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Because it's not simple. The same movement you would need to steer around is the movement needed to aim at certain parts of the screen - which is what you'd use the gun for, otherwise it becomes a fancy mouse, letting you only shoot at the center of the screen. A lot of the "immersiveness" of FPSs comes from the fact you're pretty much free to move and look/aim arround.

I remember the Time Crisis series at the arcades used a lightgun and a pedal to take cover / reload the gun. I think that's pretty much as far as you can go without having to actually physically move.

True. But, many of the original games suffer from a multitude of problems. Whether it be chips on the gameboard failing, or problems with the old black and white monitor, it's easier for operators (and yes, even home users) to pick one up for $2500 and not have to worry about it breaking down for quite a while (hopefully).

I personally think the new one looks like shit, and a "real" collector would seek out the original and restore it. But that's me.

What's surprised me is that I can often get in a quick arcade fix at the local quickie mart or laundromat for a quarter. Sure, anything reasonably new will be 50c, but a single quarter gets me as much fun as it did in 1985.

Wouldn't that be roughly the equivalent of playing Pac-Man for a 1980's dime?

As for this game, are they still planning to package it with QIX? That's one of the old school games I miss. That and my favorite game of all time, Mr. Do!. If anyone knows where a working Mr. Do! is within 100 miles of Dallas, lemme know and I'm there with a roll of quarters!

This battle robot sounds like the insidious work of Violet.

This battle robot sounds like the insidious work of Violet.

One example of an arcade game employing a stationary bike was Prop Cycle from Namco. You flew a pedal-powered flying bicycle around, running into balloons and flying through hazards to score points.

I thought it was whimsical and a lot of fun, but it never showed up at many arcades.

Schwab

My current addictions are:

• Grand Theft Auto III for PS2
  Combining racing, shooting, dark humor and wonton viloence in one game. Plus, you get to be the bad guy for once :).
• Tekken Tag Tournament for PS2
  Practice at home to play Tekken 4 in arcades and provide maximum pain to my adversaries.
• Final Fantasy X for PS2
  Ooooo... pretty...
• Yahoo! Eucher
  No one else in my family plays, so I play with complete strangers.
• Unreal Tournament on PC
  Team Deathmatch and Domination with 3+ teams is good. Mods like Jailbreak and FragBall are also highly time-consuming.
• Diamond Mine
  Great little Shockwave game. I play this constantly at work :)

Wow, looking at the list, it's amazing that I'm bored all the time...

The way I got into it was a local arcade was going out of business, I picked up an upright Top Gun machine for 300$, not to shabby. I found 2 really helpful sites out there. One is Namco Game Search and there is also US Amusement which not only auctions of arcade games, but Pinball machine, pool tables, and other misc stuff. (Pachinko anyone?) The beauty of collecting arcade games is literally the low cost. There are *ALOT* of games out there for under 1000$ USD. I ran out of space (and Im single in a 3 bedroom house) so I seem to land incredible deals now all the time =\. Have fun.

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