Arcade Away From Home

Arcade Away From Home

Recent developments in home game computers may suggest that the home games are just like their bigger brothers and sisters in the arcade. Game time at both arcade and home disproves this...

First you have to realize that this is an arcade, a place to have fun and play the game. Arcades are like spontaneous combustion, players and games glowing at each other. In that glow is a mystical intensity that you can feel from the time the first player hits the first game of the day to much later, when the games are shut down for the night.

The arcade is fun, festive, a place where you are must definitely going to hang out if you plan to get any serious work done. And with that come the other players who share your enthusiasm, skill, and luck.

The elements of home play are much different, with the game set to play on the television set in one family room or another. Not that there is any less fascination on the part of the player. After all, the game is at the player’s total control (no quarters needed), which can result in some fairly intense hours spent on the game.

While home and arcade play are different, the biggest difference is in the programs themselves. Most home game action carts are based on or reproduce the most successful games in the arcades. But the programs for the arcade and home games are not always exactly the same. So while the game may have the same name, there are differences in play that tend to give the edge to the arcade version.

Nothing wrong with that. The arcade game is where the action starts. It presents itself as only one game, to be won or lost through skill and cunning. The home game reproduction may include a dozen or two variations of the game, programmed skill levels that start the game out simply enough so that young children can play, and heightened intensity levels for the most skilled. But the home game cart can sometimes miss the essential magic of the arcade original. Or if it captures the personality of the original, it may fall down in translating color and shading.

The manufacturers aren’t trying to fool you, by the way. They know that their program product isn’t identical to the arcade games. They create programming based on the most popular plots and themes of current hot arcade games, but they’re also in the business of vending a wide range of game carts, from spots to computer training to classic games of chance to hot contemporary action.

Because they are diverse in their game software, the home game manufacturers have come up with some classic game programs that won’t be found in any arcades.

"Arcades are like spontaneous combustion, players and games glowing at each other."

If you want to be where everything seems to be happening at once, then you better get back to the arcade now. If you enjoy the challenges of home computer games, relax and have a good time, but at least once you should take your magic fingers down to your local arcade and let loose.

Perhaps the real difference between arcade and home games is that home games aren’t as rugged as their arcade counter parts. It’s difficult to give the kind of physical treatment you give to an arcade game to a home computer center. It has no tough painted plywood structure to protect it. (This can, by the way, make home games tougher to play than arcade games, as the home game joystick control units are often more difficult to work exactly than the arcade game controls.)

Arcade and home games have something to be said for themselves, eacl positive in its own way. What they reallj share in common, despite their program ming differences, is that they each havethi capacity to totally engage and intrigue tlx player from the very first moment.