Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1984

For 1984 it looks like Namco and Midway started moving away from their shooter games and put more of their efforts into the innovation and invention of new styles of play they were also seeing success in.  This resulted in some games that could only exist in that experimental, developmental period of gaming.  Who made the better games in that time is what we’re going to find out.

Tapper/Root Beer Tapper(MID): The original Tapper was made for bars and featured cabinets with Budwiser tap levers and the brand itself in-game, but would later be remade for arcades and have the alchohol references removed.  Appropriately, the premise is so simple that you could make some progress even while drunk.

It’s a game all about juggling tasks, where you quickly get everyone their (root) beer, catch used mugs and gather some tips for extra points.  Since you quickly snap between each lane, there’s no need for precision in movement, making the controls nice and tight.  It’s a fun and unique enough premise for a pick-up-and-play game, but what helps it along is its personality.  The bartender has a big, expressive face for some cute victory animations and there’s a minigame in between some levels to shake things up.  This game was memorable enough to get an appearance in Wreck-It Ralph.

Tower of Druaga(NAM): This game is infamous for its sadistic, secret-heavy game design.  It’s 60 levels of mazes and every level has an item you can get that ranges from helpful to required to beat the game.  How you get the items is never so much as hinted at.  Nobody in the right mind would think to kill specific enemies in a certain order or break their valuable item permanently or go through a door without the key that has already been established to be required to open it.

It’s unbeatable without a guide and to make matters worse, it’s one of the longest arcade games I’ve ever seen.  It can take at least half an hour of dying just to get past 10 floors and they want players to do 60!  That doesn’t take into account all the ways players can run into unbeatable situations and traps that send them back to previous floors!  I hope you don’t have to use the bathroom at whatever arcade you’re playing it at!  Maybe some of this would have flown for a console game, but as an arcade game it’s one of the worst either company has made!

However, I’m not sure I should count Tower of Druaga against Namco in this competition because technically it never came out in arcades in America, a good move on Namco’s part.  It wouldn’t come out in English until compilation re-releases on consoles over a decade down the line and those are a different story.

In some re-releases of Tower of Druaga, such as in the Namco Museum on the Switch, there’s a complete guide on how to get every item on every floor as well as what every item does, taking out the game’s critical failing.  The esoteric things you have to do for the items become instead clear and varied challenges to gain more and more upgrades and tools that give the game depth.  Save states and stage select also make the length a non-issue.  If you get a version wit the aforementioned guide and save states, Tower of Druaga is actually somewhat enjoyable, but the arcade version as it was in 1984 is abysmal.  What maniac thought this game was acceptable?
Again though, America was spared so I can’t get too mad.

Grobda(NAM): You have a tank with a lazer cannon and a limited invincibility shield.  You shoot other tanks while avoiding and shielding against their attacks and the explosions given off by tanks when they die.  Easy, simple, fun.  Not a lot to say.  It’s another shooter to add to the pile, but not a bad one.

Timber(MID): This game borrows a lot of the design philosophy of Tapper.  You play out a mundane job, in this case a lumberjack, and fulfill a simple task with easy controls, some charming cartoon animations and a minigame intermission.  Like Tapper, there’s more elements of the game at play than it initially seems.  Trees can be cut down on the left or right side and once fallen, they obstruct vertical movement, gradually creating a maze of obstacles that the player has some control over as they avoid birds and beehive-throwing bears.

Something Timber should’ve cribbed from Tapper is visual variety.  In Tapper there are other locales after the initial bar, but in Timber you’re cutting down trees in the same exact area because I guess it’s the site of fairy magic that produces infinite trees or something.  I’m impressed Midway was able to make a fun gameplay loop for something as boring as tree cutting, but it needed more.  Hell of a cabinet though.

Marble Madness(MID): I had no expectations for this game whatsoever.  When I saw a game called Marble Madness, I was expecting a bunch of circles ramming each other.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Marble Madness is actually Super Monkey Ball before Super Monkey Ball.  You control a marble and carefully roll it down obstacle courses.

What’s astounding about Marble Madness is how it looks.  It’s ingenious how it makes the illusion of 3D using the isometric perspective and the rotating pixels in the marble itself, which is animated beautifully.  It’s tricky to control, but that’s the challenge of controlling a spherical object with such an accurate simulation of physics, although admittedly the controls I used aren’t the same as the arcade’s.  I’m using an Xbox 360 controller and the arcade game uses track balls.

It’s not just a visual gimmick either.  The levels are distinct from each other with unique obstacles and enemies and there’s a surprisingly catchy soundtrack with more layers than the simplistic jingles I’ve heard up to now.

The downside of Marble Madness is there are only 5 levels and if you do a straight run without ever losing, you can beat it in 5 minutes.  I’ve complained about the lack of content in previous games, but that was referring to how the games pad themselves out for longer than they had the variety for.  Marble Madness is 5 levels of wholly unique level design and I’d much rather have that than play 20 levels of the same Pac-Man maze or Xevious background.  It’s the game of the year.

Dragon Buster(NAM): If there’s one thing I can’t knock Dragon Buster for, it’s its ambition.  It’s a fantasy action game where you go through dungeons wielding a sword and some magic fireballs to strike down evil wizards, monsters and dragons, something neither company has tried until this.  Too bad everything about it sucks.

The graphics look like doodles drawn by a grade schooler, the music is ill-fitting and grating, there’s no combat beyond a wimpy sword swing and basic projectiles and the game runs out of things to show within the first 5 minutes.  It fails on every level.  Dragon Buster is the kind of game that a comedy would use as a poor man’s parody of a video game for the background.

Midway wins.  I think that’s pretty obvious.  They had Tapper and Marble Madness.  Namco had Tower of Druaga and Dragon Buster, two games that are a close call on which is the worst game yet.  Even if I disregard Druaga for not having an English release, Grobda is too average to match up to Midway’s titles.  Midway has another victory.

Meanwhile... 1984 was the year of Capcom.  Alongside their forgettable and frustrating games were Sonson and 1942.  1942 looks better than anything here, even if the game gets stale, and Sonson is a much better action platformer experience than Dragon Buster.  I think Marble Madness is the only one from either Midway or Namco that stands above Capcom's offerings for 1984 with its visuals, music and gameplay all impressing from a technical level.

 

After their initial slow period in their formative years, games from both Capcom and SNK will start being compared to the current contestants starting in the next post as I go over the games of 1985, where Namco has 6 games and Midway has... One... Gauntlet had better be amazing if Midway wants to win next time.