I'm trying something different on the INCspotlight today - a mini-roundup of various retro and classic arcade games I've enjoyed playing over the years.
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(Original version posted on Channel Awesome on June 16, 2016) I'm trying something different on the INCspotlight today - a mini-roundup of various retro and classic arcade games I've enjoyed playing over the years. For those of you who don't know what MAME is or what it has to do with video games, and why that's the title of this particular blog, allow me to explain. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is an open source program that emulates arcade games, allowing you to play exact recreations of them on your own computer. The stated purpose of this is to allow the preservation of these games, as finding many of them in an arcade these days is next to impossible. In other words, if you have a hankering for classic arcade gaming, this will most likely be your best shot. MAME, and the individual ROMs for each game, can be found on multiple websites for free, and naturally, you're not pouring any quarters into an arcade machine, with the push of a key on your keyboard serving as an "insert coin" function instead. Best of all is a save state option for in case you mess up and want a do-over without having to replay an entire chunk of the game. (Or if you enjoy boss battles and just want to play those instead of plowing through the entire game first, which I like to do with superhero games.) MAME isn't the only arcade emulator out there, but it's my understanding that it's the most well-known (and the most conducive to a catchy title). As I've mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of retro gaming, and not just because these were the games that came out when I was a little kid. As impressive as the leaps in video game technology can be, giving them movie-quality graphics and elaborate storylines, there's something to be said for the simplicity of older games, which you can play and unwind with for just a few minutes. Besides, while they lack the immersive worlds and the deep characterizations many modern games have, the simple graphics of older games make it easier to give each one its own distinct character and set them apart from each other. And with the decline of arcades, or at least arcades likely to have more obscure games, it's only thanks to MAME that I've gotten to play some of these. Pig Out: Dine Like a Swine (1990) Rather than devote a single blog post to a single game, I'm just going to give some quick mini-reviews of some of the more obscure personal favorites of mine, in no particular order. I doubt I'd be able to get an entire review out of most of the games I want to highlight - and besides, in some cases, I'm kinda breaking my own self-imposed rule about not writing about anything I haven't played through in its entirety, so I can't give these games a proper INCspotlight review. Depending on the responses I get, I may make this a recurring series on the INCspotlight. Knights of the Round (1991) Battlezone (1980) I'm not a big fan of first-person shooters, but there's something about vector graphics games that really appeals to me. There's no story to speak of here; you're a tank blowing up other tanks and the occasional flying saucer thingie. A radar at the top of the screen shows you where the enemy tanks are, and there are various obstacles that you - and your enemies - can hide behind. Also, you're only taking on one tank at a time, which makes it a fair fight. (Although depending on your reflexes and gaming skills, it's entirely possible for you and the other tank to eliminate each other at the same time.) It may sound simple, but it's ridiculously addictive once you start playing. (The original arcade machine had a periscope you had to look through in order to see the screen - obviously you don't need to do that with this game.) There were a lot of ports of this game to home consoles, and the Macintosh game Spectre is quite a well-made clone of the game. (There was even a special version of this game made for the US military called The Bradley Trainer.) Wizards of Wor (1980) This is one I never heard of until MAME, and I don't even remember how I found out about it. Despite the title, this isn't a fantasy sword-and-sorcery type of game. You play some kind of laser-gun wielding monster hunter called a Worrior. (No, that's not a typo. Yes, that spelling is stupid.) You have a team of Worriors that you send into a maze-like arena, one at a time, and you shoot monsters. However, the monsters come at you much faster as you progress through a level, so you'll need to keep your guard up. You can either play cooperatively with another player (or the CPU), or you can try and eliminate each other and try and hog all the points (and the peril). There's a decent variety of monsters, and the possibility of having a rival team of Worriors to contend with makes it even more fun. Yie Ar Kung Fu (1985) An early fighting game from Konami, you play a martial artist named Oolong who must fight his way through a gauntlet of martial arts masters in one-on-one combat. Your opponents are typically armed with a particular weapon, and you have to face them bare-handed. (Although at least you get to jump, something most of them can't do.) I have something of a love-hate relationship with this game. I find the controls frustrating to figure out, to be honest, and I don't trust the game's hit detection, but I keep coming back for more. I've also played the Nintendo port of the game, which has fewer opponents and what I find to be easier gameplay, but I like the arcade version's variety of opponents. A home-console only sequel came out in 1986, but I've heard it was a side-scrolling beat-em-up instead of a fighting game. I'll have to track that down one day. Toki (1989) An odd but entertaining platform shooter with some beautifully designed levels and bizarre bosses, you play Toki, a jungle man turned into a monkey by the evil sorcerer Vookimedlo, who has also - of course - kidnapped your girlfriend, Princess Miho. (I'm guessing he's planning to sacrifice her or something - on the Game Over screen once you run out of lives, she tearfully begs you to keep playing or she'll be killed.) However, not only do you have the ability to destroy the legion of Vookimedlo's minions by stomping on them Mario style, but for some reason, you can spit some kind of projectiles at them. You can nab temporary power-ups, which not only include different kinds of attacks, but football helmets (heh) for temporary invincibility, It's very tongue-in-cheek, which is part of the fun, and the graphics are quite impressive. Toki's pretty easy to kill, unfortunately, as it doesn't take much damage for him to lose a life, but thanks to the various "weapons" and power-ups at your disposal, he's pretty badass. I played this once in an arcade, and then my dad got me the Nintendo port as a holiday gift one year, which I played the hell out of. (I don't remember if I ever beat it, though - something I could finally do with MAME.) Action Hollywood (1995) A top-view action game similar to Gauntlet, you play the role of a Hollywood action hero (or heroine, if you're playing as the second player). You have four films to choose from, each with their own sub-levels: "Temples of Chaos" (Indiana Jones-style adventure), "Excaliwood" (a medieval swashbuckler), "Transylvania" (horror, duh), and "Galaxy War" (see previous "duh"). Regardless of which film you choose, the gameplay is the same for all of them. Your objective is to step on each floor tile, changing its color, within the time limit. Along the way, you pick up all sorts of treasures - gold, jewels, Academy Award statues - some of which are hidden within the walls. Each level is also populated by a variety of enemies, and you have a melee weapon of some kind corresponding to the genre - a whip, laser sword, etc. - to fight them off with. It can get very repetitive after a while, but the movie buff part of my brain enjoys the concept, and the cartoonish graphics (complete with sound effects) make it entertaining to play. Captain America & The Avengers (1990) I'm going to go into more detail on this one, mostly because there's a lot more to talk about, but also because of how much I enjoy this game. I knew very little about Marvel mythology at the time I first played this - most of what I knew about superheroes came from the 1960s Batman TV show and a couple of PSA comics they gave out in elementary school, one of which was Captain America Goes to War Against Drugs. (The first real superhero comics I remember reading was a friend's collection of Luke Cage comics, and I'm pretty sure that was after I'd played this game for the first time.) Still, this lack of knowledge didn't prevent me from loving this game, and I think it's what helped get me more into superhero comics. The one and only reason this game didn't eat as many of my hard-saved quarters as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was simply because Ninja Turtles was everywhere, whereas I only ran into Captain America only once or twice. I've played it much more on home consoles and emulators than I ever did in the arcades. If you've ever played Double Dragon or the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, you pretty much know what you're in for. It's a typical side-scrolling beat-em-up with Marvel superheroes and supervillains, and a rather simplistic one at that. The plot is just an excuse for the action; Captain America's arch-enemy, The Red Skull, has built an army of supervillains to help him either take over or destroy the world, depending on what level you're on. You control one of four heroes - Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and the Vision (four players can play at a time) and fight your way through five levels of various enemies in a loosely-plotted quest (with in-game dialogue worthy of Ed Wood) to stop the Red Skull's mad scheme. Other Avengers, such as Quicksilver and Wonder Man make brief cameos to drop off health power-ups or deliver flying machine thingies to Cap and Hawkeye in the segments of the game where you're airborne (in which Wasp provides some temporary extra firepower). Mostly, you'll be button-mashing without much technique and making use of your character's distinctive ranged attacks. Fortunately, the levels are short, so this doesn't get all that tedious, the gameplay is straightforward, and supervillain miniboss battles are pretty frequent. Adding to the fun, comic book sound effects pop up during combat or when you blow something up. (The Amazing Spider-Man arcade game did the same thing.) Unlike the X-Men or Spider-Man arcade games, which may also show up in a future installment, you can use your chosen hero's special abilities - Cap's shield-throwing, Iron Man and Vision's energy beams, or Hawkeye's arrows - as much as you want, with no penalty or limit. Also, my favorite part of superhero games is getting to fight supervillains from the comics, and they're plentiful in this game, both traditional Avengers foes (The Whirlwind, The Grim Reaper, and Ultron) and other Marvel bad guys (The Juggernaut and The Controller). The heroes don't really play all that differently from each other, although Iron Man and Vision have the ability to fire diagonally when jumping, which comes in handy. For the most part, though, it's all about your personal preference. I like to make sure that certain heroes fight certain villains - for instance, I always fight The Mandarin as Iron Man, since they're arch-enemies in the comics, and same deal for playing as Captain America when going up against Crossbones and Red Skull. (Although you don't actually fight Red Skull in this game, which is why he snagged the honorable mention in my Top 10 Most Disappointing Movie Villains a couple years back.) Aside from that, though, this game is a lot of fun, especially if you're a Marvel fan, and definitely worth checking out. That does it for this installment of "It Came From MAME." If you'd like to see more, please let me know!
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