Article about the new Atari Asteroids Recharged arcade games. Has pictures and video

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 3/22/2024 at 12:56 PM, ledzep said:

 

I agree, which even back in the day sucked when a cool game got swapped out for a Pac-Man or something because that oddball game wasn't as popular (it was very hard to find a Polaris or Space Firebird game even though both were really fun, I guess most gamers preferred other games) and didn't make enough money for the arcade owner.  On the other hand, walking into an arcade back then that had 6 Pac-Mans and 7 Donkey Kongs and not so many other cool games usually meant a short visit from me and the other arcade gamers I knew.  Sometimes max profits can be bad in terms of repeat business if there are too many of the same type.

Just catching up here. Having multiples of the same game in arcades is extremely rare these days but yeah, there was a dearth of creativity on one side(copies & clones), while having extreme creativity on the other (original ideas that everyone copied and earned like crazy).

 

That said, I once came across a hand written note of earnings from one Rip Off by Cinematronics. IIRC, it was dated 1982 and covered several weeks of collections and for a game that wasn't super common then, it was bringing in over $300/wk. So even something like that could bring home the bacon in the right location. 

 

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True, but there is some risk or guessing in that sense.  Who knew that lightgun games would take off before there were lightgun games?  But they obviously are popular (I loved Silent Scope though it raped me after that first level every time, hahaaha).  But that just shows that the next thing, that isn't currently in arcades, could be the new popular so sticking to lightguns über alles could be very short-sighted in a design sense.

Well, if you look at arcade earnings for the past 20 years, the light-gun game has consistently been a dominant force among arcade video games. 

 

From my tiny microcosm of business, here are my top 20 games from last year. Jurassic Park came out in 2015, so it'll be 10 years old next year; But it still beats the snot out of most everything else. For other shooters, you've got Walking Dead, House of the Dead 5, Luigi's Mansion. Ignoring the basketball game at #5, the first non-driver, non-gun game for my location was Minecraft Dungeons. It's a joystick game but it's a weird one. I've talked to some colleagues who say it's terrible for them and some have sold theirs off, while others say it's one of their best (you need a location with a ton of kids, from what I can gather). MaxiTune 5, Cruis'n, Nirin, and Redline Rampage are all racing games. The only other nongun/non-racer/non-sport games on the list are Step ManiaX (think DDR), TMNT 2018 (joysticks) and Space Warp 66 (knob).

 

If you were to get earnings from a big chain company like Dave & Busters and removed all the redemption crap, you would see a similar pattern - gun games and drivers.  

 

 

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Ya, VR is going to be huge, if nothing else for TikTok videos of players tripping over themselves trying to run away from things that don't exist, hahaaha.

Don't get me started on VR  

 

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But a trak-ball (and spinner) are neither, though I get what you're saying about Gen Z nostalgia (or lack thereof).  Even so, how many lightgun games can a person want to play?  That's just video shooting gallery.  Yay.  I mean, how many racing games can someone play in one day in an arcade, either?  A little variety could go a long way, if just to break up the lightgun lightgun racing lightgun racing racing game choice pattern which seems to be almost all the options in the modern arcades, yes?

Referring to my list up above, more than you'd think. Although I do agree with you on principle when it comes to variety. I don't care much for cookie cutter arcades as that is boring  - my arcade is weird, a black sheep of the industry. I have no ticket redemption games; I like to have odd, rare stuff. I have a Dariusbust Another Chronicle by Taito, a Hydra by Atari Games, a bunch of fighting games, and a few other oddities, on top of the staples. I'm one of the only arcades in the world with stuff like this, because I like variety. That said, these and pretty much all of my other rare games don't make much money:

 

 

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It wouldn't make any sense as "missile command" and would fundamentally be a different game.  Maybe a popular game, as you say, but call it something else and now it's a shooting gallery again but in the sky, I guess you could just as easily be shooting birds out of the air or flying squirrels as they're leaping from tree to tree.  I would actually play that if the graphics were cool (blasts of feathers or puffs of fur, little squeals of surprised terror, hahaahaha) but it would get frustrating if the lightguns weren't accurate enough.

True, although if you follow the pattern that games like Jurassic Park uses, it could make sense. Take for example Space Invaders Frenzy by Raw Thrills. It did not use buttons nor joysticks - it uses the same mounted guns that Jurassic Park uses. I'm not saying that how this controls is what I necessarily like when it comes to Space Invaders but...this game was among the top earning games in the industry for the first few years it was on the market and believe some locations still see it doing well. Yes, the giant LED screen is part of the attraction but if the guns didn't work for what it does, then it wouldn't have done so well. I could see a new Missile Command using this setup and probably doing great, to Lord Mushroom's point - you're really just finding a way to aim at your targets on the screen. Even the recent Centipede Chaos ditched trackballs in favor of joysticks - not something I agreed with, but I remember the devs telling me that they did test a trackball version and it flopped 😕 Although those same devs also attempted to make a new arcade version of Tetris and that flopped too. They were shocked to see a lot of people during the testing phase not understand how to play Tetris and walk away without a repeat play. Who knows why that was the case but modern gamers are a strange bunch.

 

 

Ultimately though, I think that Missile Command 3D/VR's style of play would make the most sense for a gun controller

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I agree but I'm not a Gen Z gamer (thank Odin) so my opinion probably doesn't mean much in terms of the large group of lightgun/driving game loving gamers.  That Asteroids Recharged looks fun, I can't believe younger gamers would ignore it simply because it doesn't have a lightgun or isn't a driving game.  How myopic can you get?

I'm not saying that they would ignore it completely, I'm just saying that they really don't know what Asteroids is. Because they didn't grow up with it, they weren't around when it was the #1 game in the world, it's "ancient history." Because of that, you need something to hook them on it and its hard to say if buttons are that route. Although I'm not saying Asteroids needs a light-gun - more just something different. I really do like Asteroids Recharged on the presentation side and I'm very curious to see how it performs. Ultimately though, I'm basing these thoughts over what I've seen, particularly with this game, Cosmotrons.

 

Now to be completely fair, Cosmotrons didn't have a classic name for nostalgia and it was just a new Gravitar, which wasn't the best choice for a reboot. Still, having just buttons and old school vector graphics was a complete flop. I wish it wasn't as it was a really fun game. But a game that cost me $3500 and it only made $5~7 a week (i.e., would take roughly 13 years to pay itself off) is definitely not something that I want to repeat. 

 

 

[TampaBay]

4 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Just catching up here. Having multiples of the same game in arcades is extremely rare these days but yeah, there was a dearth of creativity on one side(copies & clones), while having extreme creativity on the other (original ideas that everyone copied and earned like crazy).

 

That said, I once came across a hand written note of earnings from one Rip Off by Cinematronics. IIRC, it was dated 1982 and covered several weeks of collections and for a game that wasn't super common then, it was bringing in over $300/wk. So even something like that could bring home the bacon in the right location. 

 

Well, if you look at arcade earnings for the past 20 years, the light-gun game has consistently been a dominant force among arcade video games. 

 

From my tiny microcosm of business, here are my top 20 games from last year. Jurassic Park came out in 2015, so it'll be 10 years old next year; But it still beats the snot out of most everything else. For other shooters, you've got Walking Dead, House of the Dead 5, Luigi's Mansion. Ignoring the basketball game at #5, the first non-driver, non-gun game for my location was Minecraft Dungeons. It's a joystick game but it's a weird one. I've talked to some colleagues who say it's terrible for them and some have sold theirs off, while others say it's one of their best (you need a location with a ton of kids, from what I can gather). MaxiTune 5, Cruis'n, Nirin, and Redline Rampage are all racing games. The only other nongun/non-racer/non-sport games on the list are Step ManiaX (think DDR), TMNT 2018 (joysticks) and Space Warp 66 (knob).

 

If you were to get earnings from a big chain company like Dave & Busters and removed all the redemption crap, you would see a similar pattern - gun games and drivers.  

 

 

Don't get me started on VR  

 

Referring to my list up above, more than you'd think. Although I do agree with you on principle when it comes to variety. I don't care much for cookie cutter arcades as that is boring  - my arcade is weird, a black sheep of the industry. I have no ticket redemption games; I like to have odd, rare stuff. I have a Dariusbust Another Chronicle by Taito, a Hydra by Atari Games, a bunch of fighting games, and a few other oddities, on top of the staples. I'm one of the only arcades in the world with stuff like this, because I like variety. That said, these and pretty much all of my other rare games don't make much money:

 

 

True, although if you follow the pattern that games like Jurassic Park uses, it could make sense. Take for example Space Invaders Frenzy by Raw Thrills. It did not use buttons nor joysticks - it uses the same mounted guns that Jurassic Park uses. I'm not saying that how this controls is what I necessarily like when it comes to Space Invaders but...this game was among the top earning games in the industry for the first few years it was on the market and believe some locations still see it doing well. Yes, the giant LED screen is part of the attraction but if the guns didn't work for what it does, then it wouldn't have done so well. I could see a new Missile Command using this setup and probably doing great, to Lord Mushroom's point - you're really just finding a way to aim at your targets on the screen. Even the recent Centipede Chaos ditched trackballs in favor of joysticks - not something I agreed with, but I remember the devs telling me that they did test a trackball version and it flopped 😕 Although those same devs also attempted to make a new arcade version of Tetris and that flopped too. They were shocked to see a lot of people during the testing phase not understand how to play Tetris and walk away without a repeat play. Who knows why that was the case but modern gamers are a strange bunch.

 

 

Ultimately though, I think that Missile Command 3D/VR's style of play would make the most sense for a gun controller

I'm not saying that they would ignore it completely, I'm just saying that they really don't know what Asteroids is. Because they didn't grow up with it, they weren't around when it was the #1 game in the world, it's "ancient history." Because of that, you need something to hook them on it and its hard to say if buttons are that route. Although I'm not saying Asteroids needs a light-gun - more just something different. I really do like Asteroids Recharged on the presentation side and I'm very curious to see how it performs. Ultimately though, I'm basing these thoughts over what I've seen, particularly with this game, Cosmotrons.

 

Now to be completely fair, Cosmotrons didn't have a classic name for nostalgia and it was just a new Gravitar, which wasn't the best choice for a reboot. Still, having just buttons and old school vector graphics was a complete flop. I wish it wasn't as it was a really fun game. But a game that cost me $3500 and it only made $5~7 a week (i.e., would take roughly 13 years to pay itself off) is definitely not something that I want to repeat. 

 

 

 

I agree with everything you've said.  I personally would probably love that Cosmotrons game, but I can't see it getting very much play in any of the modern-style arcades and family fun centers that I go to, and I go the arcade A LOT.

 

When we go to the arcade with the family, it's straight to Sega Transformers: Shadows Rising and games like that.  I'm not sure how available that game is, I didn't see it on your list, but I think that's a pretty good example of the genre.  Have you seen it / played it?  We also have that giant Space Invaders at our arcade and its fantastic.  We play it all the time.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

2 minutes ago, TampaBay said:

 

I agree with everything you've said.  I personally would probably love that Cosmotrons game, but I can't see it getting very much play in any of the modern-style arcades and family fun centers that I go to, and I go the arcade A LOT.

 

When we go to the arcade with the family, it's straight to Sega Transformers: Shadows Rising and games like that.  I'm not sure how available that game is, I didn't see it on your list, but I think that's a pretty good example of the genre.  Have you seen it / played it?  We also have that giant Space Invaders at our arcade and its fantastic.  We play it all the time.

I had a Transformers Human Alliance (the Bumblebee yellow cab; Shadows Rising is the sequel) for a time, but not SR. I'm sure it would do fine as it was a better game than the first, although it definitely wasn't a strong seller across the wider market. 

 

I just remembered that there's a publicly available earnings report that shows how a bunch of games across a few different locations are performing. For Space Invaders Frenzy, that number of $5778 appears to come from an anonymous location in the Northeastern US. That should be over the course of a month, although I am lucky to see my games make that much individually over the course of a year. To compare, the location on the West Coast has an SIF that makes far less, but all of their games make a ton less than that NE venue. 

 

As you can see, cranes and redemption games really haul the cash in. 😬

[TampaBay]

19 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I had a Transformers Human Alliance (the Bumblebee yellow cab; Shadows Rising is the sequel) for a time, but not SR. I'm sure it would do fine as it was a better game than the first, although it definitely wasn't a strong seller across the wider market. 

 

I just remembered that there's a publicly available earnings report that shows how a bunch of games across a few different locations are performing. For Space Invaders Frenzy, that number of $5778 appears to come from an anonymous location in the Northeastern US. That should be over the course of a month, although I am lucky to see my games make that much individually over the course of a year. To compare, the location on the West Coast has an SIF that makes far less, but all of their games make a ton less than that NE venue. 

 

As you can see, cranes and redemption games really haul the cash in. 😬

 

Cool, thanks for the data.  Always appreciated.

 

Just curious, is there a third category for arcade games that *also* do redemption?  For example, our Space Invaders Frenzy gives you tickets when you do well, so you can get the little toy prizes in the shop.  You can actually get quite a few tickets, at least as much as the pure redemption games.  Or are dispensed tickets not what you're referring to when you say redemption?  Admittedely I'm not super familiar with all the terminology.

 

Edit: To be accurate, they are "e-tickets" handled electronically, but all tickets in this arcade are electronic.

Edited March 24 by TampaBay

[Shaggy the Atarian]

3 hours ago, TampaBay said:

 

Cool, thanks for the data.  Always appreciated.

 

Just curious, is there a third category for arcade games that *also* do redemption?  For example, our Space Invaders Frenzy gives you tickets when you do well, so you can get the little toy prizes in the shop.  You can actually get quite a few tickets, at least as much as the pure redemption games.  Or are dispensed tickets not what you're referring to when you say redemption?  Admittedely I'm not super familiar with all the terminology.

 

Edit: To be accurate, they are "e-tickets" handled electronically, but all tickets in this arcade are electronic.

I have that as a category that I call "videmption" but the rest of the industry just lumps them in with redemption games, even though they tend to play differently.

 

Most videmption games have two modes: The default tickets mode, then a non-ticket mode. In ticket mode, the games are usually quite short. Space Invaders does have a non-ticket mode but I don't know if anyone out there uses it. If it is set to that, the game plays a bit differently and its just for points; It goes on for 100 waves, IIRC.

 

I do have a Galaga Assault and a SpaceWarp 66 that I set to ticketless mode and run them as pure arcade games. They do all right. 

 

Asteroids Recharged already has tickets implemented, although I don't think there are any gameplay differences.

[Lord Mushroom]

11 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Ultimately though, I think that Missile Command 3D/VR's style of play would make the most sense for a gun controller

What kind of perspective are you imagining the player would have? The same "from a distance" as in the original, or a from the ground looking up, or something else?

 

I am thinking the perspective is fine as it is. I don´t know what 3D or VR could add, and VR is very expensive.

 

But perhaps the game needs to be dumbed down, so that there are no missile batteries on the ground to be hit (just towns). And that you are using a missile battery (as a mounted lightgun) to shoot ahead of the incoming missiles, but with immediate explosions (not marking the spot and waiting for the explosion).

Edited March 24 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

On 3/22/2024 at 1:59 PM, Jimmy Wicker said:

The cabinet was a hit at the show!  Even Eugene Jarvis  came by and played asteroids recharged for about 45 minutes with us.  He was all smiles!  He absolutely loved it.

There is a danger of being misled by the enthusiasm of 40+ year olds, only to fall flat when the same machines are presented to younger people. I recommend testing the different Recharged cabinets in real arcades, ideally with different screen-sizes, control-schemes, gameplay and possible more, to find out what works best.

[Lord Mushroom]

On 3/21/2024 at 9:10 PM, GoldLeader said:

I had one more idea,  and forgive me if it's already been said (sometimes I skim, not read everything)...Maybe include the Original Games also!  So if us old timers get tired of the pretty lights or if someone were to buy one for their home game room and wants to kick back old school,...It'd be a value added proposition!

I was initially positive to this, but the more I think about it, I think it is a bad idea. I think there are very few people who would want to play the original. And having two games in one machine could make people accidentally choose the wrong one and be disappointed.

 

But I think it would be a good idea to have two or more Recharged games in one cabinet as long as the controls are ideal for both/all the games.

[TampaBay]

It's been discussed above in a roundabout manner, but the ultimate questions for the Recharged series are:

 

* Who is the target market / demographic for the product in arcades

* What is the size of that target market compared to total market of arcade visitors

* What features do the cabinets have that cater to that market

 

They all intertwine.   If the target market is younger arcade goers, then when you get to the question of "what features do the cabinets have", it would need to be based on *that* market.  That younger demo is a large market and prefers quick thrills / light guns / action.  If the target market is the nostalgia 40+ crowd, then the features may be different (for example the controls would feature buttons vs. a light gun, and potentially more strategy).  My opinion is that is a smaller market.

 

Without having yet experienced the new cabinets first hand, it's hard for me to say who it's going to appeal to.  The control scheme would seem to appeal more to the nostalgia crowd, but the question remains: how big is that market in modern arcades?  The other features (fans, sounds, lights) may appeal to the younger crowd, but again, without having seen it for myself, I can't tell.  I hope I get to see one of these in the wild, I would certainly play it, and as always, I am rooting for it to succeed.

[Giles N]

2 hours ago, TampaBay said:

appeal more to the nostalgia crowd, but the question remains: how big is that market in modern arcades?  The other features (fans, sounds, lights) may appeal to the younger crowd,

…essentially then, the 2 main groups are Atari-grandads and 8-year old kids… 😃

 

Edited March 24 by Giles N

[Giles N]

11 minutes ago, Giles N said:

…essentially then, the 2 main groups are Atari-grandads and 8-year old kids…

Meaning of course that the logical choice for the next game is, AKKA ARRH in VR, full 4D in hydraulic cabinet… 😁😅

[TampaBay]

1 hour ago, Giles N said:

…essentially then, the 2 main groups are Atari-grandads and 8-year old kids… 😃

 

I would say that sums it pretty well. 😀

[Shaggy the Atarian]

8 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

What kind of perspective are you imagining the player would have? The same "from a distance" as in the original, or a from the ground looking up, or something else?

 

I am thinking the perspective is fine as it is. I don´t know what 3D or VR could add, and VR is very expensive.

 

But perhaps the game needs to be dumbed down, so that there are no missile batteries on the ground to be hit (just towns). And that you are using a missile battery (as a mounted lightgun) to shoot ahead of the incoming missiles, but with immediate explosions (not marking the spot and waiting for the explosion).

If you've played Missile Command 3D on the Jaguar, that should give you a good idea of how that worked. It probably would do better using the "from a distance" perspective - unless of course you are going to throw it into VR, then the Jag version could still work out just fine. 

 

Dumbing down, yes, probably. People really don't like to have to read or think when they approach an arcade game these days. That's why those two genres I mentioned perform so well - the moment you see a gun on a game, you know you're going to be shooting something. When you see a steering wheel, you're driving. Buttons or a joystick (or both) or a trackball - those really can be any number of things, whether it's a shmup or a fighting game, a platformer or whatever. They are instantly less intuitive than the wheel or gun. 

 

That's why Space Invaders Frenzy really is a dumbed down version of SI, but it can still rake in a decent amount of cash. When that first hit the market, it was the #1 game for a while.

 

5 hours ago, TampaBay said:

It's been discussed above in a roundabout manner, but the ultimate questions for the Recharged series are:

 

* Who is the target market / demographic for the product in arcades

* What is the size of that target market compared to total market of arcade visitors

* What features do the cabinets have that cater to that market

 

They all intertwine.   If the target market is younger arcade goers, then when you get to the question of "what features do the cabinets have", it would need to be based on *that* market.  That younger demo is a large market and prefers quick thrills / light guns / action.  If the target market is the nostalgia 40+ crowd, then the features may be different (for example the controls would feature buttons vs. a light gun, and potentially more strategy).  My opinion is that is a smaller market.

 

Without having yet experienced the new cabinets first hand, it's hard for me to say who it's going to appeal to.  The control scheme would seem to appeal more to the nostalgia crowd, but the question remains: how big is that market in modern arcades?  The other features (fans, sounds, lights) may appeal to the younger crowd, but again, without having seen it for myself, I can't tell.  I hope I get to see one of these in the wild, I would certainly play it, and as always, I am rooting for it to succeed.

Someone knows a thing or two about marketing I see

 

I'd add that the moment you throw a license onto something, the existing target market for that product is "baked in." It becomes a delicate balancing game as how do you appeal to that base of fans while expanding the IP for newer audiences? Make something too dumbed down or change it too radically and you lose the user base (which is where I would agree with ledz, throwing guns onto a game like MC or Asteroids would probably drive that base away), so if you've done that, it had better be really good to create a new audience. It's really easy to lose both

 

Hollywood is a good example here - how many remakes have they crapped out that no one (original fans and potential new fans) liked? Too many to count.

 

I'd also add that the difficulty of the arcade space is that anyone and everyone can walk in there. I've had guys in their 80s going at a pinball game while a young mom with a newborn baby is wandering around looking for something else. Making a game that appeals to all demographics is pretty tough and few games in history have managed true mass appeal (relatively speaking). Of course, it's up to the arcade op to have a variety of content that isn't trying to appeal to everyone but specific audiences and as long as you combine that all together, you've got a decent business going.

 

How big is the target market for any of the Atari Recharged games? Well, we know already that most of them reside around here  That isn't anywhere near as large as Sega or Nintendo though. So, if you want them to be a success, certain compromises are going to have to be made to have that broader scope.

 

8 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

There is a danger of being misled by the enthusiasm of 40+ year olds, only to fall flat when the same machines are presented to younger people. I recommend testing the different Recharged cabinets in real arcades, ideally with different screen-sizes, control-schemes, gameplay and possible more, to find out what works best.

To be fair, Eugene has a pretty strong sense of what the modern market likes and doesn't like. He did try to bring Defender, Frogger, and Robotron back to arcades in recent years, but none of them were a success. His company, Raw Thrills, was also just named "Manufacturer of the Year" by a long-standing organization called the AAMA, as their games have been the best sellers out there. While I don't care for them leaning so hard into VR right now, they are leading the charge and so far they're being successful with it.

 

On testing, yes, any of the games Alan-1 does need to go through a bit of that, and need the fine tuning that goes along with them. My location should be doing that sometime in the near future, which will be interesting. I operate in a relatively low-to-mid income area and lately 80% of my customers are Latinos (many of which speak little to no English, so they gravitate towards games that don't require an explanation to enjoy). You already saw what my top games are, so we'll see how they take to something like Asteroids.

[MrBeefy]

41 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

If you've played Missile Command 3D on the Jaguar, that should give you a good idea of how that worked. It probably would do better using the "from a distance" perspective - unless of course you are going to throw it into VR, then the Jag version could still work out just fine. 

 

Dumbing down, yes, probably. People really don't like to have to read or think when they approach an arcade game these days. That's why those two genres I mentioned perform so well - the moment you see a gun on a game, you know you're going to be shooting something. When you see a steering wheel, you're driving. Buttons or a joystick (or both) or a trackball - those really can be any number of things, whether it's a shmup or a fighting game, a platformer or whatever. They are instantly less intuitive than the wheel or gun. 

 

That's why Space Invaders Frenzy really is a dumbed down version of SI, but it can still rake in a decent amount of cash. When that first hit the market, it was the #1 game for a while.

 

Someone knows a thing or two about marketing I see

 

I'd add that the moment you throw a license onto something, the existing target market for that product is "baked in." It becomes a delicate balancing game as how do you appeal to that base of fans while expanding the IP for newer audiences? Make something too dumbed down or change it too radically and you lose the user base (which is where I would agree with ledz, throwing guns onto a game like MC or Asteroids would probably drive that base away), so if you've done that, it had better be really good to create a new audience. It's really easy to lose both

 

Hollywood is a good example here - how many remakes have they crapped out that no one (original fans and potential new fans) liked? Too many to count.

 

I'd also add that the difficulty of the arcade space is that anyone and everyone can walk in there. I've had guys in their 80s going at a pinball game while a young mom with a newborn baby is wandering around looking for something else. Making a game that appeals to all demographics is pretty tough and few games in history have managed true mass appeal (relatively speaking). Of course, it's up to the arcade op to have a variety of content that isn't trying to appeal to everyone but specific audiences and as long as you combine that all together, you've got a decent business going.

 

How big is the target market for any of the Atari Recharged games? Well, we know already that most of them reside around here  That isn't anywhere near as large as Sega or Nintendo though. So, if you want them to be a success, certain compromises are going to have to be made to have that broader scope.

 

To be fair, Eugene has a pretty strong sense of what the modern market likes and doesn't like. He did try to bring Defender, Frogger, and Robotron back to arcades in recent years, but none of them were a success. His company, Raw Thrills, was also just named "Manufacturer of the Year" by a long-standing organization called the AAMA, as their games have been the best sellers out there. While I don't care for them leaning so hard into VR right now, they are leading the charge and so far they're being successful with it.

 

On testing, yes, any of the games Alan-1 does need to go through a bit of that, and need the fine tuning that goes along with them. My location should be doing that sometime in the near future, which will be interesting. I operate in a relatively low-to-mid income area and lately 80% of my customers are Latinos (many of which speak little to no English, so they gravitate towards games that don't require an explanation to enjoy). You already saw what my top games are, so we'll see how they take to something like Asteroids.

Junior Beef leans more towards gun or driving arcade games.

 

He is a mark for the Godzilla pinball, and has on occasion wanted me to play Donkey Kong. There was a flying shmup we played that he liked but I forget the name. It was older, but he also wasn't as good as it.

[TampaBay]

42 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I'd add that the moment you throw a license onto something, the existing target market for that product is "baked in." It becomes a delicate balancing game as how do you appeal to that base of fans while expanding the IP for newer audiences? Make something too dumbed down or change it too radically and you lose the user base (which is where I would agree with ledz, throwing guns onto a game like MC or Asteroids would probably drive that base away), so if you've done that, it had better be really good to create a new audience. It's really easy to lose both

 

😀  Well, I was just following your lead and trying to keep the focus on your point that in the end, this is a business.  I think when it comes to nostalgia games, its easy to fall into the trap of looking at the game as a piece of "art" vs. a commercial product to sell to the most amount of people possible.  I'm a retired professional photographer, and there is a massive difference in the types of work that I would create as "art", which had more authenticity but smaller mass appeal, vs. what I would create for commercial use.  Regarding the ReCharged series, personally I think it woud be cool for them to draw inspiration from the original arcade games, but go completely whole hog with all modern-day features with the intent to appeal to the younger crowd.  That way they'd be much more likely to tap into the significantly larger younger crowd, and if they also intriqued a few nostalgia players to drop a few quarters in the machine, you'd get that added bonus from the "baked in" license crowd as you appropriately call them.  Even if you only got a few, I could nearly guarantee that the total customer base of a modernized game (young players + a few nostalgia players) would be larger than a more authentic reproduction (smaller portion of the younger crowd, larger portion of the nostalia players).  I think Asteroids Recharged is great, I own it, but only time will tell if it's modernized enough to bring in a large customer base in the arcade.

[ledzep]

20 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

That said, I once came across a hand written note of earnings from one Rip Off by Cinematronics. IIRC, it was dated 1982 and covered several weeks of collections and for a game that wasn't super common then, it was bringing in over $300/wk. So even something like that could bring home the bacon in the right location. 

 

Ya, I think local tastes matter as much as national averages.  I loved Rip-Off when it was current.  My wrists hated it, hahaaha.

 

20 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

If you were to get earnings from a big chain company like Dave & Busters and removed all the redemption crap, you would see a similar pattern - gun games and drivers.  

 

I suppose that makes more sense with groups (birthdays), too.  I mean back in the day the arcade was as much for individuals (smaller cabinets than modern games, environmental versions) as for groups, even though most games were one-at-a-time.  Now you have lots of 2 or 3 can play in one sitting options and those arcades are more for groups to come in from what I have seen (Dave & Busters with the food and alcohol as well).  "Gun games and drivers" to me sounds the same as how many bowling alleys now de-emphasize actual bowling and really push the playing in the dark with glowing colored pins "party" atmosphere that totally negates actual bowling skill (I can bowl well, bowling in the dark makes me about as effective as a buzzed player who doesn't bowl, it's miserable).  But I'm sure they make way more money that way than catering to serious bowlers or leagues.

 

20 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Referring to my list up above, more than you'd think. Although I do agree with you on principle when it comes to variety. I don't care much for cookie cutter arcades as that is boring  - my arcade is weird, a black sheep of the industry. I have no ticket redemption games; I like to have odd, rare stuff. I have a Dariusbust Another Chronicle by Taito, a Hydra by Atari Games, a bunch of fighting games, and a few other oddities, on top of the staples. I'm one of the only arcades in the world with stuff like this, because I like variety. That said, these and pretty much all of my other rare games don't make much money:

 

 

 

You're making me not want to go to arcades anymore, hahaaha.  That first game, it's just noise, a fire hose of shots blanketing the screen, there's no challenge.  Even for people who want dumbed-down games, how long can they play that?  Just keep your finger on the fire button, slide up and down, yay.  There are some interesting layers that would be difficult to escape if you didn't have a solid wall of gunfire to save you.  I would love to see a challenging version of that game - get rid of the useless animated backgrounds, get rid of the fire hose guns (have it closer to Asteroids or Defender shooting volume), I'd play that.  The second game is just Super Mario Bros. with a green turd jumping around.  Do the gamers who play that know about Super Mario Bros.?  Meaning, do they see that they're playing mostly the exact same thing?  I take it there's no modern Super Mario Bros. in arcades otherwise why play this thing.  That third one is worse than the first, Xevious with an impenetrable wall of gunfire.  At least the scrolling background makes more sense.  The last one looks interesting, a modernized side view fighting game.  I'm curious how the controllers are in terms of gamer popularity.

 

I hope modern arcade fans don't think their games are tough or challenging compared to older designs.  They would probably want to use a minigun to go deer hunting (with stupid background music).

 

21 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

True, although if you follow the pattern that games like Jurassic Park uses, it could make sense. Take for example Space Invaders Frenzy by Raw Thrills. It did not use buttons nor joysticks - it uses the same mounted guns that Jurassic Park uses. I'm not saying that how this controls is what I necessarily like when it comes to Space Invaders but...this game was among the top earning games in the industry for the first few years it was on the market and believe some locations still see it doing well. Yes, the giant LED screen is part of the attraction but if the guns didn't work for what it does, then it wouldn't have done so well. I could see a new Missile Command using this setup and probably doing great, to Lord Mushroom's point - you're really just finding a way to aim at your targets on the screen. Even the recent Centipede Chaos ditched trackballs in favor of joysticks - not something I agreed with, but I remember the devs telling me that they did test a trackball version and it flopped 😕 Although those same devs also attempted to make a new arcade version of Tetris and that flopped too. They were shocked to see a lot of people during the testing phase not understand how to play Tetris and walk away without a repeat play. Who knows why that was the case but modern gamers are a strange bunch.

 

 

Ultimately though, I think that Missile Command 3D/VR's style of play would make the most sense for a gun controller

 

That's not Space Invaders, that's Missile Centipede Command, hahaaha.  Not a bad idea, but it completely removes the challenge of Space Invaders (place your limited shots well) for lazy instant gratification.  Keep shooting, you'll eventually hit everything!  Reminds me of when the Playstation first came out and some people got high scores by just repeatedly pressing all the buttons on their gamepads over and over with no knowledge or understanding of what the individual buttons and combinations were for (especially true for Japanese import games with unreadable instructions), they would just luck into the right sequences because button mashing.

 

A better "true" Space Invaders experience would have been the same game but looking up as they come down, meaning the closer invaders almost totally screen the farther away invaders (unless you can aim just to the side of one of the lower ones) instead of being able to sweep all the upper rows with the cannon (and the shots take a second or so to get up to the invaders).  Part of the challenge of the original was having to deal with the bottom-up aspect of the invaders, really hard to hit the top ones first.  This one is another fire hose, though not as insane.  It would be fun, I guess, especially playing with kids, but mindless after a while.

 

I think modern gamers get frustrated with having to be accurate and precise, they have no time or interest to try to be good, they just want to win it all immediately.  They have almost no patience.  With that lightgun design they can just sweep across where the targets are and probably always nail them, they don't have to actual aim the fucking guns anymore, just get it in the ballpark, success!  And driving games are obvious, everyone has driven a car or ridden a bike before, probably, it's obvious how to do decent from the first sitting.  Flying is harder if the controls are realistic, throttle/yoke/pedals, but just a yoke makes it similarly easy and obvious.  Have there been any basically accurate helicopter flying sim games?  That would probably be cool.

 

21 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I'm not saying that they would ignore it completely, I'm just saying that they really don't know what Asteroids is. Because they didn't grow up with it, they weren't around when it was the #1 game in the world, it's "ancient history." Because of that, you need something to hook them on it and its hard to say if buttons are that route. Although I'm not saying Asteroids needs a light-gun - more just something different. I really do like Asteroids Recharged on the presentation side and I'm very curious to see how it performs. Ultimately though, I'm basing these thoughts over what I've seen, particularly with this game, Cosmotrons.

 

Well, to be fair, when Asteroids first came out none of us gamers had any nostalgia or pre-built history about it, it was just a new game that was fantastic.  And hard.  Modern gamers really hate an actual strategy challenge I guess.  Just let me shoot everything at once!!

 

Back in the day we wouldn't dismiss a game simply because it didn't have the same control scheme as previous games, either.  Nobody hated Star Wars because it wasn't a joystick game, nobody hated Centipede because it didn't use directional buttons.  If fact, many of us would tend to be more interested in a game if it had something visibly unique (control layout) compared to known games.  Didn't always succeed, of course, but most games won many fans.  If the gameplay was good.  Most gamers would walk away from games when they got too good at them or the games were too easy to begin with.  I can only imagine how boring Tempest be with a fire hose gun or how easy it would be to clear Pac-Man mazes with power-ups that gave you 10x speed or shields or smart bombs to wipe out the ghosts over and over.

 

21 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Now to be completely fair, Cosmotrons didn't have a classic name for nostalgia and it was just a new Gravitar, which wasn't the best choice for a reboot. Still, having just buttons and old school vector graphics was a complete flop. I wish it wasn't as it was a really fun game. But a game that cost me $3500 and it only made $5~7 a week (i.e., would take roughly 13 years to pay itself off) is definitely not something that I want to repeat. 

 

 

 

You ain't kidding, hahaaha, Gravitar is one of the last games I'd build a new game off of, it's hard as fuck dealing with that wonky gravity direction shit.  But it is challenging and very satisfying if you can get through even a couple of levels all the way through on one life.  I wouldn't base any conclusions about modern retro game success off of this game, though.

 

That game would be perfect for MAME or home consoles, I bet.  Sort of like that VCTR-SCTR throwback VCS game.  I commend whoever designed it, an actual gamer.

[TampaBay]

@ledzep I think you're spot on with your assessment of the modern young gamer and what they're looking for (cheap shallow thrills, walls of bullets, easy mindless gameplay, etc). except with one caveat.  Maybe it's best to categorize them as something else than gamers.  When we classify them as being equivalent to the gamers who are looking for depth, strategy, challenge, high scores and the like, then yes, in a way one could say that modern group is somehow inferior and wasting their time.  The reality is, they're an entirely different group looking for an entirely different product.  Those kids are not looking for a challenge at all.  They're not even used to there being a score board.  Off the top of my head, I can't name a single popular Nintendo Switch game that even keeps score at all (I know that's not related to the arcade, but it's to my point).  The modern arcade consumer is looking to be part of "slightly interactive movie".  I don't know if you saw Shaggy's post above with a new game called Drakons.  You sit straddle on a motion simulator dragon (like the motorcycle racing games), it's basically a rail shooter, and you fly around on the dragon and generally aim your mounted cannon in the vicinity of a bad guy and fire away.  It's pretty much a small-scale Disney ride where you have a little bit of interaction.  In fact, when I first saw it, it reminded me of one of the most popular rides in Disney World in Florida called "Avatar Flight of Passage" where you sit on one of the dragons from the movie while wearing VR-style goggles, and fly around in a 3D environment for a little while.  In a smaller scaled down sense, that's what many of these "games" are trying to provide, and people are willing to pay big bucks for it.  I mentioned above that I really like Transformers Shadows Rising.  That game costs an arcade about $20,000 to buy.  They will make that back.  When I "play that game", I make no illusion that I'm playing any kind of game.  I'm sitting inside Optimus Prime, feeling like I'm literally inside a Transformers movie, dodging bad guys' bullets and firing back.  It's an escape for a little while and I'm willing to pay for it.  The kids love it.  Now completely unrelated, because I'm a 70's / 80's kid, I also have an appreciation for the more classic style of challenging games with scoreboards and extreme difficulty that requires actual skills, practice, and mastery of the controls.  That said, I don't categorize Drakons as even in the same category of product as I do something like Gravitar or classic Lunar Lander.  They're completely different experiences.  

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Yeah, we can all agree on that - modern gaming is a very different beast than Golden Age gaming. Tastes and skills have changed, and I don't know that you can force people to be better gamers...although you do occasionally get things like Elden Ring where people find an incentive to play something difficult. What will have that effect in arcades? Not sure. Pinball is sort of in that realm but as myself and many others have experienced, even with all the hype there is behind pinball these days, it's not translating into better earnings at the cash box. 

 

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

I suppose that makes more sense with groups (birthdays), too

Yeah, that's a HUGE part of the modern arcade business. I once had a location where we had a party room and it certainly helped contribute to a better outcome there.

 

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

 

You're making me not want to go to arcades anymore, hahaaha. 

No, wait! That's not my intent!  

 

That video just shows some attract modes for four games installed into one cabinet and is perhaps not the best representations of how the games play, although I get the irony there, since they are supposed to be "attracting" people to play.

 

Vritra Hexa in reality does require skill to play. Here's some direct gameplay. Strategy is required on which type of power-up you go with and there's a button to control the speed of your dragon (not unlike the old Parsec). This game is one of my favorites and the soundtrack is awesome (here's another video of the game with the Arranged soundtrack, which is higher energy and better)

 

On Gimmick (aka, green turd), that was originally an NES game; The arcade version is a remaster. Having played it and Super Mario Bros., SMB definitely wins with normies but Gimmick has a cult following as it requires a lot more skill to be good at than any SMB game does. Watching a good Gimmick player is impressive.

 

That third game was called Aka & Blue Type-R, I sold that one off a while ago. It's a bullet hell shooter so you have to be into those to enjoy it. Turns out most of my customers weren't, so off it went. 

 

The last one, Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ, has been one of my most popular games on that system. My next grab is going to be a similar game called Omen of Sorrow, which looks fantastic. controls are just standard joystick/button...and while the games are fun and are made for more hardcore gamers, the system hasn't been doing too well. 😕 I recently added this game though that I think would appeal to a gamer like yourself. They've got another classic style game in the vein of Dig Dug coming later this year. But as fun as DDD! is, it's not getting any more play than my old Donkey Kong (that's to say, a few bucks a week):

 

 

 

Regarding a deer hunting game, if you look at Big Buck Hunter, that does require skill to play - enough that they hold world championships for it every October, and give away $100k in prizes. Seeing the top level players compete might instill you hope that not all is lost when it comes to modern gaming.

 

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

Have there been any basically accurate helicopter flying sim games?  That would probably be cool

Not since Steel Talons in 1991 😕 Last flight sim style game that was released was Blazing Angels Arcade in 2008. Sega also did After Burner Climax, which was cool but not much of a sim.

 

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

Asteroids first came out none of us gamers had any nostalgia or pre-built history about it

True, but it also was cutting edge and novel at the time. Now, games like it are lost in the ocean of indie releases. That's why I think additional hooks can help.

 

Part of the problem is that once you leave the pioneer era of a thing, you're always going to be comparing new stuff to the greats of the past and it never "feels" the same. 

 

2 hours ago, ledzep said:

That game would be perfect for MAME or home consoles

The devs for that one did end up selling it off and the current IP owners are bringing it to Steam this year. It sucks it was a dud as it was a fun game. But that's why I mention that certain elements like a very difficult game, just don't work in modern arcades.

 

My thing that I try to get across, but perhaps I'm not good at it, is telling people that if they do want to see arcades and old school style games rise again, then play those things when you see them out in the wild. The more that happens, the better those games earn. A strong earning game is an easy sell to an operator, whereas a poor earning game means you have to hope that the arcade op has nostalgia for whatever it is to get them to buy. The latter will never be a big success though. 

 

45 minutes ago, TampaBay said:

It's pretty much a small-scale Disney ride where you have a little bit of interaction. 

As a gamer myself, this trend pains me, but I can't deny how effective it is. People shove tons of money into virtual roller coasters. Why that is over an actual game, ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯.

Edited March 24 by Shaggy the Atarian

[ledzep]

50 minutes ago, TampaBay said:

@ledzep I think you're spot on with your assessment of the modern young gamer and what they're looking for (cheap shallow thrills, walls of bullets, easy mindless gameplay, etc). except with one caveat.  Maybe it's best to categorize them as something else than gamers.  When we classify them as being equivalent to the gamers who are looking for depth, strategy, challenge, high scores and the like, then yes, in a way one could say that modern group is somehow inferior and wasting their time.  The reality is, they're an entirely different group looking for an entirely different product.  Those kids are not looking for a challenge at all.  They're not even used to there being a score board.  Off the top of my head, I can't name a single popular Nintendo Switch game that even keeps score at all (I know that's not related to the arcade, but it's to my point).  The modern arcade consumer is looking to be part of "slightly interactive movie".  I don't know if you saw Shaggy's post above with a new game called Drakons.  You sit straddle on a motion simulator dragon (like the motorcycle racing games), it's basically a rail shooter, and you fly around on the dragon and generally aim your mounted cannon in the vicinity of a bad guy and fire away.  It's pretty much a small-scale Disney ride where you have a little bit of interaction.  In fact, when I first saw it, it reminded me of one of the most popular rides in Disney World in Florida called "Avatar Flight of Passage" where you sit on one of the dragons from the movie while wearing VR-style goggles, and fly around in a 3D environment for a little while.  In a smaller scaled down sense, that's what many of these "games" are trying to provide, and people are willing to pay big bucks for it.  I mentioned above that I really like Transformers Shadows Rising.  That game costs an arcade about $20,000 to buy.  They will make that back.  When I "play that game", I make no illusion that I'm playing any kind of game.  I'm sitting inside Optimus Prime, feeling like I'm literally inside a Transformers movie, dodging bad guys' bullets and firing back.  It's an escape for a little while and I'm willing to pay for it.  The kids love it.  Now completely unrelated, because I'm a 70's / 80's kid, I also have an appreciation for the more classic style of challenging games with scoreboards and extreme difficulty that requires actual skills, practice, and mastery of the controls.  That said, I don't categorize Drakons as even in the same category of product as I do something like Gravitar or classic Lunar Lander.  They're completely different experiences.  

 

That is probably the best, most accurate description of what those non-gamers are and how different they are from actual gamers along with what they're expecting in terms of "gaming" experience (since I agree, those aren't really games in the traditional sense of the slightly interactive movie you describe).  What's funny is a lot of them somehow still insist that they are actual gamers when they can't stomach playing actual arcade games that are challenging and require accuracy and precision. Especially because they'll slag old games as being boring when they seem to really mean is there's not guns auto-firing to blanket the screen or enough easy power-ups or whatever.

 

Ya, that would be a tough reality to deal with as an arcade owner.  Or, more accurately, an "arcade" owner if those things are what's most popular.

 

I've never heard of that Transformers game (or seen it), but how does it compare to those Battletech Virtual World games?

 

 

I know those graphics would be considered miserable now, but the gameplay itself with the enclosed pods that make you feel like you're operating a walking tank, dodging bad guys' bullets and firing back as you say, how would that fly do you think with modern non-gamers?

[Giles N]

37 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

People shove tons of money into virtual roller coasters. Why that is over an actual game, ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯.

It’s easy to understand… 

     (…independent of whether one likes it or not…)

Edited March 24 by Giles N

[Shaggy the Atarian]

8 minutes ago, ledzep said:

I know those graphics would be considered miserable now, but the gameplay itself with the enclosed pods that make you feel like you're operating a walking tank, dodging bad guys' bullets and firing back as you say, how would that fly do you think with modern non-gamers?

I think it depends on the game. The most expensive game I ever spent money on was the Star Wars Battle Pod. It was like a modern Battle Tech system: dome projection screen, wind effects, surround sound, force feedback joystick, huge license...then the gameplay was what modern players crave, it was just a roller coaster that was sort of controllable. It did really well up until The Last Jedi came around, then it never recovered (as in, it stopped making enough to cover its substantial monthly payments. I ended up selling it after Episode 9 came out). Danger of tying to an IP that gets tanked by its parent company, I suppose. Otherwise, yeah - stuff like that is what arcades do best.

 

 

[ledzep]

28 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

No, wait! That's not my intent!  

 

That video just shows some attract modes for four games installed into one cabinet and is perhaps not the best representations of how the games play, although I get the irony there, since they are supposed to be "attracting" people to play.

 

Not blaming you, hahaaha, but I automatically rolled my eyes the moment that video started.  Not just more, but MORE more!!

 

29 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Vritra Hexa in reality does require skill to play. Here's some direct gameplay. Strategy is required on which type of power-up you go with and there's a button to control the speed of your dragon (not unlike the old Parsec). This game is one of my favorites and the soundtrack is awesome:

 

 

 

Ok, but that seems more or less to be Scramble with 10x the shots (yours and enemies'), the power-ups are ridiculous in terms of strength.  Do people who like this game see that Scramble (and Super Cobra) are essentially the same game and like them, too, or do they think that this game is way better (and "totally different") just because of the fire hose of shots, not actually seeing that the game speed is the same, the movement is similar?  I mean, if you shoot 10x the shots but the enemy targets can absorb 10x the shots, it boils down to 1 shot/1 kill like the older games, anyways.

 

I wonder what these non-gamers must think of a movie like "The Accountant" or "The Bourne Identity", for instance - "Why doesn't he just walk around with a minigun and grenade launchers firing from his shoulders when he has to fight those assassins!??!"

 

35 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

On Gimmick (aka, green turd), that was originally an NES game; The arcade version is a remaster. Having played it and Super Mario Bros., SMB definitely wins with normies but Gimmick has a cult following as it requires a lot more skill to be good at than any SMB game does. Watching a good Gimmick player is impressive.

 

I can see that.  But then it's not a new type of game, simply an advanced Super Mario Bros.  Same as Space Duel was an advanced Asteroids.  So that makes sense to me in terms of popularity.

 

36 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

That third game was called Aka & Blue Type-R, I sold that one off a while ago. It's a bullet hell shooter so you have to be into those to enjoy it. Turns out most of my customers weren't, so off it went. 

 

The basic game is Xevious style, just with way too many shots.  Again, multiplying everything by 10+ doesn't add or change anything, it just has more shit on the screen at once to kill off 10x stronger targets.

 

37 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

The last one, Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ, has been one of my most popular games on that system. controls are just standard joystick/button...and while the games are fun and are made for more hardcore gamers, the system hasn't been doing too well. 😕

 

Dare I say it?  Maybe if you added a lightgun or a steering wheel, hahaahaha.  Problem solved!  I still loved the old Karate Champ game because the dual joysticks afforded a lot of attack/defend options.  It took a few games to get the moves down but, once you did, it was a really cool fighting game.

 

39 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I recently added this game though that I think would appeal to a gamer like yourself. They've got another classic style game in the vein of Dig Dug coming later this year. But as fun as DDD! is, it's not getting any more play than my old Donkey Kong (that's to say, a few bucks a week):

 

 

 

 

Well, that's because it is Donkey Kong, just with new levels and slightly better graphics (with old font and sounds to appeal to Donkey Kong fans).  Which isn't the worst thing if the old game levels bored you at this point, on to Chapter 2 (or 3 or whatever).

 

41 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

True, but it also was cutting edge and novel at the time. Now, games like it are lost in the ocean of indie releases. That's why I think additional hooks can help.

 

Part of the problem is that once you leave the pioneer era of a thing, you're always going to be comparing new stuff to the greats of the past and it never "feels" the same. 

 

That is a problem, you can only be new and novel once in a given example.  I just don't get the general vibe of these non-gamers that the older controls are a waste of time, they only seem to want lightguns and steering wheels.  Seems very limiting.  But if it makes arcade owners money, they have to accept reality.

 

43 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

The devs for that one did end up selling it off and the current IP owners are bringing it to Steam this year. It sucks it was a dud as it was a fun game. But that's why I mention that certain elements like a very difficult game, just don't work in modern arcades.

 

Well, again, that was a very poor choice for an update, Gravitar wasn't only a bitch to play, it wasn't that common back in the day, either, although I think it was a little more common than Black Widow (another game in that Space Duel conversion cab family).  So even in terms of nostalgia, that's asking a lot.  Maybe a modern version of a game built off of Star Castle might have been better (different "color" vector game).  I wonder if an updated Major Havoc would be attractive.

 

45 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

My thing that I try to get across, but perhaps I'm not good at it, is telling people that if they do want to see arcades and old school style games rise again, then play those things when you see them out in the wild. The more that happens, the better those games earn. A strong earning game is an easy sell to an operator, whereas a poor earning game means you have to hope that the arcade op has nostalgia for whatever it is to get them to buy. The latter will never be a big success though. 

 

They've got to be out in the wild first.  This is unfortunately no longer the era of finding a couple arcade games in every convenience store in the neighborhood.  When I do make it to some kind of arcade place that has some of the old games, I definitely play them.

[ledzep]

6 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I think it depends on the game. The most expensive game I ever spent money on was the Star Wars Battle Pod. It was like a modern Battle Tech system: dome projection screen, wind effects, surround sound, force feedback joystick, huge license...then the gameplay was what modern players crave, it was just a roller coaster that was sort of controllable. It did really well up until The Last Jedi came around, then it never recovered (as in, it stopped making enough to cover its substantial monthly payments. I ended up selling it after Episode 9 came out). Danger of tying to an IP that gets tanked by its parent company, I suppose. Otherwise, yeah - stuff like that is what arcades do best.

 

Aw man, that game would be fantastic if it wasn't a virtual roller coaster but was totally directable, like the Battletech version.  Which would actually be hard and challenging (verboten, obviously) and it would take a few runs to get the hang of it.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

3 minutes ago, ledzep said:

 

Not blaming you, hahaaha, but I automatically rolled my eyes the moment that video started.  Not just more, but MORE more!!

That is a problem, you can only be new and novel once in a given example.  I just don't get the general vibe of these non-gamers that the older controls are a waste of time, they only seem to want lightguns and steering wheels.  Seems very limiting.  But if it makes arcade owners money, they have to accept reality.

Perhaps one piece of helpful context is that all four of those games were developed by a Japanese company and was thinking about the tastes of that market before the US one. Japan still demands skill-based games but if you throw a new Scramble or Xevious out there that just has updated graphics, they consider it boring. 

 

I don't care for bullet hell games, as I spend more time dodging than anything else; Judging by how poorly Aka & Blue did, seems my customers feel the same way 😕 

 

Quote

I wonder if an updated Major Havoc would be attractive.

I love MH but I would guess that it wouldn't be a big hit. 

 

Quote

They've got to be out in the wild first.  This is unfortunately no longer the era of finding a couple arcade games in every convenience store in the neighborhood.  When I do make it to some kind of arcade place that has some of the old games, I definitely play them.

Yeah that's what I mean - if you see them, play them.

 

One irritating oddity I see once in a while is someone will come into my arcade and either express to me or someone that they are with that "this place is awesome" and they gush over an old game or two that they find from their childhood. Then after lavishing praise on what they see, they walk out and I never see them again. Perhaps they are afraid of ruining those old memories as a child, but it is annoying since I can't keep the bills paid on likes and good vibes.

 

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Aw man, that game would be fantastic if it wasn't a virtual roller coaster but was totally directable, like the Battletech version.  Which would actually be hard and challenging (verboten, obviously) and it would take a few runs to get the hang of it.

 I was tempted to yank out the new hardware and throw in Sega's Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, but the screen image had to be specially masked to work with the projector effect. And trilogy looks pretty rough these days.

 

There have been a couple of other dome screen games out there such as Mach Storm and Lost Land Adventure, but thanks to the giant price tag they all had, the industry moved on to VR (where they could blow up those margins even wider and charge even more). It's too bad as I'd much rather use a dome screen than don a headset that some sweaty guy just had on. 

[ledzep]

18 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Perhaps one piece of helpful context is that all four of those games were developed by a Japanese company and was thinking about the tastes of that market before the US one. Japan still demands skill-based games but if you throw a new Scramble or Xevious out there that just has updated graphics, they consider it boring. 

 

Which is baffling to me.  It's the same game as the fire hose gun game!  The pace is the same, the obstacles are mostly the same (I will agree that the newer game has some cool ideas), you just have 1/10th the bullets and the enemies are 1/10th as strong.  I really don't get it that they think that matters or is some kind of significant difference.  It's like putting a body kit on a Fiero, now it's a Ferrari!  No, it's a Fiero with a different shape, drives the same, sounds the same.

 

19 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I don't care for bullet hell games, as I spend more time dodging than anything else; Judging by how poorly Aka & Blue did, seems my customers feel the same way 😕 

 

I can see it for some sort of bonus round level or clear everything level, like in Galaga, but not such a wide swath of bullets eating up like 1/5 of the whole screen real estate.  How lazy can you get?  Aim once in a while!

 

21 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I love MH but I would guess that it wouldn't be a big hit. 

 

I meant in terms of an updated scrolling game with multiple levels to clear (still using the roller controller, of course), much like that newer Donkey Kong clone was.  Donut Dodo Do!, I assume that's a translation of a Japanese game title?  Always love the English version of anime titles, how ridiculous they wind up sometimes.