I really do think it took a good 20 years to be able to expect coin-operated quality games on the PC or most other systems (and I lost interest in video games by the time that happened)
Let’s take a random game:
Here’s the arcade version - looks snappy, I’d give this a play now if it was in front of me
NES version - lousy
Amiga version - junk
PC version - piece of crap.
Is the claim that consoles couldn’t keep up with the state of the art in arcades for 20 years, or is the claim that there is a 20 year lag from arcade to console (e.g. 1980 in arcades is 2000 in consoles). To me your OP read like you were claiming the latter.
That is hard for me to answer specifically. I just meant there was a certain basic standard of quality to coin-operated games starting from the mid-80s (look, sound, smoothness, the whole package) which I just didn’t see on home systems until around the early 2000s.
This could partly come from what Jragon said about the use of assembly language programming in coin-operated machines to optimize performance - that explanation made a lot of sense to me.
Too complicated an answer to be the right one.
It definitely wasn’t 20 years to catch up. It’s that it wasn’t worth catching up to 20 year old games.
By the time 1995 rolled around, it’s not worth anybody’s money to code Ms Pac-Man (1982) for the PlayStation or even the SNES or Genesis. The hardware could certainly handle it easily 10 years later, but there’s no purpose to spending any resources on the effort. Certainly there were new games to port, but the hardware gap was even smaller by the 90s and even smaller now.
Ditto Double-Dragon. It’s not worth releasing a version on a new home console 10 years later on a game that’s no longer popular enough to recoup costs.
Then I’d look to compare the good to the good. If you compare random ports, it isn’t a surprise the arcade would win out (these will be closer in year, and in general whatever a thing came out on originally has the advantage in an original vs port comparison). But what about comparing, say, Streets of Rage to Double Dragon. Or Super Mario World to Wonder Boy. Or the first Street Fighter to a good port of a later Street Fighter.
I talked to an arcade owner as well as an arcade tech. The reason arcade games were so superior to home consoles for so long were the contacts used for the joystick. An 8 point contact cost around $100 and allowed for nearly superhuman feats such as the Zangief Super Piledriver.
However, it’s greatest strength also became it’s downfall. If one contact went bad, the game was unplayable. Then a tech had to be called it to replace it (repair was not an option.) The tech worked for like 90/hour, the contact cost like 20, after a while it just wasn’t worth repairing anymore.
Today, I still can’t get the same level of control through the USB joysticks, and the old serial joystick ports are hard to find. I still don’t understand how someone who uses their thumbs believes they’re actually doing well. I watched the SF2 world championships on xbox or something on youtube, and they all bring in regular joysticks, they never use thumbs.
This would only apply to some games (to the extent that it does apply). Also note that a d-pad can distinguish 8 different inputs, so it is an issue about peripherals (when you ported the game you wouldn’t need to change the controls.)
Snake Eyes won HD Remix at Evo with a gamepad using Zangief. Gamepads may be worse, but if they are it seems to me you’ve overstated the discrepancy.
Heh. I’ve got several compilations of old arcade games for my PS2. Apparently several companies were able to make money from these compilations, because they came out with more than one anthology.
This is just bizarre on several levels. First off, I doubt the average arcade game player was seriously aware of the precision involved in the hardware - this was mass market entertainment back in the day and most people sucked at it.
Nextly, you can buy arcade cabinet joysticks (sans balltop and mounting screws and such - basically, the electronics and the moving parts) for like $25 nowadays. I dunno if they’ve taken a massive nosedive in cost or what, but $100 seems outrageous.
Yeah, and those “regular joysticks” they use? They’re USB. There’s nothing magic about the old serial ones. Several of the premier Street Fighter players in the world are sponsored by Madcatz and use their hardware, which is pretty much “arcade standard” - Sanwa parts and all that. But a number of very talented players use pads too - though usually not the Xbox 360 controller, which is nigh legendary for the terribleness of its D-pad.
As for the compilations Lynn Bodoni mentioned, those exist now because we’ve basically advanced so far that it costs a very small amount of money to port these games, which is why you can buy big compilations for $20. Fifteen years ago, it still wasn’t worth the effort on the part of these developers.
:eek: Sir! I demand satisfaction!
While I never played the Amiga or PC versions of Double Dragon, the NES version was never meant to be a straight port of the arcade game. It was twice as long and included a level-up system not found in the arcades. As a translation, it was awesome.
That said, Double Dragon exists in that weird 8/16-bit valley that the SNES and Genesis were easily capable of surpassing.
It was a race, pure and simple. Early video game consoles (and the first home computers) from the late 70’s had limited memory and graphics due to the costs of manufacturing the units. Arcade machines were much more expensive dedicated machines that were able to feature superior graphics. The next wave of consoles (Atari 5200, Colecovision, etc) caught up with the arcades and had arcade-perfect - or nearly so - ports of popular games like Pac-Man, Galaxian, etc. The arcade machine manufacturers and arcade owners were worried people would stay at home and play their perfect ports on the console, so they came out with more powerful machines, and from there out it was a bit of a game of one-upmanship.
Don’t forget, consoles had relatively long lifespans and were stuck with fixed hardware during their spans (which was designed at least a year or two before the console was released), while arcade manufacturers were able to constantly revise their machines with nearly every game to stay ahead. Part of the reason the Atari 2600 was so successful was they had a huge user base to sell games to (it had a very long lifespan), and a large part of the video game crash was because they had to transition to new hardware to keep up with the arcades. New hardware meant there weren’t as many existing console owners to sell games to, and there were a lot of companies getting into the home video game market. Glut of games, many of them poorly made, plus the amount of consoles (I think there were around 10 different upcoming or newly released consoles coming out at one point in the early to mid-80’s) led to fragmentation of the market and the crash.
After the crash (which hurt the console owners a lot more than the arcades), the race continued as before but with a smaller gap between the consoles and arcades. Consoles eventually narrowed the gap to the point where arcades used increasingly gimmicky hardware to stay ahead. The arcades eventually petered out partially because they couldn’t keep up, and partially because in many communities arcades were seen as a bad influence (hangout for delinquents, concerns of drug/alcohol use at arcades) and pressured many arcade owners into shutting down.
Now, many arcade manufacturers (most notably Atari and Nintendo) were also console or console game manufacturers, so it wasn’t entirely an "Us vs. Them situation, but arcades definitely wanted and pushed for games that you couldn’t fully duplicate at home.
So I guess the arcade owner and repair tech I talked to were just pulling numbers out of their ass?
About ten years ago, there were a couple of manufacturers of 6 button arcade quality joysticks that started at 125$ and up. Probably that seems fictional from your perspective as well?
No, that’s what a fully assembled stick costs (Usually close to $150). But that’s a stick, balltop, case, 8 or 10 buttons, PCB, wiring, assembly, the whole nine yards, and that’s at retail.
Buying just a replacement joystick to replace a bad contact for $100 ($100 1982 dollars, no less, which my handy inflation calculator tells had about the same buying power as $240 today.) does still sound absurd, yes.
Maybe they were just getting gouged by their supplier? Just because you work in a field doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got any business savvy. In fact, most people who ran arcades didn’t seem to have much. Or maybe it’s been 30 years since then and they don’t remember perfectly. Who knows.
Anyone here do any work on cabinets back in the day? My experience with this stuff is relatively recent.
When I opened this thread, I thought it would be about the old pin ball games Ya know the ones with flippers, ball returns, and those bongie things. Those machines ate a bunch of my quarters and I enjoyed them immensely! I know they weren’t real cerebral, but we had fun playing them. Anyone remember them? Don’t mean to hi-jack the thread, but they were coin operated arcade games and they were so good!
I love pinball. One of my lottery fantasies is to buy a really nice pinball machine for my house…
I know this is a pretty lame lottery fantasy (pinball machines aren’t super expensive), but I can dream can’t I?
Maybe you should upgrade that to “buy a house big enough to have a pinball game room” 
edit: Wow this is bullshit
Again, like i said, without the auto-caps and whatnot: I talked to:
back in the 90’s. If that’s not an original source, I don’t know what is.
Firstly, the “no, that’s what a fully assembled stick costs…” line you quoted was a direct reply to your “About ten years ago, there were a couple of manufacturers of 6 button arcade quality joysticks that started at 125$ and up. Probably that seems fictional from your perspective as well?” citing that, in fact, I agree with you there, so clearly, you’re not following me well here.
Secondly, as I stated “original sources” that are people’s memory and opinion are not 100% infallible. At any rate, the “Oh, arcade games were super superior because of their joysticks” comment seems completely off base for the reasons already stated.
Not sure why you’re so offended by a dissenting opinion.
Therefore, you are questioning my memory, not the facts?
Go ahead and cite ANY SOURCE, BETTER THAN MINE which contradicts my facts.