Seibu's Viper Phase 1 U.S.A. was quite popular at another local arcade hangout called "The Electric Underground" as I first came across it back in September of 1995 with it's initial grand debut (it was stocked in a "Low Boy" type of upright cab but half the size of a typical full-sized Dynamo upright cab and had a 19" Wells Gardner arcade crt monitor). A single credit was a mere four nickels. Of course, Seibu made sure that it's dedicated SP1 arcade motherboard + SP1 arcade cart combo setup saved both high scores and high score initials for posterity via on-board back-up battery. How cool was that?
Angry Hina wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 12:26 pmHas someone of the Toaplan guys or other devs of the time ever said that? Sounds a bit extreme because with STII the whole Arcade Zeitgeist changed and even the hardest in-genre competition whould have on the other hand kept the genre alive and interesting.
I'm sure they have in some old interview, but I am simply allowing history to speak for itself. Street Fighter II did not change arcades enough for Raiden to be anything other than the gigantic success it was. That game was everywhere, and a large number of the shmups being made in the years afterward were directly modeled after Raiden in some way. It fucking sucks.
Hm... I dont think the history speaks in the same way to me. That Raiden keapt a success dont mean, that some other STG could have been in their place. It was THE vert STG in that time at least for the (bigger) western audience because it had the right aesthetics, music and gameplay simplicity appealing the masses.
And if all of the desperate Raiden clones were all successes bacause Raiden was, Toaplan could have been part of the new STG hype. And the Raiden series itself wasnt able to stand its ground in the longer run against the new Versus fighting arcade age.
