If it was already extremely obvious, I’m a retro Sega fan, and by extension that means I have a heavy bias towards arcade style games. You know the kind, they may or may not have a timer, checkpoint or some sort of continue system, they’re short, usually clocking in under an hour or two, and with that in mind, have a heavy focus on repeat play.
But what drives that repeat play?
I find myself asking this after the latest round of RetroSharka’s exceptional #SplashWaveRacing series. In case you haven’t seen it, Sharka selects a retro racing game every week to pit the twitter community against each other in some old school time trial, score chasing action with the aim to top the leaderboard by the end of the week.
It hits home so well because time and score were huge factors in the arcade. There weren’t many games that didn’t ask the player to enter their initials at the end of a game, and the score entry itself is a huge part of retrogaming’s cultural footprint. From references in shows such as The Simpsons and Friends, to full blown movie style documentaries like The King of Kong, performance – whether it’s by score or time – is integral to the identity of arcade games.
And it doesn’t stop there. Direct competition also exists, where players battle one another in real time, whether that’s by racing, fighting or the near limitless other ways gamers could face off.
All of this was born of our innate desire to prove our mettle against our friends and rivals. It’s a shame then that much of this has faded out, not least because of the decline in popularity of arcade games in the gaming mainstream.
While online leader boards exist today, they underpin the issue with moving the competition from the arcade to the global arena. Seeing your best score buried behind faceless elite level players can be soul destroying. And that’s why these friendly community competitions run by Sharka and 8BitBoyUK (as of this week both have been running an OutRun themed event with OutRun 2 SP and OutRun 3D) are so important.
I do love a bit of friendly competition. I’ve played thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) or Street Fighter matches online. Interestingly, Doom’s deathmatch mode was inspired by Street Fighter 2’s versus fighting, so games I play like Halo Infinite also have their roots in arcade gaming.
I’ve loved taking part in many score and time based challenges, from arcade classic like Space Invaders on the Master System to platformers like Sonic the hedgehog, to time trials in Sega Rally and Manx TT.
In almost all cases, the competition has heightened the gaming experience, urging me to shave those milliseconds off of Sega Rally’s Desert Track or nail those pesky Space Invaders.
But this week I encountered an exception to the rule.
OutRun is a game that I have always been pretty bad at. Generally putting the difficulty down to “Very Easy” and breezing through the stages, enjoying the sights and the sounds. It has always been the ultimate palate cleanser for me, a game I’ve played a lot but never taken at all seriously.
And for Outrun, especially Outrun 2, that is pretty heretical. These games are, what I would consider, the ultimate arcade experiences, and contain some of the most ingenious game and score design in any video game.
You could write an essay on the various nuances of the scoring system, for a game about driving from A to B it is outlandishly deep.
I surprised myself in an OutRun 2 SP run this week with a fairly solid score. Emboldened, and with the insight of my SegaGuys co-host James The SegaHolic, I set out to beat that score.
I never did.
Despite my initial easy going attempt at an initial run, I simply couldn’t get close to it again. Instead I was concentrating on ensuring I was drafting at the right time, that I was getting the right bonuses for passing vehicles, maximising my speed and only drifting when needed to maintain that speed around corners.
Suddenly that bright and breezy game changed. It became an endless cycle of hyper concentration and obsession, restarting every time there was a minor failure or collision. Suddenly, I was no longer having fun, and I had to step away.
It’s easy for us to get caught up in the competitiveness of arcade style gaming, and success – as I found in my Street Fighter IV days and in my first run in OutRun 2 SP – gives a dopamine hit that you become determined to replicate, and in order to repeat it, you have to stay on top. And doing maintaining or improving performance is not easy.
These days I think the term, at least in the competitive sense, is "sweaty", and depending on the game, you may love to "sweat" for it, or that ultimate competitive sweatiness can turn a gaming dream into, while not a nightmare, certainly something a little less pleasant.
At the end of the day, high scores, fastest times and head to head victories are just motivators. It is important to remember why we do this, and it’s for fun. Somehow, for a few moments, I had lost sight of that.
There are many games I love, some, particularly fighting games, I will become heavily focussed on, sweaty. Others are games that I love but am just not very good at. For me, knowing my skill ceiling is important in knowing whether I should go all in on a challenge, or simply play for the hell of it.
I can’t recommend joining the challenges I’ve mentioned here enough, and any others out there like them. There’s a wonderful community around these challenges so definitely seek them out.
Just remember, while we play arcade games to compete, either directly or via these leaderboards, the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. Challenging ourselves and others can really heighten the thrill of the game and is a huge part of the arcade appeal.
The reason why we play arcade games over and over, and why we participate in these challenges is for a extremely simple and obvious reason… it’s all for fun.
So avoid my mistake, and don’t take them so seriously it affects your enjoyment!
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