The-Dossier/article/Some-Games-of-Note/Arcade Games of Note.md

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Arcade Games of Note

  • common available for: Arcade
  • schema: Video game

This is a list of video games of note that were seen in arcade cabinets in public venues such as video arcades, supermarkets, and convenience stores.

Pepper II

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  • published by: Exidy
  • genre: Maze-Runner
  • available for: Arcade
  • controls: joystick
  • date released: 1982
  • wikipedia: Pepper II
  • play online @ archive.org

To the untrained eye, it's a ripoff of Pac-Man: fill in all the regions instead of eat all the dots. But there's something about it that sets it apart — maybe it's that the action is more frenetic and somehow smoother (if slightly buggier,) maybe it's because the strategy is different (more emphasis on getting the power-ups just to stay alive.)

City Connection

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  • published by: Jaleco
  • genre: Platformer (nominally)
  • available for: Arcade
  • controls: joystick and 1 button
  • date released: 1985
  • wikipedia: City Connection
  • review @ videochums

A jumping minivan? Yes, a jumping minivan. And European paddywagons. And a devil-cat-thing with a checkered flag. And a balloon that warps you to other cities. How can you not love it?

Not sure if it's truly a platformer, though.

Lost Tomb

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  • genre: Shoot-'em'-Up
  • available for: Arcade
  • controls: dual joystick
  • date released: 1982
  • entry @ arcade-museum
  • play online @ archive.org

Gnarly game, but very hard. I especially liked the 3D effect on the intermediate levels with the staircases. (Even though it's awkward to control and far too easy to die on these.) The "word from our sponsor" interruptions are also quite cute.

There is something coherent and unified about the design of this game that you don't often see in other games; you get the impression that it was crafted rather than simply produced.

Well, maybe I'm overstating it a bit, but you get the idea.

Looping

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In this game, your goal is to pilot an airplane over some terrain and then through a field of obstacles — inside a maze, essentially. This is made more complicated by the fact that you can only change direction in an arc. You can also shoot out some bits of the world when they get in your way, and in fact you have to in some places.

Oh, and also, if you fly too high up, you bounce off the sky.

The original ROM images for Looping have been made available for free, non-commercial use.

Liquid Kids

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  • published by: Taito
  • genre: Platformer
  • available for: Arcade
  • controls: joystick and 2 buttons
  • date released: 1990
  • wikipedia: Liquid Kids
  • entry @ arcade-museum
  • play online @ archive.org

Very cute. Quite possibly a sequel or pseudo-sequel to The New Zealand Story, since you play what appears to be a platypus, and there are oblique references to TNZS (in one of the secret chambers, the platforms are arranged in the shape of the kiwi.)

The New Zealand Story

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"This game is dedicated to all maze fans." However, that should not deter fans of: kiwis, archery, flying machines shaped like bears' heads, laser pistols, magical fireball-belching staffs, and the like.

The port to the Sega Genesis on the Internet Archive (linked above) seems quite accurate, aside from the music (the tunes and arrangement seem to be the same, but the quality of the synthesized instruments is a lot lower).

Kick

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a.k.a. Kick-Man.

I remember it from a café in a small farming community in Manitoba.

Crazy Climber

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I remember it from a café in a small farming community in Manitoba. In the instructions panel affixed to the cabinet, the protagonist was referred to a "protagonist". This is where I learned the meaning of the word "protagonist" from.

Mighty Guy

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For a long time, before I located it again, I thought this was called "Superguy".

I remember seeing this at the Greyhound station in Winnipeg — back when it was located in the downtown, and back when it had a shop with a whole row of arcade machines in it. This is also where I first saw Super Mario Brothers, fwiw.

Notable because — well, it was a top-down view, which was truly top-down; you saw the top of the protagonist's head, not their rear or side profile. On top of that, you could jump. On top of that, IIRC, you could change direction while jumping. So, while running southest, you could jump over an obstacle such as a rock, and then while over the rock, you could move northeast, then west, then east, then finally land north of the rock. And this seemed more like lax game design and/or programming, than anything intentional, but who knows.