Top 10 puzzle games

One of my favourite genres is puzzle games. There have been some great ones over the years, with a couple of the very best starting in the arcade. Here's my list of my 10 favourite arcade puzzle games.

Check Man

My introduction to this little known game was actually via a clone on the BBC Micro B called Danger UXB; it's thanks to MAME that I got to play the original. The whole point is to collect the bombs before their timers run out. The catch, and with it the puzzle element, is that you can only walk on the tiles, which disappear after you step on them. It sounds simple, but it's pure pleasure.

Klax

This match three game sets itself apart from the pack by allowing the player to stack up tiles on the collector and drop them at will. However, take too long and tiles will somersault down the play field and off the screen. This is Klax's risk-reward system, whereby the ability to catch tiles before placing them can become a burden that makes you lose the game.

Magical Drop series

The first Magical Drop was released with barely anybody noticing. When the sequel was released on SNK's Neo Geo MVS machine, its popularity soared. I was introducted to the series via a clone, Astro Pop on Xbox Live Arcade, but having since played the second and third games, I prefer the original series.

Columns series

Another matching game, based on grouping coloured gems that cascade down the screen. The play can move the gems and also cycle their positions, always keeping them in a "column".  Columns may not be the most addictive puzzle game around, but it is as close as Sega came to having a Tetris of its own.

Puzz Loop

While you may never have heard of Puzz Loop, you will probably have played its biggest copy cat, Pop Cap's Zuma series. Swap the Mayan frog for a marble launching cannon and you have exactly the same match-three action.

Q*Bert

I'm not 100% certain, but Q*Bert may have been the first puzzle game I ever played. You can get into an almost zen-like state as you hop from cube to cube to change their colour. Gameplay-wise, Q*Bert is similar to Amidar, but Q*Bert was better looking and more elegant. In the world of Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, Q*Bert may be an abandoned game that nobody remembers, but not here on Arcade Throwback!

Dr Mario

One of my favourite puzzle games of all time is technically not an arcade game, because it came out on the Nintendo NES console, however, Nintendo released a cabinet based on the NES called Play Choice 10 and so Dr Mario was available in the arcade in certain versions of that unit. Phew. Not only is Dr Mario a brilliant puzzler, it's also incredibly challenging.

Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move

Can you believe there are people out there who have played several Puzzle Bobble games, with no clue about the platform game that gave birth to it? It would be sad if Puzzle Bobble — AKA Bust-A-Move — wasn't such a brilliant and adorable game. This is the grand daddy of all match three games and few have bettered it.

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo

I said competitive puzzle action doesn't get much better than Bomber Man, but if any game could threaten that claim it's this from Capcom. I have no idea why it's part of the Street Fighter series, because in some ways it overshadows how brilliant a puzzle game this is. 

Tetris

Tetris is up there with Pac-Man and Space Invaders as one of those games that everybody has played, but in the case of Alexey Pajitnov's classic puzzle game, most people will have played it on a home machine or portable device of some kind. However, there were several arcade versions of this perfect puzzle game, my favourite of which is Atari's, which had a great two-player head to head mode and multiple difficulties.

MTW

Faux retro vs real retro

It's somewhat ironic that now modern consoles and PCs can produce high definition 3D graphics (which employ such advanced techniques as programmable shaders, normal mapped images and realistic physics) that a lot of smaller developers choose to make their games look like they were made for an 8 or 16-bit machine. I must confess to loving these faux retro games, such as Super House of Dead Ninjas, Jamestown and Fez, but the truth is a lot of the time all that is retro about the graphics are the visible pixels and the reduced colour pallet. Fez is a prime example, because as soon as the screen flips 90° to reveal the 3rd dimension the fact its running on a multi-core processor and dedicated GPU become strikingly obvious.

Fez is beautiful and brilliant, but visible pixels alone makes not a retro game.

I'm not knocking any of these games for their aesthetic, it actually taps right into the core of my nostalgia node, but at the same time I wouldn't want anyone to think they were really retro. Another such example is Retro City Rampage, a top-down action adventure in the same vein as the original Grand Theft Auto. The game looks like would run on a Nintendo NES, but again, it's doing things that are way beyond the power of Nintendo's old console — even if it was the console that ended America's video game crash of 1983.

However, before making Retro City Rampage, VBlank Entertainment were trying to make a similar game for the NES and they've now released a video explaining precisely what challenges faced game developers, both for home and arcade machines, back in the 80s and 90s. And we're not just talking about graphical challenges, but audio too. It's a great education for anyone interested in how games were made, so I urge you to watch it all (it is only 10 minutes)

Fascinating stuff, but that's not to say modern developers don't face challenges too. A Wii U might have exponentially more power than a NES, but with more detailed graphics, physics and sound comes exponentially greater memory, processor and storage requirements. In short, making games ain't easy, whether it's 1983, 1993, 2003 or 2013 and we should celebrate the fact there are people willing to go to such effort to entertain us.

MTW

Classic of the Month: Tapper

Manufacturer:	Bally Midway
Developer:	Marvin Glass and Associates
Genre:	Puzzle/Platform
Board:	Unknown
Year:	1983

Video games are awesome and beer is awesome, so surely the combination of the two would be even awesomerer? You'd be bang on with that one and if you really need proof (of what is essentially a universal law) look no further than Bally Midway's Tapper.

The game puts the player in control of a bar tender, who has to supply his demanding and increasingly bizarre-looking patrons with Budweiser (or generic root beer in a later, child friendly version called Root Beer Tapper). Tapper's pub has four bars, each with a door at one end and keg at the other. As the patrons appear you have to move to their bar, draw a pint of beer, then slide it down the bar to them, before they get to the end of the bar. When they catch the glass, they are pushed back a few feet. To finish the level you have to push each patron all the way back through the doors and out of the pub. But it's not as easy as just bombarding them with drinks. If they are still drinking, any subsequent glasses will fall to the floor and when a glass breaks in Tapper, you lose a life (well, a chance). To add more danger to the game, when a patron drains their glass they slide it back to you; fail to catch the glass and there goes another life. So you have to balance serving patrons with catching their empties. If a patron makes their way to the end of the bar, they will grab Tapper and carry him off and out of the pub — for some reason.

So the game has three ways in which the player can lose a life and if that wasn't enough, collecting the tips patrons leave (at various points along any one of the four bars) puts you at more risk of all three of them. So what on the face of it sounds like quite a cute and fun little game soon becomes as challenging and oppressively difficult as any other arcade game of the era. At the end of the day, Tapper wants your 10ps, so don't expect this to be a push over.

Tapper was released in 1983 and I think it's a pretty amazing looking game. The bar tender and patrons are detailed, colourful and brimming over with character — especially in later levels, when setting for the bar changes and the cowboys are replaced with sports fans, then punks and finally aliens (again, I don't know the reason for this). I can't help thinking that the bar tender looks like some distant cousin of Mario, but that's probably just a coincidence. As for the Budweiser tie-in, back then, here in the UK, Budweiser seemed like some exotic Yank beer, which must be refreshing and delicious, since it was always popping up in cool American culture, from action movies to rock videos. It wasn't until about a decade after the release of Tapper did I get to find out for myself that it was actually bland-tasting, overly carbonated piss. Give me a pint of Guinness any day! Tapper's still great though.

Usually, the videos I include in these posts just show someone playing the game on MAME, but every so often I find a video of the machine itself. In the video below you can see that as well as being a classic game, it's a classic cabinet. As well as a tap for a fire button for that authentic bar tender feels, it also has a bar at the bottom, which confusingly is something for patrons, not bar tenders. Oh well, it's a nice touch and a beautiful cabinet.

Root Beer Tapper was available on Xbox Live Arcade for a few years, until Midway went under and Microsoft had to pull all of their games. A nice touch on the Xbox version was the option to flick the right analogue stick down, a la the tap on the original cabinet. But it's gone now and even if you had the trial on your HDD (as I do), you can't buy the full version any more. Bummer.

MTW

Worth a Look - February 2013

The first Worth a Look of the year and it's all about arcade nostalgia, some of which comes in an unusual form.

Capcom's Arcade Cabinet

Developer:	Capcom
Publisher:	Capcom
Platforms:	XBLA, PSN
Price:	400MSP/£3.99 per pack
Demo available:	Yes

I saw the logo for Capcom's Arcade Cabinet about a month ago and guessed what it would be. When the first videos appeared it looked like the classic arcade manufacturer was trying to do single-handedly what Atari, Konami, Intellivision, Krome and of course Microsoft, failed to do as a joint venture with the ill-fated retro gaming service Game Room, but it's actually something more akin to the Vintage Collections Sega have been putting out recently. Basically, if you loved old Capcom arcade games like 1942, Black Tiger, Side Arms and many, many more, then Arcade Cabinet gives you access to them either individually or in packs of three. They are promising to release new packs on a regular basis and the first few offerings are probably better than most of what was on Game Room anyway. The interface is elegant and and emulation seems spot on. If legal emulation is your thing (and it ought to be), then check it out on your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

Arcadecraft

Developer:	FireBase
Publisher:	Microsoft
Platforms:	XBox Live Indie Games
Price:	240MSP
Demo available:	Yes

One of my many fantasies as a kid was owning my own arcade, along with being the lead singer of a heavy metal band, being a movie star, being a pro wrestler and being a ninja. Now, thanks to FireBase, we can all live out that fantasy in Arcadecraft. If you've every played Theme Park or Railroad Tycoon, you'll have a pretty good idea of what this game is about. Buy machines, lay out your arcade, alter settings for price, difficulty, etc and make your business a success. Sadly, although FireBase went to the effort of dreaming up fake manufacturer's and machines, you cannot actually play any of them, just profit from them. It's still fun, but I feel that extra step could have made this amazing.

Super House of Dead Ninjas

Developer:	Megadev
Publisher:	Adult Swim Games
Platforms:	PC (Steam)
Price:	£4.99
Demo available:	No

Based on a Flash game of the same name, Super House of Dead Ninja fast-paced 2D platform beat 'em up that begs you to have another go when it inevitably beats you.  You play the part of the Crimson Ninja, who must make her way down through the randomly generated floors before the time (30 seconds per check point) runs out. It's a combination that would have made it a very successful arcade machine. It's also one of many indie games out there that strives to look retro, whilst ultimately doing things that could not have been done in the implied era. It's brisk, challenging, graceful, gory and would not have looked out of place in an arcade 25 years ago. Although there is technically no demo on Steam, you can still play the Flash version here.

MTW

Top 10 beat 'em ups

Before I begin this top 10, I am going to preface it by saying I know purists would say fighting games and brawlers are two separate genres; Fatal Fury is a fighting game, while Double Dragon is a brawler. However, back in the day, any game with fist fighting in it was known as a beat 'em up and here are my favourite 10:

Kung-Fu Master

Kung-Fu Master was the first beat 'em up I ever played that pitched the player against waves of enemies, as opposed to one-on-one.  Despite being based on the Jackie Chan film Wheels on Meals (or Spartan X as it was known in Japan), it actually played out very similar to Bruce Lee's film Game of Death, with each floor being guarded by a different boss.  I always remember hearing people talk about what the boss was on the final levels, but I don't think I ever saw past the Man of Brute Strength on floor 3, so I never knew if those rumours were true.

World Heroes

World Heroes was one of many games designed to cash in on the success of Street Fighter II. While it never did anything to set itself apart from Capcom's classic, I've always been rather fond of it. The characters were generally a little nuttier than those in the early versions of SF2, which was always part of the appeal. Plus, when the Street Fighter cabinets were crowded, this was always a nice alternative.

Favourite character: Hanzo (sorry, you have Street Fighter II to blame for that).

Power Stone 

The first of three Capcom games in this list, Power Stone was an arena fighting game quite unlike any other. The game felt like some kind of crazy mix of a Jackie Chan film, with characters bounding over tables and chairs, as well as hurling anything they could pick up at their opponent, and Power Rangers, which each character capable of powering up into typically Japanese super heroes. The ability to power up was reliant on being able to beat three different coloured gems out of your opponent, then collect them before they did. Matches were frantic games of cat and mouse, often times extracting the gems was by no means a guaranteed victory.

Favourite character: Wang Tang

Guilty Gear II 

When I first saw Guilty Gear X, it had been a couple of years since I had played a 2D beat 'em up and after feeling disappointed by Street Fighter 3, I loved how completely out there Guilty Gear was. I can't pretend I understood anything about the game, from the out-there character designs to the multitude of meters, but it looked wonderful and felt like a much more exciting direction for the old genre.

Favourite character: Jam

Tekken 3 

If you have to pick a point where the arcade first started to show signs of losing the battle to home machines, it was when the original Sony PlayStation came along. I originally played Tekken 3 on a PlayStation and it was probably better than the arcade version. It's also generally considered to be the best game in Namco's legendary series. I've played all but the latest Tekken game and I have to say I don't think any of the later games better this instalment.

Favourite character: Paul Phoenix.

Virtua Fighter 5 

Sega's original Virtua Fighter was a ground breaking game, but once Tekken came along it kinda felt a little stiff in comparison. However, during the life of the series Virtua Fighter has stood out as a solid, deep and brilliantly balanced fighting game.

Favourite character: Lau Chan

Final Fight 

After Street Fighter, Final Fight is Capcom's biggest beat 'em up.  Like Golden Axe it featured a co-op mode that was enhanced by the differences between the characters.  I was a Cody player at the time and because of the bizarre universe Capcom games occupy, that continued in Street Fighter Alpha 3 years later.

Favourite character: Cody.

King of Fighters series 

SNK gave us two great fighting game series, Fatal Fury and King of Fighters, but as good as they both have been over the years, I feel I can only give one a place in this list, so it has to be King of Fighters. Now in its 13th iteration, King of Fighters' tag-team combat set it apart when it first appeared and is still a big part of its appeal.

Favourite team: Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui and Yuri Sakazaki.

Soul Calibur II 

Of all the 3D fighting games spawned by Virtua Fighter, my absolute favourite is Soul Calibur II. It was the third game in the series and arguably does not add anything that wasn't in Soul Calibur, but I think some of the new characters were interesting. One of my previous employers had an Xbox running Soul Calibur II in the canteen, which was a hugely popular break and lunchtime distraction. Myself (played as Mitsurugi) and one of my mates (playing as Knightmare) were particularly keen on playing the game as methodically as possible, rather than just bashing the buttons in the vain hope of winning. Our long, drawn-out matches were really tense and punctuated by the occassional decisive blow making it through the others defences. Great times.

Favourite character: Mitsurugi

Street Fighter series

I don't know precisely what it is that makes me come back to Street Fighter time and time again, but I know my urge to play it has barely waned in two decades.  My favourite iterations are Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Super Street Fighter IV.  Each one has something different about them that makes it possible to enjoy them all equally, without feeling as those the older games have become antiquated.

Favourites characters (because I can't just choose one): Blanka, Ryu, Cody, Makoto, and... oh I'll stop there.

Movie Review: Wreck-It Ralph 2D

I've been talking about Disney's movie homage to the days of arcade gaming, Wreck-it Ralph, since last autumn, but thanks to the differences in international release schedules, it's only just opened here in the UK. Yesterday, the wife, kids and I decided to go and see it.

Wreck-It Ralph wears its main plot thread right on its sleeve. At Litwak's Arcade, a TobiKomi Fix-It Felix Jr cabinet has been entertaining young gamers for three decades. Every day kids put in their quarters, watch the movie's titular hero, Ralph, smash up the Nicelanders' building, then proceed take control of the game's titular hero, Felix, to repair all the damage. When you complete the level, the inhabitants of the Niceland building grab Ralph, hurl him off the top of the building and the whole thing starts again — just like every great arcade game from the late 70s and early 80s. But bad guy, Ralph, doesn't want to be the bad guy any more, a feeling that's only amplified by the game's 30th anniversary.

Who says it's lonely at the top?

You see, much like Disney's other big video game inspired movie franchise, Tron, the characters inside all of the arcade machines at Litwak's are alive and much like yet another Disney franchise, Toy Story, when there are no players around, the game characters get up and live out a secret, alternative life, free from the rules of their actual game. Furthermore, and for reasons best not explored too deeply, these data people are able to move between games, courtesy of a circuit breaker to which all of their cabinets' power cables are connected. It is by this conceit that older gamers will get their geek and nostalgia overload.

Game Central Station or a circuit breaker to you and me

Any self-respecting arcade throwback will delight in pointing out all of the real arcade machines and their characters, as they enter and exit the train station-like circuit breaker. Q*Bert, Pac-Man, Tapper, Street Fighter II, Mario and Sonic are just some of the classic games and characters you'll see in this film, but they are far from the only ones. In fact, with the exception of Fix-It Felix Jr, Sugar Rush, Hero's Duty and Turbo Time, all of the games referenced in this film are (or in most cases, were) real games. While these references are only skin deep, some of them are so obscure that only the geekiest and oldest gamers in the audience will get them all. Basically, people like me. There's obviously a real love for arcade games here, but they don't over egg it, so non-gamers and kids who think gaming started with the Nintendo DS should still enjoy it. Nonetheless, there are a few gags that will ping right off the heads of most people. I doubt most people will get why Mr Litwak wears a referee shirt in the arcade. Not that all of the cameos are from games. Look out for a famous dubstep star DJing at one point, much like Daft Punk did in Tron Legacy.

Why is Zangief a bad guy? Communism? Is that what you're saying, Disney?

After attending Bad-Anon, a weekly support group for all of the games' villains, Ralph heads home to find the rest of the characters in his game are celebrating their anniversary. So Ralph crashes the party, much to their chagrin. After embarrassing himself, Ralph decides to prove he can be a hero by entering the hot new first person rail shooter, Hero's Duty, and winning a medal for heroism. And, with the setup complete, the movie begins its roller coaster ride through Hero's Duty and ends up in the Mario Kart-style, sickly sweet racing game, Sugar Rush. It's somewhat ironic that the movie actually spends most of its time inside the Sugar Rush universe, as Ralph tries to help an exiled racer named Vanellope von Schweetz finally win her first race.

A mixed-up racing kart for a mixed up film

In terms or subplots and supporting character development, there's actually a lot going on here, most of which is rather shallow and fails to really explore any of the issues they raise. This is partly due to the fact that, like a typical arcade game, there's very little time for the audience to catch their breath, as they are whisked along from set piece to set piece. The one that does work quite well is Vanellope's glitch, which presents itself like a combination between a nervious tick and epilepsy. This cute little character (voiced by Sarah Silverman) is shunned by the other racers because of her affliction, only for it to work in her favour towards the end. As the parents of an autistic child, this resonated with the wife and I, who know first hand both the highs and lows of having such a disability.

Overall, there's none of the depth of your typical Pixar or Studio Ghibli film here, but despite all the gaming references and shoe-horned branding, Wreck-It Ralph does have a bigger heart than, say Shrek, Madagascar or Ice Age. And it's certainly a class above the vast majority of kids CG animated movies. If, like me, you're an ageing gamer with young kids, you and your kids are bound to enjoy it, but I fear some people will be put off by the one-two punch of frequent gaming references in the first act and the multitude of sub-plots competing for attention for the rest of the film.

Oh and one last thing, my son has told me I can no longer eat Clyde when I play Pac-Man. Thanks, Disney.

MTW

Classic of the Month - Neo Turf Masters

Manufacturer:	SNK
Developer:	Nazca
Genre:	Sports
Board:	NeoGeo MVS
Year:	1996

Here on Arcade Throwback, I talk a lot about blowing things up in shoot 'em ups or knocking street punks about in beat 'em ups, but rarely do I talk about the more sedate side of arcade gaming, like golf game Neo Turf Masters on the SNK Neo Geo system.

I first played it with a couple of college friends in an arcade in my home town. In was one of the games on a Neo Geo MVS that also contained Art of Fighting and Metal Slug. The arcade in question was very much focussed on fruit machines; the only other game cabinet I can remember was Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, although I feel sure there must have been others. Whatever is the case, there was not a lot of choice. I can't remember who suggested playing Neo Turf Masters (I'm trying to recall a singular event from nearly two decades ago), but I have a feeling it was the same friend who had introduced me to Microprose Golf on the Commodore Amiga five years earlier. Now I'm no sports fan, not football, not rugby, not cricket, not motorsports, not snooker and certainly not golf, but for a while in 1991 I was hooked on Microprose Golf; Neo Turf Masters not only looked a lot nicer than that earlier game, but being an arcade game, it was a whole lot more accessible too.

Obviously real golf is a very pedestrian game and Nazca didn't scrimp on content. The game features four fictional 18-hole courses, each in a different country (Germany, Japan, America and Australia). So, in order to make it work in the fast paced, 20p gobbling environment of an arcade, Nazca streamlined all the aiming and club selection and even added lives, which they called holes. Your hole count starts at three, if you finish the course on par you lose a hole and bogeys take two, so as you can imagine you could be facing the continue countdown pretty quickly. In order to progress you had to score Eagles or Albatrosses, which did not take away any lives. It was simple, but effective and meant skilled players could actually have a pretty full complete golf experience. Even though the game auto-aimed and auto-selected clubs, there was enough of an error margin with things like variable wind and slopes made it as tough as any other sports game.

Visually this is as good as it gets. As you rotate the view the links moves in several parallax layers, which meant everything moved in parallel, rather than panning a fixed bitmap. The golfer himself is digitised, with some very detailed animation. As I watched the YouTube video below, a full 17 years after I first played the game, I was as impressed as I was then. It's testament to to the power of the Neo Geo hardware.

MTW