MarioKarnage
New member
Took my kids mini golfing with a view to ending up at the arcade there. I hadn't been in a long time and was pleased to see how vibrantly the arcade seemed to be doing. They have moved everything around and there were lots of new machines in. Sadly, most of them were the latest type of ticket-producing "games" (they usually provide precious little gameplay) but there were a few highlights:
1. H2-Overdrive. This was a direct modernization of Hydro Thunder (it was released 2009) and must either be licensed by Midway or in serious breach of copyright. It was very fun though and seemed a worthy successor.
2. Great new Sega air hockey tables.
There were only two classics left, but both were recent Namco combo games I was interested in when first getting into this hobby. They had a 20th anniversary Ms Pac/Galaga, but that had this hideous 21" 16:9 LCD screen in it. The other was the short-lived Namco combo of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr and Mario Bros.
The Namco/Nintendo cab had a real CRT, but it was huge, maybe 25-26" and was oversized for the cabinet. The joysticks—it were set up for vs. playing in Mario Bros— were the right size, but were really non-Nintendo-like. Really tight and not fun to play on.
These games cured me of wanting any of these newer re-issue cabs, like the Pac Man Arcade Party or anything that comes with an LCD. Aside from the aspect ratio being wrong for a vertical arcade game, the resolution on the LCD was just way too much so that the TV scaled the CGA up to some HD format res and you were left with loads of awful anti-aliasing filtration. If there was an LCD manufacturer that did a proper, native CGA LCD, I don't think it would be that bad. It's the scaling that makes these things look terrible in my opinion. I've seen people complain that they look to "pixely", but I think it's the opposite. They look like a computer that's trying to do away with a pixely look in software. Give me huge pixels any day, rather than 1 pixel=9 LCD pixels.
I discovered that I am more of a purist than I thought.
1. H2-Overdrive. This was a direct modernization of Hydro Thunder (it was released 2009) and must either be licensed by Midway or in serious breach of copyright. It was very fun though and seemed a worthy successor.
2. Great new Sega air hockey tables.
There were only two classics left, but both were recent Namco combo games I was interested in when first getting into this hobby. They had a 20th anniversary Ms Pac/Galaga, but that had this hideous 21" 16:9 LCD screen in it. The other was the short-lived Namco combo of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr and Mario Bros.
The Namco/Nintendo cab had a real CRT, but it was huge, maybe 25-26" and was oversized for the cabinet. The joysticks—it were set up for vs. playing in Mario Bros— were the right size, but were really non-Nintendo-like. Really tight and not fun to play on.
These games cured me of wanting any of these newer re-issue cabs, like the Pac Man Arcade Party or anything that comes with an LCD. Aside from the aspect ratio being wrong for a vertical arcade game, the resolution on the LCD was just way too much so that the TV scaled the CGA up to some HD format res and you were left with loads of awful anti-aliasing filtration. If there was an LCD manufacturer that did a proper, native CGA LCD, I don't think it would be that bad. It's the scaling that makes these things look terrible in my opinion. I've seen people complain that they look to "pixely", but I think it's the opposite. They look like a computer that's trying to do away with a pixely look in software. Give me huge pixels any day, rather than 1 pixel=9 LCD pixels.
I discovered that I am more of a purist than I thought.
Last edited: