Lesson of the day: Just because something is old doesn’t automatically make it worthy of either nostalgia or cash. We’re looking at you here, Microsoft. The new Game Room service, recently launched for both Xbox and Games For Windows, is a great idea in theory – a personal arcade of classic titles you can play for a few coins, or build up by ‘purchasing’ virtual cabinets to play at will. In practice, well…
The first big problem is the cost. You can play with virtual coins, paying around 35p a go. A bit overpriced, but fine. But what Microsoft really wants you to do is buy the individual arcade cabinets, which costs 240 Microsoft Points – around £2. If you want to play your games on both PC and Xbox 360, that becomes £3.25, for absolutely no good reason. That might sound OK for a full arcade cabinet, but really, that’s not what you’re buying. You’re getting the chance to play games like Centipede or Super Cobra whenever you want, until Microsoft gets bored of the whole idea, or launches a new arcade system that makes you start over again. Alternatively, you could just go buy one of the million and one retro compilations available for less, or play a Flash version for free, and really not miss much.
What I wanted to see was a system proposed by an online gaming service that was pitched a few years ago. It never actually happened, but it was a good idea. The plan was that you’d pay to play games by the minute/hour, but with the twist that the amount would cap out after a while – once you’d played enough that you’d have bought the game, you would have.
Replace time with virtual coins, and this would have been the perfect system for Game Room. Wander around the visually pleasing 3D world with a bag of virtual coins in one hand, experimenting and poking around a shiny arcade with none of the rubbish games getting in the way. Perfect. Instead, what we’ve got is an overpriced showroom packed with little but dross, on consoles that look embarrassed to be there. Intellivision emulation? Seriously? The Atari 2600, pretending to be an arcade cabinet? What’s next – the Odyssey? Virtual Boy? The wristwatch version of Altered Beast?
In fairness, the plan is for more games to be added on a regular basis, hopefully more exciting ones. As it is, you need to be in that very thin sliver of space between nostalgia and realism to get the most out of the Game Room line-up. Sorry, but Adventure isn’t much fun. Crystal Castles and Red Baron are not worth digging out the rose-tinted glasses for. Very few ’80s games are still worth your time, never mind your money. Those that are, like Tempest, have seen improved versions.
Having these games isn’t a problem, of course. Focusing on them is. Realistically, the ’90s are the nostalgic vein that Game Room needs to tap into right now – the arcade games from the era when computers weren’t powerful enough to compete, all big and brash and colourful, especially to kids with weary parents. The classics from before then, like Qix or Pac-Man and Space Invaders, have done the rounds so many times and in so many different forms that there’s little new to be had from yet another retro version.
Individually, few of the games are worth buying directly – the exceptions being things like Street Fighter II – but that doesn’t make them worthless. I’d never buy, say, an Xbox Arcade remake of The Simpsons arcade game, because while I have a soft spot for it, I know it’s not something I’d play more than a couple of times. Ditto with classics like Rampage or Final Fight, or all the ones that I only wish I was any good at, like the evil Smash TV. It doesn’t matter if you only have a few plays on these, because that’s all most of us had at the time. Mastering arcade machines and playing them obsessively was always a fringe pursuit, encouraged by the fact that there weren’t that many games around. Realistically, most of us would dip into arcade games, not dive.
These games may not have the same cultural oomph of a Space Invaders or a Pac-Man game, but time moves on, and nostalgia moves with it. When an increasing slice of the audience has never played Missile Command with a trackball or sat down at a Space Invaders machine, anything but the absolute gems merely becomes old and clunky. Old games resurrected in the name of nostalgia but without any sense of the actual emotion become shovelware – classic in the sense of old, not loved; a slice of history by definition rather than acclaim.
Qix remains, of course, the game of kings.
