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A Look Into Old and Obscure Arcade Games Francesco-Alessio Ursini I’ve played a lot of arcade games in my life. Most of them have been Taito games. Ah, Taito. They created a shortage of 100-yen pieces in 1978 with Space Invaders, but times have changed and they have since moved out of the arcade market for good with the exception of the occasional dedicated machine [1]. Shortly after a group of former programmers, who had worked on Raystorm and G.Darius, decided to make their own company, G.Rev. But that’s another story - this is an homage to Taito. The second volume of their Taito Legends compilations for the Playstation 2 is due at the time of this writing, and many great games will be reprinted again, so let’s celebrate and promulgate the superbness of their magnificent and glorious titles! Maybe I’m overstating things. But, well, it’s “The Taito think-tank,” not the “objective evalua- tion of Taito games,” so you’re supposed to take all of my comments cum grano salis [2]. And maybe not. That’s something you will discover by playing the games yourselves. Let’s start the celebration! PART 1 – THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF OUR JOURNEY [1] Recently Zoids: infinity in 1998 [2] Latin for “With a Grain of Salt” 92 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3 There is one thing that can be said about Taito that should be enough to make them win. What they’ll win, I don’t know, but it will make them the winners, ok? That thing is this: Taito are the makers of Bubble Bobble. Yes, the two bubble dragons, Bub and Bob, are the genial creation of Taito designers, inspired by (unless I’m mistaken) the genial intuition of designers V.A.P. and Peacock, to be exact. The basic idea behind the game is pure genius: shoot bubbles from your mouth (with a hilarious animation) and capture your enemies in them. And after that? Hit the bubbles with your horns, of course! If you never played this title in an arcade, you should seriously question the purpose of your life. Don’t finish reading this article - go outside, find a place with a Diamond cab (or whatever they’re called) and check if it contains Bubble Bobble. Bubble Bobble is pure bliss. While some score mechanics work better in the sequel, Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble is still one of the most elegant and complex engines ever. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, as the ‘80s had one genre as its supreme ruler, as far as score-fests went: the platformer. I have already covered another masterpiece, Psychic 5, in Untold Tales’ first installment. Bubble Bobble came a year earlier, and shared the same philos- ophy about scoring: lots of secrets, big rewards for one-life performances, and a killer rhythm.
Actually, Bubble Bobble is from the older generation of platformers - no scrolling, one screen full of enemies, destroy them all and go to next stage, etc - and in this case, you have 100 stages to get through before you arrive at the bottom of the pit and save your parents from the evil drunken sorcerer. While doing this, you can obtain a shitload of bonuses, secret doors, special items and random stuff. It works like Chack’n Pop, and they have recycled this mechanic in many other games, one of them being Rayforce. Taito equals exponential scores. I think that it was the summer of 1986 when I saw this game for the first time. It goes without saying that the queue was incredible. I had to wait about an hour, and people were playing in tag play the whole time. My first impact was pure violence as the other person was credit-feeding. If I wanted to play, I had to join them - at the 91st stage! I don’t remember what stage that is, but I remember it being brutal. My few credits lasted a few more stages, then someone else took my place and managed to finish the game. I thought, “what the hell, this is one nasty spoiler,” and was pissed for the rest of the day. When you’re eight years old, these things mat- ter. However, summer and lovely, colourful games tend to work flawlessly together. So the next day I woke up early to be the first one playing Bubble Bobble, only to find many oth- ers who had had the same idea. This must be a really good game if people wake early during summer to play it, no? Let’s stop for one moment and analyze, with scientific rigour, one of the best aspects of the arcade settings: social life. To start our inquiry, I will define this setting: my uncle’s arcade, in its old location, very close to the centre of the city, during the hot summer of 1986. Bubble Bobble is the coolest game of the moment. There are the usual customers: various kids of all ages, teenagers, 20-something guys (and girls - girls love platformers, that’s the of- ficial dogma) which are usually CS or Engineer- ing students, older people who are engineers or programmers, random nerds, a few punks, etc. The common thread between us was a sheer love for Bubble Bobble. I clearly remember at some point, small meetings in front of the cabs (my uncle had 3 copies of the game) with people discussing tricks and strategies. At some point, my uncle, who was a passionate gamer himself, started compiling a guide: all the tricks, secrets and bonuses were stored in this small guide, which could be consulted while playing. After a while, the standard habit of many people was to organize “threesomes,” two players in tag play with a “navigator” telling them which tricks to apply and when. Now, let’s get back to the ending: the game can only be completed in tag mode. If you’re good enough to complete it all by yourself, the game will send you back to stage 66. I’m not sure if you loop the last 34 stages all by yourself if you’re playing alone. As I told you, it was impossible to play this game without a partner, so I never found out the truth. Not that it matters, after all. What matters is the sheer passion and cheerful atmosphere that this game Untold Tales of the Arcade 3: Taito Think Tank 93
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Why Game? 1
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Table Of Contents 4 - How Nippon Ic
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Editor In Chief: Managing Editor: A
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acter turn took less time, without
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what goes into a video game is not
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America have any plans to procure t
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to approach them. We have a great w
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desperately sought after collectabl
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that. Innit?” I sighed before inh
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company of the Fiddich family I let
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into the Electronics Boutique where
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much more consistent, possibly even
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Half-Life 2 - PC M. O’Connor The
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very inappropriate phrase. It’s n
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Anamoly Discrimination Force S^2 -
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time-strategy title set in outer sp
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of destroying a bunch of other tiny
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than one-hundred percent on tests t
Page 43 and 44: So, where are we now? Starcraft’s
Page 45 and 46: I Like to Watch Ancil Anthropy When
Page 47 and 48: ourselves.” When games left the a
Page 49 and 50: in response. There were many images
Page 51 and 52: Part 5: The True Quest for Secrets
Page 53 and 54: Guilty Pleasures XXX 51
Page 55 and 56: An Exercise in Creativity by The Ga
Page 57 and 58: possible suicides. Pressing Start w
Page 59 and 60: them to be precise, and for each, t
Page 61 and 62: e kind of like a puzzle game where
Page 63 and 64: minutes to complete this dungeon, w
Page 65 and 66: huge, but there’s no save game op
Page 67 and 68: friends with Dachshunds. I was usin
Page 69 and 70: ack down on the ground. I picked ba
Page 71 and 72: petting her, she gives a little gro
Page 73 and 74: of that for me. Regardless, I still
Page 75 and 76: staples. That magazine contained an
Page 77 and 78: us we had to wake up early the next
Page 79 and 80: I’m pretty good at SMB3. I can be
Page 81 and 82: Age twenty-five... where was I? I
Page 83 and 84: a planetarium. We enjoyed the atmos
Page 85 and 86: My birthday drew near without cerem
Page 87 and 88: through whatever means necessary. G
Page 89 and 90: tenaciously, though maybe not execu
Page 91 and 92: guitar. He had a wife (who time lat
Page 93: Killer 7 Crossword 91
Page 97 and 98: task. When we became friends when I
Page 99 and 100: Wesson’s guns, but I couldn’t a
Page 101 and 102: the island? Earlier, I spent a good
Page 103 and 104: character is incidental to the abov
Page 105 and 106: This high quality is a sign of the
Page 107 and 108: chain-combo, the game slows down sl
Page 109 and 110: Concluded on Page 124... Guilty Ple
Page 111 and 112: gazillion copies, barring some unfo
Page 113 and 114: Anything but Shredder. Shortly ther
Page 115 and 116: together through each person’s de
Page 117 and 118: still haunt my life, but that’s b
Page 119 and 120: external defenses, then enter Earth
Page 121 and 122: an entire stage long. Surprised? Yo
Page 123 and 124: Morality and Emulation on the PSP B
Page 125 and 126: tion and - as a final nail in the c
Page 131 and 132: Back Cover 129
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