My Trip to Funspot - Part 2 - Games I Never Heard Of
The second reason Funspot was so awesome was that not only could I replay games of my youth, or try out games I always wanted to play; but having 200+ games there were a lot of games I never even heard of. There were two arcades in my hometown, but neither one was huge, and like I said before, I was too young to drive to them so I didn't see everything. I discovered a lot of cool titles at Funspot - check these out in MAME when you get a chance.
I'll start with my favorite - Pulsar by Gremlin/Sega. This is a tank maze game, which seems to have been inspired by Tron. The goal is to grab the numbered keys from the top of the screen and use them in the corresponding locks at the bottom of the screen to escape the level. You can get them in any order, but you get bonus points if you use them in numeric order. Of course, there are enemies floating around the maze - some shoot, some don't. There's also some kind of enemy base which looks like a cloud that floats around spawning enemies, and you can take that out. The coolest thing, though, is that the maze continually changes. Every 5-10 seconds or so some walls disappear and new one reappear. There's always a path to and from the keys and gates, and it's done in a really cool way. The rhythm is there, and I never felt screwed by the walls, it just added an extra dimension of risk - can I get the key back in time before the next change, and if the maze did change, do I risk taking route A that leads me past the enemy spawner, or route B that's longer but safer? Graphically it wasn't anything to write home about. It looked nice and moved quickly, but the tank, enemies and maze are all pretty pixely. Finally, this isn't a plodding tank game - you and the enemies move really quick. The game was an absolute blast, and I put a bunch of tokens into it. SoCal, you should check this out for It Came From Mame.
Atari Force - Liberator was another cool game, which seemed like an unofficial sequel to Missile Command. You control a targetting cursor with the trackball, and shoot from four ships on in the corner of the screen. The twist is that the enemy missiles come from bases on a rotating planet, and their trajectory orbits around the planet. There are also enemy satellites that launch missiles back at you as well, and those are trickier since they're shooting from orbit, you have less time to intercept them. The gameplay was almost more frantic than Missile Command, and the arcing trajectories of the missiles and rotating planet added a lot. I didn't quite get the plot in the couple of games I played, so I'm not sure if the missiles were always aiming for your ships, or if you had to protect some targets on the planet, but it was still a fun twist to the Missile Command formula. Definitely worth a few plays.
Sega made a pretty decent Galaga clone called Cosmic Alien which I thought was a lot of fun. The graphics were very good and the gameplay was solid. Not a groundbreaking title by any means, but if you want to try out a different bottom shooter this one is solid. Check out that marquee artwork - how could you not put a quarter in?!?!
I was intrigued by The End. It looked like an arcade version of one of my 2600 favs, Spider Fighter, only the enemy bugs try to take bricks from the bottom of the screen and spell out 'The End' at the top. The game ends if they complete the letters or wipe out all of your bug/crab-like ships. Unfortunately, it didn't play that great. The screen was cramped, and it went from being too easy to too hard in the blink of an eye. Worth checking out, but I didn't think it was all that much fun.
I tried out a mechanical pin as well: Grand Slam. There was actually quite a bit going on in the playfield, and I thought it was fun. No idea if this is common or not, but I'd never seen one before and it was definitely worth a few plays.
I don't have a pic, but I also played the gun game Cheyenne. The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't remember seeing or playing it. It looks like one of the earliest scrolling-playfield gun games. You're trying to protect the driver of a wagon against both outlaws and Indians trying to take him out. I put a few tokens in, and never made it very far. The game was fun, but it was TOUGH. The enemy bullets were little X's which didn't move that fast, but they were tough to hit. Fun game, and worth checking out, just be prepared to die a lot.
So that's it - there were a bunch of other games I'd never heard of, but those are the ones that grabbed me. Pulsar in particular was great, I'd love to own one. Definitely check them out on MAME>
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