If you've never been inside a Japanese game center, and

>>3402637
The starting point of this essay then -- and make of it what you will -- is the observation that games released in the arcades are of a much higher quality, on average, than games released for the home console market. In other words, if you decided to walk into an arcade today blindfolded, and spend the evening playing the first game you bumped into (having taken off the blindfold first, yeah), chances are you'd have a lot more fun than if you spent the same amount of time playing something picked at random off the shelves of your local game retailer. Because the worst that could happen in the first case is that you'd end up with something like Jingi Storm or Mario Kart Arcade GP -- not exactly the most gripping and cutting-edge stuff out there, certainly, but still tightly focused and at least mildly enjoyable games, for a short while anyway. In the second case, though, you could very well get stuck with some lifeless movie tie-in, or some dull sports franchise, or some bloated 3D platform collect-a-thon, or, worse still, with one of the countless shovelware titles that are always being churned out for whichever console happens to be the most popular at the moment. With all this utter rubbish lining the shelves you'd be a lucky man indeed if you ended up with something actually worth playing.

>>3402641
So this is how it is, and you either know it, or you don't. But I want to stress here that I am not out to convince anyone of the truth of this claim, or of that of all the other claims I will shortly be making. If you find yourself agreeing with me it will be because you already know by experience that what I am saying is true, so no proof will be necessary. I will merely be putting into words things you are already aware of -- not fully consciously, perhaps, or without quite having worked out all the reasons yet -- but aware of them all the same.
Old-timers, hardcore gamers, Japan-hounds: these are the kinds of people this essay is written for (indeed, these are the kinds of people this website is written for). As for everyone else: the lazy kids who whine about the difficulty in such simple games as Ninja Gaiden (the latest one, yes) or Devil May Cry 3; the casual, party gamers with their Wiis and ever-growing collections of gimmicky mini-games; the PlayStation generation that missed out on gaming's golden age and never got a chance to develop good taste in games; the hordes of uncouth, uneducated retards who practically live in videogame forums across the internet, grouping themselves into rival camps of fanboys, unquestioningly loyal -- like dogs -- to a single hardware platform, genre or developer; the "games are art" fags who won't shut up already about Ico and Rez, and who can't even tell the difference between basketball (a game) and the Mona Lisa (art); or the new games journalists and their impressionable adolescent followers who think that some flowery adjectives dug up from a thesaurus can make up for the fact that they don't have a fucking clue about what it is they are talking about -- as for all these people, as for the masses, yes, I am afraid there is no hope for them. Nothing can be done about it.

>>3402647
And that is not unfortunate. Just try to imagine what would happen if the masses suddenly took to arcade gaming (and here, and throughout, by "arcade gaming" I mean the real thing -- not the farce that is XBLA and other similar services), flooding this small, fragile market with truckloads of cash, infecting developers with greed for the quick bucks, and trampling everything under the overwhelming weight of their ignorance and bad taste.
Not a pretty picture, is it?
But then again it's also not one we should be worried about, because it's not just unrealistic, but also practically impossible. Because an arcade is a magical place that can transform ignorant, whiny kids into fucking ninjas. It's just how it works: you walk in a trash-talking, limp-wristed, Final Fantasy-playing, useless idiot, and you walk out finally humble and respectful towards skill-based games and the players who take them on.

But I am getting ahead of myself here -- I'll back up a little to answer a question that just begs to be answered.

So I started out by observing that arcade games adhere to a much higher standard of quality than console games -- one need only walk into a Japanese game center to realize this. But why is that?

>>3402653
Why are arcade games so good?
Arcade games are good because they just have to be. Floor space is always limited in an arcade, regardless of how big it may be, and a game that's not making much money is simply taking up space from another one that does. The fact that all these games are sitting right there, right next to each other, and that a few coins is all it takes to try them all out, means that the players can easily compare them and judge for themselves their quality, directing their attention to those they deem the best.

>>3402657
Ignorance on the part of the players then will not come to the rescue of lazy developers trying to shove some shitty game down people's throats armed with nothing but a big-name licence, a flashy cover and a marketing budget. Arcade gamers are not forced to rely on morally bankrupt and/or incompetent publications to find out which games are out there and which are worth playing. Arcade publishers are not in a position to manipulate their customer base by employing sophisticated marketing campaigns that last for months, if not years, building up hype around their upcoming releases according to painstakingly-developed formulas that dictate every stage in an almost Orwellian process of disinformation: from the wild claims and hoopla of the carefully-staged initial announcement, to the "leaking" of pre-rendered screenshots and exaggerated featuresets, to the release of trailers expertly designed to cover shortcomings, finally culminating on the day of release with blanket ad coverage and blatantly dishonest reviews from compliant publications.

>>3402659


None of that fucking bullshit is effective in an arcade environment where every coin a player drops in the slot is effectively a vote for the quality of that game, and where the player will simply quit the second he feels he is not being entertained. The fact that the "voters" themselves are usually older and more experienced than the average person who buys console games (which demographic nowadays includes millions of market-distorting kids and their moms, dads, relatives, etc.) helps explain why Arcadia's monthly lists of the top arcade earners are always filled with -- at the very least -- good games, whereas the various top console game charts around the world are usually made up of the worst imaginable dreck scooped up from the inside of a seemingly bottomless barrel.

So this is how the arcades work: a highly competitive and transparent environment, experienced players, no magazines, no clueless reviewers, practically non-existent marketing budgets -- and what do you get?

Good games and players who are capable of appreciating them.

>>3402661
And it's all thanks to a business model
But don't be as naive as to imagine that all this is a result of conscious effort on the part of arcade developers, publishers or operators. None of them are directly responsible for the creation of this unique environment: for that we only have the industry's business model to thank. (And who first came up with that? Man, don't expect me to know everything. Go check Wikipedia or something.)

Because every single thing that's great about arcade games can be traced back to the pay-per-play model. Nothing is a result of chance.

-Why are the controls always spot-on and intuitive?

Because players wouldn't put up with anything less: they'd simply move on to the next game in line.

-Why are there no cutscenes?

Because operators wouldn't tolerate games which expect players to just sit there and watch some movie clip for fifteen minutes at a time -- as far as they are concerned if you are not playing you are not losing, and if you are not losing they are not making any money.

-Why are licenced games rare?

Because the primary function of a licence (to trick people into buying a bad game) doesn't work in an arcade environment where no one buys anything and where crap games can be exposed for what they are with a single credit.

-Why are the games extremely challenging?

Because operators would not invest in games which many of their customers could beat in a short time, before they got a chance to recoup their investment and turn a healthy profit.

-Why is there no padding (à la Halo, for example, where half the latter stages are a bad joke)?

Because arcade players, since they are not forced to invest up front large sums of money in specific games, do not feel obligated to keep playing a game which turns to shit and laughs at them after the half-way point (a boring third or fourth stage will do almost as much harm to an arcade game's earnings as a boring first stage).

>>3402667
Outsiders fail to appreciate this, but the arcade environment is very tough on developers, who have two sets of customers to satisfy here: the players, of course, but also the operators, who place their own demands on what a game should play like.

So they have the operators on one side, who only care about money, and the players on the other, who want to be entertained while getting good value for their money, and the developers are in the middle trying to please everyone, succeeding or failing solely on their ability to design extremely challenging but at the same time compelling and worthwhile games, without the fallback options of media manipulation and blitz marketing campaigns to bail them out if things start to go wrong.

The process of degeneration
This tough business model then is what's responsible for the creation of this unique branch of gaming. Arcade gaming is not a genre; it's a design philosophy the principles of which can be discerned with equal clarity in old games such as Bubble Bobble and Chase H.Q., and new ones such as Arcana Heart and Mushihime-sama Futari.

But though arcade gaming does not represent a specific genre, it contains genres (or sometimes outright invents them), and what it always does is that it shapes them, it streamlines them, by imposing on them its unique set of stringent requirements.

That's why a true arcade racer, for example, plays so differently from a modern console racer. Or an arcade platformer from a modern console platformer. And I say 'modern' here because this great differentiation between the arcade and console variants of the different genres did not always exist. Many early console games were essentially arcade games because console developers used to look up to the arcade industry for ideas and inspiration. Times were very different back then, skill-based games were still respected, and indeed reigned supreme, and so arcade-like games did very well even outside their natural environment, even on home consoles.

So even though in the console space there was no pressing need for an original game (as opposed to a port of an arcade game) to offer a tough, long-lasting challenge, many of them did. Up to and including the 16-bit era examples of original console titles designed using the arcade philosophy abound.

>>3402674


But this state of things could not have lasted forever.

Capcom's Chohmakaimura (Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts in the West), a Super Famicom-exclusive title, was a sequel to a popular arcade franchise in which the signs of things that were to come are clearly visible, at least with hindsight.

The game was... too easy.

Being a big fan of the series and having pumped countless coins into the first two games in the arcades, I imported the latest installment as soon as it came out and ended up beating it within less than a week. That's compared to the first two games which I've yet to beat -- and probably never will.

This game is perhaps a bad example to illustrate the point I want to make here, because its predecessors were far too hard even by arcade standards, so the toning down of the difficulty of the third, console-exclusive, installment was not unjustified (though I still maintain that Capcom overcompensated).

>>3402679
But the point is that Choh had ever-so-slightly -- but still quite clearly -- veered away from its roots and from the arcade design philosophy, because it would not have made the operators very happy had Capcom tried to sell it to them. The veterans of the series would have pooped all over it even faster than I did, and from then on only the occasional noobs would be playing it. The game's earnings would therefore have collapsed far too soon for the operators to recoup their initial investment and turn a satisfactory profit. At the very least, it would have made them less money than its predecessors.

And can you now begin to see why arcade games have to be difficult, and why it's absolutely vital that they offer a long-lasting challenge?

Understand that arcade operators want the player to die (and as quickly as possible).

Understand also that players do not want to die.

Understand finally that the developers, whose job, as we have seen, is to please these two sets of demanding customers, have to strike a compromise, and the only satisfactory compromise that could be struck under the circumstances is:

Only the skilled may live -- the rest will die.

>>3402682
.

This harsh statement may as well have been engraved above the entrance of every arcade joint that ever existed. It is a direct consequence of the arcade industry's business model, and forms the core of a formula around which all arcade games are built. It is responsible for the magic of arcade gaming.

But this magic cannot be recreated outside the environment that gave birth to it -- at least not without conscious and disciplined effort on the part of both developers and players. Because outside the arcade environment there are no arcade operators, and hence the compromise that led to the above formula is not necessary anymore. Without the operators to balance the demands of the players, there's no reason for developers to try and challenge the players. Almost imperceptibly at first (as with Chohmakaimura and with many other titles released around that time), but with increasing boldness and disregard as time goes by, they move away from the arcade philosophy. They start to pander to the players: they flatter them, they play to their vanity, they give them elaborate cutscenes and ending cinematics and little useless trinkets (unlockables and the like) to trick them into feeling a sense of accomplishment -- the kind of feeling that they used to earn before by overcoming a difficult challenge.

And so the games become easier. And they lose their focus. And they degenerate.

Want to see what a degenerate arcade game plays like?

Play R-Type Final. Play the latest bloated Ridge Racers. Play Gokumakaimura.

>>3402687
The essence of arcade gaming
I've reached the most difficult part of what I want to say, and since there's no delicate way to put this so as to avoid drawing accusations of elitism, I am just going to go ahead and blurt it out:

To understand the essence of arcade gaming you must never continue.

Like, ever.

Let's get this straight right now: it's very hard for me to communicate to you with mere words, from a distance, the essence of arcade gaming -- you'll have to look for that and find it for yourself. The most I can do is show you the way, and this is what I just did.

Now Malc from Shmups knows what I am talking about here, and so does Tom Cannon and MrWizard from SRK, and Gaijin Punch from gamengai, and Recap from Postback, and WoVou from Neo-Arcadia, and other owners of arcade-focused websites, and many (though certainly not all) of their readers and community members.

>>3402692
These are the people I was referring to in the beginning -- the ones who already understand the essence of arcade gaming, having discovered it either by spending time in real arcades, or, if not, by hanging out (either off- or online) with others who had done so.

But there are many enthusiastic gamers out there who suspect what this is all about, but are not yet quite convinced. People who've been exposed to arcade gaming perhaps only through home ports and emulation, and who find these games interesting and charming, but who can't quite see the reason they should be limiting themselves to one credit at a time. I mean really now, they usually ask, what's so wrong about using a few extra credits from time to time?

These people are missing the point of arcade gaming, these people think that they are playing these games but in reality it is the games that are playing them, and so it is these people that I want to try and help now. The masses, as I've mentioned, are beyond hope, and there is nothing unfortunate about that. But for those lurking around the fringes of the masses... there is always hope for their seduction.

>>3402696
But before I go on it's worth noting that these people are not to be blamed for failing to understand arcade gaming. After all, the one-credit rule was born in the arcade environment and really only makes sense there -- and it can only be understood there. Most Westerners (and especially the younger ones) have never even set foot in a proper arcade -- how can anyone expect them to adopt such an unforgiving playing style in the comfort of their own homes, when all the arcade games they have are effectively set on freeplay?

It would be extremely strange if they did this of their own accord!

And yet they must, for there is no other way. I've mentioned this already but it's worth repeating:

The magic of arcade gaming cannot be recreated outside the environment that gave birth to it -- at least not without conscious and disciplined effort on the part of both developers and players.

So what I will now attempt to do is explain the reasoning behind the one-credit rule, in the hopes of getting a few more people to adopt it. Without a doubt it will be the hardest thing I've so far tried to accomplish on this website.

>>3402637
I've seen this shit thread a few months ago. Exact same words too. 0/10 Nice try at baiting faggot.

>>3402861
It's copypasta from Icycalm.

>>3402864
Ah yes that was the name of the individual that came up with this wondrous (but stale in this day in age) bait.

>>3402864
Didn't they jail him for fraud?

>>3402928
He hasn't updated in almost a year. Rumor has it that he died in a street race in Sweden last year.

So this guy wanted to pat himself on the back for acting like he came up with the idea of the 1cc play style/arcade etiquette? Otherwise it's just nostalgiawank.

>>3403374

I don't know if I've ever read all of this, but being that icycalm wrote it is probably more of a "I am great, brilliant, and literally better than you, so you need to be educated by me and my perfect ways, because I am the great and wondrous icycalm."

>>3403284

Was there any evidence of this? It'd be a shame if he died.

to make a point though. Arcade games HAD to be good, cause nobody was going to keep a shit game around to not make any money.
With a console game, they can sucker you in and get your money.

lesson of the story, don't fucking play shit games ya dweb.

>>3402637
I think it's that guy from Insomnia.ac.
...
Still alive, huh?
How unfortunate.

>>3403374
>So this guy wanted to pat himself on the back for acting like he came up with the idea of the 1cc play style/arcade etiquette?
He didn't. 1CCs (or no continue clear) was always a part of Japanese arcade gaming culture and some games (mostly Capcom's) even offer special staff role sequences when you clear them without credit feeding them.

>>3403765
>Was there any evidence of this? It'd be a shame if he died.
A random post on /vg/ was the source, but it kinda checks out though. He hasn't even logged into his Steam account since early last year.

This article makes some accurate points, but it's written from the perspective of a literal autist who doesn't understand that arcades were really just places to hang out and play games with your friends.

I suspect this is really elaborate bait but it's not like I'm going to sit down and read this giant ass wall of text. Kind of a shame, really.

Definitely not reading this wall of garbage.

Japanfag here though, arcade games nowadays are meh. it's all taiko and rhythm game shit. the money is in pachinko games

>posting icycalm or anything related to him or his site
>ever
No.

>>3409380
>taiko and rhythm game shit
the best kind of video games

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19KB, 367x500px

>>3409514

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>>3409517

>>3402679
>Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
>The game was... too easy.
am i just really bad at games, or is this guy just fucking nuts?

>>3409547
Never take that retard seriously, SGnG is harder than Ghouls 'n Ghosts

>>3403765
> It'd be a shame if he died.
would it now

>>3409547
Ghouls 'n Ghosts is the easiest game in that series. Super is harder.

Who considers original Ghosts n Goblins harder than SGnG?

>>3402868

Came here to post this, OP what the fuck is your damage?