Late Friday night, we arrived at our first arcade in Chicago, Gameworks. For those who didn’t see the last post, the one in blue text is an old friend of mine named Tom, who was along for the journey. He’s not all that knowledgeable about arcades.
So I’ve actually been to another Gameworks in the country, the one in Vegas. I was there as a kid and the mists of memory tell me that it was amazing. I was there again last year and it was… uh, not amazing. Tash can confirm my memory in both cases is correct. But this is the Gameworks in Chicago, a slightly more luxe version of the Vegas Gameworks’ mediocrity.
Those are no mists of memory. The Gameworks in Las Vegas was legitimately amazing. Two floors packed with games wall to wall. If it were still around around, it would get an easy S-class rating from me. The current one in Vegas I’ve written a post about before. It’s not good.
What I really don’t get about nu-Gameworks is the wannabe net cafe section it has where you pay money to play popular console and PC shooters. I guess there’s an audience for it, but I can’t imagine paying those rates to play 20 minutes of Fortnite. There was a section like this in the Vegas Gameworks, not sure about the Chicago one.
I didn’t remember seeing one of those here. I was just about to ask you if you did since five of the other six remaining Gameworks all have a PC area.
I wasn’t looking for it, but I think I would have at least noticed it. Maybe the Chicago location is a latecomer to doing it.
Gameworks, as I’m sure you know, is Sega’s own personal chain of sports bar arcades in the states.
So its long, agonizing decline makes a lot of sense in that light. It’s not even long and agonizing.
The first location was the one in Seattle, built in 1997. Fair enough. Sega seemed to be on top of the world for two years in the mid to late 90s. Then came the pain.
Even at their peak, there were only around 30 Gameworks locations. It was around 2010-ish when the chain fell apart due to bankruptcies and such.
30 is way more than I would have ever guessed. What a fall from grace. Do you think the franchise will hold on and be bolstered by a rise in interest in arcades, or fade slowly into that good night?
Let me put this into perspective for you: Round 1 has only been in the states for a few years and already has more locations than Gameworks had at its peak. Dave and Busters are also thriving. Gameworks being in the condition it’s in now is 100% mismanagement, not a lack of interest.
Is the mismanagement a customer-facing issue primarily (not enough games, not good enough service, etc.) or a behind-the-scenes thing that only subsequently led to those customer-facing problems? Or is it all just kind of a big death-spiraling mess? Like… where do the franchise’s issues stem from?
I’m not an expert in business management, but from my understanding, it’s mainly behind-the-scenes things like poor budgeting.
A lot of egghead accounting types have a short-sighted focus on margins that kill businesses like these long-term. You cut the money for the things that provide customers with a good experience… you lose customers. How hard is that to grasp?
Well, enough about the sorry state of the franchise for now, let’s talk about the venue itself.
Their merch was pretty cool, if run of the mill. I didn’t want to pay what they were charging, but there were some pretty cool Pac-Man & Mario toys that tempted me. I like little plastic tchotchkes like that.
Gameworks is very big on branding. They have their logo plastered all over the place. For those who have never been to it, the best way to describe Gameworks is “a bigger, more upbeat Dave and Buster’s.”
There’s even a bar area like D&B’s. Actually not half-bad, at least the one in Vegas wasn’t. Dunno about the one here, I didn’t get the chance to check it out. Had to drive.
There’s more emphasis on the arcade and less on the sports bar. The opposite of D&B.
This is the upper floor, where most of the good games were stored.
Although there in the foreground is a whole bank of Mario Kart machines. I didn’t even know there was a Mario Kart arcade game, but they’re apparently infesting every arcade from here to Timbuktu.
You should have said so. They’re so common I just ignored them.
The actually good games on this level were more towards the back, at the far end from where this picture was taken. A couple of my favorite games of the whole trip were on the second floor of the Gameworks here.
You probably don’t realize it, but many of these games are RARE. I’m not entirely sure if they were actually Gameworks exclusive, but they’re so seldom seen anywhere else that they might as well be.
I mean it makes sense that Sega would have some sort of exclusivity thing with their own chain of arcades. In Mall of America we have a “Gameworks” that used to be called Skydeck.
Even before they changed the name to Gameworks, I could tell it was affiliated with Sega just because they had some of those games.
This seemed like a pretty standard racing cabinet. What’s unique about it?
WHAT!? This is Sega Rally 3!
I figure it must be rare based on the last part of this conversation, but is it rarity alone that makes it special? Or is it important to the genre in another way?
It’s special for a few reasons. For starters, this game is a sequel to 1995’s Sega Rally. Sega Rally was the first-ever racing game with multiple terrains, like mud and gravel. It’s pretty high on the list of most influential racing games ever. The guy who worked on it would later make the Initial D arcade games.
Was he still on the series for this one?
This one is a bit different. Take a peek at the name of the arcade board it’s running on. I put it up there below the image.
Well just from reading about its technical specs, it seems really high end for its time.
You don’t need to read about its technical specs; just look at the name. It’s very telling.
Developed in Europe I presume?
The very first arcade game developed by Sega’s European branch.
Since you say “first” I assume there were more afterwards. Which means it must have gotten a pretty good reception.
I have no idea what the reception was since this game was made in 2008, and they’ve only made two since. You see, Sega has a much bigger presence in the European arcade market than in the west. Sega Rally 1 and 2 were very common and widespread in Europe, while 2 is pretty rare in the states.
Ok, so now it makes sense. Give development of the sequel to the people closest to its biggest market.
It’s a pretty unique case in that regard. Like I said earlier, this SR3’s release in the states wasn’t very big. It’s way easier to find in places like Belgium.
Did we play this cabinet?
We did. I think it was the first one we played.
I hardly remember it, but I was never a big fan of racing games. I should have paid more attention! Although I do remember you playing several racers here and being impressed once again at how easily you handled them.
Most of my racing game experience comes from hours on Initial D, but this series plays nothing like it despite the similar roots.
This is Jambo Safari, a very common game back during the Crazy Taxi era.
These games were developed more or less in tandem, right? They seem to share a lot of the same design concepts.
I had to double-check, but AM3 was involved with both. Jambo Safari was a co-production with AM2, so they had different teams working on them.
One of the things I really loved about it is how cleanly it controlled. It was my first time and I sucked at it, but it never felt clunky or unfair. And the tactile response, from locking on and grabbing your quarry to finally wrangling them in, is really satisfying. Its such a well made game.
It’s a lot better when you get decent at it.
I actually went back after the trip and watched some youtube videos of high level players. Just watching them snag all these different animals like cheetahs and rhinos is super satisfying.
Wow, sounds like this one struck a chord with you.
A few of the games definitely piqued my interest in a big way, and one day about a week after the trip I looked up youtube videos of people playing those games just to see what a really good player could do with them. This was one.
I’m interested to hear what the others will be.
Now this was one of my favorites. It’s such an utterly weird but fun game.
I’m honestly surprised you’ve never played Jambo Safari. It was really, really common during the same period Crazy Taxi was. It’s still not very hard to find.
I just was never that big of an arcade-goer. Most of my experience with arcades is from before the turn of the century. And although it had a console release, it just totally flew under my radar until I played it at Gameworks.
It DIDN’T have a console release.
Sure it did. It was released for Wii and DS.
That’s a different game based loosely on this one. This game was released in 1999, while the Wii one was released a decade later.
Whatever the case, I was totally ignorant of both games. And it’s a pretty wild concept to see in action.
Sega got pretty experimental with their arcade games during the NAOMI era.
Basically, if anyone reading this is as ignorant as I am, the gimmick is that you drive a Jeep through the African savannah and try to snare different types of big game animals with a net-shooting rifle. It’s some bizarre amalgam of a hunting game, a racing game, and, well, Crazy Taxi. Yep, the key is to go fast to keep getting bonus time so you can keep playing longer, like Crazy Taxi.
This game was sick. Probably my favorite of the racing games I saw on the trip. You told me at the time that they were fairly common in their day, didn’t you?
Absolutely. We’ve even still got one here in town, although it’s not the big deluxe version like this.
It definitely captured how a pod racer “should” feel. You never felt like you were totally in control, but you still had to push it as fast and hard as you could. It reminded me a bit of F-Zero. Kinda floaty in a way that makes you feel out of sorts.
You don’t steer it traditionally. You have a left and right thruster that you adjust power to.
Yeah and it sort of tilts in the direction you favor power to if I remember correctly, which felt so strange at first. It’s not helped by the sheer sense of speed this game has. That’s a big part of what draws the F-zero comparison. Very few games have given me such a raw sense of speed. It’s straight up a little scary to go full-throttle.
I’ll go in-depth about the hardware it was running on a bit later, but that’s because it was running on the Sega Hikaru. It was, by far, the most powerful arcade board out there at the time.
That’s no surprise. For its era, it seemed like it had some really good graphics and it played really smoothly for what it was doing.
Only like six games were made with that hardware because it was so expensive. This is probably the most common of them.
The track design deserves a mention, too. We only played one track, but it had some really fun sections that allowed you to push your speed while still presenting some obstacles that, because of your speed, really sneak up on you. One section with multiple rock pillars all over and another with a narrow canyon but with wide curves stood out. Nothing absolutely genius, but really well designed in general.
Sega were the kings of arcade racing games for good reason.
Tank! Tank! Tank!
I don’t remember this one at all. What can you tell me about it?
Not much. I only took a picture of it because the WiiU port was one of the first games for that system. We used to sit around making fun of how ridiculous the title was at work.
It was describing how the Wii U would perform.
You remember this one, I’m sure.
I do. This one actually reminded me of a snowmobile racing game that I used to play on the Xbox with a similar type of design. Actually, I kind of suspect that it might have been the same developer. Is this another Sega cabinet?
This isn’t a Sega cabinet. In fact, it’s the only game in this entire building that I hadn’t heard of. I had to read up on it later. It was made by a studio called Grin, which didn’t make very many games. It was originally a PC game that got ported to arcades, as uncommon as that is. The only other games they made that I recognized were a couple of the Ghost Recon games.
It seems like the conceit here was again, raw speed. And this time on tracks that go in 360 degrees. This is the kind of game that really requires both memorization and perfect reflexes. You’re basically rocketing through a series of tubes at supersonic speed, only there’s these random obstacles in the way that will stop you dead in your tracks and eventually destroy your ship if you hit them.
Raw speed is a vast understatement. You go really, really fast in this game.
It’s another game that reminds me of F-zero. It even has a boost mechanic that lowers your vehicle’s health.
Once you hit a certain speed, you’re bound to explode sooner or later anyway.
Yeah. If you don’t know the track by heart, you’re guaranteed to hit something along the way. There’s just no time to react.
I don’t think even memorizing the track would help much at top speed. It’s the equivalent of trying to play a racing game while holding the fast-forward button.
Finally, a less remarkable machine.
Did we play this one? If we did, it’s another so-so racing game that just kind of blurred together in my mind.
We didn’t. This is one of those games I see so often that I don’t even notice it in arcades anymore. It’s the hardware I want to talk about.
Go ahead.
I’ve been listing the arcade boards of the Sega games for a reason. By the end, you’ll probably understand better, but Sega were the technological leaders through the 90s and most of the 00s. This particular board is the Model 3, the oldest of Sega’s boards you’d find here. It was their main board through most of the second half of the 90s. It was stupidly, STUPIDLY powerful for the period.
I don’t remember that cabinet having any really mind-blowing graphics, but I could have glossed over it. Were the physics really advanced too?
This board was released in 1995 and had specs more powerful than the Sega Dreamcast.
Ok, yeah, that IS impressive.
Even more so, considering home PCs weren’t even on par with the Model 2, released in 1992. Consumer hardware couldn’t even hit that benchmark until near the very end of the 90s.
Did these machines do well in America or was this another case of Sega doing better with overseas markets?
They absolutely did well in America! Many of the model 3 games were some of the most common late 90s arcade games. See Star Wars Trilogy arcade up there next to Episode 1 Racer? That was one of them.
So Sega’s huge investment in this technology was a winner.
Yes. Many people think the Nintendo vs. Sega conflict was Super Nintendo vs. Genesis. It was more akin to the arcade behemoth trying to expand its turf into Nintendo’s home market. Sega’s hardware was so damn powerful that they pretty much single-handedly pioneered 3D gaming as we know it.
It feels like they tried to adopt the same philosophy in the home console market but still got curbstomped. The Genesis wasn’t that much more advanced technically than the SNES, and it did really well. But the Dreamcast was at least a few years ahead of its competition, and it was more or less DoA.
The Dreamcast was also a huge technological pioneer. Look at Jet Set Radio for the most obvious example.
Tons of examples on the Dreamcast of games that were so far ahead of their time.
Sadly, Sega had to back out of the console market again due to mismanagement.
Speaking of death, here’s Arctic Thunder.
Ok so yeah, the game that reminded me of the Snowmobile racing game I played on the Xbox wasn’t Ballistics, it was Arctic Thunder. The reason Arctic Thunder reminded me of that Xbox game is because that Xbox game was Arctic Thunder.
That makes sense. Arctic Thunder was one of the last games released by Midway Games before they shut down their arcade division.
You can play as a superintelligent gorilla racing through Chernobyl as it melts down and splashes radioactive waste all over you! Tell me that’s not a good time.
I’m not big on Midway’s stuff in general. It’s all very low-skill stuff. They made a name for themselves with instant gratification games like Cruis’n USA and NBA Jam.
Seems like it didn’t pay off for them, ultimately.
It did. They and Atari Games were Sega’s main arcade rivals through the late 90s. Then Atari Games died and was acquired by Midway Games; then Midway Games met the same fate. I like to think Gameworks keeps this machine here as the equivalent of mounting a deer’s head on your wall.
Haha.
This game has nothing to do with Harley-Davidson & LA Riders.
Gotta love that irrelevant branding. (note: Harley Davidson & LA Riders is the other Harley Davidson game Sega made that I run into in all the time. That seemed to fly over Tom’s head)
This is another case where I want to point out the hardware now since we’ll be seeing a LOT of the Lindbergh here in Gameworks. It was Sega’s main board through most of the late 00s.
So first off, why the hell is it named after the aviator?
Beats me. Sega usually gave their boards girls’ names.
Any other notable uses of this board?
Despite being Sega’s main board, not nearly as many games for this thing were made as you’d expect. I wanna say around ten were made for the Lindbergh Yellow, which was the main version of it. (note: The Lindbergh Red and Red EX, that you’ll see a couple of times in this arcade, are cheaper, less powerful variations of it. Only two games were made for each. There was also a blue variation of it, but it was mainly used in things like Mahjong games that didn’t come stateside.)
Was it as far advanced for its era as the Model 3 was for its?
No, it’s from the era when consumer technology caught up with arcades. Hell, it runs on Linux. But I wanted to mention the Lindbergh now because, as you’ll see, about half of the games made for the thing are here in Gameworks. It’s probably the most prominent board in the entire arcade. But before moving on, do you recognize that game to the left of it?
No.
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3. It’s a Namco game, a spiritual successor to Ridge Racer and Initial D’s main competitor. Instead of driving down a mountainside, you go through highway traffic at night against 1-3 other cars. Like Initial D, it’s also based on a manga series.
I’m not sure I have anything interesting to add about this one! It didn’t draw me in at the time and it doesn’t seem particularly notable except as a footnote to Sega’s history with its competitors.
I’m introducing it to you because this series will come up quite a few times later.
Like right now.
How does Nirin relate to Wangan Midnight?
This is Namco’s Nirin, a game which there’s no other way to describe than “Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune on motorcycles.” I think this game is hilarious because WMMT4 runs on the same hardware, but Namco skipped releasing that in America.
Why?
Because of a game you’d know if you ever read my blog: “Dead Heat,” a game I bitch about every time I see. Maximum Tune was a bit too “technical” for casual arcade goers, so they made a different game that’s the same thing except dumbed down with some of F&F’s mechanics, like the damn boost. (EDIT: Take everything I said here with an extreme grain of salt)
How did it work out?
I run into that machine all the bloody time.
So pretty well for the company, then!
Yeah. But don’t worry, all this ranting about Maximum Tune will pay off eventually. Maybe not in this blog post, but eventually.
Sorry, one more hardware ranting machine.
What’s the scoop on this one?
This ran on Namco’s system 246, hardware based on the PS2. During the 5th and 6th generations of home consoles, it became increasingly common for arcade boards to be extremely similar to consoles to make porting easy.
Was this a good, bad – or neutral development?
It was more of a transitional thing. Nowadays, nearly all arcade hardware is PC-based.
So this machine represents the stepping stone.
Yes, and that machine next to it has a white screen at the moment, but it’s one I’m sure you’ve heard of. Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
Fun game!
Yes, but also a game running on the Sega NAOMI, which I glossed over earlier. The Sega NAOMI was based on the Dreamcast hardware. But instead of just being based on it, it was developed simultaneously.
You said the NAOMI board was developed in tandem with the Dreamcast’s hardware. By a different team at Sega or no? And if they were different teams, did they collaborate at all?
Let me put it another way: Neither was based on the other. When they developed the Dreamcast, the Sega Naomi was something they took into consideration. The hardware was designed for both. And it paid off since it was such a popular board that it even got some third-party developers making games for it, like Capcom. It’s up there with the Neo Geo in terms of arcade boards I’ve considered buying, but it’s significantly more expensive.
Overall it seems like you really admire Sega hardware, for good reason.
The history of Sega’s hardware is the history of the arcade.
Moving on, here are some candy cabs running fighting games.
Same hardware?
I was done talking about hardware for the moment, but I do know Tatsunoko vs Capcom runs on Wii-based hardware…
I had no idea that the Wii ever had its tech adapted for the arcade market.
Remember that Mario Kart arcade game we ran into earlier?
Sure.
That was running on the Triforce arcade board, based on the Gamecube, which would later have most of its infrastructure recycled into the Wii. The consumer-model Wii can run that game perfectly.
6 years, maybe?
6 years of what?
That’s about how long I’ve wanted to come to this Gameworks.
For this machine.
“These machines”! I broadened my arcade horizons in the last few years, but I’ve always loved rhythm games. The game on the left is DDRX. The one on the right is DDRX2.
Ohhh, so they’re not the same! You had pretty much finished playing by the time we met back up, I believe.
Yeah, I didn’t want to play these while you were around because I figured I wouldn’t get to play much, so I snuck back to Gameworks the next morning.
Were they what you hoped for?
Oh, I’ve run into DDRX twice, once in Iowa and one broken-down machine on the East Coast. Those machines probably look different than any other DDR machine you’ve seen, yeah?
Yeah, but how does that impart to gameplay?
I’m getting to that. The reason they look different is that this was the first version of DDR since the original to have a new cabinet design. Since the old ones weren’t gonna work in the west, Konami contracted Betson to make the US version. The infamous Betson cabs for DDRX had such poor sensitivity that they were universally panned. Because of it, DDRX2 got a very, very limited release in America with a new pad design. The X2 pads are unique because they’re not “solid” like past games. They push down slightly, like a button.
Does that tactile difference make the game play any better?
It’s hard to tell from one session whether it felt good or bad, but it was really disorienting. Really though, aside from getting to see the weird X2 pads for myself, the main draw of different DDR games is that they all have songs that other games don’t. Super Driver from Haruhi is in these ones. A bunch of kids were having a birthday here, so I got a rather large crowd playing that song.
I know you like performing for an audience.
You bet I do, even though I’m not particularly good. I’m absolutely terrible at rhythm games, especially ones like DDR.
I’ve seen you play and “not particularly good” is not the turn of phrase I’d use. You don’t struggle to at least clear a song…
Arcade games don’t lie about your skill. They’re all about how you compare to other players. I’m above average at best but terrible compared to most people who know how to play.
Here it is. Brave Firefighters!!
Probably my favorite game of the entire trip.
You liked it that much?
I really did, and the reason why is because it outstripped my expectations so much. For a “light gun” style game, it’s totally responsive and fun to control. A lot of games like these I’ve always found kind of hard to get the hang of, but this one drew me right in. I also dig the concept, you’re a firefighter who has to go into burning buildings and put out the flames, pretty unique.
The funny part is that neither this nor Jambo Safari got a home port, but both of them (and an ambulance arcade game) were almost all ported to Dreamcast as a bundle. Then it went and died.
Sad day. I think my favorite part was saving people who were on fire by turning my high-pressure hose on them. Of course you have to throttle it a bit so you don’t hurt them. It’s a good example of early 2000s dub voice acting, too. I don’t know where Sega found these people for localization purposes, but it was on par with Shenmue for ham and cheese.
That was pretty standard for Sega. You should hear that game on its left, Let’s Go Island if you want to hear lousy voice acting.
This was another game that I went and watched a playthrough of on my own time, by the way. I just had to see the Brave Firefighters save the mayor after our failure to do so.
We could have played through the rest of the game if I had known you liked it that much.
It’s all good. I like the variety of hopping from machine to machine. Some are duds and some are great, but the experience is worth it.
I saw this game at Circus Circus a couple of years back and walked past it without giving it a second thought. I’ve been trying to hunt this game down again since. I’m glad I got to try it, at least. Like I told you in the arcade, it’s EXTREMELY significant to the history of video games.
I was about to mention that! You said it really moved the needle forward on 3D graphics, I think.
That powerful Sega Hikaru board we discussed earlier was made specifically for this game because the fire and water effects were too complex for the NAOMI. Since it was so absurdly powerful, it was the first game to do true Phong shading. Nearly every modern 3D game uses Phong shading in some capacity. Home consoles wouldn’t be able to handle that until the Xbox360, although Sega also gets the title of the first console to do Phong shading because they used a very limited version of it in Space Channel 5.
I never knew Space Channel 5 was such a pioneer. I just remember it as a cheesy rhythm game.
Remember that shiny plastic effect on Ulalala’s clothes?
Sure.
It was done with dumbed-down Phong shading.
Ghost Squad and Ghost Squad Evolution; one of Sega’s 00s light gun games. “One” because Evolution is basically an expansion pack of the original.
You’ll have to tell me about these ones. I know nothing about nothing with these two.
Light gun games are a genre that naturally tends to stagnate for obvious reasons. This was an attempt to breathe some new life into them. If I remember right, you play as an anti-terrorist organization and do exactly what you’d expect. What makes it unique is that it frequently has things where you have to stop and do a bomb diffusing mini-game, punch in a password, and other such things.
It doesn’t seem like it made much of an impression.
It had one other significant feature that was unique to light gun games at the time…
Ah, it’s one of those.
In Japan, the game had a save card system where you could unlock new guns, cosmetics, and other such things. This was around the time save cards were really taking off in arcades. In America, there are no card readers. I felt like this particular machine was mocking me.
Hah.
Even without the save cards, the game was pretty well-received. It even got a new arcade entry recently.
Despite that horrible name, I had a lot of fun on this one too.
This is one of those games that you will NEVER find outside of Gameworks. So it’s not very well-known.
It’s an interesting cross between light gun and fighting game. I’m not sure how well it really works in practice, but it’s definitely a novelty.
It’s a pretty unique attempt at a light gun game where the players shoot each other instead of enemies.
This was another one where I had to go and watch some videos of really good players just to see what’s possible. There’s a single player campaign and the later levels are absolute bullshit. I guess that’s true of many arcade games, but it’s just ridiculous how much health the opponent AI has and how quickly they act. I don’t know how any human can actually beat it.
Either way, you can tell this one was obviously made for two players.
I’m not sure a multiplayer rail-shooter style light gun game has ever been done before, so it was interesting how they ended up doing it. The cover system was fun, but I don’t know if it was my own lack of skill or a problem with the machine, but it felt really finnicky. I was never where I really wanted to be.
No, that was a gameplay mechanic. When you’re not in focus mode, your cursor moves around on its own a bit, so spamming shots reduces your accuracy.
Then I’m just hopeless, then.
You should have read the tutorial better.
Pretty standard fare for a light gun game. You’re a pair of cops trying to stop terrorists. This is the one with a time-slow mechanic, right?
That’s the one! This is Virtua Cop 3, the final game in the Virtua Cop series.
It was fun going into bullet time and shooting grenades out of the air, but it didn’t make too much of an impression on me otherwise.
The original Virtua Cop was the first rail shooter to use real-time polygons. The fact that the series as a whole is so basic kind of stems from that.
The “Virtua” line of games in general were always 3D trailblazers, weren’t they?
Yes, most of them are Yu Suzuki’s brainchildren. That guy is called Sega’s Miyamoto for a reason. I want to make a quick note about the Sega Chihiro while I have a chance. Once the Sega Dreamcast died, having an arcade board made to maximize ease of porting didn’t make much sense anymore, so Sega switched over to the Xbox-based Sega Chihiro. The Naomi was still the more popular of the two, even after its release.
So the board would make arcade-to-Xbox ports easier, then… but a light gun game going to home consoles in the early 2000s doesn’t seem like a particularly brilliant idea.
Yep, although a few games for the Chihiro did get Xbox ports as intended, this one got canned in development due to not wanting to make a light gun. Although they later did end up making a light gun for the Xbox because of…
House of the Dead is always good, clean fun. Well… good fun, anyway.
This series pretty quickly overshadowed Virtua Cop in terms of popularity.
Sega was early to discover that adding zombies instantly makes a game more popular.
This is one of the most popular arcade series. You have no idea how often I find arcades with all four games.
It kind of epitomizes the arcade experience. A sort of… distilled version of what people imagine when they think of arcade games.
Definitely. You can even tell just by the arcade boards that Sega made a new incarnation of it for every major new board they put out. But then the series just kind of stopped after the 2000s.
How much does Sega play in the arcade market these days? A lot less, I imagine.
…oh, we’ll get to that. Trust me, we’ll get to that.
This one wasn’t a Sega game at all.
This was a DJ rhythm game, right?
DJ Technika 3
It’s a great concept, but my fingers just aren’t nimble enough. I had enough trouble on beginner level when the only thing you have to do is hunt-and-peck with your index finger. I think you played on a higher difficulty, where the notes requiring some twists and turns and quick presses with multiple fingers. It starts to actually look like someone manipulating a mixing board.
Although I ran into this machine in Vegas, it wasn’t working then. This was the first time I had played it. All of these touchscreen-based rhythm games blur together in my head. This particular one is Korean.
Is this series pretty popular as rhythm games go?
I used to have a friend who wanted to play this, but I had never heard of it back then. She also played PIU, so maybe it’s well-known among the kpop crowd?
Could be. It felt a little similar to OSU too, so there could be overlap in fanbases there.
ALL of these touchscreen games are similar to OSU. Except maybe Reflectbeat.
They had the obligatory retro games sitting around the pool area.
Ah yes. The legally-mandated Donkey Kong and Pac-Man cabinets. Covered by ASTM-4250: Regulation Arcade Amusements. You have to have at least one, but the other one may be substituted for either Galaga or Dig Dug.
Did you get a good look at that Ms. Pac-man machine? Something was a little… off…
I didn’t, no.
Another unrealistic female beauty standard.
I think they didn’t want to bother to get the actual marquee and just had someone draw it.
From memory, blindfolded.
MonkeyBall was a favorite from my childhood on the Gamecube. I had no idea there were arcade versions. We saw a couple on this trip, although I didn’t play this one.
Monkey Ball was ORIGINALLY an arcade game. This, however, is just a ticket game based on the franchise. And that’s Pac-Man Battle Royale next to it since I doubt you’d recognize that one, either. Both games were hooked up to projector screens. In Monkey Ball Ticket Blitz’s case, it replaced the entire front half of the machine.
Actually I do recognize Pac Man Battle Royale. It was at the GameWorks in Vegas too. One of the few games I actually played and enjoyed there.
I’m surprised, although it’s common as all hell, especially at Barcades. The reason for those projector screens wasn’t obvious to me at first. I didn’t realize until my second visit.
What’s the reason?
When you first walk in, they’re visible from the first floor.
Arcade games as spectator sport.
As long as we’re here, I have to use the goddamn Monkey Ball Ticket Game as a chance to talk about the Sega RingEdge and RingWide, since it was the only game in the entire building running on either of them. After the Lindbergh, Sega made the strange decision to have their main board for the first half of the ’10s be two boards. Both were PC-based, running on Windows. One was Lindbergh’s natural technological progression, while the other was a cheaper alternative. In that case, it was a bit like the Lindbergh Yellow vs. the Lindbergh Red.
Downsides?
These boards are probably best known for running Initial D 6-8 and Hatsune Miku Project Diva. Guess how many games produced for these boards saw an American release?
0
Obviously not; Monkey Ball Ticket Blitz is right there.
1
Well, you’re right that only one game for the RingEdge was, despite that being the one that had more games produced for it overall. The RingWide had like 5, but a lot of them were things like this ticket game and a minor remake of Daytona USA. (note: Transformers Human Alliance was also here, which runs on the RingWide2.)
So it was kind of a dud in the US, I take it.
No, Initial D 6-8 were EXTREMELY popular imports.
So it was a case of Sega missing the boat on their own creations, then.
More like a case of Sega beginning to pull out of the Western arcade market. Remember that this board was released right around the time most Gameworks died.
Sega is becoming more insular, focusing on their domestic arcade market.
Oh boy, wait until we get to these boards’ successors.
With that, we’re done with the top floor!
RACING ZONE
This was a big thing for Gameworks since nearly all of them had one. I’m afraid I can’t tell you what they’re for, though. Maybe they used to keep all of their racing games in here?
I was going to guess rhythm games.
Nowadays, it’s mostly ticket games.
RACING to spend all your money ZONE
Maybe.
There’s something a little perverse about a Hummer racing game. Won’t someone think of the environment?
We didn’t play this one, but if you look carefully, each of the four machines has two steering wheels.
Why?
For 8 players.
Hummer Racing Royale.
Seriously though, there was another game they used to have here that ran on the same basic configuration. Outrun 2 SPDX. I was really, really hoping they still had it.
So anyway, remember earlier when we were talking about Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune?
Of course.
Well, Sega was apparently very threatened by it. Even though Initial D was Wangan’s most direct competitor, they also made this.
What’s the gimmick here?
The gimmick is that it doesn’t even try to hide that it’s a blatant Maximum Tune ripoff. You can’t play this game without going, “yeah, this is basically just WMMT….” Those games have a pretty distinct look, so it’s obvious when a game like this or Nirin is extremely similar.
I’m a complete layperson here, so I’ll have to defer to your knowledge. I will say though that if WMMT was meant as a competitor to Initial D, Sega making this in response would be like… Coke making another version of Coke to taste more like Pepsi. Which is obviously a great idea with no possible drawbacks.
Pretty much.
Life finds a way.
These are pretty common too, right?
This and the other Jurassic Park machine (which they also had upstairs) are so common that I’ve gotten tired of mentioning them. These days I usually post the picture, say, “life finds a way,” and move on to the next machine.
In retrospect, I should have gone with that quote instead…
Anything noteworthy about this one?
Of course! This is After Burner Climax, an update of the original 1980s After Burner. It was one of Sega AM2’s and Yu Suzuki’s big four full-motion cabinets. This updated version’s main selling point is that it has a very similar full-motion cabinet.
A celebration of Sega’s history, in a way.
Yes, but if you remember, you couldn’t get the full-motion aspect to work.
My mind may have blotted that part out.
The game is a lot more fun when the machine moves like it’s supposed to.
I remember this one for the simple fact that it was one of like maybe four games total I beat you at.
Sports games and fighting games are two genres I’m no good at.
I think we played Roger Federer and Roger Federer in a Different Outfit. I somehow feel less weird about playing two of the same character when the character doesn’t actually exist.
The Virtua Tennis series is particularly strange since it’s Virtua in name only. Yu Suzuki had nothing to do with it.
Capitalizing on that brand name.
Speaking of which, Yu Suzuki was mostly an arcade guy, but he did make one console game series of note. Out of curiosity, do you know which?
Nope.
It was one you mentioned earlier in this post. Shenmue.
Oh, damn. There was a sequel, did he helm that one too?
Yes, and the upcoming Shenmue 3. Those games were initially supposed to be a Virtua Fighter RPG game. Then it escalated into something else. I believe it was the most expensive console game ever made at the time of release.
Shenmue is one of those things that’s… a lot better in concept, or in retrospect, than in the moment of actually playing it.
I can’t disagree there; I’ve never been able to play it very long. It is a spectacular concept, though. Years and years ahead of its time.
This game is basketball.
It’s basketball in the way putt-putt is golf.
It’s huge. Look at how it dwarfs Virtua Tennis 3.
But still, it’s your basic basketball-as-skeeball kind of thing. Also, if you’ll remember, it was happy to take my credit swipes but didn’t freaking work.
Just be thankful that it was the only machine that seemed out of order. The one in Vegas was full of dead machines.
I forgot this picture when writing this blog post with Tom, so his thoughts aren’t here. You can see our scores on the display: 1250 to 300. I think my score speaks for itself.
Look, the game came to American arcades instead of Pokken Tournament.
You sound bitter.
It did well at the location test, but then the WiiU port was announced, and all plans to bring it over were scrapped. It doesn’t help that this game is a HUGE token eater.
It really is. Luigi’s mansion makes a lot of sense as a light gun type of game, but holy hell are the enemies ridiculous. We barely made it a few screens in before game over.
And that was with me helping. With one player, you will die FAST.
It’s got some satisfying tactile feedback with the way sucking up ghosts and coins feels, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it after taking two steps into the spooky mansion and getting my ass handed to me so soundly. This game’s difficulty is way too overtuned.
Speaking of which, take a peek at the name of the board it’s running on.
Latest gen?
This was Sega’s main board through the second half of the 2010s, although it’s more or less done with its lifecycle at this point. Once again, guess how many games were brought stateside.
Definitely 0 this time!
I hate it when people make joke responses in the middle of a lecture.
I know, that’s why I do it. My real guess is I dunno. 7?
This game and the arcade version of Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games. Two.
That was my next guess. It’s interesting to see Sega’s partnership with Nintendo in this format, though.
Sega? This game was developed by Capcom.
Bad assumption on my part, then.
It says a lot about how quickly Sega’s arcade presence in the west fell when one of the only two games running on their hardware was made by Capcom.
Last but not least, they had these big full-motion ride/games.
I steered clear of them. Have you played on machines like these before?
Yeah, they’re exactly what you’d expect. Sega loved dabbling in this kind of thing. There was a giant full-room version of House of the Dead 4 that is incredibly, incredibly rare these days. Let’s Go Jungle, too.
I love the concept, but I can imagine the execution being pretty lackluster. Do they live up to the promise?
Not really. It was more a case of Sega being very forward-minded and trying to do pseudo-VR before we had the VR tech.
Hopefully they’ll still exist and still be ambitious enough to do it again, the right way.
Raw Thrills beat them to it. There’s a new Jurassic Park game at Dave and Buster’s’ that basically does this, except with real VR. I saw it for the first time when I went yesterday.
Here’s another example of pre-VR attempts at VR.
Sega gets my respect for trying, but machines like these are probably a little unsatisfying to play.
This machine and the last one weren’t Sega-produced. Once 3D graphics became commonplace, everyone had the same idea of trying to do machines like this. The reason they have so many of these kinds of machines is that they were trying to kind of bridge the gap between arcades and theme parks.
This one WAS Sega, though.
I don’t remember even seeing this one there. What is it?
This is the Sega CyCraft, a machine I believe to be Gameworks exclusive. It was running Initial D. You stood around watching while I played it…
Well it certainly didn’t blow me away, if I can’t remember it.
I’ve played Initial D to death, but once I got in the machine I made a horrible realization.
What did you realize?
There’s no gear shift! You’re forced to play on Automatic, so you can’t drift properly! It made the game nearly unplayable!
I know your preference for manual transmission. You love to hit those drifts.
Anyhow, that was the last picture of Gameworks. I have one more unrelated photo, but let’s hear your closing thoughts on Gameworks first.
It had some of my favorite machines of the trip, but overall it just wasn’t that mind-blowing. At least in comparison to what came before and after on this trip, it just seemed… mediocre. Corporate, but in a sad way, like shopping at Sears.
What really struck me about this arcade was the sheer focus on multiplayer games. Even more so than Dave and Buster’s.
I like multiplayer games but I think I prefer the single-player experience in general. Just a personal preference.
Ho-hum, so you weren’t impressed by all of the rare Sega games. Did you at least learn something from this blog post?
I always learn a lot when I talk with you about the world of arcades. I don’t have your discerning eye for rarity or noteworthiness, but I pick up all these little chestnuts you lay down, and it’s a cool window into that hobby as a layperson.
What did you learn about Sega’s arcade presence as a whole?
Kind of like the Roman empire. Decline and fall in the west, clinging on in the east. Yes, the RingWide/Edge and Nu were a pretty painful era in the west, weren’t they? Do you think the next board will be any better?
You know, I mentioned going to Dave and Busters yesterday. They had a certain machine I’d like you to see, since it caps off Sega’s story well.
This is the very first game running on the brand new Sega ALLS, released just last month.
Looks sick. How does it play?
I can’t play it yet, since I promised to play through it with a friend. But I bring it up because it was released here just a few months after Japan.
Is Sega ready to recommit to the western market?
I hope so. A new board means a new era is beginning for Sega. All we can do now is watch the next chapter of their history play out.
