ARCADE WATCH

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene

Game Pengo! Online Manufacturer Sega

Once the beating heart of the arcade experience, the idea of friends crowding around an arcade game is, for now, a thing of the past. To counter the need for arcade-goers to socially distance, manufacturers are adopting online multiplayer to allow players to compete with others on separate machines in arcades across the globe. Sega’s release this month of retro reboot Pengo! Online serves up not just nostalgia for a classic game, but goes some way towards sating our need for a good oldfashioned multiplayer experience. Pengo, released in 1982, was Sega’s first ‘mascot’ game and riffs on Pac-Man’s theme of a hero chased by monsters. The ice-blocks that form the game’s maze are pushed by the titular penguin to squash the chasing sno-bees, which can also be stunned by shoving the outside walls of the play area, letting you run over them. Bonuses are earned by lining up diamond blocks, and if you survive for two minutes without completing a round, any remaining sno-bees turn into aggressive, faster blobs.

The game proved even more fun in multiplayer when Sega released an eight-player version to Japanese arcades in 2010. Pengo! Online is essentially that game, but the addition of online play means fans can safely team up with other players anywhere in the world.

It’s a lovely idea that reminds us of the joy of playing arcade games with others and connects people around the world at a time we’ve never felt quite so disconnected from everything. Even a pandemic, it seems, can’t kill this most resilient, adaptable and beloved corners of the gaming scene.

Long may it live.