Back To The Seaside

The Days When Arcade Machines Went Up From Ten Pence A Go

Of course, whilst all this Home Computer stuff was taking off, that doesn't mean to say that the Arcades just died. I mean, they're dead now obviously. Go and have a look at one now. They're full of either OLD MEN who are still putting two pence pieces into bandits, or LITTLE GIRLS on those fucking awful dancemat things. Rubbish. Burn them all down and turn them into crack dens, it's the only way things are ever going to get back on track.
Anyway, throughout the 80's and most of the 90's, arcade machines were still going strong, they just put the prices up that's all.
We covered all the early arcade machines way back on the first page of this guide ( in immense, intensively researched detail by the way if you haven't read that bit) so let's kick off now with a look at one of the later ones like, oooh, Gauntlet or something.
I wasn't terribly keen on Gauntlet myself. They may as well
have called it Advanced Caretaker Simulator or something,
as the object of the game was simply to walk up and down
lots of dark corridors, finding keys to open doors. I mean,
some people have to go to work and do that for real for £2.80
an hour, the main difference being that they might get a real
life dog for a bit of company.
However, Atari did try and put a bit of a spin on the tired old
'caretaker job' theme by turning it into a fantasy game with
elves and wizards and things, who had to shoot down nasty
monsters whilst picking up treasure and then trying frantically
to find the exit to the next (very similiar) level. But what makes Gauntlet really special was the fact that it was the first major multi-player game, so you and all your mates could pop down to the leisure centre, shove a couple of quid in the machine and then spend the next couple of hours shouting things like "Quick! I've found the exit!", "Over here, I'm trapped!", "What you going over there for, dickhead?", "Why do I have to be the woman? I'm always the woman!" and "God, I'm bored, I'm going for a game of pool."
Incidentally, if any pedantic out there wants to write in and point out that there were earlier multi-player coin-ops, then yes, you're probably right but Gauntlet was the first BIG one that took the world by storm and in fact Atari applied for, and eventually were granted a patent for the "Multi-Player, Multi-Character Co-Operative Video Game Play With Independent Player Entry And Departure". So piss off.

As the home computer industry really began to kick off, video game manafacturers had to really dig deep to find new and innovative ways of attracting the customers in from the rainy streets of Mablethorpe. One idea that always worked for me was the good old 'STRAP SOMETHING BIG ONTO THE FRONT OF THE CABINET LIKE A BIG GUN OR SOMETHING' concept. Probably the most popular of these turned out to be Operation Wolf in which you had to strategically capture Army bases and rescue hostages, by, erm, shooting everybody to smithereens with your big gun, even nurses if you felt like it. The sequel Operation Thunderbolt was even better because it came with (wait for it...) TWO BIG GUNS! This meant you and your mate could shoot everybody on screen at the same time, side by side and was possibly a great cure for potential homosexuality.
My favourite gun-game came a lot earlier though
with Chiller, released in 1986 by Exidy. For all
those modern day fannies who think that shit like
Mortal Kombat is a bit gory, take a look at this
Grandaddy of gore.
In Chiller, you point your mounted gun at a
single screen and then have a certain amount of
time in which to shoot apart people's body parts,
resulting in bones and blood being splattered all
across the screen, accompanied by realistic and
truly disturbing shrieks of horror. Ace! You
could even shoot the edges of torture racks to
nicely stretch apart the human target attached to
it, or shoot at guillotines in order to release the
blade and let it fall onto the poor woman's neck
beneath. Chiller was really genuinely horrific and atmospheric, and I would happily pay good money for one to have in my house, if I wasn't so homeless at the moment.

Steering wheels were another obvious thing to mount to a cabinet which brings us nicely onto the best driving coin-op ever made, Chase H.Q, released by Taito in 1988.
On the whole, racing games were really cool but
could get a bit boring. Outrun looked very nice
and all that but there really wasn't much to do
except keep your foot down on the pedal and
steer left and right occassionally. Chase H.Q
changed all that - here, the objective wasn't
merely to reach the end before your time ran
out - in this game you had to track down a
criminal car and ask him politely to stop so that
he couldbe arrested and fairly tried for his crimes.
If that didn't work, you had no choice but to
RAM THE FUCKER RIGHT OFF THE ROAD
by bumping into the back of his car repeatedly
until his car caught fire and he burned horribly to
death in the wreckage.
It was dead hard as well, you had to do some proper hardcore driving to keep sight of the target vehicle or else he'd get away and rape some more women or whatever. You had three turbo boosts though, which a proper Chase H.Q nut would always save until the target vehicle was in sight, so you were less likely to lose him - just keep turboing into the back of him until he explodes! Chase H.Q was a real adrenalin rush and is still fantastic to play today with the aid of the wonderful MAME software.

Filthy Japanese Porn

Oh, those wonderful Japanese japesters! Not for them the innocent pleasures of playing at driving a speedy car or rescuing a princess from an evil Warlock from The Dungeon Of Doom! (Well, unless the Princess was frigging herself with a banana at the time, in which case fair play, it becomes marketable.)
As usual, the Japanese insisted on shoehorning
pornography into every new media possibilty, and so
whilst us Brits were happily playing Gauntlet and
Paperboy, the fun-loving Japanese Arcade Halls were
crammed with strategic and well thought out puzzle
games, where the goal was to progress to the next level
and be rewarded with a nice graphic of a woman fisting
herself.
Naturally, none of these made it into Britain at the time,
but the fun of discovering the holy grail that is MAME, is
that EVERY arcade game ever made in the world is
available and you'll be amazed at the hundreds and
hundreds of filthy Japanese games you can now play at
your leisure.
Sadly, most of these are based on the classic Chinese tile game Mahjong which is the most complicated game in the world and I have yet to meet anybody who understands the rules of it. I spent a good half an hour trying to master Mahjong and eventually admitted defeat. I mean really, it's just stupid.
But there are lots of 'fun' Japanese arcade games for you to go and discover. Miss World 96 is a corker, based on the old Qix game in which you're a little dot and you have to fill up 75% of the screen by drawing lines across it whilst avoiding the nasties. Naturally, in the Japanese version, you're simultaneously uncovering a picture of a glamour model pissing into a bucket and this, for me, adds to to the charm and is a new twist on an old format.
But they really will just shove pornography onto
ANYTHING. Pinball, pool, puzzle games, shoot em
ups, it doesn't matter, just shove a naked bird in
there somewhere and the Japanese will lap it up.
Perhaps my favourite though is Don Den Lover
which is actually a cracking Othello game with
posh graphics and everything, with the added
bonus of your female opponent stripping off if you
can beat her. I don't know why stuff like this
never made it over here.

Looking To The Future And Not Being Stuck In The Eighties

So, as we finally attempt to bring this comprehensive guide to a close, where are we left viewers?
As noted above, the Arcades are now full of dancemats and fruit machines and nobody really bothers with them anymore. And kids today are growing up on a diet of shitty monotonous Playstation games created at board meetings by executives. So, shall we end the guide on this horrendously downbeat note?
Yes, why not?
No, I meant to say NO!
Because, viewers, the internet has saved our souls by going to back to the roots of computer programming. Nowadays, it's easier than ever for a budding programmer to write a game all by himself and just shove it on the internet for everybody to play for free! No marketing, no money-grabbing, no cock-sucking executives anywhere in the mix at all, just people writing games all by themselves and then letting other people play them, harking back to the old 'games created by one warped mind' thing I was lamenting earlier in the Guide. Hooray for the internet!
Just take a look at some of the wonderful stuff that is
around already and playable to your good self in just
minutes. One of the best games around, and entirely free,
is the brilliant Pimp's Quest. A terrific mix of fast-paced
arcade action and adventure strategy in which you have to
survive a night on the town by keeping the drug dealers
happy, stealing cars and trying to become a top class
pimp. It's dead funny, dead clever and dead brilliant. And
the great thing is that stuff like this is everywhere, it's just
a matter of finding them.
FHM, as well as being a magazine devoted to tits and
football, also host a great site here which regularly updates the best 100 games around on the internet at the moment and some of them are absolutely awesome. And don't forget that for those of you who are feeling a bit more retro, there's always the brilliant Retro Remakes site, full of dedicated programmers who are bringing you quality updates on classic games for love not money.
That's it. I'm going now. If any of you have any thoughts on the material I have presented to you in this intensively researched guide, why not keep them to yourself? I'm sick of thinking about computer games now. I'm going outside to have fulfilling sex.

With thanks to Dean Smales who pointed out that Gauntlet was a bit like a Caretakers Job and wanted crediting for it.

Rough Guide To Home Computing & The Arcades
Click here to go back to the Title page and view the whole Guide