ARCADE WATCH

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene

These are fertile times for the coin-op scene. The rise of payper-play VR installations has breathed new life into the humble arcade, while the launch of the Exa-Arcadia platform has given small independent teams a route into an industry that was previously reserved for those with the contacts or financial muscle to put cabinets into production.

Not all is new and exciting, however, and the coin-op cognoscenti are still fretful about ‘redemptification’ – in which classic games are reborn as redemption machines, spitting out tickets that can be exchanged in great sums for physical prizes. Debate swirls over whether they should be classed as gambling machines – since they’re notionally skillbased there’s no legislation on average payout, as there is in the casino variant. But they’re not going anywhere any time soon, with many arcade operators preferring them for the way they encourage spending across the entire floor.

All of which is to say that Bust-A-Move’s return to arcades after two decades is not necessarily to be cheered. The work of Eugene Jarvis’ coin-op company Raw Thrills, Frenzy reprises the cabinet design from its World’s Largest series, tasks up to two players with aiming guns to pop bubbles on a 10-foot screen and, look, that’s about it. It’s the coin-op equivalent of a manufactured pop act sampling one of your favourite songs, a creatively moribund nostalgia play that embodies the arcade scene’s split personality

– needing to reinvent itself while being wedded to its past.