"Arcade Perfect" - Your fondest memories of bringing the arcade into your living room

I was always chasing that arcade experience in the home, starting out with outrun and afterburner for my dad's Amstrad, which were appalling conversions (as you'd expect). Still, I owned two arcade games!

Virtua Racing on my megadrive, and then later deluxe on my 32x gave me an arcade at home feeling, as did virtua fighter on the 32x. Loved the feeling of having something that seemed light years ahead of anything my mates owned.

But the real moment was (as Jawa mentioned) getting ridge racer on my PlayStation. Jeeeeesus. An actual arcade game, at home, that I can play for as long as I want

I think the true home arcade experience that has never been topped for me though is the dreamcast. Put it on now and it STILL impresses with its arcade feeling. Even though it is dated, that particular arcade look is more impressive to me than a lot of more technically accomplished modern stuff.

I'll never forget getting soul caliber on launch day, the graphics strawberry floating floored me. Watching those demo screens with people doing those routines, fuuuuuck. They STILL look great today.

Look at this gooseberry fool!

mic wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:No doubt for me, i finally felt that the arcade had made its way in to my home when i got my Super Nes with Street Fighter 2 (Hyper Fighting). Looking back it is clear that there were lots of compromises that had to be made, but seeing as this was the first console i had (and so had more than one button available to me for the first time), together with no loading times etc, the small graphical and audio compromises were completely disregarded.
Still have that SNES (and the box). Seeing the artwork on it still takes me back to the absolute amazement i felt when i first saw it running.

Wasn’t that that most expensive (non-neo geo) cartridge ever at £120?

I think it retailed in the uk at £60, but i got it packed in with the SNES. I think it was about £150 all in (plus it came with a grey abs carry case that i also still have).

But yeah, import prices were insane. I remember star fox being £100 at my local importer. It was just known as "The rip off shop" by me and my mates. But we still went there just about every day after school, and to be fair the guy who owned and ran it was a really nice chap.

Ad7 wrote:I was always chasing that arcade experience in the home, starting out with outrun and afterburner for my dad's Amstrad, which were appalling conversions (as you'd expect). Still, I owned two arcade games!

Virtua Racing on my megadrive, and then later deluxe on my 32x gave me an arcade at home feeling, as did virtua fighter on the 32x. Loved the feeling of having something that seemed light years ahead of anything my mates owned.

But the real moment was (as Jawa mentioned) getting ridge racer on my PlayStation. Jeeeeesus. An actual arcade game, at home, that I can play for as long as I want

I think the true home arcade experience that has never been topped for me though is the dreamcast. Put it on now and it STILL impresses with its arcade feeling. Even though it is dated, that particular arcade look is more impressive to me than a lot of more technically accomplished modern stuff.

I'll never forget getting soul caliber on launch day, the graphics strawberry floating floored me. Watching those demo screens with people doing those routines, fuuuuuck. They STILL look great today.

Look at this gooseberry fool!

The Dreamcast certainly nailed that 'arcade in your home' feeling. More so than any other system before, at the time and since then.

I've never owned a Dreamcast but, having played it on pods in shops (and at Arsenal's Highbury ground!) I agree that it definitely had an arcade effect about it. The graphics had such vibrancy and the title screens were like "attract" modes. I love that Sega arcade feel!

60fps and 480p was incredible back then. I hooked mine up through an HDMI converter a couple of years back and those games still really pop.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:

mic wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:No doubt for me, i finally felt that the arcade had made its way in to my home when i got my Super Nes with Street Fighter 2 (Hyper Fighting). Looking back it is clear that there were lots of compromises that had to be made, but seeing as this was the first console i had (and so had more than one button available to me for the first time), together with no loading times etc, the small graphical and audio compromises were completely disregarded.
Still have that SNES (and the box). Seeing the artwork on it still takes me back to the absolute amazement i felt when i first saw it running.

Wasn’t that that most expensive (non-neo geo) cartridge ever at £120?

I think it retailed in the uk at £60, but i got it packed in with the SNES. I think it was about £150 all in (plus it came with a grey abs carry case that i also still have).

But yeah, import prices were insane. I remember star fox being £100 at my local importer. It was just known as "The rip off shop" by me and my mates. But we still went there just about every day after school, and to be fair the guy who owned and ran it was a really nice chap.

My mate had an uncle who worked for Nintendo and got him all the games first. He had Street Fighter 2 really early. Annoyingly, when we went round that time he'd lent the game to his cousin so we couldn't play it.

I knew someone who claimed to have a PlayStation 3 for testing back when the PlayStation 2 had only just been announced

My friend at primary school actually had an aunt who worked for Sony. He had loads of press-copy discs of PS2 games (same game but instead of disc art they just had text printed on them that said they weren't for resale etc). Never actually got anything early though

OrangeRKN wrote:My friend at primary school actually had an aunt who worked for Sony. He had loads of press-copy discs of PS2 games (same game but instead of disc art they just had text printed on them that said they weren't for resale etc). Never actually got anything early though

I've got a few ps4 ones like that (i got them at mad catz). It was great when someone from the office went to E3 or similar, as they'd usually come back with a bag full of games and we could just take our pick.

Ad7 wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:My friend at primary school actually had an aunt who worked for Sony. He had loads of press-copy discs of PS2 games (same game but instead of disc art they just had text printed on them that said they weren't for resale etc). Never actually got anything early though

I've got a few ps4 ones like that (i got them at mad catz). It was great when someone from the office went to E3 or similar, as they'd usually come back with a bag full of games and we could just take our pick.

I have a few 'not for retail sale' PS2 games from when my brother worked at Gamestation, nothing particularly exciting mind, the best one being THPS4.

Also got a few big box PC games for ridiculously cheap as they quite often had different barcodes to the DVD case version and therefore didn't have trade in/resale prices assigned to them so the staff were basically free to price them as they saw fit (usually 50p).

God I miss those days.

Street Fighter 2 on the Snes was also near enough Arcade Perfect. I was never much good at it but marveled at it's graphics.

Photek wrote:Street Fighter 2 on the Snes was also near enough Arcade Perfect. I was never much good at it but marveled at it's graphics.

I think, of the era, it was the one game that, as an Amiga owner, I was most jealous of. I spent ages labouring with inferior imitations such as Body Blows (and Street Fighter on the Amiga, which was emphatically NOT arcade-perfect. That one-button fight system; swapping discs every time you decided to change characters )



I also used to play a pretty, but awful, fighting game in which all the characters were all elfin. I can't remember what it was called and it's now doing my head in! Any Amiga owners fancy filling that gap?

I remember Body Blows getting high review scores even in the far more critical magazines of the time (Amiga Power).

It was terrible.

Budokan on the Amiga and IK+ on the C64/Amiga remain the only good fighters on home computers. And to be honest i'm not sure how well Budokan would actually hold up now.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I remember Body Blows getting high review scores even in the far more critical magazines of the time (Amiga Power).

It was terrible.

Budokan on the Amiga and IK+ on the C64/Amiga remain the only good fighters on home computers. And to be honest i'm not sure how well Budokan would actually hold up now.

It was classic partisan format-bias. They were desperate to have a game they could call an "SFII-beater". Plus, I'm sure Amiga Power had links of sorts to Team 17 at the time. If you played Arcade Pool, (loved that game) then the NPCs were named after Amiga Power staff.

See also: Zool being given a 95% rating in Amiga Format; they were obsessed with finding a game better than Sonic. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.


To bring this back on topic, it was when I saw Ridge Racer running on PS for the first time, having previously gawped at it in an arcade, that I realised the Amiga/16-bit was properly dead. Utterly stunning stuff.

To be fair the AMIGA was strawberry floating amazing for its time, even later in the lifespan of the line when stuff like the A1200 had come out most software was targeted at the A500 which came out in 1987 so it's understandable that it would start to show its age before the SNES which was a good 3 years younger. Still adored my Amiga though.

It was hilarious that so many Amiga owners and mags tried to continually ignore/lie about the fact that the games just couldn't match what the consoles and PC were doing as the 90s progressed. Zool was a good example but also their constant claims that any piece of shite FPS was "Better than DOOM!!!!" was funny to watch.

Oh, boy, I was a huge Amiga fan. I didn't get one until 1992 as I had an Atari STe before that but I loved the system, adding on a second disk drive, hard drive, RAM and an accelerator. I've still got the kit albeit it's in the loft now.

Even so, I have to agree that the Amiga mags did often boost their review scores and, as others have said, stuff like Zool just wasn't a match for Sonic or Mario. Body Blows was okay but definitely not in the same division as Street Fighter II. There were some technically very good imitations in latter years - for example, Alien Breed 3D and Gloom were decent, playable versions of Doom, albeit way blockier - although, as with any system, games developed with the machine's limitations in mind often turned out better than ports from other formats.

As Ironhide highlighted, Space Harrier on the Master System is very impressive considering the lack of tech power; the graphics are blocky but the overall effect is excellent. Out Run on the MS is smooth and fun to play, too.

I played Doom to the end on the SNES, it had no floor or ceiling textures and ran at about 18fps.

Jenuall wrote:To be fair the AMIGA was strawberry floating amazing for its time, even later in the lifespan of the line when stuff like the A1200 had come out most software was targeted at the A500 which came out in 1987 so it's understandable that it would start to show its age before the SNES which was a good 3 years younger. Still adored my Amiga though.

It was hilarious that so many Amiga owners and mags tried to continually ignore/lie about the fact that the games just couldn't match what the consoles and PC were doing as the 90s progressed. Zool was a good example but also their constant claims that any piece of shite FPS was "Better than DOOM!!!!" was funny to watch.

I stayed with the Amiga almost to the bitter end. I can remember reading stuff about Ridge Racer in AF - they'd take the piss out of the PlayStation's 'cool' reputation and the fact Ridge Racer had just one track for £50 (or whatever).

Sadly, the world had moved on.

Re Ridge being arcade perfect, mind, I've just found this comparison which shows it was some way short. Didn't matter at the time; it was so far ahead of anything else people had seen on their TVs.

Poser wrote:I stayed with the Amiga almost to the bitter end...

I stayed on until the end, too, Poser, buying the last issues of CU Amiga, Amiga Power and Amiga Format (which, incredibly, survived until 2000 - five years into the PlayStation!). I had the PS but I still enjoyed the more tech-focussed Amiga scene as well.

Poser wrote:(Ridge Racer)... so far ahead of anything else people had seen on their TVs...

Yeah, I think the jump in technical power from the MD / SNES / Amiga to the PlayStation was probably the biggest that I've experienced. It felt like something totally different. Obviously the polygon graphics have greatly aged when viewed now - perhaps more so than the games on those earlier machines - but it felt like a truly groundbreaking console at the time.

Poser wrote:

Jenuall wrote:To be fair the AMIGA was strawberry floating amazing for its time, even later in the lifespan of the line when stuff like the A1200 had come out most software was targeted at the A500 which came out in 1987 so it's understandable that it would start to show its age before the SNES which was a good 3 years younger. Still adored my Amiga though.

It was hilarious that so many Amiga owners and mags tried to continually ignore/lie about the fact that the games just couldn't match what the consoles and PC were doing as the 90s progressed. Zool was a good example but also their constant claims that any piece of shite FPS was "Better than DOOM!!!!" was funny to watch.

I stayed with the Amiga almost to the bitter end. I can remember reading stuff about Ridge Racer in AF - they'd take the piss out of the PlayStation's 'cool' reputation and the fact Ridge Racer had just one track for £50 (or whatever).

Sadly, the world had moved on.

Re Ridge being arcade perfect, mind, I've just found this comparison which shows it was some way short. Didn't matter at the time; it was so far ahead of anything else people had seen on their TVs.

So not quite arcade perfect then. Still a damn fine conversion nevertheless.

As for the Amiga, I played mine to death but yes after many years of delivering some cracking titles it did eventually get left behind. The jump from my Amiga to Playstation was quite something.