Japanese Quiz Show Arcade Game Confounds

Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing the latest Japanese arcade games showcased at the AOU 2004 show in Tokyo, with a particular highlight, as well as an example of building a play experience unique to an arcade, being Sega's Quiz Show, which "gives the player the experience of being a contestant on an American TV quiz show." The Japanese page for the game has pictures of the massive arcade cabinet, which has players "sitting behind a colorful table, just like a real quiz show", and allows each contestant to answer trivia questions which are "randomly selected by a physical, spinning wheel that's attached to the game booth."

Comments

Re:Arcade games

[zero_offset]

Tried-and-true formulas and good old profit motive killed American video games. If it wasn't the next "Defender" and didn't have a Sports Theme(TM) then it never saw the light of day. That combined with the absolutely stupid trend of ever-increasing per-play prices nailed the coffin-lid on American arcade games. (As a kid in the 80s, I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars in quarters -- but I only played a few fifty-cent games, and I've never looked twice at the dollar-or-more games.) I also have to assume the constant improvement in home console games and PCs contributed heavily to the demise, but I really think the Sports Theme(TM) trend was the beginning of the end. I still shake my head when I think about those endless lines of idiots mindlessly banging away on the buttons of Track & Field...

What characterized the heyday of the arcade game was creativity... and that doesn't mean "unchecked weirdness", or weird gimmicky controls, or spaz-friendly concepts like DDR.

Game needs to have updates..

[LordJezo]

..otherwise it will become obsolete because everyone will have memorized all of the answers..

Unlike other games like DDR or Pac-Man where you can improve your skill this game would involve the players to simply learn the answers.. right?

Re:Game needs to have updates..

[Ayaress]

Like Trivial Pursuit. It's fun for about a week, then your friend goes through the box, reads all the cards, and has the game entirely memorized, and the game becomes all pursuit and no trivia.

Re:Arcade games

[The Evil Couch]

I think a big reason you'll never see games with lots of extra gadgets over here in the States isn't that the games aren't enjoyable, it's that it seems like the fanciest games over here, end up broken first, whereas in Japan, they see a game with all sorts of extras and they treat it much more gingerly than they would over here.

I've lived in Japan for a couple years as a kid and it seems like when a Japanese kid finds that the lightgun at his game is off target, he'll go find an attendant and ask for help, whereas in the US, the kid will just whack the side of the gun until it either breaks or it works better.