Weekends at the Arcade

A weakness in my parents armor when it came to entertainment was the arcade, here was a place that my entire family could go and enjoy themselves for the better part of an afternoon and not have to worry about bringing a bunch of junk back home.  So probably from about the time I was in 3rd grade up through Junior High school I want to say about once a month we'd make our way to the local arcade establishment and just have a great time.  I would try my hand at whatever sweet beat em up or fighting games were new or familiar, and my dad took a liking to some of the stranger "concept" stuff that wasn't too ridiculous.  My mother was a huge Centipede and Gauntlet fanatic, and my sister for the most part stuck to ski ball, ticket games, and dabbled in stuff like House of the Dead and Nighstalkers because she thought they were cool, and lets face it they were pretty cool (also I probably dragged her over to play some other fighting games because I was tired of getting my ass kicked by strangers, she was far too good of a sport).  So it was a pleasant outing, everybody was happy and it would help ease a long stressful week of work or school.  On to my point.

My dad and I rarely saw eye to eye on what "good" games were and so very rarely did a game come around that we could enjoy together that satisfied my need for something with some tacky violence and his need for something crazy and unique (that presumably pushed the technological envelope).  There were a few over the years but the one I remember best was Virtual On.  A fighting game on a 3 dimensional battlefield where two large Mech-Like robots go toe to toe blasting each other to bits, eight unique robots to choose from.  What was neat about this game wasn't so much that it was eye candy or had marvelous easily accessible controls.  It was probably the cool ass cabinet it came in, and the fact that it was probably the only game like it at the time that was any good and probably the only good game of it's kind for quite a while.  The cabinet had two seats with some kind of polarized glass or mirror between the two people so you couldn't see the other person's screen, and you used twin joysticks to pilot your character and fire the weapons and whatnot.  I thought it had an enclosed cockpit for each person (and it might have which made it that much cooler), but I'm not finding any examples of that in any of the pictures I've found.  The controls were kind of a bitch to get used to, and to this day I think part of that had to do with just the fact that they were kind of a work in progress to being with.  It wasn't cheap either, I want to say that it was like 75 cents to play it, so two people who wanted to go head to head had to drop a good buck fifty to satisfy their need for competition (a small fortune back then).  This did not seem to phase my dad however, once or twice at some point during our visit he'd drag me over there and we'd dump a good 5 bucks into that machine vying for robot fighting skill supremacy.  I don't honestly remember if either of us was any better than the other, I suppose we were probably about even or it didn't matter because neither of us was terribly competitive or smug enough to rub any obvious victory or string of victories in the others face.  It was just fun, and the alternative (playing the CPU) was miserable because they pretty much kicked the shit out of you after the second or third opponent you faced. 

So the question is have I had a chance to play this game recently?  YES, in a beautifully ported over version on the Sega Saturn.  Granted the ambiance of the "driver's seat", twin joysticks, and the screen partition is replaced with your living room, two Sega Saturn controllers (which admittedly offer a much more ironed out control scheme), and split screen view of the action in multiplayer (you can choose horizontal or vertical split screen, something I lot of future games should have taken a hint from).  The sounds and graphics are very much intact, and it's a bit more friendly in terms of single player as well (you can adjust the difficulty).  The Saturn was dirt cheap, like 40 bucks, and the fucking thing was sealed in the box it came in (even though that box was in sad shape via 2007 when I got it, lol).  The games for that thing are a bloody fortune so don't get too excited about picking one of these up.  Also finding decent controllers can be a bit of a chore as well.  There's a PC port for this monster as well that was released probably around the same time the Saturn version came out, and unless you want an exercise in frustration and failure, I would steer clear of it at all costs (no matter how low they may be).

When I asked my dad if he wanted to take it for a spin for old time sake (on the Saturn), he kind of gave me a sideways glance and told me he'd have to pass.  I guess a more genuine arcade experience would've been needed to get him back in the driver's seat for another round.

That's all for today, I'm going to see how far I can get in the arcade mode (not far by my estimate), and then get on with my day.