We went to Cedar Point yesterday and did something we never did there before: Visited the arcade. It was pretty good, though perhaps it didn't have quite as many games as the New Jersey shore (on the other hand, that place had multiple arcades).

They had a lot of classics as well as new games. They had the only arcade Defender or Stargate I've seen. My understanding was that you needed to push buttons rather than use a joystick to move. Actually, they do have joysticks, but they only move up and down, so you do need to use buttons to move.

They had a lot of Vector games. Asteriods, of course, but also a vector racing game and (IIRC) Star Castle.

Space Invaders looked kind of cool. The real monitor was facing up, towards a tilted mirror, which is actually what you'd see. The mirror had a planet background painted on it, which gave it some detailed "graphics" despite that the original hardware couldn't do much.

The arcade Street Fighter Alpha 3 had a HUGE monitor.

FO played Missle Command and (of course) Donkey Kong. FO mentioned that the arcade Donkey Kong has a different level order than the one on Donkey Kong 64, but of course another difference is that the home version doesn't have a vertical monitor, so the graphics are somewhat squished.

They didn't have R-Type. That really would have made my day. I've never seen a real arcade machine of that game. I have to wonder how it'd work. Based on R-Types, I'd guess that game must also use a vertical monitor (in R-Types, you either need to have the status bar transparent, off the screen, or have the action part of the screen scroll vertically), but if so, you'd see less action horizontally.

I played Frogger. That was sort of "my" arcade game. I wouldn't necessarily say it's better than other classics like Pac Man or Galaga, or even that I liked it more, but by pure coincidence I've probably played it more. I once visited some people that had an arcade machine of it, and I played somewhere in the neighborhood of 40~200 credits of it then. So, I got fairly good at it, though by now I'm somewhat out of practice.

I also have the Super NES version of Frogger, and played a fair amount of it for a while. That version gets some shit because of how it's different from the arcade version: It has "enhanced" graphics (which might sound -- and even be -- strange for a one screen game), and no sound (I don't even recall if the arcade version has sound. I couldn't hear any yesterday, but it might have been drowned out). But the gameplay is, as far as I can tell, exactly like the arcade game.




For Super Mario Sunshine, I have 74 shines.

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
-Orwell