After Burner is… a game I never played originally. Yeah, even when I was a kid, arcades weren’t very big around here, and as a result I never got to play After Burner. But in more recent years I did end up playing quite a few games in the series, and loving it. Well, except for the NES version, but that’s a topic for another day.

After Burner Climax came out in the arcades in 2006. Since there’s no arcades around here (the ones we DO have are just those ticket game things), I never got to play it… until now. When I found out the game was coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360, I knew I had to play it, because videos of the arcade version looked so damn awesome.

So is the game as awesome as it looked in the videos of the arcade version? Read on and find out!

Developer: Sega-AM2
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: April 22th 2010 on Playstation 3, April 21st 2010 on Xbox 360 (PS3 version reviewed)
Platforms: Arcades, Playstation 3, Xbox 360

Genre: Rail Shooter
Players: 1
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Presentation
The presentation is great. Really. The graphics are awesome. Yeah, technically, if you take your time to look at it, you’ll see that most of the things are made in a very simplistic way but… what the fuck are you doing taking your time to look at stuff? You have planes and turrets and missiles to blow up and avoid! The graphical quality here might not be perfect, but everything is so frantic and fast-paced you don’t have time to care about that. And, either way, the game looks really good. The planes look nice, the explosions are good, the environments look great… there’s really not much to complain about here. I’ll just note here that the PS3 version has no anti-aliasing (the 360 version does), and I’ll also say that it doesn’t affect the game whatsoever.

And the music is really good. I’m that guy that frequently says that modern video game music sucks, but in this case I’d be completely wrong. Not only is the music from the game really good and fits the mood perfectly, you even have access to the badass music from After Burner 2… What more could I ask for? And the audio cues for everything going on in the game. The game tells you when you lock-on enemies so you can shoot them out of the sky, 2 teamates are constantly telling you what’s going on, you can clearly hear the missiles coming at you… Nothing wrong on this aspect either.
The presentation is near perfect.

Gameplay
Basics
The basic gameplay is quite simple. You move around, you shoot your guns, you shoot missiles and you try to get as far as you can and kill as many enemies as you can. If you don’t touch anything your plane moves back to a “neutral” position.

As you move around, your crosshair moves as well. When your crosshair passes over an enemy, you lock-on to that enemy, and you can lock-on to as many enemies as you want. You shoot missiles one at a time at each of them with the Square button, so you should try shooting one or two missiles per enemy, depending on how many hits they take (which is shown by the lock-on symbol on them). The missiles are homing, so they’ll usually find their target. Missiles are limited, but they recharge automatically and rather fast, so you’ll rarely need to wait for them to recharge. You CAN try to shoot enemies with your gun (hold the X button to shoot it), but it’s not as effective, though a few enemies can only be hit with the gun.

Moving is also pretty important, as enemy attacks are coming from everywhere, and moving properly will keep you out of danger. And you have to avoid mountains, or walls if you’re in an enclosed area, so swift movement will get you out of tough situations. You can also accelerate and deccelerate to avoid certain enemies, and you can even DO A BARREL ROLL. Which is my only minor gripe with the game, you have no control over your plane while doing a barrel roll, and if you’re not careful with the controls you’ll find yourself doing them without actually wanting to, as they’re done by suddenly moving from one direction to another. It’s not a big problem, but it can be a bit annoying.

An new feature here is Climax Mode. The Climax meter fills up automatically, and it fills up a bit more when you destroy enemies. When it’s full, you can press or hold L1 or R1. This will slow down the action, enlarge your lock-on range and automatically shoot missiles at all locked-on enemies once you leave the climax mode. This is a very useful and fun feature. Nothing more satisfying than blowing up 15 enemies at once.

Arcade
The arcade mode features 13 or 14 levels every time you finish it. Through the game, you have branching paths, which bring you to different levels, and you can choose between them. There are also 2 hidden levels that you need to perform really well in the previous level to get to, though when you get to those you can’t choose, you go there automatically. Some levels in the game have objectives, mostly blowing up certain target enemies. If all the objectives you get through the game are accomplished (within the same run, of course), you get access to a 14th and final level, which gives you the final ending.

The game takes about 15 minutes to complete (less as you become better), and has around 21 levels total. Replay value is the key here.

EX Options
As you play through the arcade mode multiple times, you unlock what are called EX options. Those basically give you total customization of the game’s difficulty. You can get more credits, more lives, stronger or weaker guns, more or less missiles, a bigger lock-on area or none at all, more or less defense, and various other things. To get acces to all those options, you have to clear certain objectives by playing in the arcade mode. Finishing the game a number of times, reaching the secret levels, getting the best ending, destroying a certain number of enemies, getting game overs, and some other objectives. This lets you make the game as easy or as hard as you want it to be. This, I find, is a really fun feature. If you find the game too easy, power yourself down a bit, or, if it’s too hard, give yourself a few boosts. That’s insanely cool.

Other Stuff
The only other mode is Score Attack. This is basically the same thing as arcade mode, except you have infinite lives. The EX options don’t work here either, so you can’t just “cheap” your way to the top. The goal here is just to get a high score. Get combos as high as you can, die as little as you can, and try to get a good spot in the rankings. When you get your score, you get your ranking on the online leaderboards, and you can try going as high as you want. This is definitely a fun feature and it’s pretty sure to get competitive.

Overall
This is a game about getting high scores, rather than a game that’s all about finishing it. The average run of the game will be 15 minutes or less, depending on how fast you go through it, how much you die, etc… And you’ll be playing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over… It’s not a game you play through once and stop playing afterwards, it’s a game you play hundreds of time trying to perfect your play and increasing your score. And with the inclusion of online leaderboards, you always have some challenge score-wise.

This is how games should be like. It looks good, sure, but it concentrates mostly on the gameplay, and it’s better for that. It’s easily one of the best downloadable games on any system in a long time. A must for any gamer with a PS3 or Xbox 360. The game is really fun, really fast-paced, challenging, and overall awesome.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great presentation
- Easy to pick up and play
- Has the retro After Burner music
- Great, frantic and addictive gameplay
- Difficulty can be fully adjusted… if you play the game enough
- Infinite replay value

Cons
- There are no cons… really… complaining about the length would be stupid, complaining about the graphics would be stupid, and the gameplay is so good there’s nothing worth complaining about… so there… no cons

The Save Factor
The game costs $10 on the PSN and the XBLA… And it would be worth it even if it was $20. So it’s definitely worth getting at full price.

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So this will be a rather short review, but it’s still a game I want to comment about a bit.

So read on!

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Date of Release: April 15th 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (PS3 version reviewed)

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Players: 1-2 (online compatibility)
Rated T for Teen

Both games share some similar functions. The first is the display options. You can see the game as if it was an arcade machine, with the arcade front panel bordering the screen, or you can have the image stretch out to fill up the screen. And there’s various visual options, to have crisper/sharper graphics, or a view simulating seeing the game from a CRT screen with scanlines and all, just like playing on an actual arcade cabinet. None of those really make the games better or worse, but it’s nice to see visual filters that can make them look just a little bit better.

In addition, both games feature arcade-style online. Meaning, if you turn on the option (it’s turned on by default), people can jump into your game to help you out at total random. It only happened to me once for now, but it’s a pretty fun feature. Randomly getting help to finish a game is nice and useful. You can also invite friends to join your game. It’s a great feature for sure. The other online feature it has is the leaderboards, where you get ranked against other players depending on your score, though your number of continues used and number of lives lost, are also displayed.

Another function both games have is the Vault. After completing various conditions in-game, you get access to various pieces of art. Concept arts, comics, other art, some of which is pretty nice. And getting some of those require being really damn good at the game. Some require finishing levels really fast, or completing levels by dying as little as possible, or getting certain scores… it’s not always easy. The Vault is separate from trophies so there’s extra challenges for those.

Final Fight
Final Fight is one of the top Beat ‘em ups ever. No doubt about it. It has all the elements of a great Beat ‘em up. The nice graphics, varied enemies, simple gameplay, high difficulty, co-op gameplay… it’s just really good. The game took a slight drop in quality in its SNES incarnation. Some enemies were removed, some were renamed (Sodom renamed to “Katana”), co-op gameplay was gonna, one of the 3 playable characters just disappeared… overall it was inferior.

Here you get the actual arcade version. Poison is there, Sodom gets his proper name, there’s co-op gameplay, all 3 characters are there… This is Final Fight as it was intended to be played. Just less expensive then playing it at the arcades (if you know a place that actually has a Final Fight machine), since here you have infinite credits. But it’s still pretty hard. The fire part of the industrial stage will probably make you use a few continues to get through. Since it’s an arcade game, it was basically made to make you waste tons of money to get to the end, so in this case you’ll be using a lot of continues. And getting a good spot in the leaderboards will be a huge challenge, since using a continue resets your score.

The gameplay itself is quite simple… since it’s a Beat ‘em up. One attack button, one jump button. Hitting both buttons are once launches a special attack that hits all around you, and, if it does hit, you lose a bit of your life bar. Pressing forward while touching an enemy makes you hold the enemy and then you can hit him or throw him. The games biggest feature though is the difficulty. It’s really hard. Enemies are strong, there’s traps everywhere, and sometimes there’s so many enemies it’s hard to manage them all. So you have to learn how the AI works and what strategies to use against which enemies. It’s a simple game, but it’s tough and requires a good amount of skill to get good at.

Magic Sword
Magic Sword is a largely overlooked Capcom arcade classic. But it’s a very good game. It’s rather simple. Like Final Fight, you have one attack button, and one jump button. But it’s a lot simpler than Final Fight. It’s a side-scrolling platformer, and the goal of each of the 50 levels is to get to the end, or fight a boss. Each time you beat a boss, or reach a certain part of the tower, you get a new sword, which is more powerful and has different magic attacks.

You have one attack: swinging your sword. If you wait long enough between each strike, your magic meter increases, giving different levels of magic attacks. Each level is filled with respawning enemies, chests, and doors. The doors lead to prison cells, which you can open to liberate an ally, who, if you touch them, will follow you and attack when you do. There are 8 different allies that can follow you, each with different powers, as well as pros and cons. The only ally I found that isn’t gotten from prison cells is the Lizardman, which you must defeat, and, if you have a diamond ring equipped, you’ll be able to recruit him. Each ally can be leveled up for stronger or slightly modified attacks. You can also find items either dropped by enemies or from chests. Each item has a different effect, most of which I don’t know. Some give you protection from attacks, some make you attacks stronger, some give you better magic for a limited time. Some items are piece of equipment, and you can only have one of them at a time (picking up another removes the one you have). There’s a good variety of different effects and using the items properly or according to your style of play can really help.

Just like Final Fight, this is a hard game, especially if you want the tougher trophies and Vault challenges. While the gameplay is simple, learning exactly how your characters move and how to deal with different enemies is required to properly progress through the game. Sure, you have infinite continues, but you’ll never land a good spot in the leaderboards if you keep dying.

Overall
This is a very nice package. Not only does it include the best version of Final Fight, it also includes the very under-rated Magic Sword. Both of those games contain huge replay value, with secret to find and Vault Challenges that require getting better at them. The leaderboards alone can offer tons of replay value once you’re done with the challenges. Both games are really short with infinite continues, but you’ll keep going back to them because of how fun they are. And the inclusion of very solid online elements make both games that much more fun.

Both games are really simplistic, but really damn fun to play, and both are great experiences. Oh, and the soundtracks are remixed and they sound great.

The Save Factor
Considering getting the SNES version of Final Fight, which is much inferior to this one, would cost at least $5 (+shipping)… $10 for the best possible version of the game PLUS Magic Sword… It’s definitely worth the money. So the Save Factor is $10, the package’s full price! This is a bargain.

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Well, while I’m still in Ghostbusters mood, let’s talk about an arcade game based on them! I’ve been slow making new Arcade Center posts, but what better way to bring a new edition than talking about the Ghostbusters?

Okay, there might be a better way, but hey, why not?

Read on!

So what’s up with this game?
Made by Data East in 1987, based on The Real Ghostbusters cartoon series, this is a birds-eye view Third-Person Shooter/shoot ‘em up (think the bird-eye view stages in Contra 3). It can be played by up to 3 players on the original machine. Should be 4, but whatever.

You play as a Ghostbuster. I have no idea which one(for player one), since the character you control looks like none of the ones from the cartoon. He’s wearing Egon’s costume, but has black hair… Might be Peter but with the wrong costume and hair color? I mean, look at the next screenshot, all the characters are the same, only with a different colored uniform. And some colors which aren’t used in The Real Ghostbusters.

So what do you do in the game? Well, you shoot enemies, and you capture ghosts. You have 2 weapons: bullets (probably some sort of energy bullet) and your proton beam. Destroying enemies reveals ghosts. Using your proton beam you can reel them in and capture them(straight in your proton pack, it seems, no trap required). You can destroy enemies with either weapon at your disposal. You also get various power ups. There’s some that power up either of your weapons, others that boost your energy meter for your proton beam(which uses up over time, though it seems to go down VERY slowly) and invincibility (Aura power up). The funnest upgrade is the Green Ghost. Why it’s called Green Ghost instead of Slimer, I have no idea, but it summons Slimer, who moves around you at random and kills any enemy he touches, until you die.

Speaking of dying, you die in 1 hit, no matter what touches you. And you’ll die a LOT. If you’re playing this at the actual arcade, bring lots of change because this game will kick your ass. Each credit gives you 3 lives, but even with 3 lives you won’t go very far, unless you’re a master at the game. The screen constantly fills up with enemies, especially in the later stages, and if just a pixels of an enemy or trap touches you, you’re dead.

Why would you want to capture ghosts though? You can finish stages without even capturing 1 ghost, just killing everything in sight. Well, for every 100 ghosts you capture you get a life. Though only at the end of a stage when they’re put in the Ghost Containment Unit. And you need all the extra lifes you can get… if you’re playing on the actual arcade, of course, since you have infinite credits on emulator.

Overall
Not a bad game, but not great. It doesn’t really feel like Ghostbusters, and the developers could have TRIED to make the characters look like the Ghostbusters(seriously, that’s just lazy). The enemy design is pretty much just random ghost-like enemies, with most not really feeling like they actually came from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon(I might be wrong, since I watched that LONG ago(early 90s), and just started watching it again last week, and I’m only at the beginning of the second season). Most just seem like generic enemies that could fit in whatever other game at the time which needed ghosts. Also, weapon-wise, there’s little reason NOT to use proton beam. Unless your normal shot is fully powered-up. But if you die you lose said power ups, so you might as well just use the proton beam.

Overall it’s not the worst Ghostbusters game, and there is some enjoyment to be found, and it’s quite challenging. If you find this game, give it a try.
(no Save Factor on this one, since it’s an arcade game)

Stay tuned for more arcade center posts, I plan on doing much more of those starting now.

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Well, with an arcade cabinet with TONS of games in my basement, I knew I’d find crazy stuff. But… I mean, just look at this game’s title… you know it’s gonna be weird. Just seeing the title in the frontend, I knew I had to try it out, and I wasn’t disappointed.

So read on for the first game in my Arcade Center posts.


What is this game about?
Some… Guy… stole Babe Ruth’s golden Baseball equipment. And it’s up to the Ninja Baseball BatMan to get them back before they get used for… evil… I guess. So the Ninja Baseball BatMan leave on their quest through the US to find the golden equipment.

As with a LOT of games at the arcade at the time (this one was released in 1993) this is a beat ‘em up. Fight a bunch of cronies until you get to the final boss of the level. Rinse and repeat until you beat the final boss of the game.

This game sets itself appart from most beat ‘em ups though, due to the insanity going on in the game.

Enemies range from baseballs with arms and legs, to baseball bats, to cute doggies with guns, to airplanes, to giants made out of balls, to playing cards and a bunch of other crazy shit. There’s lots of enemy variety, and the game just keeps on getting wackier as you go on. Everything tries to kill you really, and there’s always some weird stuff going on.

The gameplay is awesome. Very fast-paced. You have a choice of 4 characters, each with unique special and normal moves. The difficulty is pretty good, ranging from “Pretty Easy” during the first level, and escalating to “Stupidly hard” fast enough. If you’re playing that at the arcade(if you can actually find it…), you can find yourself wasting a ton of quarters. Special moves, of course, take a bit of your lifebar so you must be careful. The boss fights are very insane too, with unexpected attacks and weird patterns, they’re no walk in the park. There’s a bit of variety too, with some stages that include driving segments. There’s a few items in the game, mostly health pickups (which you’ll definitely need), but the most notable is the “Pink” heart (a heart with “Pink” written on it). This calls the Ninja Baseball Batman cheerleading squad, doing big attacks or powering you up. Awesome stuff.

The graphics… Well, the screenshots don’t do them justice. Seeing it animated it just badass. Incredibly colorful, great animation, some funny and weird animations, smooth graphics all around, great crazy style, this is one of the better looking beat ‘em ups out there.

Overall, Ninja Baseball BatMan is a great game, and it barely ever got recognition(I only heard about it when I found it in the MAME roms pack), but if you find it, at least put in a few quarters in and try it out. I’d be all for a Ninja Baseball BatMan 2 game if IREM were up for it…

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Recently I’ve been interested in a fun little project. I always wanted to have my own arcade cabinet, to have something similar to the arcade experience. Sure, I could just download ROMs and use MAME playing with a keyboard, but that just doesn’t cut it. And an actual cabinet with a game in it is… usually pretty expensive and not THAT easy to find.

So I set my goal to have my own upright arcade cabinet. And I found that the best and most cost-effective way was to make one myself. That’s how my quest to make my own arcade cabinet started.

And as you can see this is the #1 of my Arcade Center “series”, so I’ll have much more to talk about. I’ll start with my cabinet that I’m building right now.

Read on, there’s a bunch of info after the jump.


The games
First things first. If you want an arcade cabinet, you need games… or a game. There’s multiple ways to go about it. You can buy an actual arcade board with one game, or go the emulator way like I did. Get a good emulator, MAME preferably (for me it was MAMEUI32), and a recent enough version for your arcade stick to work on it. There’s loads of ROMs, of course, and with the advent of torrents it’s easy to find packs with thousands of games without much trouble. For example, the torrent I got had an overwhelming 6000 ROMs. Some of them weren’t working, or just plain sucked, or were just different versions of the same game, so I cut down that number by a few hundreds.

Of course, if you’re going that route like I did you’ll need a proper program to choose which game you want to play without trouble, and that of course will require a good front-end. This gives you an easy to navigate menu listing all the games you have (and, depending on the one you chose, you have various listing options). The one I found, which I think does a great job, is MALA frontend. Simple to use and it has a bunch of configurations. One thing to check with frontends is obviously making sure it works with the emulator you’re using. I went through 2 other frontends before getting to this one.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about this. Just make sure the computer you’ll be using is strong enough, as some games, even some that seem to be not very demanding, will lag on the emulator if your computer sucks (like the one I’m using… it can barely play Donkey Kong, yet it plays just about anything else perfectly). And if it isn’t strong enough, computers that can run properly aren’t THAT expensive.

The controls
The one important part of making an arcade cabinet, is, of course, the controls. Again there’s a bunch of options here. Buying a pre-made arcade stick, like the X-Arcade and the HotRod, or to make your own controls. At their basics, arcade sticks are just keyboards. So it’s possible to just make your own arcade controls. There’s various ways of doing that, like connecting buttons and joysticks to certain keys on your keyboard. Of course the internet is a GREAT resource for that, I found a lot of different ways to do it when searching for the right solution.

I, again, went the simple way and got an X-Arcade Dual Joystick.

A logical choice. It’s highly resistant, it works for 2 people, it uses good quality components, it’s easy to open up and mod if need be, it’s customizable, and most of all the emulator I used had a configuration to get the stick working with the emulator with no trouble at all. The only thing to remember with this stick is that you must make sure to plug in the PS/2 cable and not the USB, and make sure the actual keyboard is plugged in and with num lock set ON. Only then will it actually work.

The cabinet
Ah yes, the cabinet. Also an important part to get the actual arcade experience. Like I’ve said before, there’s a ton of ways to go with that. My original idea was to use my craftsmanship skillz (lolwhat?), and by craftsmanship skillz I mean using my father’s help, to build my own arcade cabinet and shape it to my liking. There’s many plans and measurements and such to find on the internet, so you’re not left in the dark on that. And if I had indeed made my own cabinet, I already had a chosen design and all. But then I found something interesting. I randomly ran a search on craigslist and what do I find? An arcade cabinet for 100$, all made and it was really good. I asked for pictures and it was pretty nice so I went there and got it.

It’s an authentic Nintendo cabinet. Not in PERFECT shape, but not in incredibly bad shape either. When I went to pick it up, the screen, bezel, marquee, frontal plexiglass, game and controls were removed, but the rest was left untouched. So now I had the perfect starting point to actually put everything in there after getting a good screen, a computer, the arcade stick and testing various software. AND I saved a lot of time too.

Where am I now?
Here’s what it looks like right now (sorry for the horrible picture quality, I was using a crappy camera):

There were some slight modifications to do: repairing a defective button on the stick(instead of just replacing it for an unused button on the stick… damn we’re stupid >_>), putting in the screen at the right angle (it basically just fit by putting it there and nothing else, only little tweaks to get the exact right fit), plugging in the computer and everything that needed to be plugged into it (the back of the cabinet is a random mess of wires right now), cutting a very small part on each side of the cabinet to have easy access to the white “Add Credit” buttons on the sides of the stick and…. that’s about it. OH, and we modified the speaker upfront (that the people I bought this from left there) and made the sounds come from there (simple modification require a set of working speakers of course), which is pretty badass. The arcade stick is at a perfect height, the screen is at a great angle, and the computer isn’t THAT hard to reach.

What do I need to do now? Well, I have to get myself a marquee, since now there’s just plexiglass with the neon behind it (it has a kinda random flashing effect too which is kinda cool). The monitor is placed fine but we’ll need to add a bezel to hide everything that’s behind it and give a more authentic feel to it. I’ll also need to get a bit plexiglass to put in front of the screen. The current molding around the arcade is in bad shape so we’ll remove the current one and put some black molding instead. There’s some other finishing touches to do of course.

Current cost: Arcade stick is 130$+shipping (got mine as a Christmas present, so FREE), computer can cost around 100-200$ (I used my sister’s computer(not that she cares, she lives 2 hours away from me now), so  FREE), and the arcade cabinet’s cost differs depending on how you’re planning to do it (for me it was 100$ for the cabinet + time to put everything together). So for now this cabinet cost me a measly 100$, and the experience is great. There’s still lots of work to do, this is far from final, but I’m already quite satisfied.

So that’s it for my first Arcade Center post (damn I’m good at naming stuff……okay, not really >_>). I’ll have multiple other posts in this “series”, mostly talking about arcade games that are awesome, but also about cabinets and such. And if you have some input about this, don’t hesitate to talk about it in the comments!

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