Gaming Hell

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Pinball Action (Tecmo, 1985)

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Just the one ROM this time, and no Preference Settings either.

Here's an interesting one, a video pinball arcade game! While there's a lot of examples of these in the home (I'd personally recommend Devil's Crush and The Pinball of the Dead), there's not a whole lot of arcade games of this type out there, probably because if you're in an arcade, there's a high chance there's going to be pinball there anyway, but pinball tables are bulky, expensive and don't let you nudge them too much before they tilt and lock you out! Video pinball, on the other hand, lets you have tables that defy the laws of space and time with multiple tables and more elements that can change dynamically, and having an arcade game in this style lets you do a lot more graphically than home consoles at the time. Pinball Action has the one main table with three sets of drop targets- hit them all then sink the ball in the appropriate hole and you'll move onto a whole new layout with different tricks for scoring big! There's some neat visual touches too, like the giant face on the playfield winking at you and the ability to nudge the table to influence the ball's trajectory to your heart's content. Sadly, I'm very bad at pinball but I'm trying (oh yes, very trying) and so I've never been able to get high scores on ths. In fact, when I streamed it, I was so bad I didn't even make it to the extra layouts! It's a bit of a shame we almost certainly won't see the follow-up, Super Pinball Action, on Arcade Archives, as that has nude images throughout, unless Hamster's willing to draw on a lot of bikinis... Oh well.

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An organisation using strange weapons and sorcery... THE MAGIC TIGERS.Their evil ways have begun to spread across the world, and there's only one man (or two in co-op) bold enough to stand up against them. This soldier's name? Unknown. His mission? Certain. He must destroy every enemy that crosses his path, be they soldier, robot, gorilla, Yoda-like psychic, mummies, wolfmen, trees that he keeps falling into for some reason, it doesn't matter. Our hero is attacked from all sides, but he can shoot into both the background and the foreground, so nothing will stop his mission. Failure is not an option as our brave soldier heads into the heart of the... RIOT! See what I did there?

Oh my goodness this game is a lot. I always assumed this was an NMK game- that's the only company mentioned on the title screen and there's no in-game credits- but it was actually developed by Tecmo (the game's soundtrack was included in the 2014 OST box TECMO ARCADE GAME CHRONICLE) and, well, if you take a look at it, it kinda feels aesthetically similar to the arcade Ninja Gaiden and Wild Fang / Tecmo Knight, so it all makes a bit more sense. Fortunately, the Hamster stream for this game had a lot of developer documentation and some behind-the-scenes stories, so this otherwise-obscure arcade game suddenly has a second life. It needed one too, the game was unreleased in Japan originally- there's this location test report from a Japanese player that was found by LordBBH on his old Riot page, but I guess it didn't do well enough for Tecmo to justify releasing it- and NMK were the ones to pick it up for distribution overeseas where it disappeared, until eventually dumped for use in MAME. This is exactly the kind of game Arcade Archives is perfect for- something you might never have played or even seen otherwise!

Riot is worth seeing too, it's a very interesting crosshair shooter that has your character in the middle of the action, with enemies appearing in the background and the forehround. You have two shot buttons, one firing into the back and one firing into the front, so you're constantly surrounded by threats. It's a little tricky to get used to at first, but once it clicks, it's great fun! It's also completely off-the-wall with its presentation and story- the MAGIC TIGERS have sorcery on their side after all, which means boss fights take place in an alternate dimension with mummies and wolfmen and gigantic dragons fighting your lone soldier dude, plus there's a recurring joke of the player being knocked off tall ledges (sometimes by a giant industrial fan that appears out of nowhere) to land head-first into tree branches and later glass, then there's the cutscenes with classic lines like "A department store? They've gone too far...?" (it's the question mark that makes it work), the fact you have to fight multiple gorillas, the amazing ending... If you've never played it before, play RIOT. That's what Gaming Hell says!