Tag: arcade

Defender Strategy

Defender’s difficulty is legendary. Craig Kubey in The Winner’s Guide to Video Games said it was like being locked in a closet with a swarm of killer bees, and I actually think that’s not overstatement. And yet, people have flipped Defender’s score counter many times in a single game.

In an 18-minute strategy session, Joe Dearman explains the basics of playing Defender well, but I’m afraid if you don’t have a certain base facility it might be hopeless. Although I’m generally good at video games, I don’t seem to have it myself. Take a look and see if this looks like something you might be good at, but be warned, Defender’s controls themselves are complicated, with a lever and five buttons, although I dunno, game controllers these days tend to have many more than that. It is important, however, not to underestimate this game. It will rapidly annihilate you if you aren’t very good.

Both Defender and Robotron 2084, mentioned yesterday, were made by Williams, and designed by Eugene Jarvis, who still works in arcade game production today, or did last time I checked.

Another thing these games have in common is they’re very adjustable. Operators can choose starting difficulty, ending difficulty and on which wave it’s reached. This thread at arcade-museum.com breaks down the different romsets and differences between them. The earlier roms, “Blue” and “Green,” are generally harder, and increase in difficulty through 99 possible levels. The most common and latest set, “Red,” only has 30 effective levels.

At the higher numbers of Blue and Green, weird behavior can be seen. Defender has an enemy called the Baiter, which exists to harass the player if they take too long in clearing a wave of other enemies. At maximum difficulty Baiters become hilariously numerous, the game sending them in about once every two or three seconds. Watch a few minutes of this game with the wave difficulty settings cranked up to maximum from wave 1 (39 minutes). The extra ship level is set it easier than normal, needing just 5K to get an extra, and it’s set to restore all the Humanoids every wave, but that’s mostly to make the game possible, although there does exist video of someone surviving maximum difficulty with ships and Humanoids at normal settings, up to a score of 909K. (1 hour 7 minutes, somehow).

Here is the first of those two links, I’ll leave the other for you to click on if you’re interested. Both of them have the amazingly persistent Baiters, and in both of them the player manages to hold up under the pressure, for a while anyway.

Robotron 2084 Strategy from arcadeimpossible

It’s the third of this week’s classic arcade strategy find posts, and today’s dedicated to the original twin-stick shooter, Robotron 2084.

Robotron’s what I’d call a very pure game. It’s simple in play, nowhere near as complex as Eugene Jarvis’ first game Defender, but deep despite it. The left joystick moves, the right joystick fires, and until you get used to that you’ll have short games. In fact, you’ll probably have short games regardless. It is ruthless.

These videos feature host “Greg” and star player “Darrin,” who is the one giving most of the advice. The first video covers the first nine waves (5½ minutes). They set the template for the game: there are theme levels that cycle every ten waves. There are Spheroid, Quark, Brain and, for levels ending in 9, Grunt waves that completely surround you with enemies right from the start, and each poses its own kind of challenge.

The second video covers intermediate-level play, and wave beginnings (7 minutes):

The videos mention three parts, but it appears that only two were ever uploaded. They mention a site in their descriptions, robotron2084guidebook.com. In the 12 years since the videos were posted that site’s gone dark, but being a text site it’s pretty well preserved on the Wayback Machine, and has lots of good information. They also mention video on the high score site scoreground.com, but sadly it’s also defunct, and the mentioned video that was hosted there is probably lost. If there’s one good thing about Google, I guess, it’s that they let Youtube videos persist on their site for decades without culling them too much.

Donkey Kong High-Level Basics

Continuing with this week’s theme of classic arcade strategy videos, these Donkey Kong videos are from a variety of Youtube sources.

Rob O’Hara on basic strategy (9½ minutes). Note that he’s playing on one of those multi-machine emulators so the sounds are a little off.

arcadeimpossible talks with former world record holder Hank Chen (22 minutes):

Getting deeper into the weeds now. Here’s a high-level strategy video on just the Barrel (a.k.a. Girders) boards (41 minutes!). All the following videos are from Chambers_N Gaming:

Was that a lot to say on this one subject? Well hold on, that was just part 1! Here’s part 2, which is another 42 minutes!

And here’s detailed strategy on the Rivets (a.k.a. Ziggurat) boards, although it’s “only” 19 minutes:

That a single game can inspire so much discussion so long after its release speaks volumes about the quality of its design. A lot of it has to do with how much randomness is in the game. Even the best players die sometimes! Donkey Kong is heavily resistant to rote patterns, although there’s still things the player can do to subtly affect each board, and make it more manageable. On the Barrels boards, on higher levels, you can affect when barrels decide to come down ladders by steering towards them as they reach their decision point.

Classic Arcade Tips: Phoenix & the Centipede Trap

Let’s have a week of tricks & tips for retro arcade games. Here’s one you don’t hear about too often, Phoenix, and one still popular, Centipede.

Phoenix is a standard old-school space shooter. Your spaceship is affixed to the bottom of the screen, where spaceships should be affixed as God and Kazunori Sawano (designer of Galaxian) intended. It’s got a bit more atmosphere than most of them from the time, and is particularly known for being one of the first video games to feature a boss battle, with a big flying saucer with shields to chip through.

One trick in Phoenix, the result of a bug: if you shoot three enemies in rapid succession as they ascend upwards onscreen, you get 200,000 points! This is a gigantic amount, in the video below (18 minutes), which is blurry so you can’t really tell.

The interesting thing about it (which is explained here) is, it’s not a bonus. The score is set to around 204,000 points. If you had a higher score (which is very unlikely in Phoenix) then you lose points because of it.

As for Centipede, there’s a clever trick that takes advantage of a number of converging aspects of the game. First, nothing affects the playfield mushrooms globally (this was corrected in its sequel Millipede, making it ineffective there); second, the Spiders that emerge and periodically clear out mushrooms from the bottom of the screen never touch the first two rows on the side they emerge from; third, centipedes that make it to the bottom of the screen and cycle up and down through the player’s area can get caught by carefully-placed mushrooms at the side of the screen; and fourth, a trapped centipede may halt game progression, but it doesn’t stop scoring, as Spiders, Fleas and Scorpions will continue to emerge into the board, which are worth significant points by themselves.

The result is: The Centipede Trap. Observe (video by “pat,” 12 minutes). If you want to skip right to the trap in action, you can jump to an appropriate place here.

I’ve known about the trap for a long while, it was reported in an issue of my favorite classic arcade magazine, Joystik, in a feature interview with early arcade champion Eric Ginner, where he laid out how to make it, and how it could be useful. It’s a pretty boring way to play, but it works. It doesn’t make the game completely boing, Spiders can still be a big threat, and if one makes it across the screen from the opposite side without being shot it still has a chance to eat the trap. But it does give the player an opportunity to clear the upper reaches of the screen of mushrooms while the centipede is pinned in.

If it’s done on the first wave of each set of twelve, the one where a whole centipede emerges at the start, then Fleas won’t ever appear to add mushrooms, and you can actually clean the entire board of mushrooms, excepting the ones that make the trap. Fleas emerge, on most boards, when the number of mushrooms near the bottom of the screen get too low, but are programmed never to appear on a full-centipede board.

I’ve got some interesting strategy video finds for other classic arcade games coming up over the next couple of days, I hope you’ll like them!

Sundry Sunday: Game Over by PES

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

(grumble grumble… stupid WordPress…)

PES is an acclaimed and Oscar-nominated stop motion animator. They’ve done terrific work. One of their videos is game-related, and additionally references classic-era arcade games. Have a look (1½ minutes):

A huge old-timey penny arcade in Yorkshire

It’s hard to believe, but an “arcade” didn’t used to mean video games. Across “the pond,” to trade in ludicrous understatement, in “old blighty,” there is an amazing collection of old-style mechanical machines. Northern Introvert has an ‘alf-hour video exploration of them that makes for fascinating viewing!

Stuff on Raimais

Pretty hard to read. Is that supposed to be AAIMAIS?

Raimais is a sci-fi-focused maze game from Taito in 1988. Ryan Oliver, writing over at Hardcore Gaming 101, has written an excellent description of the game, including why you might be interested in it. Not only is it like a kind of Arkanoid-style revision of a pre-existing genre but with powerups, in this case maze games, it reminds me a lot of the early arcade and Atari 2600 game Dodge ‘Em. It’s got multiple routes and lots of secrets, including secret endings. It pulls some Druaga-style dirty tricks on the player: without a secret item, you’re doomed to get a bad ending. Even with it, you have to complete a sequence of Quick Time Events during the ending or your character gets zapped by a laser gun and just dies, no do-overs, no continues.

Furthermore, the hardest-to-reach ending was actually impossible to get! The game’s included on Taito Legends 2 from 2006, but there’s a more-recent Arcade Archives version (Switch, Playstation Store), that gives you the option of making the impossible ending possible.

This Arcade Archives trailer gives a good sense of the play without giving too much away (3 minutes):

Here’s a recap of links at the end of the HG101 article:

I’ve known about Raimais for some time, and in a reversal of the usual turn of events I had already read the gaming.moe and Sudden Desu pages before HG101 covered it. This is an excellent excuse to link to them though.

Kim Justice on I’m Sorry, Sega’s Political Arcade Game

It’s a really strange game even without the context that your protagonist, a fan-waving Japanese guy running around from sunglasses-wearing agents, and occasionally celebrities like Michael Jackson (probably his first role in a Sega game) and a barrel chasing him around mazes, is based on a real person, Kakuei Tanaka, a prime minister in Japan in the early 70s who was taken down by a bribery scandal. When he gets caught by the suits, they put on S&M garb and Tanaka gets whipped by them! Here’s Kim Justice’s report on it (19 minutes). Here’s about five minutes of gameplay.

I can vouch that it’s playable in MAME, and it’s not even that bad a game, certainly better than Abscam, a pretty terrible Pac-Man bootleg that’s probably our closest version of it.

Obscure Mylstar Arcade Prototype: Wiz Warz

I’ve lamented how Atari Games shut down lots of interesting prototypes over their operation because they didn’t perform well on test, or maybe other reasons.

Well other game companies did it too, and one was Mylstar, a.k.a. Gottlieb, the makers of Q*Bert and a number of other classics. I found out about a very interesting little game called Wiz Warz that I’d have loved to have found in a classic arcade (if I had been able to visit many classic arcades back then). Insert Coin has a nice demonstration of it (9½ minutes). It’s kind of like Tempest, but you can fire at any direction into the playfield, and there’s lots of other unique elements too. We’re still in a low effort mode this weekend, so have a look, and speculate about a game that could have been.

Nicole Express on The Legend of Makai

What a weird game Nicole Express has dug up, an excellent example of how interconnected video gaming can be, in unexpected ways.

The Legend of Makai is a 1988 arcade game from Jaleco, developed by NMK. NMK made a variety of games around that time, but one especially notable thing they did was publish a Famicom game in Japan called Densetsu no Kishi Elrond, which is a slightly modified version of Rare’s Wizards & Warriors. It’s no bootleg: it was licensed from them for release.

This is getting off the track a bit, but Elrond is one of those games where the changes are minimal, but what was changed is extremely interesting, since rarely will you have so a clear an example of what the publisher’s priorities are. In the Japanese version the level order has been rearranged, and your knight hero has only one life, but does have a numeric counter for their health, and by collecting health-granting meat you can increase your life total above its initial maximum.

Wizards & Warriors is one of those games that’s fallen into the classic gaming netherworld. Its publisher Acclaim no longer exists, and Rare has little connection with Nintendo these days, so while it’s possible to play it officially these days (as part of Rare Replay), it’s missing from most of the prominent avenues in which classic NES games have been kept playable, like the Wii and Wii-U Virtual Consoles, the NES Mini and Nintendo Switch Online. Back on the NES W&W was rather popular; its hero Kuros actually got a cartoon rendition as part of the cartoon segments of the game show Video Power (there he’s a generic barbarian who speaks in thees and thous forsooth, and has no armor). His second and third adventures were developed for Rare by the legendary Pickford Bros. But now, the series is gone, and probably will never be revived.

So why do I bring up Wizards & Warriors, a British game, in an article about The Legend of Makai? Because as Nicole points out, The Legend of Makai is a arcade game made by W&W’s Japanese publisher, and it has many things in common with Wizards & Warriors that can’t be coincidental.

  • Your character jumps in a similar way, that few other games replicate
  • Your character holds their sword out at all times, and if you jump into enemies you can stab them with it
  • You’re searching for colored keys
  • Levels have a verticality to them that’s reminiscent of W&W
  • You’re searching for permanent powerup items that increase your abilities, some similar to W&W.

Hardcore Gaming 101 also noticed the similarities. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know what went on there (maybe someone who can read Japanese can look through old magazines from the time?), but in one of those twists of fate, it’s easier to legally play The Legend of Makai now than Wizards & Warriors, for it’s been released through Arcade Archives (Switch, PS4), while W&W has to be sought out through Rare Replay, or else on the original cartridge.

Jesh & Zac’s 100 Facts About Gauntlet: Dark Legacy

Finding this one was a real treat for me. I’m so pleased that there are still people who care deeply about these weird arcade/console hack & slash games from a twice-defunct publisher. While in its final years it got renamed to “Midway Games West,” it’ll always be Atari Games in my mind, and that’s what it rightfully should be called, it having had a direct lineage to the first successful arcade video game manufacturer of all.

Gauntlet Dark Legacy is the last of the “real” Gauntlet games (it’s best not to talk about Seven Sorrows), and is especially notable to have received something of a redesign when it came out on consoles. I don’t think the changes were all for the better; the make work of collecting crystals and stuff does not substantively add to the game, but there are some nice additions, like extra class magic effects, poisonable food and destructable items (they’re nice in game design terms, that doesn’t have to mean nice to the player).

The Youtube account Jess & Zac arguably likes the Gauntlet games even more than I do. In a 27-minute video, they give 100 little-known facts about G:DL. Just knowing someone else cares so deeply about the games was enough for me; the information that fans have made updates for the game to fix bugs is even better. I should seek that patch out! I’m entitled, or should be: I own a copy of the game on Gamecube! Also, the N64 and Dreamcast versions of Legends! Me and friends in college played so much of N64 Gauntlet Legends….

That video’s pretty short. They also have a much longer video (1 hour 27 minutes) that rates all 60 maps of Gauntlet Dark Legacy. That one’s rather more obsessive, but it’s not like I’m any strange to video game obsession (Rampart), and it’s a game that isn’t talked about nearly enough these days, at least within my hearing. They’re in order from worst to best, so maybe skip through to the end? Up to you.

I personally think Dark Legacy is a little too long. Gauntlet Legends, its predecessor, is thematically tighter, DL’s extra characters aren’t differentiated enough from the originals, and in the arcade it took many more quarters to get through DL. But I’ve played through both games, and I’d do it again. They’re a little mindless, but less mindless than they seem at first.

I wish Atari Games had stayed in business and allowed to keep iterating and improving on the Gauntlet games, and not closed by stupid corporate cost-cutting. The United States relies on corporations for so much of its creative presence, but regularly destroys huge portions of its culture due to being judged by clueless moneypeople who are way to sure of themselves. It’s a problem that other countries suffer from too, but no where else is it so bad. The US just decided that the skill and thought that all of Atari’s people, who had worked much of their lives making games, didn’t matter. It’s a damn crying shame, and it’s far from the only time it’s happened.

LordBBH on SNK’s The Super Spy

LordBBH has a most excellent website, of the style that those/old of us remember fondly, made out of plain hand-coded HTML scrolling down the finite-length page, with images and writing. Like |tsr’s classic NES site, and Gaming Hell’s current one. (A lot of the pages from our list of great gaming sites are like that!) Some days I fantasize about remaking Set Side B in that style, but we’re daily, I’m not the only one who posts here, and I don’t think Josh Bycer would appreciate it if I suddenly decreed that he write posts in raw HTML. Maybe some other time, or for some other site….

LordBBH is on Bluesky, but is taking a break from all social media right now, which proves his great wisdom and power. His site is still online, and hosts descriptions and information on several old arcade games, which as we all know are the best descriptions and information. One of them is on an SNK arcade game from the early days of the NeoGeo, The Super Spy.

Images from LordBBH’s site, used for the purpose of providing context and to convince you to go to the site itself and read it!

The Super Sky is of a small field of three arcade games, NeoGeo first-person brawlers. It wasn’t too popular when released, but its two followups, Crossed Swords and Crossed Swords II, did considerably better. You can think of them as like Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! series, but less pattern-basis, more scaling, and fighting more opponents at once.

It’s an ambitious game for an arcade format, it has non-linear explorable buildings and an experience system.

In The Super Spy, you’re the titular uber-agent. You know karate, and can also box, and you take your lethal hands and feet (and a knife and a pistol too) against enemy terrorists in a series of three settings. It’s behind-the-back first-person yes, but you can’t rotate your perspective; you’re always facing north. An array of icons at the upper-right corner of the screen show which directions you can move in, and it’s the only indication if you can go south, or “down.” There’s at least one secret passage in the game that’s hidden that way.

You have an array of moves that would make Little Mac proud, including multiple kinds of punchse, but also kicks and slashes and shots. Each building you explore is swarming with enemies, fist guys, ninjas, mini-bosses, bosses, and exactly one woman, who you know SNK’s team of graphics creators were very normal about.

Dammit SNK. This isn’t even the most ridiculous thing about her art, which is that, in the Japanese version, her panties are randomized each time you reach her.

It’s easy to make fun of The Super Spy, but LoadBBH asks us to take it seriously, and while it’s quite unfair in places he makes a strong case that it’s worth your time. He’s written one of my favorite kinds of web pages about it, and I recommend you taking a look of you like weird arcade games. Go, go! And hover the mouse over images on the site to read entertaining alt text about each one!