, but as one of the few properly licenced arcade racers I could remember, I thought I'd save this excellent top-down racer for the sports list. The game features all the teams and drivers from the early 90s, including such legends as Nigel Mansell, Jean Alesi, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and of course Ayrton Senna, all beautifully drawn and instantly recognisable. And while F1 begs to be made into simulators as opposed to arcade games, the top-down perspective works brilliantly, like a helicopter cam, letting you get a birds-eye view of all the jostling for position.

Side Pocket

If there was one sport that was on the telly in my house as a kid, it was snooker. I can't remember any snooker games in the arcades, but there were a few pool games, many of which came from Data East, including the dubious Pool Gal series. However, Side Pocket is the game I remember from the arcades I visited. With its top-down view, the mechanics were greatly simplified, but as always that suited the arcade.

Punch-Out!!

Nintendo's Punch-Out!! is perhaps better known for the NES and Super NES versions, but it did start out in the arcade in 1984. I remember it being a technically impressive game for the time, with the player's green-haired character (later known as Little Mac) appearing as a transparent wireframe model, so that you could get a better view of your opponent. And what a cast of characters they were! Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Dragon Chan, they were all brilliantly drawn and full of personality. The simply controls provided enough variety that you didn't just mash the buttons and the opponents' combinations of attacks, blocks and feints kept you on your toes. Nintendo resurrected the franchise in 2009 on the Wii and it's a brilliant update of the game.

Wind Jammers

You can look at SNK's Wind Jammers one of two ways: either you can disregard it because its a made-up sport or you can play it and enjoy one of the best one-on-one video games ever! The premise is simple, mix a little tennis and squash, but played with frisbees and add in special movies that wouldn't look out of place in a King of Fighters game. This is definitely one of those games that's easy to pick up, but very hard to master. Doing the special's is easy enough, but countering your opponent's specials and send them back at him with deadly force is much harder and also much more satifying.

Pigskin 621AD

Okay, if you thought I was pushing my luck with WWF Super Stars, you'll think I'm way over the line with Pigskin 621AD, but you won't deny it's a riot to play! This crazy medieval version of American football is almost as much a beat 'em up as a sports game. The field is also full of traps, like ponds, muddy puddles and boulders, which prevent you from zig-zagging wildly down the field in an attempt to avoid being clobbered by a mace-wielding warrior-jock. Unlike many other football games, you only control one player, the team captain, Thor Akenbak, but you can control the tactics (in a basic way) of your team mates by pressing the red button. When the player's team is in possession of the ball you can swap between "Block" and "Scatter", and when your opponents have the ball you can swap between "Get Ball" and "Man-to-Man". In either situation you can also set your team to free-for-all by selecting "Bad Attitude" — assuming you have enough time to think that far ahead in all the chaos!

Hit the Ice

Ice hockey is fast and frequently violent and so it's perfect for translation to video game. Few versions of the sport are as manic as Taito and William's Hit the Ice. Take control of a goalie and one member of either the Reds or the Blues, then skate, pass, shoot and, if need be, punch your way up the rink to score a slot shot. There are plenty of quite serious ice hockey games out there, but Hit the Ice is a bit like Pigskin in that it takes neither itself nor the sport it's based on too seriously. The result is a game that's full of comedic violence, like hitting your opponents in the head with the puck and making them see stars.  

Virtua Tennis

When it comes to tennis, us Brits have never had so much to celebrate, with Andy Murray winning just about every grand slam he enters and several young stars, like Laura Robson, doing us proud as well. For gamers, there is no finer tennis game than Sega's Virtua Tennis series, which was developed for their Naomi system (which shared its guts with the Dreamcast console). The game manages to be both accessible and authentic in equal measure, allowing players to feel like they could take on the grass courts of Wimbledon as well.

Neo Turf Masters

All the other games in this list are based on fast, action-oriented sports, but Nazca's Neo Turf Masters for the SNK Neo Geo masterfully adapts the sedentary pace of golf to the rapid-fire world of arcade gaming, without sacrificing the core elements of the sport. For lives you get a strict stroke limit, meaning that you can only progress if you can stay under par, meaning you can be facing the game over screen as quickly in this game as any other in this list. And thank God for one of my school mates showing me Microprose Golf on the Commodore Amiga back in the early '90s, because otherwise I might have totally overlooked this gem, which remains one of my all time favourite arcade games.

MTW

Nostalgia Trip - My Arcade Garage

We've all dreamt about it, but Penny Arcade's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik has only gone and done it, he's built his own arcade garage. He turned this:

into this:

He apparently has room for seven machines and he's chosen:

• Pac Man
• Dig Dug
• Donkey Kong
• Super Mario Bros
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Gauntlet Dark Legacy
• A Neo Geo

You can read about his journey here:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/07/01/my-garage-arcade

It's a fascinating read and he's clearly put a lot of effort into the project. It got me thinking, if I had the time, space and money to build my own garage arcade, what seven cabinets would I put in there. This is my list:

• R-Type
• Space Harrier
• Golden Axe
• The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot (although a new machine from Stern or Jersey Jack would probably be more reliable)
• Super Street Fighter IV
• Tron
• Pac-Man Arcade Party (which contains all the Pac-Mans, Xevious, Galaga, Dig Dug and a bunch of others).

(A Geo Geo would be my number 8 if it was a top 10, but these are Gabe's rules, not mine.) So come on, what seven would you guys choose?

Classic of the Month - Defender Stargate

Manufacturer:	Vid Kidz/Williams
Genre:	Shoot 'em up
Board:	6809-based board
Year:	1981

Few people would refute that Williams' 1980 side-scrolling shoot 'em up, Defender, is one of the all-time classic arcade games, but it's easy to forget the following year Williams brought out a sequel. Known as Defender II, Defender Stargate or just Stargate, it was developed by Vid Kids, a small 3rd party studio formed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar, both of whom worked on the original. And eagle-eyed Arcade Throwback followers may have even noticed it on the banner of our Facebook page and Twitter account, so   this month it's our classic in focus.

Gameplay is much the same as the original, except things get busy much more quickly, with a greater variety of enemies out to get you from the very first level. Thankfully your ship has a few more tools at its disposal this time, with the inclusion of the Invisio units, which allows you to turn invisible (and therefore evade hunters) while you keep the button held down. There are also the stargate themselves. These square portals are dotted throughout the landscape and effectively work like a fixed and more predictable hyperspace, allowing you to now only avoid danger but also deal with snatchers on the far side of the level.

Whether you can remember this sequel or not (I can't), one thing remains from its predecessor: IT'S ROCK HARD! To alleviate some of the difficult Vid Kidz added the option to pay extra at the beginning to get more lives, bombs, hyperspace jumps and Inviso units, but you'll still struggle to clear more than the first few levels.

So why is it so few of us can remember this game? It plays well enough and in many ways it's a better game than Defender -- it certainly tries harder to keep the player going. I suspect the answer is in my introduction: Defender is in the absolute top tier of arcade classics; the reputation it has the the respect fans have for it is up there with the likes of Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong. Quite simply, the original overshadowed it.

MW