Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

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I remember Gun Frontier with very mixed feelings. Have you ever played it, maybe on Sat- urn - where you might have exploited the auto fire feature to make the game easier and more enjoyable? Back in 1990 I had a lot of prob- lems with it, courtesy of the insane number of enemies and the necessity to button-mash like a fiend. My uncle made a simple hack to partially overclock the fire rate, which was helpful, but made me feel like a cheater. I discovered recently that this game (and since I mentioned it, Carrier Airwing too) were some of the targets of such cheaty practices in many Japanese arcades. Hell, at some points programmers gave up and started putting auto fire in as the default option in shooters. Gun Frontier hasn’t aged well. Rendering techniques were pretty primitive, gameplay was a bit stiff, even for the time, and the game has a nasty ranking system and even worse restart points. Yet still, there was something about the game (even if this has by no means the best audio work by Yack and OGR), about its peculiar and truly original atmosphere, about the space shuttles half-covered by the dunes in Stage 4 and the incredibly climatic duel at the end of the game. The game itself is pretty simple. Well, one original idea is its power-up system. You need five small icons to get one extra power level, and 40 small bomb icons for an extra bomb. Ok, this is not a true innovation as most Compile games worked in that way, but that was the first time that I saw such an approach in an arcade game. Small but meaningful change, eh? There is at least one point in which you can send a mid-boss to its resting place in such a way that it gives you a few extra points if you destroy it by targeting a specific area. There are so many 96 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3 shooters since that use this mechanic that I find it pointless to stress again how influential this game has been. Back when I was 12, I couldn’t predict that this game would have such a deep impact on future shooters. Well, I didn’t care, nor do I really care now. My enjoyment wasn’t a question of gameplay. I mean, the gameplay is simple - shoot stuff before it shoots you. The final boss battle works like an old western duel: you need to be the quick if you don’t want to be the dead, leaving Gloria to be engulfed by an eternal nightmare. This is but one great thing about the game, much in the vein of the epic duels be- tween the white hats and the black hats. Except nobody is wearing a white or black hat. Actually, I wouldn’t even suggest shades of gray: after all, it’s just a game. The important thing is that there are two main reasons to play: score and atmosphere. As I said, the game hasn’t a particular score-system to talk about, so frankly, I played it for the atmosphere. Speaking of which, I think that its melancholic atmosphere is what made me think of Sergio Leone’s western movies in the first place. Atmosphere was why other people played this shooter as well. I wouldn’t label it as a very successful game – not in the sense that I needed to queue to play it, which is usually a good indication of success for an arcade game. Despite its relative unpopularity, there were a few people playing it with gusto and passion - among them my father and uncle. They were the ones who constantly made comparisons to westerns by Leone while I kept thinking of Matsumoto’s anime. I don’t know if the true West had improb- able heroes flying on planes built like Smith and
Wesson’s guns, but I couldn’t avoid imagin- ing that I was the lone rider fighting against all enemies to save the poor citizens of Gloria - feeling like a romantic knight who made justice where there was none. Well, that is more Clint Eastwood than Sergio Leone, and as a kid I was a bit of a reactionary. Luckily, I grew up and stopped taking Matsumoto, Eastwood, or romanticism too seriously. It’s embarrassing, but I think we’re all little Nazis at 12. Another shooter, Battle Garegga, had a plot involving two brothers, John and Bruce Wayne, fighting against an evil dictatorship that uses their father’s weapons to enslave people. John Wayne’s true name was Marion Morrison, and he used the nickname “John Wayne” to pay hom- age to Saint John and Bruce Wayne, also known as the Batman. Why mention Garegga? Because Garegga is the unofficial sequel of Gun Frontier. Not that I knew it when I was a kid, but many games, such as Batsugun, Rayforce, and Giga Wing, were heavily influenced by Gun Frontier. This realization goes beyond my fond memories of this title, my arcade memories es- pecially. Other arcade games captured my atten- tion after this title of course, and a good portion of them were made by Taito. BACK TO NOW So, Taito’s glory is back again on PS2. Ok, I must admit that hi-res is not my wet dream, but if you don’t mind emulation you can cough up a few bucks and get 25 great games in one package. These packs will, in some sense, allow you to enter the marvelous palace of gaming pleasure which was the arcade market of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Have fun! Untold Tales of the Arcade 3: Taito Think Tank 97
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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
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So, where are we now? Starcraft’s
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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 and 94: Killer 7 Crossword 91
Page 95 and 96: Actually, Bubble Bobble is from the
Page 97: task. When we became friends when I
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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