I remember once I was listening to music from a game called Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, a 2014 title that was brought over to the PC from console. Why do I mention this? Because the music is some of the best of its kind, symphony rock, and a whole lot of it. One day I went onto the notorious site 4chan, but not to the part we think of when we think hackers and people who you think could destroy your life from a computer screen, no. I instead went to a different part of the site to discuss something lighthearted that we could all bond over: video game music. I start off by saying I was listening to Metal Gear Rising’s music, where the small forum I created turned into this big nostalgia trip for many, saying they were listening to many of the Super Mario soundtracks, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario 64, sonic the hedgehog, and countless others. It got me feeling nostalgic, I began pulling up playlists of the All-Stars Super Mario tracks, Donkey Kong Country, Mega-Man and one of my personal favorites, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers soundtrack. Bandai in my opinion, crafted to perfectly capture the feel of each stage, from the upbeat city streets to the gritty songs of the sewers you work your way through. It brings me back to a time where I would listen to those soundtracks at my part time job just to pass the time, or more importantly as a kid when I would play that game all the time. And that’s not to say that only happens with that game, Super Mario’s music brings me back to when I was much younger, when gaming was all I had to worry about (and 5th grade math) and always trying to beat the harder squeal, The Lost Levels. The music was the same, but the world was much different. I died a lot, obviously, so hearing the same tunes over and over made me appreciate every note (and hate) the shear amount of times I listened to them over and over due to having to replay the later levels so many times.
While there are dedicated lists and numerous posts that clearly state what games are better than the others, it’s harder to narrow it down to music, because a single game could have as many as ten or twenty different tracks to choose from. On top of that, many different game soundtracks appeal to different people, rather than the game as a whole. It makes it hard to find a list of just arcade games, rather than a list of specifically games from the arcade era. There is a plethora of lists for 16-bit games in general, but I don’t talk about 16bit games specifically, I cover any game that at one point had an arcade counterpart.
I figured I’d keep this post simple due to how difficult it would be to try and make a post based solely on music from games that may or may not have arcade counterparts, and instead share a story that got me feeling nostalgic(and maybe have you think about some of your favorite classic game tracks), rather than just solely give my opinion on what I think are my favorite, I’ll save that idea for another day.
I may have mentioned this story before (or said I would mention it when the topic is more relevant). I remember back from when I first turned 21 and went to my first barcade. Seeing many of my favorite 16 bit games and also having a couple drinks with friends eventually lead to my eye being caught by a big dark billboard with names of games, and more importantly, the names of people with their high scores. I looked through the list, not every game for sure was on there, but one I knew very well and have mentioned many other times was.
That game was Dig Dug, and only within the last year have I looked up strategies and began to practice to improve my scores, as futile as it was. The best I could do was possibly 80,000, a respectable score but the high score on that billboard was 180,000, a 100k difference.
While I may be far away from my goal, that doesn’t mean if I couldn’t ever obtain it. The great thing about these older arcade games is that if you work hard enough and develop a strategy, you can easily beat those high scores. You won’t be able to do it in a night, but with enough dedication you could in maybe a week or two.
For some reading this they’ll never want to dedicate time to a game like that, where others such as myself want that glory of their name on the board, being able to hold some sort of prestige that few others can.
So, with that out of the way, let’s go over some of the popular arcade games high scores and how you may be able to improve your own to climb the ranks, whether you’re a newbie who’s never really been into games but you were dragged out with your friends to somewhere like a barcade or you’re the hot shot of your group wanting to take it to the next level. Let us begin.
Dig Dug
While still on the subject, let’s talk about a strategy for Dig-Dug. It’s simple really: group enemies, smash them with rocks and make sure to use at least two rocks for the hidden vegetable for bonus points, if you can’t group them up then kill them normally. This game is much more strategic as I’ve said, with the next game we talk about having three patterns of different difficulty up until the later levels, where Dig-Dug can be more random with no solid strategy for clear victory every time, the next game can have a much clearer strategy.
PAC-man
PAC-man will be the second game we talk about, I’ve mentioned this game a couple times before and for good reason: it’s iconic and super fun for just about anyone. You want to get better at it? Little did I know until writing this post, there are actually three different patterns, all involving the same route but accommodates to different situations such as different ghosts. Pattern one will easily get you through the first level, the focus is to clear out the bottom from left to right, grabbing the power pellet in either the left or right corner, and then clearing out the middle and top right side. Pattern two is similar and will get you through the next two or three levels, the only difference is that when you go right, you’ll want to turn the other way as a blue ghost will be after you. Simply turn around, and grab the left power pellet to have him and the others run while you begin to clear out the middle and head for the top right again.
The third pattern is kind of hard to explain, but it involves going around the whole map while tricking each of the ghosts into grouping up, starting toward the center, going toward the top left and clearing out the top right, going back down through the middle and around to the top right, and then down, tricking the ghosts into splitting up and allowing you to have four separate corners with four pellets. There are videos that can help a bit more with this is you want to dedicate time outside of this post, this is just to have some quick information on hand.
Galaga
The next one I want to talk about is Galaga, another popular and easy game to get into. There is a secret that few know about, one that will allow you to disarm the enemies in Galaga in order to get further than ever before and to play as if it’s still level one. Your friends don’t need to know, and if you’re not very good at video games it’s a fun trick to play on them, as they see your score climb higher and higher and watch you get further into the game but yet make it seem as though it’s one of the first times you’ve ever played. There is the method as well as to getting two ships at once, however if you want to risk one life for the sake of dual fire power and have the enemies not shoot you, go for it.
Donkey Kong
Another game to talk about is Donkey Kong. I’ve mentioned it before as being a slightly more difficult game, especially if you try to rush. The very first level is a huge deception to how brutal the game can truly be, especially when you realize if you fall down from large heights it will kill you, meaning you have to time jumps between barrels and holes in the platforms. There are some strategies for different levels, including to clear our one side of yellow markers so that way you can trap flames on the other side of the stage, on top of strategies like getting to the hammers as quickly as possible in order to clear the stage somewhat faster or to avoid hazards that would appear if you went a bit slower through the level. Having a plan for this game will surely help your first couple of times to increase your score and impress your friends(it should as hell would impress me, I’m terrible at this game so I’d be damn impressed).
Lastly I’ll talk about Mario Bros, the original arcade game. This game I talked about in a previous post saying how it was one of the best arcade games and how you could play with a friend to help or hurt them, and that’s basically the strategy here. Help your friend, steal their points, kill them off or take their kills after they knock enemies down. Do whatever it takes, fight fair or fight dirty. If for some reason you’re playing alone however, I used to play this quite a bit on the hand held consoles. A big key to this game is just management of the surroundings. Learn how each enemy works and which you should deal with first. Turtles are the least of your problems when you have angry crabs or angry bees after you. Never be comfortable in one place, be used to being on the bottom, middle, or top parts of the stage, as some parts may turn to ice or have fire balls that will kill you on contact. More points means more lives though, so like I said: manage enemies, grab coins for extra points after killing each enemy, and be comfortable at any part of the stage and you’ll be impressing your friends in no time. And of course, your saving grace: the POW block to help you knock down enemies to easily clear levels. However it only has three uses, so be careful.
That’s it for this post, I will be doing another one hopefully tomorrow about some of the best music from the best arcade games, and maybe some of the home consoles as well. That’s it for this post here at Arcademia, the Arcade Academia.
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!
Speed Race
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.
Death Race, every cross is a grave marking where you ran someone over.
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.
Night Rider
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.
Le Mans 24
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.
Kaiser Knuckle, the resemblance to Street Fighter II is very apparent.
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.
Dragoon Might showing off two sword users
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.
Outlaws of the Lost Dynasty, featuring one character with weapons and one without.
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.
Shadow Force
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.
King of Dragons, a Wizard attempting to take treasure from Goblins
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.
Ninja Baseball Batmen, featuring a boss that is a plane, being fought inside a bigger plane
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!
So, I’ve covered two essential topics so far: the golden age of arcades, and then where arcades are now which have mostly come back in the form of barcades. In my first post I went into more detail as to why Arcades began to fade away, but the reason that is relevant to this post is the innovation of the home console. the NES, or the Nintendo Entertainment System, was revolutionary. Just think about it, the idea of buying the game once and you owned it to play whenever you wanted in your own house. In some ways it was vastly superior than having $10 in quarters making your pants sag a little lower while you jingled over to the arcades. Today I want to talk about the differences that were seen between games on the Arcade machines vs those on home consoles.
The NES has many great games with what some consider, superior counterparts. Some like the superior sound design of beat ’em ups from Turtles in time or X-men and experience of just being in an arcade. Turtles in Time had voice acting, compared to the text boxes that were in the SNES port, among other small character sprite and menu changes. Then there’s others that have the game slightly altered like the original Super Mario bros to prevent exploits such as ways to obtain infinite lives to manipulate the score board.
That was the exact experience I had at a local arcade one night, I was attempting to be a hot shot and make it to the top of the score boards, when I noticed certain enemies were missing. This was again, done to prevent cheating in certain parts. There were also jumps that were slightly modified to be more difficult. On top of that there was also some minor differences such as power ups being moved, replaced, or removed entirely from levels.
Some have reported that games like Turtles in Time, while they may have a better soundtrack on the arcade cabinet, it lacked the refinement that the port did. For example it has stated there is unfinished animations or glitches when fighting enemies.
One of many details changed in Turtles in Time, the player select screen.
The next point I find a bit controversial because of the passion in the community, but there is a debate for fighting games as to which may be superior. Some games such as the original Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 2 are debated as to whether they’re better at the arcades or on the home consoles, with some stating that they both have wonky controls that don’t work well on the big arcade systems(which wasn’t an issue for sequels)or the NES and SNES inferior sound and sometimes inferior graphics, as both fighting games did not have the glitches that Turtles in Time did.
Even some games such as Tekken Tag Tournament were running on PS1 hardware in the arcades, where the port was released on the PS2, the next generation console of the time. It boasting better graphics and tighter controls. Mortal Kombat had many changes between the Arcade and the SNES port, the Sega Genesis remained faithful, even going as far as to not change some of the odd animations that would raise an eyebrow due to how unnatural they looked. Graphics aren’t everything though! Another popular fighting franchise, Soul Caliber, was the exact opposite, despite releasing on the Sega Dreamcast, a rival system to the PS1, PS2, and SNES, was inferior due to the worse controls which made it an overall inferior experience.
Mortal Kombat with several changes, with the Arcade on the left and SNES port on the right, featuring lower detailed graphics, different fonts and foreground, among other changes.
A special type of game as well, one that was terrible, were games that were made into literal random button sequences. These types of games would be merely made into cut scenes, and would want you to press button combinations at random times. Some were ported to the NES,SNES, and the SEGA CD as completely different games(and they weren’t much better). The best(and maybe only) example is dragon’s lair. I had the chance to play it at a Marc’s once, and the stiff controls and dying in one hit made it an unpleasant experience very fast. Bottom line: don’t play any of them to retain the most sanity.
Top: NES, original arcade quick time Bottom: SEGA CD, SNES
There are many more games that have got either faithful ports from the arcade or entirely different games all together, however I think you get the idea: The idea of Arcade vs Console is for the most part subjective, with some people despite the issues the arcades had, still going to play them because it is nostalgic and holds many more memories and allowed them to connect with strangers, where others prefer the home console port for the sake of being convenient, but if it was better that is always a plus.
I hope you enjoyed and got a solid understand now that not all arcade games were the exact same as their console counterparts, be sure to come back next week where I discuss games you may or may not have known about due to their obscurity, good or bad.
And for those of you that were curious about the location of the arcade in the Waldo picture, here it is. Be sure to check out my Instagram for updates for the next post!
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