ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
In 2006 Taito brought Half-Life 2 to Japanese arcades as Half-Life 2: Survivor. Housed in a cumbersome cabinet with foot pedals and two sticks, it found its way west only at Valve’s Seattle HQ, and was generally poorly received even in Japan. Undeterred, Taito is revisiting the experiment with Left 4 Dead: Survivors.
Survivors is Taito’s third notable attempt at bringing a firstperson shooter to Japanese arcades but is the first one to eschew the pedals and sticks in favour of a mouse and Wii-style nunchuck – hardware that might not last very long in the wilds of a western arcade.
Like Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead: Survivors uses existing Valve assets for its levels, but localises the characters as Japanese students on a school trip. College bro Kudo Yusuke fights alongside tour guide Kirishima Sara, token blue-jeans American Blake Jordan and inevitable Japanese schoolgirl Haruka Hirose. Games are timelimited using Survivor Points (SVP), which are scattered around as collectibles, and when your SVP runs out the game is ended with a relentless s and overwhelming zombie rush. sh.
The game’s me’s late-May location on test was popular ar but received a cool response from rom players, who ho criticised the he game’s controls, ntrols, voice acting g and difficulty. ulty. They’re easily sily fixed woes, s, but likely symptoms of a deeper er problem: like ike Half-Life 2, , Left 4 Dead was s never meant nt for arcades. s.