General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

sniper_samurai

rubadub wrote: »

I definitely saw at least 1 cabinet here in Ireland but can't remember where, possibly dublin city centre as I think I would remember if it was in Bray. Nobody used to play it much, I think they used to charge twice or 3 times the price of normal games.

Iirc the cabs were pretty expensive due to the laserdisc player.

rubadub

sniper_samurai wrote: »

Iirc the cabs were pretty expensive due to the laserdisc player.

yeah, thats what I thought. Thing was it just looked normal size so seemed a ripoff, while big moving games like outrun or afterburner it was blatantly obvious why they were charging more.

I remember dr quirkeys had that rotating G Loc machine which was also very expensive for a play, I rarely saw it played and never had a go myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R360

Only 150 R360 cabinets were produced and were all shipped with G-LOC; an upgrade kit was released 2 years later for Wing War. According to The One, the R360 cost "over £70,000" in 1991.

Inviere

rubadub wrote: »

I remember dr quirkeys had that rotating G Loc machine which was also very expensive for a play, I rarely saw it played and never had a go myself.

Same, down by the front window if I recall? Never tried it, it seemed insane! I remember being preoccupied with the SF2 CE hack version "M5" they had in there, game breaking rubbish nowadays, but back then it was like wizardry

Optimus Prime

They had that Street Fighter version in the short lived arcade around the corner from me and you when they turned the shop into a pool hall! I remember playing it in there a lot.

Speaking of rare cabs did anyone ever play "Time Traveller" the weird hologram cowboy game? I can remember playing it in the arcade at the back of the swimming pool in Salt Hill in Galway, i remember being amazed by it back then. I never seen it anywhere else after that.

Retr0gamer

rubadub wrote: »

yeah, thats what I thought. Thing was it just looked normal size so seemed a ripoff, while big moving games like outrun or afterburner it was blatantly obvious why they were charging more.

I remember dr quirkeys had that rotating G Loc machine which was also very expensive for a play, I rarely saw it played and never had a go myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R360

I always wished I'd given it a go but back then my pocket money was tight and I could get a couple of goes on other machines for the price of one GLOC play.

o1s1n

I was freaked out as a kid by the idea of going upside down in a cabinet so was never brave enough to give it a go.

The side to side hydraulics of Afterburner 2 were excitement enough for me :pac:

dav09

Would love to have tried one, maybe someday. Does anyone know anywhere to play an R360 in the UK/Europe?

Shapey Fiend

Expensive cabinets are what sort of killed arcades more than consoles imo. Once Daytona and Sega Rally came out all the small operators got priced out. Then nobody got the model 3 games cos it cost too much they all kept the model 2 era stuff indefinitely. Should have stuck with jamma cabs didn't require so much space and higher credit prices would have been a more sustainable business.

There was an r360 in La Tete Dans les nuages in Paris well into the 00s doubt theres many on location anymore maintaining the hydraulics would be a pain.

dav09

Apparently Sega Rally & Daytona took years to pay back but were big hits for arcades, on the flip side Street Fighter 2 was cheap and mega popular as it seemed to be usually in Jamma cabs (was there ever an official cab for it? I know some companies seemed to have tried make one but seemed to mostly be conversions or unofficial versions). There seemed to be a battle between Ops and Developers which ultimately lead to their downfall. An apparent shift towards redemption came once a lot of boring games came out late-90s and when ops didn't want to pay for expensive stuff.

According to wikipedia, R360 was 70k pounds which is madness and can't see how somewhere would ever had payed that back unless it drew people as a "marquee attraction" which is unlikely realistically.

geotrig

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Expensive cabinets are what sort of killed arcades more than consoles imo. Once Daytona and Sega Rally came out all the small operators got priced out. Then nobody got the model 3 games cos it cost too much they all kept the model 2 era stuff indefinitely. Should have stuck with jamma cabs didn't require so much space and higher credit prices would have been a more sustainable business.

There was an r360 in La Tete Dans les nuages in Paris well into the 00s doubt theres many on location anymore maintaining the hydraulics would be a pain.

nah I'd actually disagree on this , these big cabs ,maybe not the r360 but afterburner and the likes were going long before arcades starting to die out , the home console market had jumped up a level and was offering different gaming experiences and near arcade perfect ports where as the arcades were stuck in a bit of a rut , if anything the big cabs were still a big draw for some and kept a few of us still coming !
Daytona was a massive earner for any arcade that had them and clawed back its money well. the money that came i saw coming out of it and all the games back then was massive with coin buckets well over half full constantly.
The R360 was different i had always heard it was around the 100k so the 70k fit in around there and it was more an experience type thing than anything else.

Dav09 I'm fairly sure sf2 was never a "cheap" game to buy new or any street fighter for the matter (iirc sf2 was somewhere in the 10-12 k region i could have those figures off now but it always carried a premium ) and probably explains why the "bootleg" pcbs were so rampant for it.
There was a r360 for sale a few years ago for around the 3k mark ....should have bought it :pac:

geotrig

Retr0gamer wrote: »

So I played and beat the steam version of Dragon's Lair.

I actually never played this on in the arcade and never remember seeing a cabinet. Was it as big here as it was in the states.

As for the game.... it was a fun half hour but it would have driven me insane in the arcades. Did the arcade even had the prompts to tell you what to press or did you just have to guess or do it from the flashing scenery???

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I couldn't stand it at the time, just a money gobbling exercise.
I did indeed have directional prompts.
I liked the much later cel shaded platformer, I played it on the OG XBox.

remember playing it once ,cant for the life of me remember where and thinking it was broken ! found out years later it was just the way it played !

dav09

geotrig wrote: »

Dav09 I'm fairly sure sf2 was never a "cheap" game to buy new or any street fighter for the matter (iirc sf2 was somewhere in the 10-12 k region i could have those figures off now but it always carried a premium ) and probably explains why the "bootleg" pcbs were so rampant for it.
There was a r360 for sale a few years ago for around the 3k mark ....should have bought it :pac:

That's outrageous if they were around that. Had thought they were a lot less but maybe not. Premium was probably due to it's popularity. CPS1 seemed to be one of the most bootlegged boards ever but the looks of it, and resulted in the suicide battery issue we have now (although less of an issue now than a few years ago).

Yikes 3k, worth 3 times that now probably.

geotrig

I'd take it would be worth a bit more now as well easily, demand for these type big cabs a few years back was nearly non existant as most home collectors couldnt take these big machines
take my figures above with a pinch of salt , my memory doesnt remember things so good anymore but either way Street fighter has always had a premium price and was way more expensive than most other pcb kits ,even with 4 when they released it ,not sure what happened the prices for 5 and that but I'm sure capcom where struggling to justify the premiums as much.

o1s1n

Am I imagining things or did someone post an original (type writer typed) price list of arcade PCBs years ago somewhere?

I think it was on a yellow bit of paper...

Think SF2 was about 12k on it alright!

geotrig

o1s1n wrote: »

Am I imagining things or did someone post an original (type writer typed) price list of arcade PCBs years ago somewhere?

I think it was on a yellow bit of paper...

Think SF2 was about 12k on it alright!

HAHA that would make my addled brain feel better !i've seen a few price lists over the years but As i said it always stuck in my head @ about 12k but then I think back to what a house cost back then and well my head starts thinking I also had in my head from stuff that i read years ago that daytona was 20k ish*(less certain on the price of this ) but dont know if that was a twin cab etc and the r360 was 100k mvs where 800+ish upwards and other premium games around £1500-2500gbp so maybe some of my confusion might be from different currencies etc as well

also i believe from some article i read one the sf2 price in the states had a fluid price ! and the sales reps where like rockstars

rubadub

o1s1n wrote: »

I was freaked out as a kid by the idea of going upside down in a cabinet so was never brave enough to give it a go.

I was more freaked out at the thought of being dead within 10 seconds!

I would have wanted to get practise in on Gloc on the standup version to get a good go on the 360 -but I was always fairly useless at gloc & afterburner, they both had frantic sort of gameplay, hard to see what was going on. If I watched others play I did not learn much either, whereas if you watched somebody on say Shinobi you would learn loads.

rubadub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II:_The_World_Warrior#Commercial_reception

Arcade versions
The company sold more than 60,000 video game arcade cabinets of the original version of Street Fighter II.[98] It was followed by Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition, of which 140,000 cabinets were sold in Japan alone, where it cost ¥160,000 ($1300) for each cabinet, amounting to ¥22.4 billion ($182 million) revenue generated from cabinet sales of Champion Edition in Japan,[8][99] which is equivalent to $342 million in 2020.[100]

The sales for the arcade versions of Street Fighter II in the Western world were similarly successful.[99] In 1992, Street Fighter II captured 60% of the UK coin-op market, with individual machines taking up to £1000 per week, for an estimated total of £260 million per year[101] (equivalent to £542 million or $722.67 million in 2014). In North America, it was at the top of RePlay's May 1992 coin-op-earnings charts, on both the upright cabinets chart and the coin-op software chart[102] (for ROM cartridges and/or upgrade conversion kits). On the July 1992 charts, Champion Edition was number one on the upright cabinets chart (above Midway's Mortal Kombat) while the original Street Fighter II was number two on the coin-op software chart (below SNK's World Heroes).[103] On RePlay's April 1993 charts, Champion Edition was number four on the upright cabinets chart and Street Fighter II′ Turbo was number one on the coin-op software chart,[104] while in May 1993, Champion Edition remained number four on the uprights cabinet chart and Turbo dropped to number two on the coin-op software chart (overtaken by SNK's 3 Count Bout).[105]

The October 1992 issue of Electronic Games noted, "Not since the early 1980s has an arcade game received so much attention and all-out fanatical popularity."[46] According to the March 1995 issue of GameFan magazine, the game had earned "billions of dollars in profit".[106] By 1995, gross revenues of Street Fighter II and Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition arcade machines had exceeded $2.312 billion (9.25 billion quarters),[107] equivalent to over $4.34 billion in 2020

beejee

rubadub wrote: »

yeah, thats what I thought. Thing was it just looked normal size so seemed a ripoff, while big moving games like outrun or afterburner it was blatantly obvious why they were charging more.

I remember dr quirkeys had that rotating G Loc machine which was also very expensive for a play, I rarely saw it played and never had a go myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R360

Optimus Prime wrote: »

They had that Street Fighter version in the short lived arcade around the corner from me and you when they turned the shop into a pool hall! I remember playing it in there a lot.

Speaking of rare cabs did anyone ever play "Time Traveller" the weird hologram cowboy game? I can remember playing it in the arcade at the back of the swimming pool in Salt Hill in Galway, i remember being amazed by it back then. I never seen it anywhere else after that.

Yeah that r360 was the biz, 2quid a go in quirkeys. Played it a handful of times, great fun!

The Sega hologram game was in bray. Remember thinking it was a rip off, they even had a "time crystal" you could buy for an additional 20p.if you died, you'd use the crystal to go back in time and play again. Looked cool, bit serious gimmick.

Hat the fools should have done is keep going with the holographic stuff, but leave out the fmv games. The fools. The stupid fools!

I was talking to an op a good while back, and a Sega rally cost 20odd thousand brand new (virtual on twin about the same). He said he made nearly 200k over the course of like 4/5 months in Blackpool.

So, big outlay, but great profits if you got the ingredients right.

Killer instinct was about 7/8 grand new, and quirkeys had such high demand for the game he had 6 cabinets at one point, and you'd still regularly have to wait for a game.

To add, another op started talking about Street fighter 2, almost teary eyed, "those were the days". They cleaned up

dav09

rubadub wrote: »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II:_The_World_Warrior#Commercial_reception

Arcade versions
The company sold more than 60,000 video game arcade cabinets of the original version of Street Fighter II.[98] It was followed by Street Fighter II′: Champion Edition, of which 140,000 cabinets were sold in Japan alone, where it cost ¥160,000 ($1300) for each cabinet, amounting to ¥22.4 billion ($182 million) revenue generated from cabinet sales of Champion Edition in Japan,[8][99] which is equivalent to $342 million in 2020.[100]

That's more along the line of what I heard, so buying boards with conversion kits were probably only a couple of hundred? (Inflation might bump it up to 1000 in today's money)

geotrig

While on one hand it makes sense, Something about all that just doesn't add up for me :think:
I think the japanese domestic pricing was different to other terroritries in general back then (still is but not like before) hence the boot logos warnings and the likes, and they did target the small shop owners to have machines every where , also they were all about generic Candy's by then for the most part (which were about 2k I think alone )or those small shop front woodies no idea what these cost as I've never seen anything about their prices.
I suppose years of reading this and that about prices in various currencies adjusted / not adjusted for inflation and the likes might muddy the waters and brain cell a bit.

The pricing above 1300 sounds more in line like what a mvs with cart cost to me but I'm getting older, can't remember and it doesn't really matter anymore :pac:

dav09

geotrig wrote: »

While on one hand it makes sense, Something about all that just doesn't add up for me :think:
I think the japanese domestic pricing was different to other terroritries in general back then (still is but not like before) hence the boot logos warnings and the likes, and they did target the small shop owners to have machines every where , also they were all about generic Candy's by then for the most part (which were about 2k I think alone )or those small shop front woodies no idea what these cost as I've never seen anything about their prices.
I suppose years of reading this and that about prices in various currencies adjusted / not adjusted for inflation and the likes might muddy the waters and brain cell a bit.

The pricing above 1300 sounds more in line like what a mvs with cart cost to me but I'm getting older, can't remember and it doesn't really matter anymore :pac:

Oof, 1300 is mind-blowing for a MVS cart but really shows how much ops must used make at one point if the demand was there. And it sounds right too going by a few threads online, some cheap carts but mostly around that range http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-238450.html

But yeah it doesn't really matter, just is interesting.

geotrig

yeah ,I also have in my head that mvs mb were at on point about 2.5k I also remember contemplating forking out some serious wedge for kof2003 (it was already greatly reduced at that point but still several hundred quid) , glad I didn't as its price thanked even more!!
One thing is for certain prices used to drop rapidly I suppose as some ops didn't hold a game too long once they had made a good return or demand dropped off.
Even some of the might cave kits dropped in price rapidly when sales where sluggish ibara springs to mind most.
One thing is the they made a fortune and made their money back for sure .
I remember in an arcade we frequented the guy that used to collect the money left the coin door unlocked on a Cisco heat or chase hq and well let s just say 3 young chaps and a handful of coins each amounted to about 60 quid and wasn't even a dent in what was in the coin box that was emptied 1-2 times a week.

Shapey Fiend

I'm pretty sure the most expensive arcade machine (that wasn't a complete one off in Japanese arcades) was Virtua Formula. It was 250,000 sterling for a 4 player deluxe cabinet. Think the Last Gamer said it cost even more in one of his videos I just can't be arsed digging through his video about his.

Sega Rally and Daytona were obviously gigantic hits. I'm just saying that it's like modern AAA videogames with these tentpole releases from publishers where they've started releasing two big games a year instead of a range of product. Yes they're maximizing profits in the short term by squeezing every cent out of each release but then if you have a flop you're down a gigantic amount of money and it's ultimately narrowing the market not having a range of product to draw in different sorts of people. It's wasn't a sustainable model considering the size of the market so they killed off all the smaller operators. It resulted in the genres becoming consolidated into racing game, light gun game and little else.

Videogames in a social space are significantly different. If they'd concentrated more on people playing together or competing with each other at a price point that was appealing to chippers/pubs/cinemas etc. instead of trying to dazzle with overpriced tech that quickly dates maybe things would have been different. Same **** happened with phone games everybody chasing a hit not thinking about sustaining interest in the long term.

geotrig

For me arcades were about what you couldn't get for home, sf2 ports were good but just not the real thing and sufficed until you could get back to the arcade again ,we had c64 and Atari competing against arcade hardware that in some cases was a one off pcb development, hence companies moved away from that type of development.
I just think home hardware caught up with the arcade market which still had Sega +Namco making the big expensive cabinets+games and kept the industry alive, hence both are still at it. ,no arcade shop chipper or cinema had to buy these, generic cabs and mvs and the likes were still being made .
I think you might be looking at this differently but all these games where made to make money and get you to spend your cash it isn't and wasn't for the most part about anything else, shous sales pitch on exa is all about what revenue it is making op's,
They had a balance they tried to hit.iirc from someone article or op manual had a guideline on maximizing profit and deemed something along the lines of once a player got about 1min 30 they would be satisfied.
But at the end consumer hardware caught up and consumers moved on to pastures new....

Shapey Fiend

Cinema still exists in the era of streaming content. So does theatre, live music. Gaming cafes are a thing. My small town has one. They don't really even exploit social aspect to full extent (everybody with headphones not interacting in a physical space). I really think the reason it died a death was they didn't create a sticky enough experience to engage players. Certainly today kids don't give a **** about graphics, or not the sort of ugly ones you get in a Raw Thrills game. They're still trying to sell trash games at 10k a pop instead of thinking about what will make people come back. Pool, air hockey, table football etc. still presumably sell 10's of thousands every year because they're actually engaging past 1.5 minutes. Throwing as many flashing LEDs and gigantic marquees on games to try and attract players is the dumbest **** ever. It's so reductive. There are loads of game concepts that would work 10x better in an arcade setting than at home but Namco and Sega gave up trying 25 years ago at least in the western market. In Japan they had card games, collectable toy games, horse racing games, wacky music games.. they didn't bother trying anything innovative over here.

dav09

For me it seemed to be gameplay over most things that really killed it, there were a lot more duds than hits on Sega STV and Naomi Hardware. Redemption took over and going to arcades for Teddy's, Coin pushers and tickets is something more child orientated than adult, adult orientated arcade machines died a long time ago. People also had no need to got to arcades anymore too as consoles had caught up and was easier/ less effort to play games at home (besides some games which may have had a draw like Crazy Taxi with it's machine, but is still arguable as it's home version was mega popular too). This sounds very like the cinema industry. The social aspect too didn't matter to people, but I can see this changing.

I can genuinely see a real resurgence in arcade-related material over the coming years if things happen right as there's still a place for them, and socially are great if done right. Classics still hold up and people still love the social arcade experience of fighting games. I've often seriously thought about the idea of making a new arcade game company starting small scale but with really attractive looking machines, and even more attractive gameplay. Shmup's, Platformers, even Battle Royale. I wrote lots of games and apps in my teens and can build machines and have lots of designs done, but taking that leap would be a risk I'm not sure I could take, it would be madness in some ways. I just feel raw thrills, sega and namco have had some cool games, but trying to flog games for the prices they charge and the gameplay they offer is often sub standard to what people want.

Sparks43

Tonight at 8pm our time the first SMK speedrun Championship begins. Format is double elimination with best of 5 cups.

I’m playing against a high level American player tomorrow and expect to get pretty much destroyed.

All matches will be streamed on the Speedgaming twitch channel with full commentary.

Schedule and links to the matches are at this link add 5 hours for our time zone

http://speedgaming.org/smk/

Retr0gamer

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21136607/hasbro-tiger-electronics-lcd-handheld-games-xmen-sonic-transformers

Tiger lcd handhelds making a comeback

Mr.Saturn

Retr0gamer wrote: »

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21136607/hasbro-tiger-electronics-lcd-handheld-games-xmen-sonic-transformers

Tiger lcd handhelds making a comeback

Savage, I get to relive the disappointment of thinking these games would be any way resemble their originals.

o1s1n

Mr.Saturn wrote: »

Savage, I get to relive the disappointment of thinking these games would be any way resemble their originals.

The most exciting thing about those games was the artwork!