Hi Tom.
Well some of those old games were going a bit too! far in difficulty, I mean
the ones where you couldn't actually progress without real trouble and many
tries. i never played original montizuma's revenge, but some of the old
amstrad avoidance platformers, games like manic miner, jet set willy or
spikey the hedgehog, ---- games that in retroremake parlance are now called
avoidemups were horribly! difficult.
This is why I am such a fan of games like mega man that got this balance
exactly right, hard enough to be pretty dam challenging, but not so that you
would be utterly turned off, sinse you'd get further each time, --- -though
of course megaman isn't really an arcade game (original the original 1986
one which did! have a scoring system), sinse the hole point was! to complete
it and see all the levels and bosses.
Myself, i love extra content, but it's got to be worth working for and not
just like a film you stick on and essentially play to the end then never
watch again because you've seen it.
This was one thing I felt about grizly gulch and chillingham, as well as
some other space invaders games, ---- especially the simple ones like
mudsplat. Even terraformers suffered from this problem a little I found.
however good the game, if it's going to be finished the first day, then
achievements aren't really going to achieve much :D.
There is also for me however an element of exploration, even it's barest and
most simple sense.
I don't know if you ever played the atari game berzerk, in which you
wandered around a maze the size of one screen shooting robots. I used to
love Berzerk, jsut because even though they were a pregenerated set of five
or so mazes with robots scattered at random, the chance to work through
them, blasting the nasty rrobots, avoiding deaths when the game generated me
slap back next to a robot etc was really stimulating.
This is something of course I grew to enjoy far more with games with their
own maze layout like turrican and metroid.
then of course, there is the fact that arcade wrack up score games are
simpler and easier to play than harder ones. I have just bought king of
dragon pass as you know, and in general the detail and complexity of the
game is everything I could want. However, I can guarantee there will be
times when I'm simply not mentally up to the challenge of very detailed
management and story, and want to just murder some robots for a bit of fun!
This is also I'll add though where progressive achivements can help, and
where platforms like the Iphone are bringing back that sort of game, ----
sinse if I for instance were playing berzerk and there was a trophy to urn
for blasting ten thousand robots or completing a tthousand rooms of the
maze in successive games, not only! would a five minute blast be fun on it's
own, but it'd also be contributing to an over all statistic and thus giving
a sense of accomplishment.
As witness this with audio games, look how well Liam's arcade games with
trophy's have done. I probably wouldn't have bought judgement day myself if
it hadn't had the trophy system, sinse in the end it is! just another space
invaders game, and it is the trophy system that would incline me to buy
super egghunt (though currently I'm a little busy with my Iphone to
considder arcade games).
So, I wouldn't say it's a case of the ability to have! extra achievements or
content that is the culprit, rather people's inability to work for them, or
to enjoy other aspects of games such as exploration.
Btw, one thought does occur to me about arcade games. Part of the problem in
access terms, is that everything we have is either a space invaders sterrio
targiting fest, or a varient on egghunt.
I've often thought that an arena shooter like robotron 2000, or indeed
berzerk (provided it didn't get bogged down in maze mechanics), would be a
great idea for an audio arcade game. the fp perspective would give the same
kind of absorbing experience as in packman talks, but players could really
let rip with the amo, run around the arena and blast at speed.
Heck, to speed up the game it wouldn't even need to be a complete! first
person game with 360 movement, 8 way running would be more than adequate,
with a strafe feature to blast away in front of you as you shuffled
sideways, sinse in those sorts of games fast movement and shooting on the
run was what tended to be the best style of play.
Super deakout was I think the game that came closest to this, but even then,
there was no actual weaponry to be shot in the game, much less weapon power
ups, and there were only a max of two enemies in play at once, where as with
those arena shooters there could be literally hundreds, and even in audio
you could probably get away with more.
Maybe something like that would help get audio arcade games out of their
current rut.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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