STGs in arcades - No place for them anymore?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Have they ever made a video game where if you do well enough you win some cheap stuffed toy or something? Maybe that's the way to go. If you beat the first level you win a piece of candy. If you 1CC the shmup and a stuffed toy drops out of the machine etc...

At the Great America amusement park based out of Santa Clara, CA back in 1987, just outside of the main entrance of one of the premire arcades, an 8-player linked-up Namco produced Final Lap deluxe cabs was setup at a dollar per credit. The winner at the end of each race won a stuffed animal as a prize (could be traded up for a bigger prize later on but at the additional expense of playing & winning more races though). I tried my hand on that 8-player racing game and walked away in 6th place...not bad for trying it out for the first time back in the day.

Back in the mid-1990s, the local Camelot Park amusement place (known now as Boomers these days) had a four player linked-up Namco Final Lap 2 deluxe sit-down cabs. I played against three other complete strangers and it was quite an intense & competive race towards the checkered flag. I played three times and ended up crossing the finish line in 1st place once (due to the other three players getting involved in big crash/melee incident). I've never played Final Lap 2 that competitive with strangers since then. I was told that was a good race and thanked the guy racing next to me for the kind compliments. That was some serious balls-to-the-walls arcade F1 racing right there, folks. Didn't any better than that.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[yyr]

If anything it'll be a rather short resurgence fading out again as the technology fans out to consumers.

Actually, in my opinion, the thing (if anything) that will cause an arcade resurgence is the decline of consoles, as tablets, smartphones and other portables eat further into the market, and the price of individual larger-budget games rises to the point where people don't want to pay it any more. I mean, we're already seeing single games (Call of Duty, I'm looking at you) cost $120, between the $60 on launch day and the $40-60 in DLC that you just HAVE to get. I mean, just look at all the problems that many of the larger publishers are already having. The indies at the low end are doing alright, Activision and EA at the high end are doing okay, but the "middle class" is really getting killed right now...and the software prices and selection will reflect that.

I don't think the market will disappear entirely, but perhaps people might want to go out and play video games for a dollar a pop, again...

[EmperorIng]

combine an arcade with a bar = instant profit

put said barcade near a college campus = money for life.

For every retro galaga/ms. pacman cab you have raking in money from the broskis you can sneak in something cool like Darius Gaiden or Ilvello or Psyvariar 2.

[blackoak]

combine an arcade with a bar = instant profit

Ground Kontrol in Portland works this way, and its always packed on the weekend. Awesome upstairs pinball collection too. There's a freeplay night once a month which is really worth it, especially if you get there early.

[Ed Oscuro]

If anything it'll be a rather short resurgence fading out again as the technology fans out to consumers.

Actually, in my opinion, the thing (if anything) that will cause an arcade resurgence is the decline of consoles, as tablets, smartphones and other portables eat further into the market, and the price of individual larger-budget games rises to the point where people don't want to pay it any more.

Game budgets pose a direct problem for developers, not consumers. They can find other funding models if they need, or scale back the games a bit.

I don't see how arcades are supposed to solve any of this. The only thing I could think of, as I mentioned before, is augmented reality (think of like a beefed up laser tag arena) but I don't see any reason why that has to remain too expensive for consumers to get.

I don't see anything that a traditional video arcade game can offer, aside from the gameplay model and maybe nostalgia, that you can't get in some other places (or at least approximate).

I don't see consoles going anywhere anytime soon, by the way. Consoles weren't originally about heavy computing tasks, but just rendering a game. Add that console manufacturers have been trying to realize the Sony dream of the one-stop set-top box and closed ecosystem, and even if a lot of that can be done with less hardware, we're probably just looking at a shift to more mobile hardware. So you have manufacturers displacing one another to make things more enticingly convenient while trying to make things more closed for their purposes. Arcade hardware doesn't really have any advantage for the user - they're not trusted computing platforms (nor should they be), they're not always available, and they're still closed systems but without many of the everyday uses of a mobile device.

The one thing that arcade games can do well is physical interaction (be it a joystick or something more complicated) but you can certainly have joysticks and lightguns at home. Dance pads...oh, those are on consoles too. For the medium term, making something a meaningfully new physical experience while keeping the hardware to some kind of manageable cost seems unlikely. It's nice that Deadstorm Pirates has a steering wheel, but come on, that's not really going to turn heads anymore. I see an arcade as a place where the more expensive or bulky hardware goes first, but augmented reality doesn't have to be bulky or expensive, but lots of other things (power gloves, force feedback etc.) seem to present reliability problems, or are on consoles already - or they just aren't interesting enough for the expense.

[gs68]

Have they ever made a video game where if you do well enough you win some cheap stuffed toy or something? Maybe that's the way to go. If you beat the first level you win a piece of candy. If you 1CC the shmup and a stuffed toy drops out of the machine etc...

At the Great America amusement park based out of Santa Clara, CA back in 1987, just outside of the main entrance of one of the premire arcades, an 8-player linked-up Namco produced Final Lap deluxe cabs was setup at a dollar per credit. The winner at the end of each race won a stuffed animal as a prize (could be traded up for a bigger prize later on but at the additional expense of playing & winning more races though). I tried my hand on that 8-player racing game and walked away in 6th place...not bad for trying it out for the first time back in the day.

Back in the mid-1990s, the local Camelot Park amusement place (known now as Boomers these days) had a four player linked-up Namco Final Lap 2 deluxe sit-down cabs. I played against three other complete strangers and it was quite an intense & competive race towards the checkered flag. I played three times and ended up crossing the finish line in 1st place once (due to the other three players getting involved in big crash/melee incident). I've never played Final Lap 2 that competitive with strangers since then. I was told that was a good race and thanked the guy racing next to me for the kind compliments. That was some serious balls-to-the-walls arcade F1 racing right there, folks. Didn't any better than that.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

I went to MGM Grand's arcade in 1996 and 1998, and they had 8-player Suzuka 8 Hours (I think it was 8P, probably 6P instead). An attendant would take your money when you wanted to race, wait for at least 2 players, and then feed credits into the players' machines. The winner would win stuffed animals.

[gs68]

I think a better idea would be cards that keep track of your stats (number of times cleared, average score per credit, total time played, etc.) and rank you against other players like with fighting games. I think Nesica cabs already do something like this, but they should flesh it out more.

oh hell fucking yes

i've had this idea for ages

some racing games do this as well, you use the card to store your tuned cards, time attack times, preferences, etc.

[Temia Eszteri]

I once went to one of those family fun arcades. Even when it was becoming increasingly clear there weren't any shmups to be had, I had an inkling of hope that they had something half-way interesting tucked into the back. Nope. Turns out the staff don't even know what a shmup is.

At this point, the only arcades worth visiting (read: have shmups) around where I live are the barcades and the ice cream parlours, and the barcades have nothing newer than R-Type (which is still plenty fun, admittedly) and the ice cream parlours (and half of the barcades) being an hour out of town by bus.

I still won't forget the time I found Zero Gunner 2 on an interstate train's arcade-equipped passenger car, though. Unorthodox as it might've been, it was plenty of fun to kill time (of which 26-hour trainrides tend to have in spades) playing. I think I dumped like $8 into the game before I reached my destination...

Anyway, I'd still hold out for shmups in the smaller establishments where the arcades are less the main attraction and more of a mantlepiece, ironic as that may seem to us die-hard (or less) shmup fans - they aren't as centered around income generation from the cabs, so they may have more variety to them that way.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think a better idea would be cards that keep track of your stats (number of times cleared, average score per credit, total time played, etc.) and rank you against other players like with fighting games. I think Nesica cabs already do something like this, but they should flesh it out more.

oh hell fucking yes

i've had this idea for ages

some racing games do this as well, you use the card to store your tuned cards, time attack times, preferences, etc.

A lot of expense for something that's less convenient to use than just keeping track of stats locally...the card might be an extra inducement to play something again but the actual gameplay experience must be up to snuff. If your only "gameplay" idea is "a card to keep track of their progress," cheap online games will do it just as well and more conveniently. I don't know about the stuffed toy thing, that would only really work if you had things so rigged that it was hard to win repeatedly...carnivals get away with this because they can mess with the game mechanics and they also don't have the same people coming back and winning repeatedly, because that's expensive. I don't see that really working for a traditional arcade style game because of the expense of it.

tl;dr version - everybody had this idea, and nobody made it work, and nobody's going to.

[gs68]

i guess i just got excited because i tend to be a card whore

especially since for instance US arcades got stuck with the shit no-card version of GHOST Squad until the full-unlock apology edition (aka Evolution) came out

[spadgy]

combine an arcade with a bar = instant profit

Ground Kontrol in Portland works this way, and its always packed on the weekend. Awesome upstairs pinball collection too. There's a freeplay night once a month which is really worth it, especially if you get there early.

I'd love to have the balls and financial know-how to do this in London! I'm confident it's a model the could work, and that it could be a gateway to shmups.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I think a better idea would be cards that keep track of your stats (number of times cleared, average score per credit, total time played, etc.) and rank you against other players like with fighting games. I think Nesica cabs already do something like this, but they should flesh it out more.

oh hell fucking yes

i've had this idea for ages

some racing games do this as well, you use the card to store your tuned cards, time attack times, preferences, etc.

Yep, those racing cards like with Namco's Wangun Midnight: Maximum Tune and it's sequels had that feature. Racing against the Blue Devil AI car in WM:MT for a solid 22 minutes = priceless.

combine an arcade with a bar = instant profit

Ground Kontrol in Portland works this way, and its always packed on the weekend. Awesome upstairs pinball collection too. There's a freeplay night once a month which is really worth it, especially if you get there early.

I'd love to have the balls and financial know-how to do this in London! I'm confident it's a model the could work, and that it could be a gateway to shmups.

I'm sure it'd work just fine across the pond, spadgy. Just gotta look for some willing business partners to fund this venture and the rest as they say, is history. Could be the start of a new franchise if looking to "expand outside the box" concept. Add some bartenders with some cool flairing mad skillz and you've got a showstopper attraction as well to draw in the drinking crowd.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

It really is sad that arcades are dying out, and the fact that people tend to ignore Shmups is especially depressing, because they are accessible to beginners and fun for veteran players. I have memories of when I was a kid living in Echo Park, Los Angeles, my dad would always take me to a Robinsons-May shopping mall in downtown L.A. and we would always go to a huge arcade that they had there. He would always sit me on his lap and we would play Cruisin' World. I also vaguely remember seeing some Raiden games; either 2 or DX, because all I remember was the attract mode and seeing the purple laser. That whole shopping mall has been closed down for many years now. I also remember seeing Raiden 2 or DX in two different supermarkets near my house in Echo Park; the Pioneer supermarket and La Guadalupana market. I do recall playing Raiden II when I was very young, and of course not even lasting a few minutes. Ever since I moved to Palmdale in 2000, I have seen less arcades overall. In our mall, there used to be a movie theater that had some games in it, and the only shmup was the original Raiden. That movie theater was also closed down. There was also a family fun center nearby called Funland USA, but it changed it's name to Mulligan Family Fun Center. Along with the name change, they removed a whole section of old but fun games just to make room for laser tag This was where I first played Raiden DX, and from that moment on, I was addicted for life I went there many times, but in 2006, they didn't have it anymore and I was devastated. Ever since, I consoled myself by playing Raiden X on the internet, until I discovered emulators. In 2010, my uncle took me, my brothers, and cousins to an arcade called Nickel Nickel 5 Cent Games in West Covina. This place was pretty awesome; it had a whole section of games on free play, including Raiden, Flying Shark, Strikers 1945 and other classic games. Raiden DX, however was not free, but at 5 cents a credit, it was amazing. They also had some other larger games, including an Air Combat 22 cockpit cabinet, but it wasn't turned on. Some of the games were broken, however, including Strikers 1945 and Raiden's 1P joystick also. I also recall playing Raiden Fighters at Raging Waters with my brother. The most recent shmup I have played in an actual arcade cab was Raiden DX at the Palmdale International Shopping Mall earlier this year. It was a two button setup, so it didn't have rapid-fire, and my fingers hurt afterwards, but it was worth it. All people are interested in now are prize redemption games, fighting games, and lightgun shooters. Shmups definitely deserve to get more attention and respect.

[gs68]

^ The problem is, the "hardcore" arcade scene dismisses shmups as nothing more than mindless quarter munchers in the vein of Raw Thrills games. As I said in the original post, shmups lack arcade-exclusive gimmicks and the competitive-ness of fighting games. If you see a shmup in an arcade, do not expect it to make more than roughly half or even 1/4 of what fighting games within the same arcade make.

I honestly believe that the future of shmups lies in consumer releases, not in arcades. Hell, even telephone versions with slide controls are more viable than an arcade game that'll simply be a waste of development budgets and arcade cabinets that could be better used to house more profitable titles. Even the original Street Fighter II would get more attention than SaiDaiOuJou.

[trap15]

Not everything has to be profitable in an arcade. As long as they're in the black collectively, there's no problem.

[gs68]

I suppose *shrug* I just get worried when I see the poor little shmup in the corner just sitting there with almost no players on it, high score table almost entirely at defaults.

Another problem is that most people just find shmups to be way too hard or nothing but stupid Quarter Munchers(TM). Most people who come across shmups in an arcade will feed a few credits, maybe credit feed it to the end if they have enough money, and then call the game "beaten" and leave. Or they’ll get the console port and complain that the game is too easy because you can just press start every time the continue screen shows up. (Naturally, limiting continues will just elicit more backlash.) Or if people understand the logic behind “it’s not a legitimate clear if you don’t do it with no continues”, they’ll get overwhelmed at how much they suck compared to “the pros” and swear off the genre permanently.

[trap15]

Don't know how many times I'll have to tell people this before they get it, but: Lose faith in humanity.

Really, if you give any fucks what the general public thinks/cares about, you're doing it wrong. The general public doesn't care about skill based games. They care about stroking themselves to cinematic "experiences" and shooting their friends in the face on their xbawks.

[gs68]

does Sonic Colors's Starlight Carnival count as a cinematic experience

i mean half the zone is a cutscene where you see Sonic running on holo-track automatically

[EmperorIng]

If the "public" really cared about cinematic experiences, then Wii Sports would not have been the best-selling game of all time.

Shmups are a niche genre, but that doesn't mean they can't have mass appeal.

[Hagane]

If the "public" really cared about cinematic experiences, then Wii Sports would not have been the best-selling game of all time.

That's because Wii Sports is something any grandma can pick up and play with their grandchildren. Not really what I'd call "skill based". To do well in today's gaming market, you either have to spend millions on cutscenes, voice acting and awful plots, or make something that any braindead monkey can pick up and play (or both).

[EmperorIng]

I doubt it - we're seeing that all the money being spent on cutscenes and voice-acting isn't really generating any positive growth in the industry.

I wasn't arguing that Wii Sports is necessarily "skill based" but I think it bears repeating that it is the best-selling game of all time, and in general the industry is in decline even after all the money pumped into games like Halo 4 and Nathan Drake etc.

The money is made either in exploiting a very specific niche (big or small), or by having your game appeal to the widest-possible number of people.

[Hagane]

And to appeal to the widest-possible number of people you have to either make a cinematic game or something dumbed down enough for most people to understand. All the modern best-sellers follow this path. Even established skill based franchises like Street Fighter have been adding cinematic stuff and greatly lowering their depth/complexity to sell more.

[gs68]

Hence why if I pursue game dev I'm just gonna shy away from the industry and make indie shmups as a side hobby for little to no cost. Not that you can't have quality and mass appeal at the same time, but I'd rather focus on making a game that's good than a game that'll be popular.

[hermit crab]

Who even has pocket change anymore? Everyone is using (and every place accepts) credit/debit cards.

People get their quick arcade-style gaming fix with mobile games nowadays, on their phones and tablets. In fact never mind the arcades, even console gaming is down because of that (http://posttrib.suntimes.com/business/1 ... games.html).

And to be honest I don't really understand why you'd even want to go to a filthy place with screaming kids (or drunks) to play shmups. You can have a better experience at home. Sometimes I go to play pinball, that's it.

[NTSC-J]

And to be honest I don't really understand why you'd even want to go to a filthy place with screaming kids (or drunks) to play shmups. You can have a better experience at home. Sometimes I go to play pinball, that's it.

The words of a man who's never been to a Japanese arcade.

Some reasons to go:
- Wide selection of arcade-perfect shooters, some of which have never been emulated or ported
- Impeccably maintained cabinets, fixed weekly, huge screens with great resolution and often with game-specific adjustments (differing auto-fire rates, reset function for games affected by accumulated rank like Battle Garegga)
- Top players you can watch set new records and learn new strategies from without buying a DVD or squinting at some crappy youtube video
- No kids
- Recording equipment hooked up to the cabinets to save your runs, free to use
- Location tests for new games

When you find a place where people respect the games and the players, arcades can be pretty fun.

[hermit crab]

The words of a man who's never been to a Japanese arcade.

Actually I've been but yeah it was a long time ago and I mainly just remember the poor selection of pinball.

Some reasons to go:
- Wide selection of arcade-perfect shooters, some of which have never been emulated or ported
- Impeccably maintained cabinets, fixed weekly, huge screens with great resolution and often with game-specific adjustments (differing auto-fire rates, reset function for games affected by accumulated rank like Battle Garegga)
- No kids
- Recording equipment hooked up to the cabinets to save your runs, free to use
- Location tests for new games

That's all great but seems like to be financially viable you would need to have a huge population of highly dedicated punters, in a geographically small area. Not too many places like that in the world.

- Top players you can watch set new records and learn new strategies from without buying a DVD or squinting at some crappy youtube video

Argh. Not that I'm a top player or anything but that's another thing I hate about arcades, people peeking over your shoulder. Totally messes up your concentration. The only thing that's worse is when you're enjoying a nice single player game of Street Fighter or whatever and out of the blue someone sticks in a coin and presses P2 start.

[EmperorIng]

God forbid there's social interaction in a public place!

[null1024]

Argh. Not that I'm a top player or anything but that's another thing I hate about arcades, people peeking over your shoulder. Totally messes up your concentration. The only thing that's worse is when you're enjoying a nice single player game of Street Fighter or whatever and out of the blue someone sticks in a coin and presses P2 start.

If someone's yelling right next to you, sure. But the only reason I'd even put money in a fighter is because I expect to be challenged by someone...

does Sonic Colors's Starlight Carnival count as a cinematic experience

i mean half the zone is a cutscene where you see Sonic running on holo-track automatically

I guess this is the worth of cinematic experiences, that level is one of the worst in Colors. Lots of good ideas [that act where you start near the goal ring, but need to go away from it to come back was actually a neat bit of level design], but eeeeengh, springboards and doing nothing. So little want.
it shouldn't count

[Hagane]

The only thing that's worse is when you're enjoying a nice single player game of Street Fighter or whatever and out of the blue someone sticks in a coin and presses P2 start.

You are completely missing the point of Street Fighter.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The only thing that's worse is when you're enjoying a nice single player game of Street Fighter or whatever and out of the blue someone sticks in a coin and presses P2 start.

You are completely missing the point of Street Fighter.

It's still probably more polite to ask if they'd like a match first (the person could be trying to 1CC it). But yeah, enemy AI isn't as much fun to play against as playing vs another human.