Superauthenticity: Arcade game aspect ratios

Photo by redditor AKJVermont

Early-to-golden-age arcade games, with bespoke video hardware and no real standards, pose some unique properties concerning aspect ratio and resolution. Among them are:

• Vertically-oriented monitors
• Vector monitors with point-plot resolution
• Non-standard monitor configurations
• Variable resolutions

Most of these games, even back then, were designed for a 15Khz 4:3 monitor. Even vertically-oriented arcade games would simply output a 90-degree rotated display and expect the monitor to be rotated likewise; MAME thankfully automates this for you by default. For the most part, you can achieve a reasonably authentic aspect ratio in MAME by simply letting it do its thing.

However, my superauthenticity theory speculates that some games simply didn't account for the distorting effect that non-square pixels would have on the final display, and if these games could be identified, then authentic aspect ratio is a flaw, and by using square pixels, instead of a corrected 4:3 aspect ratio, their presentation could be enhanced in a non-destructive manner.

I'm not even going to examine pixel aspect ratio here; it's too complicated to delve into that for such a wide variety of video display types, and arcade games generally had more precise video signals than console games of the day did, with much less overscan. I've already explained why it's bad to assume 4:3 DAR is authentic, but if I'm going to analyze arcade games, it's too much trouble not to.

 

Atari 

Breakout

Data Driven Gamer's first ever whale defies resolution analysis. MAME considers the resolution to be 896x252, but a raw screenshot captures at 228x1440. In reality, the video hardware was analog and any resolution capture is just an approximation.

Just let MAME deal with it. It's fine.

 

Centipede

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

At 240x256 resolution, raw pixels give Centipede a nearly square screen layout. A vertical layout with authentically thin pixels just looks better. Right down to the font.

Verdict: 3:4

 

Star Wars

DAR:	Raw 4:3

Internally, Star Wars has a 'tall' resolution of 502x562, but this is a horizontal game. But since it plays on a vector monitor, resolution doesn't work in a typical way; 502x562 is effectively a grid of positions from which lines segments may begin or end. The line segments themselves are not bound to this grid (no staircases! no aliasing!), and because of that, the game's effective resolution is limitless.

Incidentally, vector games are a situation where I feel pixel shaders are appropriate for screenshot documentation purposes. I never use them for screenshotting raster games, as they are destructive to the raw image data, but vector games don't have raw image data, at least not in any sense that would produce a pleasing visual.

As for the best aspect ratio, MAME does provide an option to play at a tall aspect ratio, and in some ways, this actually looks better than 4:3. Fonts and 2D screen elements seem more natural, and the iconic Star Wars text crawl looks better this way. 

DAR:	Raw 4:3

But the Death Star is round in 4:3, and narrow in tallscreen, so it's clear that the artists gave some thought to the 4:3 aspect ratio. They just weren't consistent about it.

Verdict: 4:3

 

Marble Madness

Marble Madness runs slightly pillarboxed but has an output resolution of 336x240, which is extremely close to 4:3. I expect this was deliberate.

 

Paperboy

Running on a high-for-its-time-resolution 25Khz monitor at 512x384, Paperboy was designed for square pixels, and there's no other option.

 

Gauntlet

Another 336x240 resolution Atari game.

 

I think we can conclude from this that arcade game manufacturers like Atari considered display aspect ratio pretty much from the beginning. Star Wars was the only time that there was any inconsistency - I guess vector math is hard enough without also having to worry about aspect ratio. But let's look at some more, by other companies.

 

Namco 

Galaxian

DAR:	Raw 3:4 7:8

Galaxian is an odd case. The playfield, which is rendered by tile-mapping hardware, is 224x256, a 7:8 ratio. But the starfield behind it is generated independently of Galaxian's tile mapper.

Stars are not exactly pixels, but analog pulses of color on each scanline (which run vertically, not horizontally). Since each star is generated on a single scanline, a star's width is the same as a playfield pixel, but its height is smaller than one, and its vertical position can be anywhere.

MAME has to work with pixels, though, and simulates this by rendering 224 scanlines, but treats each one as being 768 pixels tall, and renders the 224x256 playfield with triple-tall pixels to fit. The simulated starfield is then 224x768, which provides a reasonable approximation of Galaxian's sub-pixel stars.

So in this case, the "raw" 224x768 resolution is definitely wrong and isn't intended to be right. Bringing the display in alignment with the playfield's 7:8 aspect ratio simply requires tripling the pixels horizontally. But an authentic 3:4 aspect ratio just looks more correct, I think.

Verdict: 3:4

Pac-Man

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

At 224x288 resolution, Pac-Man is pretty close to a natural 3:4 aspect ratio, but different enough that some stretching occurs. But not so different, it seems, that Iwatani felt it necessary to account for this. Square pixels make Pac-Man perfectly round, the dots perfectly square, and the maze perfectly geometric.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

 

Dig Dug

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

Another 224x288 game. Similarly, I think this looks just a bit more correct without the aspect ratio correction.

Verdict: Square pixels

Xevious

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

Same resolution. Same thoughts.

Verdict: Square pixels

Pole Position

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Pole Position runs at 256x224 with fat pixels... but it just looks unnaturally stretched out that way.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Overall, Namco seems less concerned with precise display aspect ratio than Atari did, but again, it's not consistent. Galaxian, one of their earliest games, looks better at an authentic 3:4 aspect ratio, and Pole Position, one of their most advanced of the era, looks better with square pixels, but the majority of their games ran at 288x224 where it doesn't make that much of a difference. I suspect that was a deliberate choice.

 

Midway 

Wizard of Wor

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Wizard of Wor runs at 352x240 and does a similar thing as Galaxian where the starfield signal is independent of the playfield pixels, but MAME doesn't use any resolution tricks to simulate this.

An authentic 4:3 requires thin pixels, and I think this looks better. 

Verdict: 4:3

 

Tapper

DAR:	Raw 4:3

Let's look the logo that Budweiser used in the early 80's:

With fat pixels, the bartender is a bit pudgy, but that banner is a pretty close match!

Verdict: 4:3

 

Spy Hunter

DAR:	Raw 3:4

Spy Hunter's got an interesting resolution of 480x480, though this is one of those situations where the sprites are drawn at a higher resolution than the background layer and MAME just uses that as the overall canvas. Long story short, Spy Hunter only looks right with thin pixels.

Verdict: 3:4

Midway, it seems, was not afraid of experimenting with strange (and often high) resolutions, and understood how to use non-square pixels.

Konami

Super Cobra

DAR:	Raw 3:4 7:8

Super Cobra and Scramble run on the Galaxian board and have the same resolution oddities due to the starfield generator.

As with Galaxian, 3:4 looks better than triple-wide pixels. 

Verdict: 3:4

 

Frogger

DAR:	Raw 3:4 7:8

We're still on Galaxian hardware, but this time the starfield generator doesn't do anything, and we're just looking at a 224x256 playfield where every pixel is tripled in height for no reason.

An authentic 3:4 once again looks the most natural.

Verdict: 3:4

 

Gyruss

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

We're off Galaxian hardware, finally, and running at 224x256. This title screen, with the round earth, is the strongest evidence that Konami was taking non-square pixels into account.

Verdict: 3:4

Rush'n Attack

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

So much for consistency! Rush'n Attack looks terrible at 4:3.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Gradius

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Gradius has a bit more horizontal resolution than Rush'n Attack, and because of it, the 4:3 stretch isn't as pronounced, but I think this still looks better without it.

Verdict: Square pixels 

 

Nintendo

Donkey Kong

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

We've looked at this one before when analyzing NES games' aspect ratios, and concluded that more often than not, Nintendo didn't really account for pixel aspect ratio, but sometimes they did. Donkey Kong on NES was an example where they did not; the arcade game has thin pixels and a vertical orientation, the NES has fat pixels and a horizontal orientation, and while the NES version's layout was reworked to account for this, the sprites and tiles were not.

But with the arcade original, I think they did account for the thin pixels. The rolling barrel looks rounder that way, and DK himself looks more proportionate, as do Mario and Pauline.

Verdict: 3:4

 

Donkey Kong Junior

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

DKJr likewise looks better with thin pixels.

Verdict: 3:4

 

Popeye

DAR:	Raw 4:3

Popeye is another one of those weird cases where the sprites are drawn with much smaller pixels than the playfield pixels are. MAME gives it a canvas of 512x448.

Honestly, I think this looks better without aspect ratio correction. 

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Mario Bros.

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

I noted before that both the arcade and NES versions of Mario Bros. seem better to me with square pixels. I still feel that way.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Williams

Defender

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Defender runs at 292x240 resolution, which is pretty close to 4:3 but does stretch a bit to fit. The graphics are a bit abstract, but I don't really feel that the stretch is an improvement.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Robotron: 2084

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Robotron has the same resolution as Defender, and this time I feel pretty certain the graphics are better left unstretched.

Verdict: Square pixels

Joust

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Joust also runs at 292x240, and looks a bit better without aspect correction.

Verdict: Square pixels

Sega

Zaxxon

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

Sega's Zaxxon is, unambiguously, intended for thin pixels. It features a true isometric projection, but this needs the 3:4 aspect to be seen correctly.

Verdict: 3:4

 

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom

DAR:	Raw Double scan 4:3

Buck Rogers involves some analog video processing and MAME simulates this by setting the canvas at 224 scanlines of 512 pixels each. A double scan results in a resolution of 512x448. To me, this looks better than an authentic 4:3, which looks a bit too stretched horizontally. Either is better than raw output, obviously.

Verdict: Double scan

Space Harrier

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Space Harrier runs at 320x224, which is the same resolution that a lot of Genesis games would eventually run at, and has thin pixels on a 4:3 monitor. It's slight, but it's better this way.

Verdict: 4:3

Capcom

1942

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

This looks a touch better at the thinner 3:4, I think.

Verdict: 3:4 

 

Commando

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 3:4

Commando likewise looks better at 3:4.

Verdict: 3:4

Ghosts 'n Goblins

Scaling:	1x 2x
DAR:	Raw 4:3

But this one, which I did not and will not cover, looks better raw! 4:3 Arthur just seems a bit out of shape for this adventure. 

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Before this dive, I had a theory that western developers were more inclined to take pixel aspect ratio into account. Based on this sample, I can't say my theory is substantiated. While there does seem to be some correlation between region and aspect ratio awareness, it's not a strong one. Every Japanese developer here had at least some games that looked better with an authentic aspect ratio, and all of Williams' games look better with square pixels.

But there is another divide which seems much stronger - vertical vs. horizontal.

Almost every vertically-oriented game I compared looked better with a correct 3:4 aspect ratio. The sole exceptions were three by Namco, which ran very close to 3:4 anyway.

The horizontal games, on the other hand, for the most part looked better with square pixels. All of the exceptions had some unusual pixel properties; Midway's games run at strange resolutions with pixels that are either thin or very fat. Space Harrier uses thin pixels. Star Wars doesn't use pixels at all. The rest of the horizontal games here all have pixels with a PAR between 1.09 and 1.25, and I find they all look nicer with a PAR of 1.

Maybe I just have a bias towards thin pixels? I think it will be interesting to revisit this topic in the future, as vertically-oriented arcade games start to become less common, outside of niche genres.

Ports of Entry: Midway

Unknown lead platforms:

 

Mortal Kombat Trilogy

First released for PS1 on 10/10/1996, developed by Avalanche Software.

Released for N64 on 11/14/1996, developed by Midway Games.

Released for PC in 1997 by Midway Games, and Saturn by Point of View.

The PC and Saturn versions can probably be eliminated as possibilities, as they came a year late and Wikipedia states they are both based on the Playstation version.

The PS1 version did come out first, and a quote from Ed Boon on Wikipedia suggests that the PS1 port of UMK3 was the impetus to create MK Trilogy. Wikipedia describes the N64 version as a "port." The PS1 version generally looks and sounds better, and forms the basis of all subsequent versions. These facts suggest PS1 as a lead platform.

However, the N64 version was developed in-house, and plays at a speed more accurate to UMK3 in arcades. Leaked beta code for N64 also predates corresponding PS1 code by several months.

It may also be that both versions were developed independently, informed by existing code and assets for MK3 and UMK3, but not by each other in either direction.

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero

First released for PS1 on 10/01/1997, developed in-house.

Released for N64 on 12/08/1997, developed by Avalanche Software.

 

Most signs weakly point to PS1 being the lead platform, but not conclusively. PS1 version came first, was developed in-house, and has higher quality music and FMVs.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance

Released for Gamecube and PS2 on 11/18/2002.

Released for Xbox on 11/19/2002.

An IGN comparison says that the Xbox version is the most complete version in terms of visuals and sounds. This could indicate Xbox as the lead platform with sacrifices made on PS2 and Gamecube to optimize performance. But it's also possible that PS2 (or less likely Gamecube) was the lead platform and Midway simply enhanced the Xbox port appropriately. In fact, according to their comparisons of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Mortal Kombat: Deception, such was the case for those games, with the PS2 being the lead platform even though the Xbox ports had been improved in every way.

The Suffering

First released for PS2 and Xbox on 3/9/2004. Developed by Surreal Software.

Released for PC on 6/10/2004.

 

Area-51

First released for PS2 and Xbox on 4/25/2005. Developed by Austin studio, formerly Inevitable Entertainment.

Released for PC on 6/06/2005.

As with other sixth generation Midway games, IGN says the Xbox version appears to be the most complete, but this does not always mean that it was the lead platform.

 

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

First released for PS2 and Xbox on 9/19/2005. Developed by LA studio, formerly Paradox Development.

 

IGN does not indicate much advantage to the Xbox version this time, nor does it state a lead platform.

 

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

First released for PS2 on 10/11/2006.

Released for Xbox on 10/18/2006.

Stranglehold

First released for Xbox 360 on 9/5/2007.

Released for PC on 9/18/2007.

Released for PS3 on 10/29/2007.

Blacksite: Area 51

First released for PC and Xbox 360 on 11/12/2007. Developed by Austin studio, formerly Inevitable Entertainment.

Released for PS3 on 12/10/2007.

 

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

Released for PS3 & Xbox 360 on 11/16/2008.

 

Select chronology: 

 

Midway Mfg. Co.:

All games listed were designed for arcade machines.

Title	Date	Contemporary ports
Leader/Playtime/Winner	1973
Gun Fight	1975-11
Sea Wolf	1976
Wizard of Wor	1980
Omega Race	1981	1982 ports to VIC-20 and C64
Solar Fox	1981
Gorf	1981	1982 ports to Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit, and VIC-20

 

Bally Midway:

All games listed were designed for arcade machines.

 

Title	Date	Contemporary ports
TRON	1982
Tapper	1983	1984 ports to various computers & consoles
Spy Hunter	1983	1984 ports to various computers & consoles
Rampage	1986	1987 ports to various computers
Xenophobe	1987	1988 port to NES by Sun
Arch Rivals	1989-5	1990 port to NES by Rare
Trog	1990	1990 ports to NES and PC
Pigskin 621 AD	1990

 

Midway Games:

All games listed were designed for arcade machines.

 

Title	Date	Contemporary ports
Terminator 2: Judgment Day	1991	1992 port to Gameboy by Beam Software
Total Carnage	1991
Mortal Kombat	8/2/1992	1993 ports to various computers and consoles
NBA Jam	1993	1994 ports to various consoles and handhelds
Mortal Kombat II	1993-4	1994 ports to various computers and consoles
NBA Jam Tournament Edition	1994	1995 ports to various computers and consoles
Revolution X	1994	1995 ports to Genesis, Saturn, and SNES
Cruis'n USA	1994-11
WWF WrestleMania	1995	1995 ports to PC and consoles by Sculptured Software
Mortal Kombat 3	1995-3	1995 ports to PC and consoles
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3	10/6/1995	1996 ports to Genesis, Saturn, and SNES
War Gods	1995-12	1996 port to PC by Eurocom

 

Midway Games & Home, 5th gen:

 

Title	Lead platform	Date	Contemporary ports
NBA Hangtime	Arcade	4/16/1996	1996 ports to PC and consoles
Mortal Kombat Trilogy	???	1996	Same-quarter releases on PS1 and N64 1997 ports to PC and Saturn
Cruis'n World	Arcade	1996-11
Rampage World Tour	Arcade	1997-3	1997 ports to PC, PS1, and Saturn 1998 ports to Game Boy Color and N64
DOOM 64	Nintendo 64	4/4/1997
Mortal Kombat 4	Arcade	9/11/1997	1998 ports to PC, N64, and PS1 by Eurocom
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero	???	1997	Same-quarter releases on N64 and PS1
Rampage 2: Universal Tour	PlayStation	1998	1998 ports to Game Boy Color and N64
Hydro Thunder	Arcade	1999	1999 port to Dreamcast 2000 ports to N64 and PS1
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing	Dreamcast	9/9/1999	1999 ports to N64 and PS1 by Point of View

 

Midway Home, 6th gen:

 

Title	Lead platform	Date	Contemporary ports
Spy Hunter	PS2	9/27/2001	2002 ports to Gamecube and Xbox by Point of View
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance	???	2002-11	Near-simultaneous releases on Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox
The Suffering	???	3/9/2004	Simultaneous releases on PS2 and Xbox 2004 port to PC
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy	PS2	6/14/2004	Simultaneous release of port to Xbox 2005 port to PC by Gamestar China
Mortal Kombat: Deception	PS2	10/4/2004	Simultaneous release of port to Xbox 2005 port to Gamecube
Area-51	???	2005	Same-quarter releases for PC, PS2, and Xbox
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks	???	9/19/2005	Simultaneous releases for PS2 and Xbox
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon	???	2006-10	Near-simultaneous releases for PS2 and Xbox 2007 port to Wii by Just Games Interactive

 

Midway Home, 7th gen:

Title	Lead platform	Date	Contemporary ports
Stranglehold	???	2007	Same-quarter releases for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360
Blacksite: Area 51	???	2007	Same-quarter releases for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe	???	11/16/2008	Simultaneously released for PS3 and Xbox 360

Game 270: Tapper

Add "bartender" to the long list of jobs that I'm definitely not qualified for.

Midway's Tapper, originally intended for bars and featuring authentic Budweiser tap handles on the control panel, tasks you to serve up mugs of mediocre beer-flavored carbonated beverage to throngs of testy patrons while scrambling to catch the empty ones that they slide right back to you. Most re-releases and retrospective compilations substitute no-name root beer in place of Bud.

With four different bars to tend, and no room for errors, Tapper becomes a chaotic juggling act. The main threat is failing to catch the empty mugs - even one dropped glass (whether an empty one you failed to catch or a full one that you overzealously slid down the bar when nobody could catch it) will cost you a life, but at the same time, failing to sling suds at the customers faster than they come in means they'll overrun your bar and slide you down it, out the window.

My best attempt got me 50,000 points, but I couldn't pass the rave, or get to the alien space tavern that awaits afterward.

 

My general strategy was this - when at a bar, count the number of patrons waiting for a drink, and serve exactly that many before moving to the next one. Should one bar look like an impending disaster, rush down the current one to collect whatever empty mugs I can before zipping to the new one to deal with it. One technical challenge is that you have to pull the tap for a fraction of a second to fill the mug - release too soon and the mug won't be full enough to serve. At least you can't overfill it.

A thing that makes Tapper so challenging is evident toward the end of the video - the customers are endless. You finish a round not by serving all of the customers, but by serving them all before any more can come! If more come in before you're done, which has happened just as the last customer on the screen was chugging down a glass, then it becomes a losing battle as even more will come in just as you're serving the last of them. Repeat ad nauseum.

One tool meant to help you out is tips, which customers sometimes leave behind. Whenever you collect a tip, a show starts, distracting some of the patrons for a few seconds. In practice, I found this rarely helped. It takes precious time to run down the bar and collect tips, and during the show, distracted patrons can't be served, but new ones can enter. The tips might delay them long enough for you to collect some empty mugs before they crash on the floor, but I seldom found that the situation after the show was improved from the situation before it.

ACAM does feature a real Tapper machine, located in the barroom, naturally, and the main difference in gameplay experience is the use of the tap handle controller to pour. It's a bit more demanding than using a gamepad or keyboard, but does lend the experience a bit of verisimilitude.

GAB rating: Average. Tapper's just another arcade game that I'd spend half an hour on at most, hit a wall, and then move onto something else. There's nothing wrong with it, and the premise is creative, but I can't see myself playing Tapper again unless it's on a real machine, and then only for the novelty of playing on its bar-friendly cabinet.

Game 264: Spy Hunter

Arcade games always lose something in translation to the home experience. The days of watered-down NES ports are long behind us, but even today's cycle-accurate emulation can't replicate the feel of being at a physical machine with controls and cabinet artwork designed specifically for the experience of playing one game.

This holds especially true for games like Bally Midway's Spy Hunter, where the controls are unique and the control panel is integral to the gameplay. The machine features:

• A steering yoke with four triggers in its handles
  
• A button in the center of the yoke which lights up when its function is available
• A pressure sensitive throttle footpedal
• A two-gear shifter stick
• An LED dashboard displaying your armaments

 

The yoke is poorly simulated by a gamepad, let alone a keyboard, so in preparation not just for Spy Hunter, but for the driving games to come, I bought a USB steering wheel. It won't work well with all driving games - a lot of the early ones like Night Driver, Turbo, and Pole Position use free wheels that measure turning speed rather than distance turned, but for Spy Hunter, whose steering yoke drives a potentiometer, this is a reasonable approximation. The wheel has face buttons which can be mapped to the triggers and center button, and the accelerator pedal is, well, an accelerator pedal. Spy Hunter's weapon dashboard is simply displayed as a HUD overlay in MAME - not quite as attention-grabbing as the real thing, but functional enough.

There's just one non-straightforward thing to configure here, which is a common issue to several driving games in MAME. The shift stick here is a toggle switch, either low gear or high gear, with no neutral position. MAME, by default, maps this to a toggle button, which you tap to toggle between the gears. This is fine for most people, but if you've got a wheel with a stick shift as I do, this isn't ideal.

To change this, load the game, and then (temporarily) map the Gear Shift control to something you'll recognize easily, like the 'G' key. Quit MAME, then go to MAME's cfg directory and edit the "spyhunt.cfg" file. Look for the XML element that controls Gear Shift, which you might only be able to identify by the keymap you just assigned.

<port tag=":ssio:IP0" type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="16" defvalue="16">
    <newseq type="standard">
        KEYCODE_G
    </newseq>
</port>

All you need to do here is add toggle="no" to the port element's attributes.

<port tag=":ssio:IP0" type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="16" defvalue="16" toggle="no">
    <newseq type="standard">
        KEYCODE_G
    </newseq>
</port>

Then you can load the game again, and remap Gear Shift to one of your gears, so that you can naturally shift up and down. In my case, I picked 4, and now gear 4 means "high" and neutral (or any other gear) means "low."

If you want the inverse, so that neutral means "high" and your mapped input means "low," just edit the cfg file again and add the word NOT to the input element.

<port tag=":ssio:IP0" type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="16" defvalue="16" toggle="no">
    <newseq type="standard">
        NOT JOYCODE_1_BUTTON12
    </newseq>
</port>

 

Spy Hunter basically wants to be every James Bond car chase scene in video game form, and reportedly even played a synthetic version of the Bond theme in an early build, only to be replaced with Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme when they couldn't get a license.

As a muscle car-driving spy hunter - or are you a spy being hunted? - your mission is to simply survive as long as possible, driving down series of roads full of hostile drivers. Armed only with a pair of forward-firing machine guns, these will be adequate for the first few seconds of play in which you'll likely only encounter hostile cars from behind who are easily taken out. Only black cars should be shot at; anyone else is a civilian and will cost you points. Eventually you'll pass by a van and may call it for support by pressing a flashing button - enter the van and you'll get a new weapon, either an oil slick or smoke screen for dealing with enemies behind you, or anti-air homing missiles for shooting down helicopters.

Around the same time as getting your first weapon - likely earlier unless you get lucky, your enemies will get deadlier, and start spawning behind you, following in pursuit. "Switchblade" cars with slashing hubcap mechanisms straight out of Goldfinger will blow out your tires. Armored vans impervious to your gunfire will ram you off the road, or into traffic, or sometimes just total your car by merely connecting. Shotgun-toting enforcers in limousines will attempt to pull up beside you and shoot a 12-gauge hole through your radiator, or wait for you on the shoulders. Sometimes a blast instantly destroys you, sometimes it does nothing, and I'm not sure if it's possible to determine what causes it.

Among the least enviable situations is when any of these are hot on your tail without an oil slick or smoke screen in your arsenal, as trying to get them to pass you is extremely risky, and going fast enough to outrun them without fatally slamming into something ahead of you is quite difficult. The best tactic seems to be to switch into high gear and using the throttle to regulate your speed, keeping ahead of them but not getting out of control, which is easier said than done even with a steering wheel and pedal setup, and probably not feasible without one.

What's even more difficult is when hostiles are both behind you and in front of you. It's no good to just barely keep ahead of the pursuit - the foes ahead of you will close in. You've got to shoot them if possible and dodge their wreck at high speed, or throttle up and try to pass them. Nor is it any simple task to pull into a weapons van while several switchblades and armored vans are on your tail.

Owing to the unforgiving difficulty (and high price - a game costs two tokens by default), Spy Hunter has a grace period of 110 seconds in which you have infinite lives, and only after this time expires is it possible to get a game over. Unfortunately, this doesn't do much to help if you can't survive that long to begin with, as losing your car means losing all of your weapons except for the limitedly useful machine guns, robbing you of your best chance of surviving long enough to get a rear-firing weapon. Especially infuriating is when, right after pulling back onto the road from losing a life or collecting a weapon, a random vehicle just comes in out of nowhere and crashes into you. Deliberately staying on the shoulder until speed picks up can somewhat offset this risk, but it doesn't always work.

My best attempt scored over 50,000 points and made it to a motorboat section, a gameplay mode not seen in the demo loop. Here, your car turns into a gunboat and you have to deal with helicopters and sea mine layers. This part, in theory, seems like it should be easier going, as there's less enemy variety, and the helicopters are less deadly as their bombs don't leave any dangerous potholes in the river, but it's also pretty monotonous and gets boring once the novelty wears off.

GAB rating: Average. On the plus side, Spy Hunter looks nice, with its realistically proportioned and animated sprites, the control scheme is novel, and its high concept is well realized. But the difficulty factor is more frustrating than challenging, and success and failure often feels dependent on luck. Blowing up because a car just randomly came out of nowhere is irritating, as is being forced into car chases without having any suitable weapons at hand. It's also, honestly, quite a repetitive experience, with most of the possible scenarios playing out in a five minute session.

Spy Hunter had a sequel in 1987 which by all accounts was terrible and will not be covered or otherwise acknowledged in this blog. A reboot series began in 2001, followed by another reboot in 2006, and another in 2012. The most widely played rendition, though, was probably an NES port developed by SunSoft the same year as its maligned arcade sequel.

Game 237: Jr. Pac-Man

With its kid-themed imagery and bright, colorful aesthetic, you might expect Jr. Pac-Man, the final American-made title to come out of the brief Namco/Midway alliance, to be tamer than its famously difficult predecessor. What a sick joke.

The most obvious change here is the wide maze format, which now takes up about two screens' worth of space and scrolls horizontally. Bigger maze means more space to maneuver, right?

Not really. The monsters are pretty efficient at boxing you in, aggressive as ever, and there are no escape routes. The sides of the levels, once relatively safe, are now among the most dangerous places to be, because you can easily get forced into a corner trap. Sometimes the maze layouts can cause monsters to get lost in an endless loop, giving you a bit of temporary breathing room, but it won't last.

You do get some additional power pellets, but not enough to make up for having nearly twice as much ground to cover. You'll spend more time than ever dodging monsters without any protection, especially as the invulnerability time is drastically reduced as soon as the second maze.

The scoring items - kid-themed items like bicycles, balloons, tin drums, and... beer?... move around the maze like Ms. Pac-Man's fruits, but ignoring them is perilous. Any dots they touch become chewy, slowing Jr. down quite a bit as he eats them, though they are worth extra points. And if they touch a power pellet, both explode!

Jr. Pac-Man, like the previous ones, features cut-scenes in between levels, and they're more elaborate than ever, this time telling a story of young love and antimiscegenation.

 

 

Does she know that I ate her parents?

My best effort got me to the fifth maze and scored 60,000 points. Two keys for surviving this long were understanding the monster AI well enough to take opportunities to throw them off my tail when they presented themselves, and also understanding that turning corners slows them down a bit and is sometimes the only way to not get overtaken, since eating dots slows you down just enough that they'll gain ground if you let them chase you in in a straight line.

GAB rating: Good. With its extra large levels, Jr. Pac-Man can feel drawn out compared to his single-screen procreators, but it's no less frantic or fun. The timing of Jr's release, though, just wasn't right. By 1983, American arcade games were in a decline, losing grounds to consoles, and although Atari developed ports to all of their systems in 1984, the company was financially troubled, the home console market's bottom was falling out, and under new leadership by the notoriously ruthless Jack Tramiel, they canceled its release, with only the 2600 port ever seeing commercial distribution years later.

And this really makes Jr. Pac-Man an almost prophetic allegory for the plight of the millennial. Through no fault of his own, he came of age into an era of economic downturn caused by the failures of his elders, lived in the shadow of his parents' accomplishments even as they continued to pull in revenue from a shrinking market, had no chance of enjoying their success and prosperity despite being expected to work twice as hard, and was ultimately cast aside by the whims of the economy and the calculating decisions of an uncaring corporate machine.

Game 198: Ms. Pac-Man (Atari 2600)

Talk about a turnaround! Nearly everything that was wrong with Atari's disastrous port of Pac-Man is improved here. Maze layouts and ghost behavior actually resemble the arcade game now. That horrible flicker, though not entirely eliminated, is less egregious and only an issue when more than two sprites occupy the same horizontal scanline. Ms. Pac-Man is decently animated and the ghosts are properly color-coded. Controls are solid and hit detection feels closer to the arcade game. Cherries look like cherries, as do oranges, pretzels, etc. And the intro ditty, though nothing incredible, sounds more like the arcade game's theme than a horror film's scare chord.

There is one big issue that doesn't come across when watching on Youtube - a weird, dog whistle-like high pitched sound permeates throughout play, which I found painful to listen to unless my volume was low. It's most noticeable during the few seconds before a new stage starts or when dots are collected. It's possible that this is an emulation issue; MAME is paradoxically precise enough to preserve artifacts that would have been dropped by the low-fi TV speakers of the time (or the streaming compression algorithms of today), or perhaps by the Atari's own analog circuitry.

I didn't spend a lot of time playing Ms. Pac-Man. As impressive a port this is, considering how bad the first one was, it doesn't offer much over the arcade original which is now readily accessible in so many different forms. The game does feel easier than the original, which I don't prefer, but I didn't spend much effort trying to find out if this was because of different ghost AI, or a more forgiving maze layout, or for other reasons.

One thing that surprised me is the relatively few game modes, which up until now have been so common in Atari's console games. Pac-Man had eight of them, plus an optional and as usual pointless two-player mode, and used difficulty switches to affect power pill duration. Ms. Pac-Man has no two-player mode; a good call considering the memory-prohibitive cost of remembering two different maze states, does not use the difficulty switches, and only has four game modes. All that the extra game modes do is reduce the number of ghosts in the maze, which I suppose may make it more accessible to easily frustrated children (the extra modes are denoted with teddy bears rather than numbers), but to me it only serves to make it less interesting to play.

GAB rating: Good. This is an excellent conversion of a great game, and tends to be overshadowed by its predecessor's infamy. Had the Atari 2600 ever been my only video game system, I'd consider it a must-own. It's a bit ironic, that the wretched Pac-Man port was the best-selling game on the system, while this game, which is everything it should have been and more, barely sold a fifth of its numbers.

Games 107-108: Super Missile Attack & Ms. Pac-Man

Among the most celebrated aspects of computer games is the unofficial mod. More than a couple have even become official commercial products, such as Final Doom, and most famously, Counter-Strike.

Arcade games aren’t as well known for mods, but they’ve been around in the forms of enhancement boards and modified bootlegs almost since the beginning. Ms. Pac-Man is an early example of an arcade mod which gained official canon status, but before playing that, there’s a notable predecessor.

Game 107: Super Missile Attack

Super Missile Attack is an unauthorized mod for Missile Command, distributed in 1981 as an enhancement board by General Computer Corporation, which had been founded by MIT students the same year.

The principal enhancement is greater difficulty, as if Missile Command wasn’t difficult enough. Rounds get longer, missiles rain down harder, your own ABM’s get weaker, and a new enemy, the UFO, moves erratically and attacks with a laser weapon. The levels also have new colors and sound effects; enhancements recognizable as trademarks of Ms. Pac-Man.



Interestingly, my best attempt got me to level 10, the same level I reached on my best attempt at Missile Command, but with about 3,000 fewer points. Also interestingly, the score difference wasn’t due to a decreased city bonus – if anything, I was able to hold onto cities a bit better this time around – but due to fewer destruction points. For the higher count of targets falling in Super Missile Attack, I wasn’t able to hit them as often (and yet I did a better job of keeping them off my cities).

Game 108: Ms. Pac-Man

Buy Ms. Pac-Man on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/403410/

I skipped playing Pac-Man for the 1980 phase on the grounds that I’ve played enough of it already. Ms. Pac-Man, on the other hand, I haven’t played nearly as much.

Ms. Pac-Man started off as another unauthorized enhancement board called Crazy Otto, but Midway gave GCC the go-ahead to release it and collaborated with them to rework it into a full-fledged sequel, altering the sprites, text, and cut-scenes to better suit its status as a Pac-Man canon title.

The result is a familiar yet expanded and much more difficult game. There are four different mazes, as opposed to Pac-Man’s single maze, and monsters are less predictable, preventing “patterns” from working reliably.

As with Pac-Man, to be good at Ms. Pac-Man, you must understand the monster behavior. Fortunately, they haven’t changed much from the original. What follows is a selection of the information written in The Pac-Man Dossier, which is rich with exactly the kind of data that I love.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132330/the_pacman_dossier.php

Monsters have three behavior modes:

• Chase – Monster pursues a target
• Scatter
• Frightened – No target, monster chooses intersections randomly, and moves at a reduced speed

In any of these modes, monsters will never stop or reverse their direction. They will reverse at designated times, or when you collect a power pill, but never at any other time.

During chase mode, Blinky’s target is you. Pathfinding is a greedy algorithm – whenever Blinky reaches an intersection, he looks one tile ahead for all valid moves, and picks whichever one is closest to you (calculated by triangulation), regardless of the overall path. In the event that two tiles are equidistant from the target, he will prioritize up, then left, then down. All four monsters have this pathfinding logic, though their targets aren’t necessarily you.

It’s a greedy algorithm, so it doesn’t always choose the most efficient route.

Pinky’s chase mode target is four spaces in front of you, depending on which way you are facing.

Pinky can be thrown off your tail if you understand how he thinks.

If Pinky reaches his target, which is sometimes possible for him to do without killing you on the way, he’ll just keep moving past it since monsters can’t stop or turn around. Then at the next intersection, he’ll keep using pathfinding logic – take the tile that gets him closest to the target.

Due to a bug, if you are facing upward, Pinky’s target will be offset four spaces to the left of where it should be. Understanding this can further assist in throwing him off.

Inky’s chase mode target is a bit complex. His target is on the geometric line which intersects Blinky and the tile two spaces in front of you, such that the tile in front of you is centroidal to Blinky and Inky’s target.

Sue (formerly known in the U.S. as Clyde – the first transgendered video game character?) targets you when far away.

But when she gets close, her target becomes the lower-left corner of the screen instead (until she is no longer close).

Monsters’ behavior is tied to a stopwatch which begins as soon as the level starts. Monsters that leave the house late do not start at the beginning of the routine, but pick up in the middle based on how much time has already passed.

• Scatter for 5-7 seconds
• Reverse
• Chase for 20 seconds
• Reverse
• Chase forever

Dying or finishing the level resets the timer.

The stopwatch is different from Pac-Man, where the monsters would alternate between scatter and chase for a longer period of time.

Scatter mode is also different from Pac-Man, where the monsters would target the four corners of the screen. In Ms. Pac-Man, Blinky and Pinky will just move randomly for the first 5-7 seconds. Inky pursues the bottom-right corner and Sue pursues the bottom-left corner if they leave the house during this period.

Eating a power pill will pause the timer, make the monsters reverse directions, and put them into frightened mode for as long as the pill lasts (or until you eat them and they return to the house). Once the pill wears off, the timer will resume and all of the frightened monsters will be restored to their previous behavior.

Ms. Pac-Man has four mazes, quite a bit up from Pac-Man’s one, but you’ll have to play through quite a few repeats before you can see them all. Level 3 is the first time you’ll see the second maze, level 6 is where you first see the third maze, and level 10 is where you first see the fourth maze. Beating the third maze four times was just too much for me; I could reach it fairly consistently, but the best I could do on a stock set of three lives was to beat it twice.



Before Data Driven Gamer, I hadn’t delved into Ms. Pac-Man with any seriousness. I knew it was more than just a sprite-swap, that it had new maze layouts and higher difficulty, but didn’t really know what made it that way. Now I do, and I have to say that this is one of my favorite games of the year; a breath of fresh air into Pac-Man, a game I’ve played entirely too much of. The biggest difference, I think, is that the monsters are comparatively relentless. Pac-Man’s monsters alternated between chasing and scatter multiple times during a stage, but now they scatter only once at the start, unpredictably, and then chase you until the end of time. I’ve gotten a million points in Pac-Man on a real machine, and I feel with enough time and patience, anyone with basic gaming competency can. At least eight players have achieved perfect scores of 3,333,360 points. To date, nobody has scored a million points in Ms. Pac-Man. That, I think, numerically illustrates what a difference the higher difficulty makes.