#internet arcade

When I started playing at the internet arcade, some of the buttons felt a little finicky to me because the placement was unfamiliar. Specifically, in Root Beer Tapper, I was not used to the game's controls. I'm used to playing gacha games on the Windows laptop, where I use WASD to move, but I had to use the arrow keys instead. I thought I could use the mouse button to fill the root beer, but it was actually the Ctrl button instead. I kept mashing buttons until I eventually gave up and checked the reviews. However, once I got the hang of the controls, I started liking the gameplay for this, because it reminds me of Diner Dash, but is more picky about how the player performs. This is because a single mistake can cost the entire game. For example, I would make an extra root beer by accident, and would end up losing the entire game.

I ended up trying two different games. At first I naturally went for the game labelled Dungeons and Dragons because I love DnD. But I found it very confusing because there were a lot of controls and skills/weapons that I had access to but didn't fully understand. At this point I also struggled with controls because unfortunately, my down key did not work. I played as the dwarf because I assumed that would be the character closest to a barbarian so I felt that he could survive a little longer on his own and his attacks would be more intuitive.

After spamming the attack button a few times, I decided to try a different game which ended up being Cotton, a side stroller shooting game. It reminded me a lot of Touhou, which is a game that I watched my friend play a few times. I was able to reconfigure the keys to make it easier to play and ended up playing a few times trying to get as far as possible (I did not get far at all). I found that Cotton was much more intuitive without a tutorial because it essentially only had one attack skill I was aware of: to shoot at the enemies in my way. Since I played Cotton longer than the DnD game, I'll talk about the former for the rest of this reflection.

The biggest difference between playing on a emulator and an actual arcade machine would be the absence of the joysticks and buttons. On an arcade machine for Cotton, I would imagine one or two joysticks and a few, maybe just one or two, buttons. But because I was playing through an emulator, I had access to an entire keyboard with many keys I never ended up using. This takes away the intuitive and simple design of arcade games since they usually never have tutorials and instead rely on the player's quick thinking to figure out the controls. I also felt that a joystick stick would definitely make dodging objects and enemies easier. I felt limited to moving up, down, left and right because moving diagonally would require me to use my other hand, which was already spamming space to shoot, to press other keys. If I was playing with a joystick, Cotton would have access to a larger range of motion.

When it comes to gaming, I prefer staying at home and playing on console machines or my personal computer. I haven’t played that many classic arcade games in my life, aside from a racing game or two. Maybe a claw machine if I was feeling lucky. I thought I wasn’t missing out on much, considering I played many a minigame adapted from the classics.

Take Astro Blaster for example. A simple goal of shooting the alien space ships before they take you out first. I figured I would take a spin at it after seeing it in the Internet Arcade. I remembered how fun it was to play the minigames of a similar nature and, though I ended things off early in the past with such games out of boredom, I figured it was an easy enough game to play for a bit.

Though I neglected to realize the differences between the original and other adaptations until I lost the game. A very quick and humbling experience, might I add.

The key differences that led to an untimely end were the enemies themselves. While the versions I played focused on many enemies descending at once, Astro Blaster gave me a run for my virtual coins as the enemies moved around the level faster than my favorite rhythm game at maximum speed. Normally I would miss enemies by the skin of their teeth. With Astro Blaster? I couldn’t even hit the broad side of a barn!

5630 points. Not bad, but I could do better.

Another “coin” clinked in the machine. Round two, let’s go!

Then I became aware of another thing I missed: the fuel gauge. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about maneuvering my little ship around. After all, it was the onslaught of enemies I had to worry about and whether I could dodge their attacks before they overtook me.

With Astro Blaster, however, I discovered the fuel gauge and the threat of overheating the lasers. Not only was I now focused on dodging the space ships, but now I had to make sure I didn’t blow up my own ship.

3320 points. New information noted. Round 3!

Did you realize that you could die from being in the wrong area of the map when it’s time to dock the ship?

1880 points. It was a fluke, but now I’m honed in. Round 4, baby!

I figure out that if I stand in a specific area, I can avoid lasers and save up space to shoot back between shots fired. Neat trick!

That I eventually have to put in my back pocket because I tripped up at the asteroids hailing at me.

2320 points. I feel like it’s getting worse, before it gets better.

Feelings aside, I only gave the machine five coins, so I’m on my last turn. Taking in all the information I discovered through error, I maneuver back to the section I originally lost to in the beginning.

And I keep going! The slight nihilistic twinge I felt earlier melted away as I blasted the enemies down one by one. Then, the level moved to the next wave of enemies.

That I almost immediately lose all of my lives to because geez these little guys hit hard!

6340 points. …I can do better.

And yet, that’s the farthest I got before I had to throw in the towel.

Did I have fun? Debatable.

Did I get competitive? Oh, definitely.

Would I keep coming back? Probably not if it was an arcade machine, given I only have so many coins to my name. But given the opportunity to do so again on the Internet Arcade?

As an avid Star Wars fan, I have played most of the modern iterations of Star Wars games. This includes Star Wars: Squadrons, which was released in October 2020. As Star Wars is such an old franchise, when opening up the Internet Arcade, my first instinct was to see if there were older games from when the originals were released. To my luck, I found The Empire Strikes Back by Atari Games, released in 1985. The first thing I noticed was that the game was a first-person rail shooter that simulated space flight. I also noticed the simple vector graphics. As I continued playing, I noticed that gameplay was divided into four sequences, each with different opponents from the Star Wars universe. The game starts over at a higher difficulty when the four sequences are completed. Though incredibly enjoyable, I felt like I was missing out on playing The Empire Strikes Back on an emulator and not on the original Atari hardware. As the game simulates space flight, the original console had a handle similar to a steering wheel. It was much harder to hit the targets on a keyboard. Despite these drawbacks, I still enjoyed playing The Empire Strikes Back in an emulator as it reminded me of the origins of video games such as Star Wars: Squadrons.

Retrogaming : plus de 900 jeux en ligne

Vive Internet Arcade !!!

L’organisation américaine Internet Archive (à but non lucratif), a pour mission de réaliser la plus grande bibliothèque numérique en ligne à partir d’archives trouvées sur internet. Ainsi, depuis plus de 20 ans, le site effectue une curation de pages, textes, documents vidéo et audio, images et logiciels du web… Le site en a rajouté une couche en mettant à disponibilité…