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F-Zero Draws Console Gamers To Arcades?
Thanks to Gamers.com for their report discussing the newly revealed synergy between F-Zero's home and arcade versions (here's an alternate article at GamePro.) According to the article, "..customized racers are freely interchangeable between the arcade and console versions of the game. Just save a custom racer to the GameCube memory card with either game, and you can transport it from one game to the other." As well as this, "..winning a race in the arcade game can unlock.. ships or tracks as a special bonus - save that data to a GC memory card and you can play an otherwise unavailable ship or course in the home game." You'll also get a special magnetic License Card for high scores in the arcade version, in this interesting attempt at providing incentive for players to return to arcades.
In that case, it was because the home game dance pad was crap, but who knows, this F-Zero might have the same effect becuause of the home game connectivity.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
I love playing in Arcades, but unfortunately I just don't see the reason why anyone would go to the effort of saving their game to a memory card and taking it to the arcade.
Why not just play the game that you already own from the comfort of your couch rather than standing feeding loads of quarters into a machine?
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Wasn't this feature available with the Neo-Geo?
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Nothing helps progress like competition. If people can show off in front of a whole arcade or a whole city or even the whole world, of course they're going to do it.
Other game companies should get in on this action.
I purchased an import version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes for my Dreamcast. It also had this kind of connectivity, but in the form of points earned from playing and victories. You need victory points to buy the hidden characters, uniforms and levels in the game. Much to my chagrin, there are many things I cannot unlock because the import version requires points you can only aquire by playing people in the arcade. I have not been able to find a machine in the US...and I no current plans to visit the land of the rising sun. :- /
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Yeah, it will definitely suck in a few years when you want to play F-Zero for nostalgia but can't unlock everything because the arcade version is no longer available.
The idea does sound intriguing though. But if you ask me, I think your standard cabinet arcades are dead. It's cheaper and more fun to play on your favorite console at home. Now, notice I said cabinet style. If you to attract more people to the arcade, you have to make a setup that isn't feasible as a home option. Dance Dance Revolution is one idea. It has a large dance floor which is a million times better than the home pad version. Another idea is BattleTech and virtual reality. These setups are too costly for the average user but I've seen people readily hand over 5-10 bucks for 10-15 minutes of playtime.
Most of the arcades where I am from are dying or are dead. It's kind of sad really.
Kid eagerly bounds up to the F-Zero machine, clutching Gamecube Memory card in hand. After spending 10 minutes pulling out the accumulated chewing gum that's been wedged into the slot, he plays his game. Reward won, he retrieves his card and eagerly turns around to go home... ... and gets mugged by a group of pimple faced smackheads who've blown their parents dole money (stolen, natch) on the fruit machines.
Or is that just BRITISH arcades?
Great idea, but there is something that is going to ruin it in the blink of an eye:
Cheat devices
People are going to use these to hack together overpowered super cars and drivers, and then take them to the arcade and try and dominate the score boards with them. This may be worked around if Nintendo implements some careful cheat protections, but I think that something like this is more or less doomed to being hacked to death. PSO on the DC anybody?
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I played one game at Circus Circus in Las Vegas that was basically an arcade fighter jet game that had full 360 degree rotation in any direction. That was definitely worth coughing up some cash for (and I think it cost a dollar or two to play), but would've definitely taken a few runs just to get used to being strapped into the seat hanging upside down if you turned the stick that way before you could play it for longer than a minute. I don't even remember anything about the gameplay or graphics, just that if your plane was upside down, so were you, and that it was a blast for that reason alone.
Other than that, the only arcade games I've played in the last 5 years or so have been fighting games (Tekken series and Soul Blade/Calibur), shooting games (like House of the Dead), and a couple of odd tank games and racing games that involved elaborate control setups or a bunch of little race cars lined up in front of huge screens.
For the most part, though, the places that actually have these kinds of setups make their money through other means (like casinos), or appeal strongly to an older market and don't have a lot of games that I would really enjoy (like Dave & Buster's, which seems mostly geared towards sports games).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Midway did this with some versions of their NFL blitz arcade machines, but they required the N64 memory card for connectivity (and who had that?).
I like the idea of arcade connectivity much better than Nintendo's current strategy of game boy advance connectivity (I don't want to buy a game boy advance...i have a game boy player, but that doesn't work unless you have 2 gamecubes). This seems like less of a cash-in with more tangible benefits.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Pay a quarter (or more) per 3 minutes of gaming in an arcade when they just shelled out $50 for the identical home version?
Yes, but I'll go you one better. I bet there aren't any buffer overflow checks on that arcade machine. Why should there be? They've (almost) never had to worry about this sort of user input in the past. Even with the Neo Geo systems, it would be really difficult to put your own code on the memory cards, but there's a memory card available from Lik Sang that has a USB port on it so you can back up your games to the PC. All you gotta do is hack up some code, toss it on the card and plug it into the arcade game. Boom, anything from crashing the machine (and resetting high scores) to wiping people's memory cards to free games, depending on exactly how many priviledges the game code in the arcade machine has.
Sure, that's all fun and games, but how long before someone simply figures out how to change the high score on their magnetic cards? Without actually storing it on the machine, and letting people take something home to play with, is just asking for trouble.
I think this may encourage more than simple "connectivity." It'll be interesting to see what happens, either way.
Simple. Just institute classes of racers/vehicles. Those withing 'normal' bounds and those above. Surely it's not hard to check a few key numbers and report whether they fall into Class A or Class B.
I'm just pissed that they haven't instituted a unified memory card system yet.
And for that matter, why don't arcades offer fighting games where people can import their own fighters fully made from, say, a small program freely available on the Net. And with a single memory card they could import the character to any console version of said game....
Jeffool.
Hey, I'm onto something here!
What a great idea! I buy a game to play at home, but don't get use of the full game because there won't be an arcade withing 1000 miles of me with the game.
I guess this is to be expected from Nintendo -- with their push for the gameboy-gamecube connection. Now you can pay 100% for a gamecube game and get 90% of it in return.
I certainly hope there are cheats that can open up the "hidden" tracks for those of us stuck in the god-forsaken corners of the world.
Maybe the future of arcades is to provide instant LAN setups... Replacing low income games with banks of gaming setups with boxes, monitors and comfy gaming setups. Random groups get together and Doom out, or whatever it is you kids do these days.
Replace the GC memory card with the USB RAM keychain...
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I think this is the first step towards arcades making a comeback. The next step is more games with high scores. The best case scenario is that this will lead to legendary highscores in games like Starship Runner 3D or Pac Man: The Next Frontier...
Note, the games mentioned above are not real and are figments of my imagination
The extra details are inteteresting, but the general idea of the arcade-console hookup has been known since before E3.
That aside, i may try this out if i can find an arcade with one nearby, but mainly for the unlocking things that can be transfered to the console aspect. I normally don't make it out to arcades anymore except for DDR, and i don't have much interest in spending a great deal of time upgrading and customizing a car for use in the arcade machine.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I am sure that they have but the thing is, Nintendo has say, 20 maybe 30 people play testing and debugging the game trying to find every possible exploit or mean of cheating and so on.
But there will be thousands of people trying to hack the game with cheat devices, and only one of them has to succeed and post it up on the net. Any tard can punch in some numerical values on a game shark, it dosen't take programing experience to do it. By sheer numbers someone will find a way around it, Or maybe not.
In theory it should be possible to make a piece of software completely free of bugs and exploits, but You might need to fire up the Heart of Gold to push the sort of infinate impropability needed to create such holy-grailesque application.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
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Things like DDR, Time Crisis 3, and F-Zero are giving kids a reason to head to the arcade. The problem is that there aren't any. And where there are arcades, prices are high. 1 dollar per credit is a little nuts if you ask me. And most arcades don't update with the newest games.Someone should open up a chain of very small arcades in areas with lots of gamers and no arcades, like suburbs. The arcades don't need a lot of games, just the new big ones. They can make money of skee-ball, crane machines, mini golf, a skate park, birthday parties, etc. However, they should also be run with the gamer in mind. When new games come out that will be popular the arcade should get them asap. High Score and such should be taken seriously. Tournaments could be hosted. A LAN area would work well too. Set up a chain/franchise of these and money is coming your way.
Also, back in the day arcade games used to be superior to home games. Obviously today they aren't. Expensive peripherals like light guns and ddr pads add something. But what we really need are arcade games that use vastly superior technology than console and pc games. Think about it. A 300$ console setup + television has a game of equal quality to a 3000$ arcade machine? For the very high prices arcade machines could have extremely powerful computers inside and have pixar quality graphics and surround sound, etc. that gamers can't get in their homes.
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What made the arcade great was that you couldn't find any of those games or experiences anywhere else. Now with most arcade games being released for home consoles, the demand for arcade games have diminished.
More creativity has to be put into arcade games. Look at Japan. The arcade is still as big as ever because many of the games they have aren't available at home or would not be able to be played on a console/pc anyways.
I won't ever buy another Nintendo arcade game again. I bought all these nintendo arcade games, then they release exact copies for a sub 100 dollar home system. Fuck Nintendo. Personally, Nintendo has always made my favorite consoles. Even all the way back to those pocket games.
That's a top idea! Shame it's for the gamecube, but good for them. As long as they don't charge an absolute fortune to play it.
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The driver's license cards are pretty cool. I got one at the E3 this year and I was very surprised to see that the machine actually prints your name and other stats on each card. This is in addition to stats being stored on a magnetic strip on the reverse side.
I'm thinking that you won't be allowed to upload data from a Gamecube memory card. Uploads are only from the driver's license card. Once your stats are loaded from the license, you can then download your profile on to a GC card.
-BIGmog
V O T E F O R M O G
E-mail the save file to yourself, and hack it
Should have read "not staying out of pie shops..."
;^)
Everyone else seems to have seen it for the typo that it was. I guess you didn't.
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