ARCADE WATCH

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene

Simogo’s multi-award-winning ‘pop album videogame’ remains an Edge favourite; it’s a game we can never bring ourselves to delete, which perhaps explains why we still have it installed on four different formats. Well, now we’ve seen it running on a new piece of hardware, and are hankering after a fifth. Madrid-based No Coin Arcade (whose slogan is ‘new games, old ways’) makes homebrew cabinets, and it’s given Sayonara Wild Hearts a stand-up cab of its very own.

Well, not quite its own. It’s a repurposed retro-gaming cabinet, creator Sergio Ruiz says, with a button layout that’s designed to accommodate all the inputs of an Xbox 360 pad, so that it might support a range of titles. Thus it boasts two traditional ball-top joysticks and eight buttons on either side for a singleplayer game that requires only one. It’s a proof of concept, Ruiz says, for “an arcade bar dedicated exclusively to modern games in this form factor”, and this is one heck of a start. From its coin slot to its marquee, bezel and eye-catching side art – which all use in-game assets to splendid effect – it’s a sophisticated unit befitting its subject’s style. A fitting tribute, too, given the game’s debt of gratitude to the coin-op era. With its wide-eyed homages to the likes of Out Run and Space Harrier, Sayonara Wild Hearts always felt like it belonged in an arcade. Now, thanks to Ruiz’s efforts, it may well have found its natural home.