Time blasts by. This is a 21st-century, networked, 3D, arena-based robo combat dreamboat by Capcom, playing on a cathode ray tube in a yellowing hulk of a Sega Blast City cabinet from the 1990s.
I’m hearing bad things about the independents. Even Sega is shutting shops. Akiba 2-kan – iconic! – is gone. Photos of staff bowing outside in thanks for years of patronage from also-bowing, clapping crowds.
Teeth bared; talons out. But look at the posture of their right hands. Claws, but relaxed claws, ready to swoop at the attack buttons with quite a travel. Wouldn’t your response be quicker if you started nearer the buttons? It’s not that kind of reflexes. You play with rhythm, where the travel helps. Reflexes are to quickly change rhythm. If fighters were music games they’d be jazz duo jam sessions.
The 2D fighter: as a genre, perfect. Almost nothing pushes the edges of the concept: everything’s definitely a fighter or definitely not.
Mortal Kombat was supposed to be a Jean-Claude Van Damme game. No JC in the end, so they went for guys in pointy hats and balaclavas pulling each other’s spines out. And lo, born was a multimedia franchise up there with Care Bears and My Little Pony.
MM Land has this kind of peripheral vision tester game where you whack light-up buttons on a board right in your face.
Out of the office, pop your umbrella. Hide your eyes and shuffle with the crowds: synthetic-mix suits are both the camouflage and the background.
The Versus City is a two-faced cab, smiling innocently at the player on each side.
Tokyo arcades had been waiting for me since my schooldays. They sent me loveletters tucked into 90s gaming mags and little video missives on Games Master. They promised to save themselves for me. Finally, years later, I got on the plane.
Everyone thinks their childhood games were gold. But only 90s kids were right.
Do you want to play with a fake vacuum cleaner? No worries.
Dare you read this ghostly Friday tale? And can you solve the riddle of the tile?
I thought “Battle Arena” was just a pretentious name for this arcade’s deadbeat basement.
