Arcade Games of the 90's - Part 8: 1997

[@lustisnotlove6226]

Sooo fun I haven’t seen most of them Thank you gamer Gary

[@chiissu]

17 I knew of before this, 27 I'd like to try. Good compilation. I check back with your channel every now and then to see if you posted a new one. Glad you are still doing this. Vids like these helped me find some games I'd never have played otherwise. You're doing great work.

[@GaryRetroGamer]

Thanks for coming back! Generally, there's a new video every two weeks - and I've been alternating with posting another chapter in the "Arcade Games of the 90s'" every alternate video. So, this Saturday will be the next video (x68000) and then two weeks after that will be the arcade games of 1998...

[@4h0w1e6]

That weird period when pixel art was reaching its apex while low-poly 3D was starting to appear everywhere.

[@sonicmania9993]

Spooky Patreon Steamkey this time, Gary! It's 2019's LOVECRAFT'S UNTOLD STORIES: looks like an action (run-n-gun) roguelite but with RPG style upgrading etc. Fun stuff, cheers!!

[@elsenorburns889]

Thanks Gary. You re The best!

[@sonicmania9993]

A bit less variety this year than earlier in the 90s, as you’ve been suggesting! Still some really great shmups (G-Darius & Strikers 1945 II are special favorites for me), and a great catalog of Capcom fighters -- they were really on top of their game. I also like quirky fighter Rabbit. Virtually all of the good games in those genres got home ports. The racing genre was weak this year: standouts Le Mans 24 (which had an excellent Dreamcast port a few years later) and an early version of SF Rush are the standouts. It will be interesting to see if the genre bounced back later in the 90s, or just transitioned mostly to home consoles. I also want to shout out Shock Troopers (a Saurus game for Neo Geo), which looks like a typical overhead run-n-gun, but ends up being way more fun than it has any right to be LOL. Good game design there. Its sequel was not nearly as fun. Why couldn’t we have gotten some Beatmania home ports outside of Japan? (I think that Europe got one game on PS1 or PS2, but North America got zero.) I wasn’t in arcades much in the late 90s, they were all closing in the States, so I never saw the American version HipHopMania. A couple of great light gun games (HotD, The Lost World) and a couple of very fun soccer games (Libero Grande and my fave Virtua Striker 2) but that’s about it. What will 1998 bring I wonder?

[@GaryRetroGamer]

Definitely less variety and significantly fewer overall titles, but with an increase in lower-quality (almost shovelware-style) titles. True, a few bright spots like the titles you mentioned - almost all of which made it into the home - which reinforces the fact that arcades were rapidly losing their identity - aside from specialist "peripheral machines" (e.g. Beatmania) and prize redemption ticket machines. Even Capcom's fighting games were starting to lose a bit of inventiveness. Yeah, Super Gem Fighters was incredibly cute and fun to watch - but was it really a good fighting game? And did we need to see 3 barely different releases in the Darkstalkers saga? Genre stalwarts like the run and gun, and the belt scrolling beat'em-up were very under-represented - while falling-block puzzle games (with cute skins) were over-represented. It's pretty clear to me that this was a clear sign of the sharp decline of arcades - and I don't expect 1998 to be much better. (Interestingly - this is often what the tail end of any console generation looks like; fewer titles, cheap cash-in sequels, shovelware, and zero innovation...)

[@theGodfollower99]

Might not have been a great year, but hey, we got the first House of the Dead, so that’s pretty awesome! 👍

[@bigballzmcdrawz2921]

The Lost World was my fav light gun game back then.

[@R0n1n760]

1997 was an amazing year in my opinion

[@svenkamog2232]

This was the beginning of the end. 😣😢😭

[@ht_100]

These games 25th anniversary on 2022. Notable 1997 games Beatmania Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter Street Fighter 3

[@fernnandobulgarelli9157]

Thanks for another video;

[@jymfiskburk2256]

I wonder which was the target market for some of this games?

[@sonicmania9993]

99% Japan. The American arcade scene was really in its death throes in 1997, and western Europe wasn't far behind... Capcom & Neo Geo fighters continued to be big worldwide though...

[@jymfiskburk2256]

@@sonicmania9993 no, i mean which age, job or social status were the target for some games, i remember reading once that a lot of office workers love quiz, shogi and mahjong arcades, thats why i was wondering that

[@sonicmania9993]

@@jymfiskburk2256 Yes, for sure by the late 90s a lot of these games were for JP salarymen coming home from work -- a lot if them would fit in an hour in the arcade before going home for dinner. All kinds of weird/mediocre games LOL!

[@whatsup3820]

What's with all the puzzle bobble, Bubble bobble, Qix, Puyo puyo, Tetris, Columns, Arkonoid type games?

[@mumblesslam]

I was wondering what your criteria is for the credits above the game? I know Shock Troopers 1 and 2 were developed by the accredited companies, but they were published under SNK and have appeared on various subsequent SNK compilations.

[@GaryRetroGamer]

Ah, that's a great question. I use MAME's database for the information (e.g. title, year) - and every entry has a "Manufacturer" - which is what I use. So instead of "Publisher" or "Developer", it's just a generic "Manufacturer" name - and usually, that's what makes it into the video. (In a few circumstances, I've personally changed it - for example, for the Street Fighter EX titles, I list Arika (developer) instead of Capcom (publisher)

[@rc88kw]

Anyone knows of a 90s arcade game whereby your controlling a tiny little machine and whenever you went out of the boundary and made a loop back, the portion was "removed" as real screen. Your objective is to cut out as wide a portion as possible while avoiding contact with a big monster enemy & its little ones which will try to get you killed (by touching your machine). The biggest score would be 99% if you ever succeed in getting the big monster trapped within a tiny frame. I am trying to recall the name & it was something like "Zoid" but couldn't find it. Would appreciate if anyone can help :) Thanks!

[@GaryRetroGamer]

The "Qix"-like genre had a few releases in the mid 90s - but often with smutty pictures attached to them. For example, this video - at 3:53 - you can see "Fantasia". Another prolific Qix-like series was "Gals Panic" (by Kaneko). If you watch the 95/96/97 videos in this series, you'll find several instances of them. Be warned that most of them are very NSFW.

[@rc88kw]

@@GaryRetroGamer Thanks for your reply! Oh I've played this game Fantasia before, lol! But there was another similar kind of game but without these sleezy pictures behind. It was more of outer space scenes with the player trying to trap the big monster n its babies within the confinement of the space cut out by him. There were more than 6 stages with the first being The Centipede, then (not in sequence) 2 Clamping Machines, The Hand, Crabs, etc. Just couldn't get the name of that game… :)

[@rc88kw]

Ahhhh thanks Gary for mentioning the word "Qix"! I found the game I've been talking about: Volfied!!! Lol

[@GaryRetroGamer]

Great! Glad you found it! Happy to help.

[@saturnman9129]

97 was a year of pretty poor games it would seem. You can see the lack of effort being put into a dying trend.

[@AnnaPurwanto-d2l]

Birglar x 2:15

[@I2ed3ye]

ジャンプ！

[@bassram3337]

they dropped gorgeous pixel art for weird looking polygon mess, Capcom and SNK were fine, though