THAT DAYTONA ARCADE GAME CAME OUT AFTER ALL
Doesn’t look like Sega bothered to promote it very well, especially as none of us noticed it was out
I bet Yu Suzuki’s LIVID
If you’ve got four grand lying about, you can buy it from here
It’s actually quite cheap, considering they want £500 more for the abysmal Sega Rally Revo 3 cabinet.
Here’s a video of two men not appreciating it enough:
Come on Sega, get this ported to Xbox Live. If you can’t be bothered, let Sumo Digital do it for you
filed in ACTUAL GAMES on Jan.19, 2011
January 19th, 2011 on 12:13 pm
Yeah. It did come out… And it’s… Well, it’s the original Daytona arcade game in HD, complete with hideous pop-up, but without any mention of the word “Daytona”.
The story goes that Daytona is one of the major reasons why arcades died when they did (sure, they would have eventually when the home hardware completely caught up, but Daytona was… what? 94?)
Allegedly, once arcade operators got Daytona machines, they kept on making money, and they never needed to buy new games to replace them – Arcade goers would just keep on playing Daytona. For some reason. Personally, I think there’s only so much you can go around the same 3 courses, but apparently normal people are stupid with the memory retention of goldfish.
Sega Racing Classic was made to replace the old cabs so the arcade owners would have new working Daytona cabs to replace the 15 year old falling-apart ones, and continue milking the money tree.
January 19th, 2011 on 2:09 pm
This is all well and good, but when are we going to be getting SCUD Race at home?
Possibly heresy, but I always preferred that to Daytona.
Still, shouldn’t grumble, it’s got blue skies in it at least.
January 19th, 2011 on 2:44 pm
Do my eye’s deceive me, or is there some horrendous slowdown when he drives off track before the downhill / hairpin on Dinosaur Canyon, and also in the trees on 777 Speedway?
This would never have happened in Yu Suzuki’s day. :O(
January 19th, 2011 on 3:04 pm
Interesting story, Mentski. Given how many arcades I’ve found with old Daytona and Sega Rally cabinets it certainly sounds plausible. I just wish there were a few more Time Crisis 1 cabinets out there…
I hope they’ve made Sega Racing Classic a bit easier, I’ve never managed better than 2nd place on Dinosaur Canyon, and that’s using manual gearbox and flicking down to 2nd gear to trigger power slides.
January 19th, 2011 on 3:17 pm
It’s got to have “Daytona, let’s go away!” in it, though! It’s not Sega Racing Classic without it! I’m pretty sure the Daytona USA can actually copyright the word Daytona since it’s a place. So I’m guessing just the logo is removed from the title screen.
January 19th, 2011 on 5:45 pm
Bulk Slash: I’m probably over-simplifying it, but it certainly was a turning point.
Daytona was one of a new generation of “1 quid a go” games. The cabinets were more expensive for arcade owners to buy, but the price per game meant they broke even pretty fast, and could keep that price the same for massive profits.
Arcades changed right then and there from loads of little cabs (where the PCBS could simply be swapped when a game had gone “stale”), to 1 pound coin-guzzling, dedicated behemoths (which usually fell into the category of either racing, gun, or bemani) that were simply more cost-effective to keep than replace.
January 19th, 2011 on 5:55 pm
Speaking of games we overlooked, was there ever an official UK:R press release on Sonic Colors? I heard it was alright.
If you don’t want to fork out for a Wii you could just download the Dolphin Emulator:
http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/
A Wii sensor:
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_trkparms=65%253A12%257C66%253A2%257C39%253A1%257C72%253A4682&rt=nc&_nkw=wii+sensor+bar&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_sop=15&_sc=1
and a wireless Wiimote:
http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=434461
And then torrent the game.
Go on, somebody do it and review it I can’t be arsed.
January 19th, 2011 on 5:58 pm
Scudrace will be playable in a future revision of Demul. proof is here wwwDOTemucrDOTcom/2010/12/demul-wip-model3-wip-scud-race-20101227.html
January 19th, 2011 on 10:19 pm
If we’re getting in to a history of why the arcades died – Daytona actually briefly revived the industry. It was already on a downward spiral due to StreetFighter II. Streetfighter was the peak. After that, operators wanted more of the same for the same price. Capcom took forever delivering it and when it finally came it was Super Street Fighter 2 (which was very unpopular). Mortal Kombat 2 and Killer Instinct also made impressions but the operators suddenly saw they could put any old cheap Neo Geo PCB into their machines and still make big money because it was ‘like streetfighter’.
What they didn’t see though was arcade goers putting their money in because it looked like Streetfighter then walking away because the experience was nothing like Streetfighter.
Sega’s 3D racing games finally added something new to the arcade – first with Virtua Racing then Daytona and Sega Rally. The next downturn happened when they released Sega Touring Car Championship, Manx TT, Indy 500 and Scud Race. Many operators invested in these cabinets but hardly anyone played them (compared to Daytona and Sega Rally).
3D fighters gave another brief burst of hope (Virtua Fighter, Tekken). Then StreetFighter finally came back with the Alpha series and StreetFighter 3 but the general public had moved away from playing in arcades and many of the more committed arcade players were drifting toward consoles.
Dedicated cabinets like Daytona USA, Virtua Cop and Time Crisis still brought people in to the arcades but operators could no longer afford to buy anything but a sure hit so went for the cheaper options (which the players didn’t love – Area 51, Dead or Alive, Top Speed). The industry had got itself into a dangerous position where every big game that came out had to be a hit. And they weren’t.
The final revival came through dance games and photo machines. That was short lived and alienated the players who had generated the core revenue for arcade operators.
So to summarise –
– New generation of players brought up on consoles did not replace the players from the 80s/90s generations.
– Big dedicated cabinets that cost thousands but with very few hit titles.
– No innovation from the industry with everyone trying to copy whatever the latest hit was and diluting the appeal of the genre to players.
(I work on both sides of the industry throughout the 90s, selling and operating).
If we’re not getting in to a history of why the arcades died then ignore everything above and Daytooooona! Let’s go away! G. A. M. E. O. V. E. R. G, a, m, e, o, v, e, r, gay, oh, gay, oh, gay, oh. Game over.
January 20th, 2011 on 7:04 am
It’s nice to see that there are many of us unwilling to yield to the ‘casual gamer’ stereotype, and still get enthusiastic about ‘proper’ games.
Actually, with regard to the ‘casual gamer’, I would argue that gaming now id far less casual than in days of yore. Nowadays the idea of sitting down for a quick spot of gaming – maybe completing a few levels before going out – proves harder due to the length of games and long drawn-out and sensationally rendered tasks, with plenty of cut-scenes in between. It’s harder to play for a short time as games are less ‘level’ based and more ‘extended narrative’ based. Some games don’t even tell you properly when they’ve autosaved, so you don’t really know when you’ve done one segment and moved to the next. Final Fantasy games assume you will play for so long that they only place save points after the equivalent of maybe an hour’s gaming at the very least.
Games and your average Hollywood action and thriller film are becoming virtually indistinguishable in many ways, and this is definitely the age of the computer game epic.
Arcades have been subsumed by online gaming, which sees gamers uniting for prolonged bouts of gaming long after the arcades used to shut up shop for the night. In many ways the competitive element of arcade gamng is more fierce than ever, the competition is globalised, and the rankings go up online, and certain games are clearly geared towards achievements which boost the gamer score of the player. I have known people to knowingly buy poor computer games and complete them 100 per cent simply for the attainment of gamer points.
Yes, undoubtedly games are losing a certain excitement and originality, but this definitely doesn’t mean we can define this era of gaming as the age of the casual gamer, in fact I’d say the complete opposite. Yes, there is such a thing as a casual gamer, and I think the Wii caters for this new phenomenon, and which perhaps didn’t exist to such a degree in the aracade era, but en masse, I would say most games are geared more towards people who are willing to spend most of their leisure time playing computer games, and the standards of making a fully-immersive sensory experience rather are pretty high.
January 20th, 2011 on 7:51 am
I have to agree with Weatherbox.
I used to play a lot of videogames but stopped after the DC. One of the reasons is that console gaming became too complicated. I live in Japan and I am sure that I can find out how to setup a PS3/360/Wii but my motivation is very much lacking because I don’t have any game friends who play fighting games and playing an RPG (do they still make those ?) with the whole story in Kanji is a bit too much effort and not enough relaxation.
Going to arcades is a lesson in humility as I will get beaten by everybody that still hangs out there. If you think that arcades are dead I invite you to come over and I ll show you some nice places. These kids are more hardcore than I have ever seen in Europe.
The fact that I also prefer VF over tekken makes that my pool of opponents is rather small and everybody is ridiculously good at what they play here.
January 20th, 2011 on 9:51 am
Please stop this sensible and reasoned discussion about arcade games and focus on the logo on the bottom left of the top two pictures.
It was developed by Ringwide. Fnar!
January 20th, 2011 on 10:30 am
I used to love going to the arcades. For the same reason I love coming here. To socially interact with people who don’t like to socially interact.