Do Quarter Munchers Actually Exist?

[Hagane]

Dude, they are not extreme. Just because you are too stubborn to take your blinders off it doesn't mean they are ultra hardcore titles. Otherwise I, an average player, would not be able to clear them in roughly 30 hours of total play (with no savestates, even, as I think normal play suits this style of game better, so that would make a total grand amount of what, around 50-60 quarters to 1CC? Such quarter munchers).

The genre is as transparent as it gets. Unless you are totally, utterly oblivious to any kind of fighting, then spacing positioning should be obvious, and the 'em in beat'em up should tell you that dealing with groups of enemies is paramount. Instead of posting your usual inaccurate walls of text you could better spend that time experimenting a bit with the games. Who knows, maybe actually playing them will have some effect on you!

[trap15]

Well said.

[hermit crab]

30 hours on a coin-op machine is hardcore as fuck from the perspective of a normal person. 30 minutes is pretty long already, and that's your estimate for a single credit.

[Hagane]

30 hours is around a credit each day through a couple of months (and that's how I usually play these games, one or two credits a day). How is that hardcore as fuck? Most people play a hell of a lot more than that with easy console titles. RPG players are a good example, and there are lots of those.

[hermit crab]

Well what kind of person goes to the arcade EVERY DAY for months to practice the same game... Sure there was one or two in every school back then, and they ended up on gaming forums and are the "normal person" here (hardcore is a relative term). But come on now.

[trap15]

Usually when you go to an arcade you don't pop one credit and leave. If you do, it's probably on your way home from work or school or whatever, in which case that's pretty reasonable.

[Hagane]

Pretty much. Playing a credit or two while going to or coming back from work / school / whatever sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Much more than spending hundreds of hours grinding in an RPG for sure.

[Sinful]

XEXEX which is also a perfect example of a game with an added lifebar & removed checkpoints in the US version. But to make up for this, the freaking difficulty has been bumped up higher then the second loop of the original japanese XEXEX. Has different enemy pattern, and I think certain bullet sprites (along with their hitboxes I assume) seemd noticeably bigger?

So no wonder why some think this game is hard, they're refering to the cheap difficulty of the US version for sure. Cause even with a healthbar & without restarts, that game is hell. Credit feeding hell. While the original seems to be one of the easier shmups out there.

[Pretas]

I'm not saying this is the "correct" way to play, because it isn't, but...

From my experience in American arcades throughout the nineties and early 2000s, whenever people would play an STG, beat-em-up or light gun shooter, it was to finish the game in one go via credit feeding and never touch it again. Assuming the game held their interest, and they had enough change on hand. I used to play like this myself, before I learned better.

[hermit crab]

I'm not saying this is the "correct" way to play, because it isn't, but...

From my experience in American arcades throughout the nineties and early 2000s, whenever people would play an STG, beat-em-up or light gun shooter, it was to finish the game in one go via credit feeding and never touch it again. Assuming the game held their interest, and they had enough change on hand. I used to play like this myself, before I learned better.

That's the way we WANTED to play but lack of funds prevented it. Except once a month when the arcade held a free play evening, good times.

[Pretas]

Playing like that, without any goal of practicing for a 1CC or a high score, always felt like you were just killing time. It turned games into movies where you had to pay up every couple minutes to keep them rolling. I've enjoyed arcade games more than I did in the old days ever since I ceased playing carelessly.

[hermit crab]

IMO it's about a natural balance between the amount of money used and what you get for your money. Getting an extra life is like winning money, dieing is like losing money. A 1CC is sort of what you're striving for "in theory", but as an actual goal it's quite artificial, and really practicing for it goes deep into enthusiast/hardcore territory.

[Mischief Maker]

It turned games into movies...

Thank god we've gotten beyond that in modern gaming. Hey, have you seen the gameplay trailer for RYSE yet?

[Specineff]

Wasn't the American Thunder Cross nerfed to the point some sections were impossible to pass without dying?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There is a section in the third stage of [Metamorphic Force] where a ton of little bugs come out and swarm you long enough for a bigger guy to possibly knock you down. You're stunlocked if they get you unless you get enough of them dead to make a gap in their conga line to recover. Well, they do full damage and can one shot you from full health in the US version. (It is a super fun game regardless of this).

Those bugs are bullshit. I remember playing the US version to that point and when I discovered the bugs take multiple hits to kill (instead of being easily one-shotted with punches like in the JP version) I was seriously baffled. You're pretty much guaranteed to get hit by the bugs if you try simply punching them. The hardest difficulty setting in the JP version doesn't even do this nonsense, it just adds a lot more enemies and is pretty fun to play.

[Skykid]

Well what kind of person goes to the arcade EVERY DAY for months to practice the same game... Sure there was one or two in every school back then, and they ended up on gaming forums and are the "normal person" here (hardcore is a relative term). But come on now.

I did and still do, only in the confines of home when I'm in the UK. In China I was in the arcade daily. That's the way arcade games are all meant to be played, and not necessarily for a 1cc or utter mastery, sometimes just for the rewarding nature of improvement. You set your own own goals and get out what you put in.

I agree with Hagane regarding scrolling beat-em-ups, it's equal to any arcade genre in its learning. I used to think I understood the simplicity of shmups but floundered at them until growing accustomed to their nuances - same with fighting games etc.

I disagree that they're not quarter munchers, but I think folks are confusing business ideals and poorly executed tosh. They're all designed to take as much of your cash as possible, however it is they go about doing it. To clarify, I'll just leave my previous post here:

This is a no-brainer. All arcade games are designed to be quarter munchers, that's the nature of the business, drumming up money for the operator and cementing your brand as profitable.

The question is simply one of good and bad games; good being those that will challenge you for your cash, but are ultimately fair and learnable, and 1ccable. Bad being those that are almost purposely broken or ridiculously tough that are only designed to net coins and have no intention of offering an experience that can be conquered with reasonable practice.

Anyone who thinks Final Fight's last two stages weren't designed to squeeze the living hell out of the average punter's pocket doesn't have all their dogs barking. Doesn't ruin the game, just dulls its shine slightly.

[Hagane]

They are made to take your cash through challenge, and that's why they are so interesting. But as you say, good arcade games are designed to eventually be mastered and consistently cleared, so I don't like to call them "quarter munchers", as it suggests that they are games that arbitrarily and unfairly take your money away, as if they were impossible and your skill or knowledge didn't matter. It's misleading, and 99% of the time people use it to unjustly bash games they are not familiar with.

I prefer to reserve it to games that actively and unfairly try to rob your quarters, where victory is a matter of chance instead of strategy and execution, or are borderline impossible due to bad design.

[hermit crab]

How do you guys feel about forced scrolling and how it relates to this?

What I mean is... In many games you don't get to go forward until you figure out the pattern or whatever needs to be done. But once you do it becomes easy, after which playing it again is more of a chore and a bore than getting something for your money. So you might as well keep feeding credits to stick with the new and interesting challenge instead. But in something like many shmups the game keeps on moving as long as you have lives and having passed that part doesn't really mean you've done anything at all, playing the same parts over and over is actually needed to figure them out.

[ACSeraph]

I agree with Skykid that in one sense all arcade games are quarter munchers. Most games are going to be so difficult that they will drain a lot of cash as you are trying to learn them, often with cheap shots that you have to be aware of ahead of time in order to avoid. It's certainly true of shmups. It's just part of the business model of arcades.

However I'm more interested in hearing opinions on a hardcore definition of Quarter Muncher a la Hagane's definition: games that involve luck and cannot be consistently cleared regardless of player skill, or are just generally impossible to complete due to shit design. Basically a game where clearing requires mo' money rather than learning. We are a hardcore group of players here, so I really don't think anyone has a problem with playing through an ungodly amount of credits to learn to clear a game. What I'm really worried about is games that were never designed to be cleared in the first place.

Gauntlet comes close to this definition but I'm not sure it really fits it since it loops seemingly forever. Seems to me like the entire point of the game is seeing how far you can get before your inevitable death rather than clearing and I'm not sure they deserve to be faulted for that design choice.

I'm especially interested in hearing about original Japanese releases that could be considered quarter munchers, even before being butchered by US operators. Are there any?

[system11]

Arcade games exist to take your money, many operator manuals used to advise operators to make the game harder if players were lasting more than 3 minutes.

Fun note on Crime Fighters - only the US 4 player one has the stupid life counter, other versions are normal including the English 2 player release.

[ACSeraph]

The main this I have learned from this thread is that American arcades were totally bullshit back in the day. I'm glad most of my arcade experience has come from here in Japan...

I'll ask something specific here, I recently got he JP versions of Sengoku and Ninja Combat on NGCD. Are those games 1cc-able with patience and practice? I read some review of Ninja Combat on gamefaqs that claims it is a true quarter muncher but I don't really buy it.

[BIL]

GameFAQs informed me back in the day that Shikigami no Shiro II and Gradius V were quarter munchers, despite the latter not actually accepting quarters.

[Ed Oscuro]

You know, I don't like that term "quarter munchers" either. It suggests that what is different about beltscrollers constitutes barriers to progress, where I'm saying there are just slightly higher hurdles. Are these games more difficult overall? That's not a question I'm trying to answer. I agree it makes sense that once you get the basics down, you have made huge progress in most of these games. The more relevant question is to analyze where the problem occurs - just using the same focus process you guys cite when learning these games. Why is it so difficult to apply that same process to the discussion?

I'm in favor of demystifying and promoting these excellent games too - but the message you guys are sending is getting fixated on proving something that matters not at all to the motivated player, and which obscures what's actually going on. There is a problem when what you're saying doesn't match up with reality - especially if it doesn't match up with the reality perceived by the audience you want to target. Don't be this guy.

My argument is that figuring out how, not if, the elements in these games work can be somewhat more involved than in many other arcade games (and you guys should note you're typically mentioning three elements of beltscrollers to pay attention to, each of which can have its own wrinkles).

Ease of prediction: You're going to run into a wall in a racer, OR get hit by a bullet in a shmup (or most any game with bullets), OR a specific enemy is going to shoot / tag you (in many lightgun games, remember that enemies jumping in front of you will immediately spin up a slash, and many "priority" targets flash to be helpful), OR an enemy is going to grab or swing at you in a beltscroller: Any of the first three are pretty easy to predict without any prior knowledge, but I can't quite say that in beltscrollers, although I would agree that many people (myself included) probably disregard warning frames because they are just intent on mashing attacks in the enemy's face. But it does seem that warning stances and frames are less common in beltscrollers and that they are generally less obvious to interpretation as well.

Ease of understanding the system: The movesets in A.) Street Fighter II, B.) Final Fight, C.) Ark Area.

A good shmup design is pretty open-ended. That doesn't mean that Gradius III arcade's famous horribly-designed environmental collison boxes are better to deal with than learning the (somewhat confusing, but universal) controls in Renegade. I agree that a lot of the fun and motivation of these games (and games like Street Fighter II) can come from the moveset - but it's still a level of complexity that's not there in many shmups. I'm not out here to celebrate simplicity over engaging complexity, but rather to point out that in very specific ways beltscrollers tend to ask players to look at things that aren't as obvious as the goals in many other games (that's my response to trap15, as well: It's not that beltscrollers need to be dumbed down with concessions to the player, but rather that in other games players don't feel as much need to have them).

[Mero]

Isn't the final boss of one of the Magical Drop games supposed to be literally impossible on one credit? I'd say that counts.

Yes, Black Peridot is invincible unless you die on him and use a continue.

[Specineff]

I'll ask something specific here, I recently got he JP versions of Sengoku and Ninja Combat on NGCD. Are those games 1cc-able with patience and practice? I read some review of Ninja Combat on gamefaqs that claims it is a true quarter muncher but I don't really buy it.

I'm sure it can be 1-credited, as this video seems to hint. They had to lose one life to a boss, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smwfHhcDoTg

[Skykid]

The main this I have learned from this thread is that American arcades were totally bullshit back in the day. I'm glad most of my arcade experience has come from here in Japan...

I'll ask something specific here, I recently got he JP versions of Sengoku and Ninja Combat on NGCD. Are those games 1cc-able with patience and practice? I read some review of Ninja Combat on gamefaqs that claims it is a true quarter muncher but I don't really buy it.

Interesting two games to cite. SNK/ADK and the Neo Geo residents were very much considered guilty of turning out a lot of games intent on cash rinsing. In some cases this was true, especially with the poorly made Neo stuff, and others were just hard.

I have a Superplay of Sengoku and the guy no misses until the last boss and then has no choice but to melee attack him to take him down with no regard to strategy (because there is none.) He loses 3 of the lives he accumulated in the process.

So I'm with Hagane that the definition of 'quarter muncher' is open to interpretation, but there's still an element of business involved at all times: we just hope that it's one of fairly measured challenge and not bullshit cheap shots over and over again... which crop up a lot in arcade games.

Undercover Cops world version I don't even think is 1ccable, and Korean Donpachi is actually impossible to clear. There's a lot of crap that went floating about, we just all had good enough taste to home in on the good stuff. The arcade games I went back to as a kid I still play today.

Also, on a side note, a good arcade experience is based around the sensibilities of the player, but it makes its money regardless. If you spend 30 coins learning to clear something and get the 1cc, you're no different in business terms to the person who spent 30 coins in one sitting to credit feed through to the end. You both spent a large volume of cash and it's unlikely either of you will revisit the machine thereafter.

[Ed Oscuro]

Also, on a side note, a good arcade experience is based around the sensibilities of the player, but it makes its money regardless. If you spend 30 coins learning to clear something and get the 1cc, you're no different in business terms to the person who spent 30 coins in one sitting to credit feed through to the end. You both spent a large volume of cash and it's unlikely either of you will revisit the machine thereafter.

The arcade operator would prefer the players clear off the game ASAP - but of course consumer satisfaction has to be taken into account. If you played the game and thought "that was a shitty experience," even if it was what Hagane would characterize as a player problem, you're less likely to go back for more, even with a different game.

[Sinful]

It turned games into movies...

Thank god we've gotten beyond that in modern gaming.

Har, har, har.

You know, my sister's husband is one heck of a casual gamer if I ever seen one (wait, that's all I see. nvm). Even told him "you're what's wrong with the gaming industry." If a game is too hard, looks too hard or smells too hard. He won't touch it. And ALWAYS, sets the difficulty to VERY easy. Always about the graphics. Won't touch a game or movie that's older then one year. etc. etc. etc, Sigh. I tried to help that guy, but he just too stuborn. And well, buddy never even held a gamepad before I gave him one too. I mean, wow, where do I even begin?

[Despatche]

Jesus Christ, Crime Fighters and Metamorphic Force are exactly why we need some kind of info source for version differences. I will make one eventually, damn it.

So no wonder why some think this game is hard, they're refering to the cheap difficulty of the US version for sure.

Not entirely. First, Xexex is very obscure (in terms of "casual downloading a bunch of MAME roms"), and few have played either version; that is to say, people who know about the game almost always know about the version differences. Second, the real Xexex was played in STGT one year and most people ended up complaining about two things: it being an R-Type clone, and it having random extends.

Yes, Black Peridot is invincible unless you die on him and use a continue.

black pierrot is the embodiment of shrill-voiced death

He's actually beatable, someone TAS'd it... and almost lost. He's meant to actively deny you a 1CC, yes.

[Ed Oscuro]

I played a few credits of The Punisher (great attract mode!) to see what's going on.

At first, I was somewhere between bemused and disappointed at my performance (just beat the first boss; MAME's default settings only give you one extra life). So I was able to pass the first boss on my first try, and had a section where I was hammering him with thrown enemies and even had him trapped against the front of the bus - I unwisely kept hammering him while the two late arrivals with weapons arrived behind me. On another try I got to see a lot more of his behavior.

I think the most telling, and initially kind of frustrating, moment came at the very beginning of my playthrough - I walked up to the third enemy, on the right of the screen, and then walked away - and got tagged in the back of the head. The immediate reaction was "wow, that's quite a reach." Letting my unconscious work on it, it's obvious that I did a stupid thing approaching the enemy and not attacking.

The ease with which Nick grabs and throws enemies in this game is pretty promising. I did not figure out yet how to throw a grenade - the usual health-depleting special move is there, but it appeared as if the grenades take a special input combo to throw. Of course, right now I am only playing with the most basic moveset - grabs, throws, simple punch combos, and the flying kick, like it's Golden Axe. I am sure there's more there too.