Recently in Arcade Games Category

Last January, or maybe a little while before then, I decided to set a small goal for myself and my arcade cabinet. I wanted to buy at least one native game for the arcade table each month.

I've written about some of these games already, but I haven't managed to get to all of them yet. I figured that since it has been about a year since I set my goal that it might be a good time to look back over the last twelve months or so and see how I made out.

The list of games, nearly in order of purchase

• Irukandji (blog, home)
• Titan Attacks (blog, home)
• Braid (blog, home)
• Cortex Command (blog, home)
• Gish (blog, home)
• The Bundle of Wrong (SYNSO, War Twat, and friends) (blog, home)
• Mactabilis (blog, home)
• VVVVVV (blog, home)
• And Yet It Moves (blog, home)
• Voxatron (blog, home)
• Blocks That Matter (blog, home)

There's also a few games that I'm pretty excited about, but I'm traveling right now it will be a while before I can install them on the arcade cabinet. I'm hopeful that they'll all fit in very nicely there:

• Super Meat Boy (blog, home)
• Jamestown (blog, home)
• Bit.Trip Runner (blog, home)
• Shank (blog, home)
• Cave Story+ (blog, home)

If my arcade table happened to have a different controller layout, then I'd be able to add a few more games to the list:

• Droid Assault (blog, home)
• Ultratron (blog, home)
• Scoregasm (blog, home)
• The Binding of Isaac (blog, home)

Those are just the handful of twin stick shooters that I already own, and they would all be playable if I had built an upright arcade cabinet.

Are bundles considered cheating?

I've listed over 16 indie games I purchased for the arcade table during 2011. The majority of them were part of various Humble Bundles. If I'm counting actual individual transactions then the count is closer to eight.

At least two of the Humble Bundles that I bought didn't include any games that I could use on the arcade cabinet and most of them came with duplicates... So I'm just going to split the difference and say that I did reasonably well last year.

Plans and hopes for 2012

The last couples games I was waiting patiently for were Super Meat Boy and Voxatron. I don't really have any specific games in mind that I'm waiting for next year.

I'd really like to get caught up with writing about the rest of last year's games. I'm already at least a half dozen games behind. I'll end up a full year behind by 2013 if I don't work harder!

Another game from the Humble Voxatron Debut, this is an exciting bundle for my arcade cabinet! There are so many great games that fit quite well on an arcade cabinet: Voxatron, Gish, Blocks that Matter, and Jasper's Journey.

Blocks That Matter

Blocks That Matter is a fun little puzzle-platformer from Swing Swing Submarine. I haven't had a chance to get too deep into the game yet. I hope this isn't a spoiler, but I'm up to the level where I have to out run the giant blob guy that is chasing me.

The puzzling aspect seemed pretty simple, but I have a feeling that I'm being deceived... I think there's already been two little secret boxes that I haven't figured out how to get to already. In the game you are a little robot, the Tetrobot. He is able to collect blocks of various materials (wood, sand, rock, etc) by drilling through them or bashing them a few times with his head. He is able to place down groups of four blocks in shapes much like Tetris pieces.

Some of the blocks, such as rocks, can support their own weight. Other blocks, like sand, will fall if they are not supported by another block or wall.

The controls

Blocks That Matter has my favorite kind of controls: every single thing in the game can be done with the keyboard. No mouse required for anything at all. That makes it so easy to drop it onto an arcade cabinet. All that was required was mapping my controller buttons to the correct keys.

I forgot to record a video...

... So all I have is this lousy picture:

I am cheating a little bit this time... I haven't even played Voxatron on my arcade cabinet yet because the replacement power supply hasn't arrived yet. The Humble Voxatron Debut will only be running for about two weeks, so I figured I should write about it sooner rather than later!

The controls

Voxatron is a neat little 3D platform shooter) will map very easily to the arcade controls. It uses the arrow keys for movement, z to jump, and x to shoot. The only other keys that need to be mapped will be enter and escape, for moving around the menus.

The game

Voxatron is a neat little 3D platform shooter. It feels a bit like Robotron with the addition of jumping. I've only played through a few levels, so I haven't seen much of the game yet. I'm (impatiently) waiting to play it with the arcade controls!

The blocky retro-style graphics look awesome. I especially like that the little light guy's head lights up when he is shooting. Voxatron will definitely be a welcomed addition to the growing collection of modern games on my arcade cabinet.

Update 2011-11-11: It is actually on the cabinet now!

The cabinet is back up and running and Voxatron looks amazing on there! I was very impatient and ended up playing through the whole "adventure" mode on my laptop long before the replacement parts for the arcade cabinet arrived. I know now that it much easier to handle the hold-button-to-lock-shooting-direction control setup with the arcade controls than it is with the keyboard!

A low quality camera phone video (sorry!)

I'm sorry the video is so dark and washed out. One of these days I'll find a better camera. Maybe I'll even talk someone into helping me record the videos!

I've been keeping an eye out for an arena shooter for my arcade cabinet. There are quite a few of them out there, but the majority of them require analog controls. I was pretty excited when I read about the Bundle of Wrong at OnlyLinuxGames.com.

The Bundle of Wrong is a pay-what-you-want style bundle. My expectations were pretty low, I didn't expect the games to run well under Wine. I was very wrong, all the games in the bundle seem to run flawlessly under Wine.

Every game in the bundle looks quite awesome on my arcade cabinet. Unfortunately, for now, most of them run a bit slow on there. The good news is that I will be upgrading the video card soon. A good friend of mine is letting me steal one of his old video cards that is a few generations newer than the one currently installed in the cabinet.

The arena shooters: SYNSO:CE, Squid Harder:SE, and War Twat

All the arena shooters in the bundle share one thing in common: they are all extremely colorful and psychedelic. Especially [War Twat]http://bagfullofwrong.co.uk/bagfullofwords/2009/05/war-twat/)(, which also comes with a "Colour Blindness Edition" for old people like me who tend to lose track of the bullets in the rotating color palette.

I've enjoyed playing all three games, but I think my favorite is probably Squid Hardest. The arena feels a bit larger and I really like the music in Squid Hardest. I have gotten that little tune stuck in my head a few times already!

A game with an awesome name: Squid and Let Die

I haven't had a chance to play Squid and Let Die much. I have only gotten far enough to verify that it runs well on the cabinet. The short description from the Bagfull of Wrong web site sums it up pretty well:

Squid And Let Die is a game. Collect the dots. Do not die. The board is a death trap. Fight inevitability.

The retro style, mostly green graphics bring back fond memories of the green screen monitor of the Franklin Ace 1000 we had when I was a kid.

The Bundle of Wrong is fitting in well with my glowing collection of modern, retro-style games on my arcade cabinet.

I set a goal for myself early in the year. I would like to buy one Indie game for my arcade cabinet every month this year.

I've tried my best to find native Linux games, and there are plenty of awesome independent games that run natively on Linux. The problem is that the vast majority of these games require some sort of analog input, usually a mouse. My cabinet has no analog controls...

I have been keeping my eye out looking for Windows games that run well under Wine. There are a large number of Indie games that run very poorly under Wine, most of them were created using GameMaker.

I saw the Buy Games Not Socks and I immediately hoped that Mactabilis would run under wine. I downloaded the demo and it ran absolutely flawlessly, so I immediately purchased the bundle.

It even runs well on my arcade cabinet with it's ancient Nvidia 6200LE video card, even with the video flipped upside down. I do have to run it with the resolution set to 960x540, though.

I was happy to learn that everything in the game can be controlled with the arrow keys and a handful of buttons. After mapping everything I would need I still had one button left over on my six (seven, counting start) button control panel.

Mactabilis is an awesome side scrolling shoot 'em up. The first thing I noticed when I started playing was that the game felt backwards! I'm so used to my ship being on the left.

This was very easy to get used to. For half of the first level your ship is moving from left to right, on the second half you reverse direction.

Mactabilis has an interesting feature that I've never seen in a shoot 'em up before. You can hit a button to move your ship between the foreground and the background layers. Enemies and obstacles seem to occupy one of the two layers.

If things get too crowded or dangerous in the current layer you can just hit a button to move your ship into the opposite layer. Enemies in the other layer become transparent, blurry, and desaturated.

This is pretty neat but I was constantly forgetting that this option exists...

Mactabilis also seems to have a staggeringly huge number of weapons to purchase for your ship. I haven't had time yet to get very far into the game, so I can't really comment too much on this. I can say that the weapon screen has a seven by seven grid of weapons you can purchase. I can hardly wait to try some of them!