Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades: 1986

Last year Midway only had one game on which to bank their victory, but for 1986, the roles are reversed.  This year there were only 2 games from 1986 I could find from Namco, meaning it’s now them placing their bets on a small chance at victory.  We will see if Sky Kid Deluxe or Rolling Thunder is good enough to make that a winning bet.

I got a little distracted playing the Atari 50 collection while writing this one.  There's a game in there that our contestants are lucky aren't in the competition because it has the best graphics, best gameplay and best music out of anything they've made and quite possibly anything they ever will make.

Sky Kid Deluxe(NAM): I already played this game.  Sky Kid Deluxe is an updated version of the original with slightly enhanced music, some touch-ups and more enemy variety.  It’s still the same generic, uninteresting shooter at its core.  Throw it on the pile too.  It’s up to Rolling Thunder now.

Super Sprint & Championship Sprint(MID): I’m putting these two games together as one because as far as I can tell they’re the exact same game.  They’re top-down racing games where you steer left and right while pressing the gas pedal to accelerate.  The controls are finicky with how fast the car turns and I know I’m not playing on the cool wheel-equipped cabinets, but the drag, sharp turns and bouncing around after bumping into walls is clearly baked into the game and becomes a real nuisance.  I get that drag and collisions are part of real racecar driving, but the cars in this game don’t have the feeling of weight to them to give any illusion of realism to the driving in the first place.

Once I started taking advantage of the drift from letting go of the gas pedal and after a long time bouncing all over the walls I started to get more accustomed to the way the cars handle and got a sense of accomplishment when I successfully maneuvered around the curving tracks to win.  It needs refinement, but Midway was on to something with these.

Rampage(MID): For a game that’s all about destroying things it sure isn’t satisfying or cathartic.  The goal is to systematically demolish buildings while dodging incoming military fire that is nigh impossible to avoid because of how slow your giant monster moves.  I guess the big monster sprites are impressive for 1986, but the lack of any music, weak sound effects and nonexistent level variety makes the act of destroying things itself boring, which is pretty damn bad for a game about giant kaiju.

Joust 2(MID): This improves on the original game in every way.  More enemies, different levels, some better music, less obnoxious bouncing on collision and even a new mechanic that allows your ostrich to turn into a pegasus.  The pegasus is bigger and has a height advantage, but it can’t gain the altitude the ostrich can so skillfully switching between them is key.  If it weren’t for the huge difficulty spike on only the third level with no ability to continue after losing all your lives, this could’ve been great.

Good luck getting past this.

Rolling Thunder(NAM): The core gameplay concept for Rolling Thunder is solid, but it needed more work done.  It’s a shooter with a methodical approach, where you have limited ammo, die in one or two hits and can’t run and shoot at the same time.  Defeating the enemies that pop out as you progress through a stage means getting in the right position and learning tricks on how to deal with the different enemy types effectively and efficiently.

Rolling Thunder leans into trial and error gameplay, but (usually) not in the egregious sense of things you couldn’t see coming one-shotting you.  Once you realize the errors you make, they become less and less frequent and that sense of figuring out how the game ticks is satisfying.  The big problem is that’s coupled with punishing design.  When you inevitably die, you’re booted back to a sparse checkpoint and have to do large parts of the game over again and when you inevitably get a game over, you’re booted back to the beginning of the game and have to do EVERYTHING over again.  It’s not fun to get better when most of the time spent is on the same few levels you have to constantly play over and over again because of one difficult part.  I understand that most arcade games so far do the same thing, but with other games you see how far you can get on skill alone, whereas with Rolling Thunder, dying and learning from mistakes is expected so making the dying part unfun runs counter to that.

Like with Tower of Druaga, the Namco Museum collection on the Nintendo Switch alleviates this.  In it, there’s save states, a level select and tips and tricks to the game, including pointing out a programming exploit.  That takes out the worst part of the game and it’s moderately enjoyable experienced that way, but judging it by its original release it’s frustrating before long.
 
Gauntlet 2(MID): The first Gauntlet had some impressive tech for the time, but was a boring slog of repetitious mowing down of swarms of enemies in a battle of attrition.  Now in Gauntlet 2 it’s a boring slog of repetitious mowing down of swarms of enemies in a battle of attrition, but with more complex levels.  The first Gauntlet had empty and samey levels with little to them and this one adds more obstacles, enemies and environments, but apparently nobody told the developers that what killed Gauntlet was the awful combat because that’s completely unchanged.  How do you miss that?

The Winner

Neither company was doing very hot this year either, but Namco only had 2 chances to beat Midway and they blew it.  Namco had a good core gameplay idea for Rolling Thunder, but the punishing difficulty requiring constant restarts make it more a chore to play than fun.  Midway’s games weren’t great either, but the Sprint games were fun once I got used to them and Joust 2 came close to being good so Midway takes another point.

Meanwhile…

Capcom and SNK were really starting to make a name for themselves by this point.  SNK made Ikari Warriors and Athena, Capcom had The Speed Rumbler and Hyper Dyne Side Arms.  Even if they weren’t all great games, the graphics and music from them again show up Namco and Midway.  Namco wasn’t slouching with their music in either of their 1986 games, but none of those tunes are better than the music from Hyper Dyne Side Arms or Ikari Warriors.  Nobody made a game quite like Midway’s Sprint games though so they did still have the edge when it came to innovation, which is why thus far I've looked forward to seeing what they come up with next.
 
Things are looking bleak for Namco.  Midway has a lead on them, 2-4.  They need things to turn around.