Let's Design a Modern Atari Arcade Game

[GraffitiTavern]

Do you think such a thing could work? Game genre? Graphics?

[GraffitiTavern]

My idea is that it's a space shooter, with upgrades for your ship.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

There was one attempt at this in 2018 with Cosmotrons - it's pretty much a Gravitar sequel. I did own one for a few years but it was a dud for me - worked best in a bar or all-retro arcade.

 

One thing I've learned from years of operating an arcade is that here, graphics do matter. Every time I place a game that looks old, even if it's brand new, it flops. Perhaps it's just my venue - I've got brand new stuff mingled with 80s games. So a new retro game gets overlooked...perhaps it's the player thinking "that looks old but I've never heard of it - OH HEY, THEY HAVE MS. PAC-MAN!" and play that instead. The one thing that is breaking away from that is the new Enter The Gungeon arcade game. It kind of looks like a 90s game but it has effects that are more modern. It's an interesting mix but it's also a light-gun game, so that's an easy sell. 

 

Building something from scratch though, the possibilities are quite broad. If you want to make something that would be an easy sell to today's industry, I'd say go with a light-gun game or a racer. The industry is saturated with those kinds of games but with the right concept/hook, you can stand out. One way to possibly do that would be to use the Outlaw theme and expand on it into a rail shooter or just create some new kind of Western shooter. There's only been one of those on the market in recent times (see below), while there's no shortage of games involving zombies, aliens, robots or pirates. But to think that this recent one is the only way to do a Western shooter...well, I don't agree with that strawman thought

 

In the thought of a racer, most will probably read that and say "SF Rush!!!!" but that IP is owned by Warner and it would take someone with super deep pockets to make that a reality. That wouldn't stop you from making your own new kind of SF Rush-style racer though...these days most games play more like Cruis'n USA, involving Point A-to-B racing instead of circuit courses. But it's not like San Francisco is the only city that would be fun to do some crazy racing in. I'd say take the kernel of SF Rush and combine it with the leveling/stats/parts system found in Bandai Namco's Maximum Tune series. This is consistently in my top 3 games every month as it has a very loyal player base who comes back to it over and over again. There is InitialD by Sega, but they only support that in Japan these days

 

To reach out on a limb, I think the modern arcade biz is in need of a good sports title. Whether that's football or soccer, it's been over 20 years since we had an NFL Blitz game; Recently a Chinese company tried to do a soccer game but it wasn't very good. If you resurrected Pele Soccer but did it in the style of SNK's Ultimate 11, then I think that could be a hit; If you couldn't do an NFL game with the violence that Blitz had, then just make your own thing. As long as it's fun, it could stand a chance. 

 

I love space games but they are a tough sell these days to modern arcade audiences. That'd require some creative thinking to figure out as there was an attempt last year to resurrect Asteroids up to 8-players but from what I was told, it earned poorly so they ended up shelving it 😕 Cosmotrons as mentioned performed terribly at my arcade. It was a very fun game but the concept of gravity plus graphics that didn't stand out as new made for something that most players overlooked. 

[Ettinsoft]

Technically we did that with Circus Interstellar, we loved playing Berzerk and were like "why the hell has no one remade this game?" lol  

 

Here's a trailer of Circus Interstellar to give an idea about what it looks like: 

Your profile pic makes me wonder, is there any Rampart remakes?  That'd be badass, love the timed base building and such, really put the pressure on.  Totally gonna google that now lol 

I've got Rampart on my MAME cab, but with only 1 trackball I cant do multiplayer...

 

Cosmotrons looks sweet, always loved Gravitar.
 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Ettinsoft

[Ettinsoft]

Checked out Rampart like games, but in my short google search all I found were games that didn't look that inspired. 😕

 

Might not have looked hard enough though..

[GraffitiTavern]

On 9/17/2023 at 4:56 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

There was one attempt at this in 2018 with Cosmotrons - it's pretty much a Gravitar sequel. I did own one for a few years but it was a dud for me - worked best in a bar or all-retro arcade.

https://www.facebook.com/CosmotronsGame

Apparently they were bought out by some new Wisconsin-based company who's bringing the game to steam

 

But also, I was thinking something more along the lines of Recharged or Geometry Wars, as opposed to a direct recreation of a classic game. I like VCTR-SCTR gameplay wise but the point on the graphics is noted, it would need something more modern looking. I think the art could also play a big role in that, which is a big draw. DSM Arcades I think does that well. Maybe even a mashup of art visual styles could be visually appealing. I do know of one popular Space-themed game in SpaceWarp 66, even has a paddle control, but that is a bit different from Atari space shooters.

 

On 9/17/2023 at 4:56 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

One way to possibly do that would be to use the Outlaw theme and expand on it into a rail shooter or just create some new kind of Western shooter. There's only been one of those on the market in recent times

That's a really good idea! Drawing on the original, a single player mode could have a sort of boss rush series of duels, and two-player versus mode where the players face each other. Having an alternative 'weird west' setting with sci-fi elements and neon could also appeal to modern audiences, or at least me. I have seen how popular a lot of more social games can be, a game which plays on that could be very successful.

[GraffitiTavern]

On 9/24/2023 at 1:50 AM, Ettinsoft said:

Your profile pic makes me wonder, is there any Rampart remakes?

Unfortunately none that I know of, although an arcade tower defense game could be cool if done right. It would have to have shorter rounds and more streamlined defense placement(like the original Rampart) for that to work.

[GraffitiTavern]

On 9/17/2023 at 4:56 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

That'd require some creative thinking to figure out as there was an attempt last year to resurrect Asteroids up to 8-players but from what I was told, it earned poorly so they ended up shelving it

Tbf I was curious why they made it a cocktail table, Centipede did well but it is also flashy with unique seats. I don't if the table set up is well suited to a Dave & Busters with a bunch of massive cabs competing for attention.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

23 hours ago, GraffitiTavern said:

But also, I was thinking something more along the lines of Recharged or Geometry Wars, as opposed to a direct recreation of a classic game. I like VCTR-SCTR gameplay wise but the point on the graphics is noted, it would need something more modern looking. I think the art could also play a big role in that, which is a big draw. DSM Arcades I think does that well. Maybe even a mashup of art visual styles could be visually appealing. I do know of one popular Space-themed game in SpaceWarp 66, even has a paddle control, but that is a bit different from Atari space shooters.

I think that GW style would work out best for anything vector related. It has to feel like the game is "alive," with sparks and pixels flowing around like fluids to the vector lines. Otherwise, it's just stale.

 

I do enjoy Vctr-Sctr, I guess it just would need to move the Lunar Lander part to the very end. Add some extra GW-style effects and maybe it would work but I guess I'm just getting more and more jaded after investing thousands into retro flops  I hate to say it but even my Donut Dodo Do! which is a very fun game and "Atari" in its vibe is also barely moving the needle, despite my constant promotions about it.

 

Quote

That's a really good idea! Drawing on the original, a single player mode could have a sort of boss rush series of duels, and two-player versus mode where the players face each other. Having an alternative 'weird west' setting with sci-fi elements and neon could also appeal to modern audiences, or at least me. I have seen how popular a lot of more social games can be, a game which plays on that could be very successful.

Thanks! I'm kind of surprised that Atari never pursued the Outlaw IP further in the arcade space. As tech advanced, it could have been a hit with the right design, especially back when Westerns were still a thing. Seems like they're making a comeback though - or just drop the elements into something like a Future Retro/steampunk setting. 

 

23 hours ago, GraffitiTavern said:

Tbf I was curious why they made it a cocktail table, Centipede did well but it is also flashy with unique seats. I don't if the table set up is well suited to a Dave & Busters with a bunch of massive cabs competing for attention.

That's a good question - maybe to compete with Pac-Man Battle Royale but I would like to know if they ever did test an upright. If they did, they should have ditched the old button controls in favor of a dual stick like Vctr-Sctr uses, that felt much more intuitive to me

 

On 9/23/2023 at 11:55 PM, Ettinsoft said:

Checked out Rampart like games, but in my short google search all I found were games that didn't look that inspired. 😕

 

Might not have looked hard enough though..

I once was putting some thoughts about doing a wildfire/fire fighting game in the style of Rampart but I need to graduate from paper designs to actual designs one of these days  I thinking about it, the concept really hasn't been used by anyone, even BITD there weren't many/any Rampart clones. Shame. 

 

One that would immediately get attention would be a remake of SF Rush. When Cruis'n Blast came along, I saw a lot of comments about "where's Rush?" I guess the trouble is (apart from Warner Bros) that no one likes closed circuit racing in arcades anymore 

[GraffitiTavern]

52 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

One that would immediately get attention would be a remake of SF Rush

Ooh yeah, I play 2049 whenever I see it in an arcade. I am curious about how Daytona USA Championship and Cruis'n Blast did, perhaps they could get follow-ups. 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

5 minutes ago, GraffitiTavern said:

Ooh yeah, I play 2049 whenever I see it in an arcade. I am curious about how Daytona USA Championship and Cruis'n Blast did, perhaps they could get follow-ups. 

I haven't heard numbers on Daytona but I would guess that it did ok for Sega but nowhere near OG Daytona numbers (best guess is in the 2~3000 range for sales)

 

Cruis'n has sold over 10k units per Raw Thrills, which I think they said back in 2020. Around there they had to increase the price to $10k a unit from $7300~7500 so I imagine that sales on that have slowed considerably but it's possible that they have managed a couple more thousand sales since then. It's been the only race car alternative one has from Raw Thrills unless you want to spend $25k a seat on their new Fast & Furious. 

 

Eugene once mentioned in an interview I did with him that he'd love to tackle Rush 2049 as he gets requests for it all the time too...just sucks that WB would want far too much money to license it

[GraffitiTavern]

4 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Cruis'n has sold over 10k units per Raw Thrills

Wow those are pretty good numbers, I was impressed by the setpieces when I played it in arcade, although I suck at racing games. Do those sorts of games get many content updates or software packages? I know such software upgrades used to be pretty common because they could be marketed as a new version or sequel

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 10/3/2023 at 1:26 PM, GraffitiTavern said:

Wow those are pretty good numbers, I was impressed by the setpieces when I played it in arcade, although I suck at racing games. Do those sorts of games get many content updates or software packages? I know such software upgrades used to be pretty common because they could be marketed as a new version or sequel

There are code updates but it's usually just bug fixes, not content related. I wish it was the latter - if they released some sensibly priced content updates, that is DLC I could get behind. But such a thing is exceedingly rare in the industry for some reason. I'd pay $1-2k for a new set of levels on Jurassic Park Arcade or for 5 more Cruis'n tracks. It never happens though. 

 

The only time they really changed the content for Cruis'n was when the licenses ran out and they had to change the cars. This felt like a downgrade to me so I avoided it; If you come across a Cruis'n with these cars then that likely means the game was sold from 2020 onwards:

 

 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Ah, just got word that Cruis'n is no longer in production. A standard version of Fast & Furious is trickling out to some early customers and that will replace the game. When I'm rubbing shoulders with Raw Thrills at a trade show next month, I'll see if they will talk how many sold. 

 

Back on topic, I saw that Atari is bringing Spring back with NeoSprint. As an upright machine, that might work with the right adjustments; Someone did do a Sprint-like game for arcades some years ago, although it's kind of rare (you could link up to three units for six players):

 

[Tornadoboy]

I've always thought Tempest deserved some kind of follow up, maybe a two screen/two player simutanious where you shoot at each other from either end of the tube with enemies attacking both.