Tag: cosmicsmash

DragonCon 2023: Arcade Things

More low-effort posts about game things spotted at Atlanta’s pop culture mega-convention.

A Cosmic Smash cabinet!

That recent arcade port of NES obscurity Mr. Gimmick!

A 2007 arcade version of Rhythm Heaven, completely in Japanese! This was perhaps the coolest game at the convention.

Sadly blurry in this shot, but: Space Invaders! Without the color overlay though. The monitor didn’t work for like two entire days, too.

Twilight Zone pinball, this picture being of the time I nearly completed the door but lost my last ball before collecting that hated Question Mark! (Don’t worry though, the next day I came back and did it, and played Lost In The Zone. I left with the #2 score on the machine–although oddly, it seems someone else who plays these games also has my initials? JWH? Their Terminator 2 machine’s scoreboard is full of JWH but I’ve never played it!)

The games were brought this year by Save Point, who mostly provided Japanese games and some pinballs, and Joystick Gamebar, which provided a good number or retro arcade machines and more pinball, including that Twilight Zone.

Two of the people who helped bring us the games from Joystick Gamebar this year, Winston (left) and Brian (right)

I’ve got hundreds of pictures that I’ve yet to sift through. More tomorrow!

Time Extension on a revival of Cosmic Smash

Have you ever heard of Cosmic Smash? I’d be shocked if you had. It’s the kind of thing that even I only know about from obsessive reading of obscure game blogs and Youtube videos. It was a Sega arcade game that got a release for the Dreamcast right at the moment the company was getting out of the console business. It had laughably bad timing, and it never made it out of Japan.

Yet, the game has gotten a cult following. You could deride it as merely a futuristic, three-dimensional take on racquetball and Breakout, but it’s one of those games where the style makes all the difference. Here’s some footage of the Dreamcast version:

Why don’t people make games that look like this more often?

Time Extension, one of those blogs that makes good posts so often that I’m tempted to tell you to read it instead, did an article talking with the creator of a spiritual remake called C-Smash VR, released for Playstation VR2 with a license from Sega and the blessing of the game’s original creators. It’s such an obscure game that I’d be surprised if it could be profitable, but we love rooting for underdogs here, even if I have a general antipathy for VR.

Cosmic Smash And C-Smash VRS – Reviving Sega’s Cult Classic (Time Extension)