ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
Nowadays it’s not uncommon to see consumer games make the transition to the arcade, but during the ’80s the traffic moved mostly in the other direction – and there was a lot of it. Such was the appetite for “bringing the arcade home”, in fact, that even low-profile coin-ops had a chance of getting the conversion treatment – Jaleco’s P-47: The Phantom Fighter being a good example. This 1988 release wasn’t a classic shoot-’em-up, and yet it found its way to numerous 8bit and 16bit computers – as P47 Thunderbolt
– by 1990. A sequel, P-47 Aces,
didn’t enjoy the same attention thanks to its arrival in 1995, by which time arcade-conversion fever had passed, but that hasn’t stopped the creation of a follow-up, subtitled Mk.II.
The biggest change here is the transition to a 16:9 display, giving a bit more room for the four simultaneous players it supports. Though the game is essentially an update rather than a full-blown sequel, its sprites and backgrounds have been redrawn, while its audio features a new, live-recorded soundtrack, and its developers claim to have fixed the original version’s bugs. Topping it all off are promo visuals from acclaimed artist Hidetaka Tenjin, whose CV includes the likes of Gundam and Macross.