The Arcade Industry What Went Wrong
This article is the 2nd part of Kevin Williams insight in the golden era of the arcade.
Who's responsible for digging the hole?
The cat has been thrown amongst the pigeons by accusing previous Sega executives of being influential (if not the only executives) of not just shooting, but plucking and stuffing the golden goose – that laid the eggs of rebirth after the Crash.
The reason is that in 1985 Sega Enterprises AM2 developed Hang-On! under the then new producer Yu Suzuki, who undertook an imaginative move, building a large (Ride-On) cabinet (influenced by Williams' 1983 Star Rider) The game offered motorbike action, fully instigating the love affair with both graphic technology (under the Sega Super Scaler architecture), and with the manufacturing not just of a standard upright cabinet, but also various deluxe versions.
From a sale's point of view champagne corks started popping. A cabinet for every pocket, and with the right encouragement no operator would want to be left out of owning the biggest and the best of the varieties. And so begun the blackmailing of one operator against another saying "…hey your nearest competitor has it - you had better get one!"
It needs to be observed that the really big deluxe (Ride-In) systems had initially been envisaged by Bally / Sente with the Sente Arcade Computer II (S.A.C-II)
motion simulator that was prototyped around the same time as Sega proved Hang-On! followed by their influential and successful Space Harrier Cementing deluxe cabinets as a fundamental part of video amusement.
The JAMMA connector supplied the means for arcades to survive following the disastrous crash – stopping the need to remove one identical cabinet to be replaced by another identical cabinet by another manufacture with a different game using the same wiring, cabinet and controls as the previous. But with the ‘deluxe' cabinet the old ghost of replacing hardware, this time with an even bigger cabinet with an even shorter shelf life, returned!
Did 3D CGI push us over the edge?
The reaction of recent market changes are not subjects that receive much coverage, the corporate amusement industry is not one for historical belly button gazing, that is normally left to the ‘whitewashing' of corporate memory – such as the removal of the name PuckMan from Namco history, or the fact that the makers of the film King Kong sued Nintendo over Donkey Kong.
We now cover a very contentious period in the recent history of video amusement, which saw the decimation of vast profits, accrued by some of the largest amusement companies and the total alteration in the structure of the hold on the market by the Japanese factories.
There has always been a technological ‘arms race' in the development of amusement. The move from black and white to colour displays, raster to vector display, and as covered the race from upright cabinet to deluxe cockpit. But it was the 1989 move for better computer graphic imagery (CGI) that would prove the breaking point and erosion of past profits.
Atari Games – the perpetual leader and originator of all technological advancement in amusement – had toyed with 3D computer rendering, against the more common 2D graphical representation with their game I-Robot But as the game came at the cusp of the collapse in video amusement sales it fell by the way side. It would take nearly five and a half years before Atari once again experimented with this technology. The resulting game, Hard Drivin' in 1989 would be a trendsetter incorporating not only the first 3D driving environment (rendered by a non-dedicated PC architecture), but also the first steering force-feedback system. The game would be a phenomenal success - but its benefits (and profits) would go in a strange direction.
Namco had acquired a controlling interest in Atari Games by 1986 (following a roller coaster of corporate intrigue and acquisitions following the 80's boom years) and in this relationship shared R&D information, so in the same year as Hard Drivin' in Japan Namco was able to release Winning Run, though using a fully dedicated polygon engine (later known as hardware platform). This head start, courtesy of Atari R&D, would allow Namco to decisively compete in a battle that would become an escalating ‘arms race' to provide the best and the fastest hardware platform.
Sega Enterprises was sitting on their own polygon system aspirations in 1989, seeing the success of Hard Drivin' (easily the better game, evenn after Namco tried for a second time copying Atari inroads with a three screen game Drivers Eye
Sega however felt they needed support to their own 3D R&D development, and so started the constant one-up-man ship of finding CGI partners to support amusement endeavours. Sega in their first round would select General Electrics (later to become Martin Marietta and finally Lockheed Martin) to help devise the Model 1 hardware that would power the successes that were the first Virtua series of releases (Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing
Namco themselves would go on to partner with Silicon Graphics, Evans & Sutherland and Texas Instruments – striving to create their own faster hardware. Sega would strive themselves to hold the lead attempting to be the first to build-in first texture, then anti-aliasing and finally a richness of 3D graphical environment that were once the preserve of the military flight simulator – draining the experience of partners that had originated the commercial simulator industry.
The Japanese (if not the whole) amusement sector was turned on its head, suddenly you could not be a member of the video amusement club unless you were working on a new graphics platform and had big 3D systems in development. By 1989 the markets top ten of manufacturers consisted of (based on popularity and sales), Sega, Namco, Taito, Konami, Jaleco, Atari, Capcom, SNK, Data East, and Williams/Midway. Overnight a ‘3D Club' had been formed, and from the perspective of the bottom markers they had to start 3D development partnerships and projects or be left behind.
For these manufactures deals were cobbled together, Taito would initially develop homebrew hardware such as used with their rudimentary Air Inferno, but would finally succumb, unable to compete. Saved only by the phenomenally popular Japanese Let's Go By Train! series, which would keep the company in some sort of contention. For Konami they would spin their wheels in more and more convoluted partnerships, including Matsushita, IBM, 3DO / Panasonic and event 3Dfx. But it was the wasted investment in complicated 3D technology that in many cases would only be employed in one reiteration of a cabinet that forced Konami and others to making a fateful decision.
To show the influence of 3D aspirations, even companies highly entrenched in profitable 2D developed fantasized with polygon aspirations. Capcom who seems to have depended on variations of the Street Fighter genre to stay in amusement, built a failed prototype 3D driving game in the late Nineties (SlipStream). Even in their core sector Capcom striving to stay current in the player's eyes, building advance cartridge PCB systems. Using the standard JAMMA connection as a base the company developed a ‘piggyback' unit that allowed a specialist cartridge to be connected onto the JAMMA motherboard. Known as the Capcom Players System (CPS) it has been through three revisions of the hardware promoting the unique 2D graphics style of the company to this day.
By the late 90's it was clear that ‘Moores Law' had caught up with 3D graphics and that the consumer console developers (many of whom had been directly or indirectly influenced by video amusement manufacturers) had hardware comparable for amusement application. In particular the Sony Playstation and Playstation 2 proved a suitable platform for amusement application. Companies that initially jumped on the bandwagon were Konami with their System 573 or Psyon System, Namco with their System 11 or System 246 Taito and Capcom would license Namco's popular PS2 based System 246 hardware bedrock.
Where some companies selected console alliances, American amusement manufactures predominately favoured PC based architecture. Manufacturer Midway - having acquired the Atari Games operation in 1996 - also acquired Atari's extensive R&D efforts to develop 3D engines based on the 3Dfx graphics acceleration hardware. Games such as California Speed
and NFL Blitz benefited from the resulting Seattle Hardware platform. Though PC acceleration hardware offered a wide and flexible 3D platform for amusement, various political difficulties hindered this adoption.
For many in removing the gap between what was achieved in the home and what the arcades offered was the end of amusement credibility and spelt a slow down and a loss of way – the seed of 1984 sowed in 1989!
From this observation we have to draw a harsh and unpalatable conclusion that the R&D facilities of these major amusement manufacturers - treated as high-priced gurus - bled their respective corporations dry, while lorded over by their executives. Rather than worshiping the AM studios of Sega we should consider them as the fundamental reason for the corporations near bankrupt status at the end of 1999. Games such a Ferrari F355 Championship a highly expensive and vast cabinet, pure gratification for the R&D engineers, but fundamentally a game that was unpopular as an actual amusement revenue earner. One game of many that boasted the latest graphical effects or technological gizmo, but for the operator became an expensive three hundred pound ‘white elephant'.
An example of the flailing last throws of these once dominant corporations - attempting to address plummeting sales - was to try and dominate the operation market and run the facilities themselves, selling their under performing machines to themselves. The disastrous Sega JOY POLICE, and boarder line Namco Wonder Egg, Amusement Theme Parks (ATP) facilities - representing the cherry on top of the rotten cake of financial failure.
Hard times for amusement as it slipped in 1997 back into another hole, developers unable to hide losses looked to minimise amusement expenditure, the ability to port a arcade release to a console platform as soon as possible seen as a means to redress the losses from lowering amusement sales. This attitude has proven a contagious solution as players held off from playing in the arcades if in only a matter of weeks the game would be available for home. Less and less faith in having an amusement & console development team became obvious, companies such as Nintendo, Midway / Atari, Jaleco, Data East and Irem removed their involvement in video arcade development.
A Secluded Country
As a side note towards the picture that is video amusement, there is one area worth mentioning that though showing the privations of a tempestuous industry still seems to be a part of the market. The fighting game genre has established a consistent place in the market, though it still has been victim to the down turn in gaming, Sega's Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution and Namco's' Tekken 4 and Soul Calibur II have a player loyalty, even with the knowledge of immanent PS2 release for both titles.
It is the ability for a company like Shin Nihon Kikaku (later to become famous as SNK) to still has a strong presence in the amusement sector that shows the power of the fighting game genre on the ‘hard core' player. A group of players so focused on the beat-em-up genre that they have been the subject of a film documentary (Bang The Machine)
In the case of SNK, following a disastrous fall from grace in the mist of the market downturn, the high aspirations of SNK (yes they even started up their own ATP – NeoGeoWorld) were cut short and so followed the acquisition of the company and properties by two Japanese operations.
The current owner (PlayMore) has revitalised the name and proposes to re-populate the stagnating NeoGeo MVS (http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=thumbs&id=2031)
line of cabinets with a number of new releases. The first and most eagerly awaited is King Of Fighters 2002 one of the few non-3D fighting brands able to hold its own with Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter 4, and Guilty Gear XX. In the dying days of the original SNK management an agreement with Capcom lead to the revolutionary Capcom Vs. SNK
cross property branding. As part of the agreement SNK was free to create a NeoGeo version of the game, SNK Vs. Capcom is another game promised to help reinvigorate the flagging cabinets. Proof even in such depressed sector the whiff of a good fighter can cause hearts to stir.
It needs to be mentioned that arcade releases have certain credibility with players. The release of the arcade version acting as endorsement once released later to home. company's like Nintendo, even after ending arcade production in 1992 have still flirted with arcade (see later in this feature). While Midway now removed from the arcades have found the latest Mortal Kombat game crippled when sold for home, hampered without that arcade presence.
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