Not all games get to have a console counterpart, nor were there promises of them ever being popular, whether they didn’t do well in the U.S Arcades due to not many arcade machines being in the U.S or were never ported to console to gain notoriety.
So here I will talk about some of the obscure games of different genres as well as my personal experience with one very obscure game. The reason why you need to play them (if the point of my blog which was to encourage you to play them in the first place for yourself, I hope this will make that message more clear this time).
So there’s too many games to count based on research that I’ve done, instead I’m going to keep it simple for myself and for all of you, to give you a base idea as to what is really out there, where to start in case you want to explore for yourself. I’m going to cover popular genres for arcade games: racing, fighting, and beat’em ups. If I tried to do more than just those three, you’d tell people never to read my blog because of how long the posts are.
First up is racing games, with a company I mentioned in my first post(which you should read, don’t ignore this), Taito’s Speed Race released in 1974. Credited with potentially being the first controllable racing game where you use a wheel rather than a traditional controller or joystick, it must have been such a huge innovation released during the golden age of arcades. The objective, like many games of its time, is simple. Dodge cars, get a high score!
Next up, Death race. Imagine GTA but you’re always in the car, and the object is just to hit people. There you go, simple enough, NEXT.
The writer that wrote about Death race needs to be shot, fired, or damned to one thousand years of bad video games for that horrible description. Anyway, the next game is called Night Driver. For an arcade game, it’s decent due to how simple it is, being that you just need to avoid crashing into things. The only problem is that the sounds it uses will make you wish you were born deaf. It reminds me of some games that were released during the early days of iPods, where you did similar motions by tilting the device back and forth.
Lastly we have Le Mans 24, which seems to be a cult classic among racing game lovers for the arcade. It seems just to be your standard racing game with many different iterations, including an arcade version, as well as a Sega version featuring many different cars.
Next we have fighting games. It was hard back in the day I’m sure for a new fighting game to rise up when there was already well established franchises in the form of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or Tekken. Turns out there’s many others that were praised, and others that may have been loved out of nostalgia.
First up is Kaiser Knuckle, released in 1994 by Taito this game was meant to be a clone of Street Fighter II, with it’s own twist on the fighting mechanics. The only problem is that it released 3 years after Street Fighter II, so Kaiser Knuckle never caught on.
Second will be Dragoon Might, an arcade only release that featured many different interesting mechanics including the use of weapons as the primary way of doing damage. So imagine Street Fighter II, but the only way to do efficient damage is if you have a weapon. You can fight with your fists, but it’s much less ineffective. You can also disarm opponents as well, so you’re not always going to be safe! The game also has an interesting risk and reward system with the special attacks: time it right for big damage, miss and you may end up killing yourself instead of the other player. I’m sure because of this game being arcade only is why it became obscure like many others, this is a game I will have to take a second look at.
Lastly we have Outlaws of the lost Dynasty, which I would recommend playing in an arcade if possible. The reason? It has overwhelming positive support, however a main complaint is that it is very similar to other fighting games of its time, meaning that it isn’t necessarily worth buying a Sega or PlayStation(unless you already own it) to play it. A big difference between this game and Dragoon Might is that while they both use weapons as a means of attacking, using your fists gives you a different system rather than being punished. Swords give fast strikes but are harder to combo with, where bare fists give less damage but much more combo potential. Like Dragoon Might I will have to come back to this game as well.
Lastly we have the popular genre known as the beat’em ups. The classics like x-men and turtles or even the Simpsons’ create this sort of standard as to what a beat ’em up should be like. Some of these hit the mark, with one special game being a personal favorite, which I’ll eventually get around to and oh boy, the list of beat ’em ups is about that of a short novel.
First up for the beat’em up is Shadow Force. This game was also made by the same people who developed the popular Double Dragon beat’em up game. The difference? Six buttons instead of four. Why is that significant? Well it allowed for the player to do things such as low attacks like a fighting game and even allowed the use of blocking. A problem I had with this game was that it was hard to tell which character was the player when the screen was more crowded.
Second up is The King of Dragons, which is essentially the famous Dungeons and Dragons brought to life in the form of a 2D beat’em up. There were many like it, but this one seemed to be the most talked about in forums and other blogs. An interesting mechanic for this game is that you’re able to level up, allowing you to gain more health on your journey and unlock spells.
Last but not least is is a fun game I played back when I was very young, I’d say about 7 years old. I went to a bowling alley and they had this little arcade game that looked a lot of fun. This game is known as Ninja Baseball Batman, and according to sources there was only ever 43 of these arcade units ever found in the U.S. As someone who enjoys a once in a lifetime opportunity, I’m glad to know that was one of them.
The game itself though, well the title speaks for itself really. They’re ninja batmen, in this what I can only assume an alternate version of Japan where baseball rules over everything. And frankly, I’m okay with that. It has your standard characters: the all around good choice, the speedy character, the power character, and the character with the long reach, all with their own unique and special moves with even more unique levels and enemies. The idea of the game is simple: someone stole baseball artifacts and your job is to retrieve them. Simple enough, simple but captivating game play. Don’t let my words fool you. I may say the game is simple, but finding the game won’t be. Considering it never had a console release, the only way to play it now is to go somewhere like the biggest arcade in the U.S, which I mentioned in another blog post(shameless plug, sue me) or emulating it online or what I recommend it is downloading it, as playing it online has a lot to be desired for sound quality.
That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed as always and consider subscribing for more. Unfortunately I will be taking the week off so come back in two weeks (March 14th) for the next post!
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