Right, here’s something for you to ponder over the weekend. On Wednesday, on XBox Live (*) something new is being released called Game Room, basically your own little space you can deck out with things, most of those things being old arcade games (which you can play at 60 MSP for two goes, or 240 (about £2) to own them outright).
I can see myself spending a lot of money here. So the question is, if I was to deck my Game Room out in the style of The Crystal Maze, with four “zones” of Aztec, Futuristic, Medieval and Industrial, what would be the best old arcade games to go in and why? The best ideas may actually get used, depending on what’s on offer at any point.
(*) My Gamertag is Brig Bother, add me for leaderboard fun if you want. You might even get to come and visit the real virtual thing.
Immediate ideas after approximately no thought
Future: Tempest because that sort of vector graphics still look like the future in my mind, and it’s a glorious game to boot.
Medieval: Joust. Maybe. Thematically perfect, the flying mounts kinda spoils the atmosphere, for ‘medieval themed’. Gauntlet. Because dungeon crawling is medieval. Bubble Bobble: You’re a dragon in it. Albeit a bubble breathing one.
Industrial: Robotron. The industrial robots have gone mad and started to kill everyone.
Aztec: …Uhh… Not too sure here.
Some very good ideas there.
If they have to be a bit lateral, then so be it.
If it has it, Smash TV belongs in Industrial. Also if Sega decided to do an arcade version of Columns (which they best do!) it deserves to be in Aztec.
Also Spy-Hunter for Industrial. Remember that mystery game with the ‘dead body’ in the detective’s office? Yeah.
Possibly for the lateral connection category: Crystal Castles in the Medieval room. One, it’s castles. Two, there’s a witch you try to avoid.
Somehow, Arkanoid could go nicely in Futuristic, but then again, any game set in “the future” would.
Klax would probably work in futuristic if there’s an arcade version of it.
…Despite it no longer being the 90s.
Defender for Future?
Really going lateral – How about Breakout for Aztec? Purely because to leave the Aztec Zone, Crystal Maze contestants went through a hole in one of two walls, and in Breakout you’re making holes in walls.
Less lateral – Centipede, the largest living centipede is native to the South America, which is quite near to the right geographic location on a global scale.
La Lista:
Sudden Death reaches the 30 answer mark without a winner. So they start a new list: (ski p to 17 mins)
http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/todos/abecedario/L.html#724471
En Toutes Lettres:
Pascal is within striking distance of winning 100,000 Euro. (skip to 34 mins)
http://programmes.france2.fr/en-toutes-lettres/index.php?page=article&numsite=4139&id_article=12296&id_rubrique=4142
Ooh, TVE has a catch up service! I’ll have to explore that later.
Just trying to plan a good list. For extra credit, I think I might try to get four games for each zone; one Skill, one Physical, one Mental and one Mystery.
There is almost certainly some Come Dine With Me style shenanigans in this somewhere.
I don’t actually know what’s in the starting line-up, I know there’s 30 at launch with a view to there being over 1000 eventually.
Okay, here goes; I’ve taken a few liberties with some, but on the whole I think it fits quite well.
Aztec:
Physical: Toki
Mental: Columns (There was indeed an arcade version)
Skill: Congo Bongo (Um, rather more African than South American, I’m afraid)
Mystery: Time Scanner (A little generous here, but it feels right to me at least)
Industrial:
Physical: Crack Down (Would have been Donkey Kong, but there’s no way that’ll appear on Xbox Live!)
Mental:Pipe Dream
Skill: Badlands
Mystery: Hammerin’ Harry
Medieval:
Physical: Black Tiger
Mental: Quiz & Dragons (Taking the Mumsey role, there)
Skill: Dragon Spirit
Mystery: Golden Axe
Futuristic:
Physical: Xybots
Mental: Klax
Skill: Tempest
Mystery: I, Robot
Great stuff! I’ll be interested to see how many of these are “gettable” at launch.
I don’t know if it means they’ll be appearing in the Game Room, but there’s already Golden Axe on XBLA, and there’s a Toki HD remake on the way. I’m still not fully clear what the plans are for whether all Live games will get a Game Room incarnation, or if it’s limited to those which were arcade games which have been ported to Live – or if existing ports mean nothing, and it’s only going to be fresh ports from here on in.