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    Quality arcade. Been about 5 times. I entered a Guilty Gear tournament there a few years ago. Also, last time I went, I took my young children who mostly play Fortnite and the like. Absolutely ruined it for me by just wanting to wait to play more Fortnite there and didn't find the retro stuff appealing. The little ****s

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      Cheers chaps, I could talk all day about it.

      Atticus the Sopranos pinball was weird as it had pole dancers in the one corner and a bonus mode where you beat people with a baseball bat. If you hit the van it opened up for a score multiplier or something. Family Guy was fun with loads of quotes and tiny Stewie pinball in the corner! I tried loads of the tables, but Godzilla was the only one where I kept coming back. You hit a building and it keeps dropping until you can fill up the roof with pinballs and it goes into multiball mode. Pandomonium.

      @ Shiro mjbrooky, there's no excuse not to get down there!

      Honestly, it was just a blissful day and I loved the idea that I had the whole day with hours of gaming ahead of me.

      I grew up in the 80s/90s, with seaside trips and I really enjoyed having those memories triggered where I saw cabs I'd not seen in decades.

      I lurched from The Ninja Warriors triple-screen cab to Super Sprint (love spinning that wheel (like Ya Kid K)), then spotting Spy Hunter and Chase H.Q. next to each other, oh there's APB! Oh wow Temple of Doom original cab! etc.

      I made a list of all the machines I played as I spent a good chunk just gawping.

      Top Floor retro room:
      Salamander
      Nemesis
      Superman
      Spiderman
      RoboCop
      Aliens
      Alien Syndrome
      Shinobi
      Parodius
      UN Squadron
      R-Type 2
      Kung-Fu Master
      The Ninja Warriors
      Super Sprint
      Spy Hunter
      Chase HQ
      Out zone
      Ghouls n Ghosts
      Mercs
      Rolling Thunder
      APB
      Commando
      Double Dragon
      Elevator Action
      Temple of Doom
      Space Ace
      Space Harrier
      Robot Monsters
      Xybots
      Toobin'
      Tron

      2nd Floor Candy Cab room:
      Viper Phase 1

      2nd Floor Main/Rhythm Games room:
      Tekken 3
      Tekken 7
      Tekken Tag
      Baby Pac-Man
      Initial D Stage 8
      Time Crisis II
      Smash TV
      Quick & Crash
      Macross
      Taiko no Tatsujin
      Crimson Clover

      1st Floor Social Room:
      Centipede Chaos
      Tank tank tank
      Star wars battle pod
      Mission impossible the arcade
      Dancerush Stardom

      Ground Floor Pinball Room:
      Godzilla
      Iron maiden
      Sopranos
      Family guy
      Revenge from mars
      Walking dead
      T3
      Metallica
      Dr who
      Twilight zone

      Ground Floor Main Room:
      Initial D the arcade​

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        I think they had a Dariusburst AC 4 player cab at some point.

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          Originally posted by hudson View Post
          I think they had a Dariusburst AC 4 player cab at some point.
          They still do, but I didn't play it as they have it at Retro Realm near me and I tried to play stuff not available there.

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            My Retro Realm pass was about to expire but couldn't squeeze another trip in as I was seeing a mate who I'd not seen for ages.
            Asked where he wanted to meet and said "Have you been to that Retro Realm, yet?" The stars aligned!

            We ate together first and the burgers were pretty decent, to be fair!
            They'd made it to order so all the food was hot.
            Service there is great and I had another chat with the manager about some of the new cabs. He's genuinely enthusiastic and there's a lot of head/heart purchases. Like he saw a Sega Ferrari cab come up but had to pass as they're notably unreliable. Sure enough, the guy who did buy it had it 24 hours before it broke.

            They've picked up a few of those Dino King cabs and he may convert them, but would also like to keep it as-is because it is fun and getting the cards is a nice feature, but he'd have to charge to play it to cover the cost of the cards, but that goes against the freeplay ethic of the place.

            My son was dropped off later and I had a Thrillho moment as I blitzed Black Sabbath on Guitar Hero and got the top score.
            Ran out of time entering "QualityChimp" and later I spotted my son playing it and knew he'd see me at the top spot, but we both cracked up that the top score was by "QualityChin"


            They're still adding and swapping cabs, so here are some of the new ones.
            I also played some of the stuff I wouldn't normally go on like Fast and Furious (so poor!) and the basketball game when we got competitive!

            There's a new Hang-On cab, but it's modded so you can play a bunch of bike games, mainly the Hang-On series, but also AB Cop, which I love!












            Last edited by QualityChimp; 14-03-2025, 08:21.

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              That looks class @QualityChin

              The Eighteen Wheeler cab should really come with a trucker's horn you can reach up and pull. That would never get boring.

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                It's not really fair to compare Arcade Club's 4 floors with Retro Realm's smaller space, but there's still more than enough to play on, even on repeated visits. I still need to play that Eighteen Wheeler, for example HOOONK HOOOONK.
                We were mainly playing co-op or Vs. stuff. It's funny how boring some shooters can be (Terminator) but others can be so much fun.
                We finished the night winning the WWF Wrestlemania event, just as the lights came on to go home, so we played until 10pm.

                They're obviously enthusiastic about it and the games. We were chatting about Pac-Land and I said, I swear that didn't used to have a joystick and he said they added one, but the competitive players like the buttons to get across the springboard sections!

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                  I was always puzzled that it's been 12 years since Mario Kart Arcade GP DX and a new entry hasn't been made given DX seemed to do well.

                  Recently found out it's literally because DX did well - Namco are still producing new units of the machine

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                    Originally posted by QualityChimp
                    We were mainly playing co-op or Vs. stuff. It's funny how boring some shooters can be (Terminator) but others can be so much fun.
                    It's interesting, isn't it? I remember Asura and I talking once on here about this a very long time ago. Fundamentally lightgun games are extremely simple but some have the juice and are endlessly fun and replayable (Time Crisis 2) and some are just utterly boring (Vampire Night).

                    I honestly find it quite hard to pin down exactly what uplifts the best ones so much.

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                      I played Monster Eye 2 with Teddymeow in December and I had a lot of fun on that, because it was so preposterous and had fun with the giant Kong smashing up a theme park. It didn't take itself too seriously.

                      After shooting my 1000th T-100, I'd got the point, but it was short for a while.

                      That M.I.B. one at Farnborough was horrendously bad.

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                        I hadn't heard of Monster Eye 2 but just watched some footage. I don't tend to be the biggest fan of those kinds of positional gun games that incorporate crosshairs, but they can be a lot of fun in two-player. Let's Go Jungle had a 'Love Meter' which gave you a compatibility rating in between missions which was such a cool idea, tailored for dates!

                        For me, I think what makes a lightgun game satisfying is probably less to do with the graphics and sound and more to do with the overall pacing and structure of how the targets are delivered.

                        I think it needs to be just fast enough to get you into a flow state, without it becoming overwhelming, and with sufficient variety in styles of target (big ones that pop up in your immediate FOV and give you a small amount of time to react, small ones far away that you need to pick off more judiciously, large numbers of small ones that swarm you, etc).

                        I think if you took, say, Time Crisis 2, and re-did the game in a kind of MGS VR Missions way without any graphical detail, and made all the targets abstract shapes instead of terrorists and boats and helicopters and stuff, I think it would still be really fun to play. And likewise from what you're saying, you could probably give The Terminator lightgun game all the theming in the world, and it would still be boring.
                        Last edited by wakka; 14-03-2025, 14:44.

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                          Originally posted by Neon Ignition View Post
                          Recently found out it's literally because DX did well - Namco are still producing new units of the machine
                          DX does something which means I only ever played it once and never again - even if you win, it charges you to continue. Evidently though that's the secret sauce if it's still making money!

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                            Originally posted by wakka View Post
                            I think if you took, say, Time Crisis 2, and re-did the game in a kind of MGS VR Missions way without any graphical detail, and made all the targets abstract shapes instead of terrorists and boats and helicopters and stuff, I think it would still be really fun to play.
                            This is often called atomic design; you break everything down to its most basic level and use that to define your attributes for gameplay. It's a very useful way to build games.

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                              My favourite lightgun game is Lethal Enforcers and I think it's largely down to the structure of how the targets are placed, it's basically a glorified shooting gallery. The game itself is quite ugly with low-colour digitised graphics and unmemorable music, but there's something incredibly satisfying about how/where people appear.

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                                Hirst I've never played the first Lethal Enforcers (obvs know of it though) but your post makes me really want to do so!

                                Do you know which is the best port? I'm seeing on Reddit people saying that the PS1 version has accuracy issues.

                                I really need to get a CRT soon, in part to play lightgun games. I've been kicking the idea around for ages.

                                Originally posted by Asura
                                DX does something which means I only ever played it once and never again - even if you win, it charges you to continue. Evidently though that's the secret sauce if it's still making money!​
                                Yeah it's a bull**** move. It's fun to play with kids, though, so I can see why it's had such enduring popularity. The game is kinda basic overall however and while it's fun to play a variant Mario Kart, quality-wise it's not even in the same universe as Nintendo's efforts.

                                Originally posted by Asura
                                This is often called atomic design; you break everything down to its most basic level and use that to define your attributes for gameplay. It's a very useful way to build games.​
                                That is very interesting, thanks.
                                Last edited by wakka; 17-03-2025, 11:41.

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