What is attract mode?

What month I talked about screen burn and how arcade manufacturers started to add attract modes to their games to help prevent this, however, that wasn't the primary function of an attract mode. As the name suggest, attract mode was to attract players. Pretty obvious, huh?

Usually attract modes would alternate between a demonstration of the game, the highscores, profiles of the characters or vehicles and the story of the game (if indeed there was a story). They often said "Game Over" or "Insert Coin(s)" and were sometimes silent, although usually that was controlled by a dip switch.

Now, I like to include videos in my posts where I can find them, so imagine my delight when I discovered a someone on YouTube calling themselves Narox has uploaded a series of 41 videos on Capcom attract modes, including such classics as Captain Commando, Three Wonders, Dark Stalkers and loads from the Street Fighter series. If you don't know what attract screens look like, you will after this:

Can I be honest? I like just leaving this video series playing in the background. Ahhh, nostalgia. 

MTW

Radiant Silvergun comes to XLBA

I heard a rumour Treasure were bringing their legendary debut shmup, Radiant Silvergun, to XBLA, but I had no idea it was ready.  What's more, it'll be here tomorrow.

If you haven't played Radiant Silvergun before, it goes out of its way to give players a unique shoot 'em up experience.  There are no power ups, instead you get seven modes of fire, activated by pressing different combinations of the three buttons.  It also features a brilliant colour-coded point system based on the order and patterns you kill (or avoid) enemies.  There's a nice overview of the mechanics on Hardcore Gaming 101 here.

The XBLA version features local and online 2-player co-op modes, both the original arcade version and Saturn version of the game (with its frankly superfluous animated cutscenes), an option to enable Ikaruga's scoring system and multiple display filters - some of which do a great job of making it look high def.

So until Wednesday, let's have another look at the trailer they released last year.

Smells like arcade spirit

Online competitive gaming is all well and good, but there's something about standing beside your opponent, with a crowd of onlookers cheering along, that Call of Duty and its ilk simply cannot capture.  Arcades used to provide that kind of experience and it's something I miss - even if I frequently embarrassed myself at the time.  Since the recent Evo tournament, a bunch of us from work have been getting together at lunch to play Super Street Fighter IV (a perk of working in the games industry).  We're all Street Fighter nuts, each with our favourite characters, whom we've practiced ad nausea for years, if not decades.  So, with Hori EX2s (some modified with Sanwa parts) and Mad Catz Fighting Sticks at the ready, we battle it out - but not for glory, we're trying to learn from one another.  Street Fighter IV's focus system is deep and involved mechanic, which might even rival Virtua Fighter's complex fighting system.  I must confess that despite playing SFIV for two years, I hadn't really understood the focus system.  I had used it from time to time as a counter, but it seemed rather slow and cumbersome compared to Street Fighter III's parry system. Thanks to a Spanish DeeJay master, I am starting to appreciate how focus can be cancelled, in order to block an attack and immediately follow it up with something more devastating than the focus attack.  There's also the rather trickier tactic of using focus to cancel specials, in order to avoid committing yourself to a move that either will not hit or lead you into danger.  It takes a lot of practice, not only to learn but to unlearn old habits from 20 years of play.

Oni, one of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition's new characters

All of which has got me thinking, should I mod my Hori EX2?  The fighter hardcore will probably be astonished that, as someone who claims Street Fighter is his favourite game of all time, I haven't built my own joystick using Sanwa parts, but to be honest, I get on well with my Hori.  I use it for all my arcade ports and emulation, not just Street Fighter and other than thinking the shaft is a little short, it handles great. 

Hori EX2 - not the best arcade stick you can buy, but pretty damn good.

However, I am thinking an 8-way gate would be good for performing quarter circles movements, rather than the EX2's original square gae.  Sanwa make one called the GT-Y (pictured below), which can, with a little effort, be fitted to EX2s and cost less than a tenner.

A Sanwa GT-Y 8-way restrictor gate

But then Virtua Fighter and Tekken players will say square gates are better for 3D fighters, as well as games like Pac-Man and Tetris.  So what to do?  For now, I'm going to sleep on it.

MTW

Classic of the Month - Image Fight

Manufacturer:	Irem
Genre:	Vertically-scrolling shmup
Board:	Irem M-72
Year:	1988

I've been ill for the past few days, so I've fallen back on a favourite subject, shoot 'em ups. I'm sure you won't mind.

Usually when you mention Irem and shoot 'em ups, most people will talk about R-Type.  However, Irem made a slew of shmups in the late 80s and early 90s, including Dragon Breed, Mystic Riders, X-Multiply, In the Hunt and of course, Image Fight, which was my favourite.
Unlike the majority of Irem's shmups, Image Fight is a vertical scroller, but in keeping with their other classics, it has a weapon system that is as much about strategy as it is power.  As well as being able to power up the main guns, there are two kinds of pod (Image Fight's version of R-Type's "Force") to collect, both multiply your basic shot, but each behaves differently.  Blue pods only face forwards, giving you the most people forward fire power.  Red pods turn to face the opposite direction to your last month, making them more versatile.  You can attach a total of three pods, the first two appears on the left and right sides of the ship, while the third Pod appears behind it. When a pod is drops it alternates between red and blue, so you can choose what type to collect.  Futhermore, you can mix and match them as you see fit. The other thing that Image Fight is noted for is the variable speed system, which is controlled with button two.  This is a system that would be later adopted by the R-Type series.  And that isn't the end of Image Fight's ties to R-Type.  It's signature OF-1 fighter went on to cameo in R-Type Final. 

If you want to play Image Fight now, you can get it as part of the Irem Arcade Hits pack, from DotEmu.com.

MTW

Street Fighter III Online Edition comes home

There's no denying Capcom's Street Fighter franchise is one of one my influential and popular arcade series ever created and thanks to 2009's Street Fighter IV, it help revive the fighting genre after years of neglect. However, while the various Street Fighter spin-offs and versus games enjoyed huge success, the third "proper" sequel was something of a slow burner. For many the new parrying system was too hard to execute and ignored as a failed experiment, for many more the strange and unappealing cast of fighters was just plain off-putting, with only Ryu and Ken returning from the myriad of other SF games. Thankfully, Capcom continued their trend of releasing updates to their Street Fighters and the third iteration, subtitled 3rd Strike, nailed it. Perhaps it was the improved roster that encouraged people to stick with the game and master the parrying system or perhaps it was because fighting fans had to go nearly a decade before the true king of fighters returned, but whatever the reason, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is now recognised as perhaps the greatest 2D fighting game ever made.

Today Capcom released this seminal game on Xbox Live Arcade for 1200MSP and PlayStation Network for £10.20.  As well as a near-perfect emulation of the original arcade game, Capcom have included multiple display filters, from sharpening up the aging, lo resolution sprites, to applying a scanlines and curved edges, as though you're playing on a tradition arcade cabinet, rather than a HDTV.  More important for all you budding Daigos out there is the inclusion of the GGPO net code, which provides the best online fighting around.

If you have any love for the genre, I cannot recommend this port enough - especially if you own an arcade stick for your next gen console.  Let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?

MTW

What are kill screens?

What happened when you completed an early arcade game?  Did they even have an ending?  Did Jump Man (AKA Mario) ever rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong?  Did Frogger finally get home?  Were the Galaxians ever thwarted? The answer, I'm afraid, is no. The truth, however, was only ever revealed to players with the skill and patients of demi-Gods, because in most cases you had to play through hundreds of screens to get to the "end" - and let's be honest, even getting past the first dozen screens on Pac-Man is impressive.  So what did happen?  Quite simply, the game broke, like this:

This is a 'kill screen' and in the case of Pac-Man it occurs on level 256.  When games like Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong and Galaga were originally developed, nobody expected players to play for that long.  So kill screens are little more than bugs, often caused by integer overflows on the level counter.

Back in the day, I never heard anybody talk about kill screens.  The first I heard of them was when I watched arcade championship documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.  For top arcade gamers, reaching a kill screen is the Holy Grail and the only way to "beat" these old games.

MTW

EVO 2011 Results

The Evolution tournament (or Evo for short) is probably the most famous gaming competition on the planet and it isn't for first person shoot 'em ups or real time strategy games, oh no.  Evo is about fighting games, the only genre to still have any sort of presence in modern arcade, thanks to games like Super Street Fighter IV, Tekken 6 and Virtua Fighter 5.

Thanks to the likes to YouTube, it's possible to watch some highlights of the tournament from over the years and this year Sony showed it live on PlayStation Network, which says a lot about the continued popularity of these games.

Sadly, despite it being an absolutely top notch game, Virtua Fighter 5R has fallen out of favour, with more console fighters like the new Mortal Kombat and Marvel vs Capcom 3 taking its place.  However, we aren't interested in the console fighters, so here are the results from the arcade fighters, Super Street Fighter IV: AE, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2.

Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition

1. Fuudo (Fei Long)
2. Latif (C.Viper)
3. Poongko (Seth)
4. Daigo Umheara (Yun)
5. Kindevu (Yun)
6. Tokido (Akuma)
7. Wolfkrone (C.Viper)
8. Flash Metroid (Zangief, C.Viper)

See the final here.

Tekken 6

1. Kor (Bob)
2. NYC Fab (Bob/Miguel)
3. Rip (Law)
4. JustFrameJames (Law)
5. Crow (Bob)
6. Mr. Naps (Bryan)
7. Tokido (Bob)
8. Ryan Hart (Kazuya)

See the final here.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2

1. Spark (Haku-Men)
2. Lord Knight (Litchi)
3. Tokido (Noel)
4. Zong One (Carl)
5. Heart Nana (Makoto)
6. Severin (A-11)
7. DSmoove12 (Noel)
8. Wuku (Hazana)

See the final here (part 1) and here (part 2).

While I'd love to go to Evo, just watching the games makes me realise I will never have the skilled needed to get anywhere.  Never mind.

Results source: Shoryuken