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| (image from Arcade Shop) |
Hey, it's Bally-Midway! You know, the creators of Pac-Man.
(angry whispering)
They're... not the creators of Pac-Man? Who is?
(more whispering)
Namco? Where does it say that on the machine?
...Er, anyway. Bally-Midway took all the credit for Namco's work in the United States, to the point where it made its own unauthorized sequels to Pac-Man and wove elements of Galaxian into its own Whitman's Sampler of a shooter, GORF. Eventually, Namco lost its patience with Midway's chronic misappropriation of their characters, and paired up with Atari to distribute its arcade games in the latter half of the 1980s.
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| The credits for Top Secret illustrates just how possessive Midway was of a game that wasn't even theirs. (Like how Paramount made it nearly impossible to get this screen cap.) |
In all fairness, Midway is more than just the games they tried to filch from Namco! It's also the home of artist Brian Colin, who brought the feel of Sunday comics and MAD magazine to the digital world with games like Rampage and Xenophobe. It's also the early stomping grounds of Dave Nutting and his esteemed associates, Jamie Fenton, Bob Ogden, and Alan McNeil.
By the end of the 1980s, Bally would divest itself of Midway, and the company would eventually merge with rivals Williams and Atari Games to become... Midway again. Then it would go bankrupt, with Warner Bros sweeping up the pieces to form Warner Games.
Enough with the history lesson... onto the games! The output of Bally was familiar but competent in the early 1980s, with GORF, Wizard of Wor, and Tron being highlights. However, Midway got an in-house artist, and got a lot more creative and experimental with their game designs in the latter half of the decade. Not all of these daring new ideas stuck the landing- for all its innovation, Xenophobe is an uncomfortable game to actually play- but the occasional smash hit like Rampage proved that experimentation was the right direction for Midway.
Note that these aren't all the games released by Midway. A complete list would probably take a while to review!
Blueprint
Played: in MAME, but saw in a convenience store near Lansing
So about this game! A long, long time ago, I did a video review comparing Blueprint's various home conversions, but I erroneously stated that the game was born in Japan, by Jaleco. Not so! Jaleco distributed it in Japan, but the reality is that the game was designed by Ashby Computers, a little software business in England that would grow up to become... wait for it... Rare.
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| There's no better way to kill a rogue raisin than a Rube Goldberg device that shoots basketballs with all the precision of Shaq at the throw line. Don't look for sense in this game, you won't find it. |
I was right about it being a weird game, though. As JJ, a man better dressed for Vaudeville than a video game, it's up to you to save your girlfriend from Ollie Ogre, drawn as a cartoon thug on the marquee but looking a lot more like a rampaging prune in the game. JJ can't go toe to toe with the ogre... raisin... thug... creature, so he does the next best thing, stealing parts from various houses to build the world's least efficient mech. This unwieldy contraption fires basketballs from the top of its funnel-shaped arm... nail Ollie with a ball and you're off to a new, rougher neighborhood.
Rare was going somewhere with this design, but it's a little too process-oriented and memorization-dependent for Blueprint to be an arcade classic. Bug-eyed monsters (this is a Rare game, after all) pop out from a hole, hoping to unravel your work, and potted plants rain down from the top of the screen, honing in on you with infuriating accuracy. Return to a house you've already visited and you'll find a bomb inside... quickly chuck it in the monster hole or you'll be blown to bits, with a taunting message from the designers to throw salt in the wound.
There's a lot of balls to juggle in Blueprint, and it's easy to lose track of which houses you've robbed in the chaos, resulting in wasted time and lost lives. It's surprisingly complicated and user-hostile for an arcade game, making it a hard sell next to more intuitive mazers like Pac-Man. Maybe Blueprint was more popular in its native Great Britain, where punishing, over-encumbered titles like this grew like weeds on the ZX Spectrum.
GORF
Played at: Cedar Park in Sandusky, Ohio. Booyah!
I quite distinctly remember playing this at Cedar Park. I also remember playing Space Panic, and not understanding or enjoying it. I was seven, cut me some slack!
Where was I? Oh yes, GORF. This game is a sampler plate of shooters you've already played before, or are a lot like games you've already played before. It's derivative to the point where you wonder why Namco or Taito didn't sue, but it's got something neither Galaxian nor Space Invaders had... menace. The Gorfian consciousness addresses you with rough synthesized voice, and he's rarely complimentary. Your shield crackles with volatile energy, and scorching explosions singe your ears as you pick off each Space Invader, or its almost legally distinct Gorfian counterpart. Playing this game feels like licking a 9-Volt battery... it's a prickly yet energizing electricity.
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| The arcade game had a lit panel on the cabinet, with your rank highlighted. It's not strictly necessary, but it's a nice touch. |
The five mini-games on offer are better than the average shooter of the time, with the flagship offering a memorable end to each loop. Dodge its fireballs, crack a hole through its shield, and sink a bullet into its nuclear heart to witness the best explosion you were likely to see in a 1981 video game. The gameplay is fine, but it's the raw, electric atmosphere of GORF that takes the experience over the top. When you clutch that flight stick tightly, as if it's the only thing between you and the vacuum of space, you'll get it.
Journey
Played at: A bowling alley in Lake Odessa. Check out those swans!
Before Spice Girls... before Revolution X with Aerosmith... before Moonwalker with Michael Jackson... there was Journey. Here's an early example of a game whose sole reason for existence was to bank on the popularity of a trendy music act. This time, it's the 1982 line-up of the pop rock band Journey. And you can tell it's really them, because their digitized faces have been stapled onto cartoon bodies!
You can kind of tell it's them. Steve Smith looks more like Cheech Marin than anything, but it's early video game digitization. There's not even any color in these low-res photos... everyone looks like a grey smudge with five 'o clock shadows.
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| Go get 'em, Cheech! I mean, Steve! |
Where was I? The contrived plot has our five musicians trying to regain their instruments from crazed alien group-oids. (The designers didn't take this seriously. Who could?) Simple platforming challenges, like squeezing through rows of neon gates and bouncing on giant drums, stand between each member of Journey and his instrument of choice. Once the band member grabs it, he can fire bullets with the power of radio-friendly soft rock... which is handy, because everything on screen is now eager to kill him. Quick, back to the Scarab!
Journey looks a lot like Tron, with the glowing circuitry replaced with a science-fiction theme loosely based on the band's album covers. It's not as good as Tron, feeling like a clumsy re-badge of a better idea, and that's pretty much what it was. Ralph Baer, the inventor of video games, also pioneered video game digitization, which Midway would use a decade later in Mortal Kombat. The original plan was to let players take snapshots of themselves (any part of themselves...) in place of initials for the high score screen. Since people were already using "ASS" for their initials, you can understand why Baer ultimately went with Journey as his Plan B. (Maybe it should have been his Plan Z! Maybe it was!)
Omega Race
Played: on the VIC-20, primarily
This was Midway's one and only vector based arcade game, designed to shake quarters out of Asteroids fans with a game that feels a little sleeker and a lot more threatening. You're not fighting mindless rocks in this combat simulation, but a caravan of circular droids. One droid takes a leadership role, while the rest follow behind it. Eventually, another member of the flock gains sentience (and rage), becoming increasingly aggressive and trigger-happy. Soon after that, it evolves to its deadliest form... a triangular paddleboat. (Look, they're vector graphics... don't expect ornate detail here.) This Delta Queen is merciless and mean, spraying gunfire everywhere while making a beeline for your ship. A death ship will be spawned at least once in every stage, and it's always a Maalox moment for the player.
This isn't one of those floaty, "leave one end of the screen, come out the other end" kinds of space shooters like the relatively placid Asteroids. Omega Race exists on a rectangular track with the score and lives in the middle. Try to move outside the borders of the screen and you'll be bounced back by elastic lines. The ship in Omega Race also handles differently than the one in Asteroids... it's lighter, faster, wispier. A good tap of thrust fires your ship outward like an arrow, so you'll have to practice thrusting to take advantage of your ship's speed, while not careening into the droids or any of their droppings. What are these, vec-turds?
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| Always clean up after your combat droids! |
Omega Race was given an exceptional conversion on the VIC-20 home computer, which captured the vector look of the arcade game perfectly along with the Omega Race logo and the storyline, explained in text during the attract mode. The less satisfactory ColecoVision port contains... none of these things, and it badly whiffs the Omega Race physics that the VIC-20 game nailed. Calling this Omega Race feels like calling store brand toaster pastries Pop-Tarts, but you can play it if you want. (I wouldn't. Just sayin'.)
Rabbit Punch
Played: In a Lansing dollar store
Rabbit Punch was the debut of Japan's Video System, and an odd choice for localization from Nolan Bushnell's Bally-Sente. It feels out of place next to the likes of Snake Pit and Trivial Pursuit and Hat Trick, but bless Nolan and crew for taking a chance on it anyway.
Rabbit Punch is a horizontal shooter that's unmistakably Japanese, but feels very unique from similar games by Capcom, Konami, and Data East. There's a distinct vibe to Rabbit Punch... the visual style is at once metallic, cartoony, and grotesque. One minute you're gathering power-ups from cans of carrots, the next you're flying past Peter Weller in the middle of brain surgery, and the minute after that, you're battling a pride of robot cheetahs. This game goes places. Strange, slightly worrying places that makes you almost afraid to go down this rabbit hole, but you'll want to keep digging just to see what freaky Twilight Zone-meets-Ghibli imagery Video System will throw at you next.
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| This game is all over the place stylistically. It's like that cartoon, Gumball. |
The gameplay in Rabbit Punch ain't too shabby, either. Kind of punishing despite the cute rabbit heroes and the use of a hit point system, and feeling uncomfortably cramped at points, but not bad. The headlining feature is the titular rabbit punch... get close enough to an enemy and you'll smack it with an oversized fist, doing incredible damage and knocking it backward if it's not already been turned to space dust. Packs of homing missiles can be collected from carrot cans, which spread out to reach those pesky cannons tucked behind walls.
Rabbit Punch holds together pretty well for Video System's first release, and suggests that the company has a bright future ahead of it as a designer of competent shoot 'em ups. (And that one really bad volleyball game, but the less said about that, the better.)
Rampage
Played at: A bowling alley near Stanton (no swans here! Or bowling alley, now!)
Okay, I'm told the bowling alley near Stanton is now an empty field. Nothin' but flowers. I miss the Dairy Queens and 7-11s. (Never really cared for the Honkey-Tonks, though.)
So I guess this will double as a memorial for the Double 6, or whatever it was called before it got bulldozed. The Double 6 was a bowling alley not far from our house, that was in better condition than many. They must have renovated it for the 1980s, because it's where our family would spend some quality time when we didn't want to drive all the way to Grand Ledge-sing for mini-golf, and neither the NES nor the Disney Afternoon were cutting it for fun.
It was the first bowling alley I went to with computers taking the place of manual scoring, and monitors that played those cheesy cut scenes from the stone age of CGI whenever you got a strike. It was also a fantastic source of arcade games, with a regularly refreshed variety of cabinets. One year, you might find Data East's Shoot-Out (with a "not for play outside Japan" warning before the title screen), and the next, it could be Shinobi.
Don't eat that toilet bowl!
Or do... you're going to have
to throw another quarter into
the machine soon enough anyway.
One year, it was Rampage. And Rampage was glorious, a three player celebration of cheesy monster movies from the 1950s. The game was in high resolution, with every pixel of that densely-packed screen used to its fullest by Brian Colin, Midway's in-house artist. At points, the game looks like a MAD magazine page come to life, with your movie monster sneering in disgust after swallowing a toilet, losing his balance atop a skyscraper, or being shrunk down to a normal (and very naked) human after you've run out of health.
As for the gameplay, you break things. You break everything. You demolish buildings by punching through every window, you punch manhole covers, throwing them high into the air, you punch trolley cars that let out a disapproving "ding!" with every hit, you punch neon signs that electrocute you. You'll even punch your friends because damn it, Matt, I wanted that turkey! Come on, you've got a lot more health than I do!
Few games are as jam-packed with personality as Rampage, and it's an absolutely terrific game for three players. However, after punching a dozen cities into rubble, you've seen as much of this game as you need to see. You definitely don't need to see all 255 stages in the heavily watered-down NES conversion. Don't make the same mistake I did!
Satan's Hollow
Played at: A laundromat in Coldwater
Years before Mortal Kombat, Midway got the nipples of parents groups in a twist with Satan's Hollow. Past the use of Lucifer and his minions as enemies, and some slightly foreboding backgrounds (on a scale of 0 to Heironymus Bosch, they rank a generous 3), there's nothing scandalous about this fixed-screen shooter. Take Galaxian and Phoenix, smoosh 'em together, then give the player some extra busywork by letting him build a bridge to a second screen, and that's your game. Also, as expected from the title, there's Satan himself. He belches streams of fire down upon the player... better be quick with that shield button!
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| Satan's fire vomit is deadly. (Sounds like a hot sauce I had once.) |
Satan's Hollow doesn't compare to the timeless cosmic ballet that is Galaga (anyone wanna switch seats?), but it's a workable shooter when taken on its own terms. A generous shield protects you from the thick swarms of gargoyles and their hail of brimstone, and cannons can be added to your ship by killing a lesser demon lurking on the second screen, but there's not much else going on in the gameplay department. Well, there is that occasional aggravating demon who will try to swipe a life from your stock... it feels cheap, and if you get it back, there's no benefit to your current ship, like in Galaga. You just prevent the flocks of demons from destroying your ship before you even get a chance to use it. Dirty pool, Midway. Annoy the parents groups all you want, but now you're getting on my nerves, and I'm the one playing this!
Apropos of nothing in particular, there's a recent port of Satan's Hollow for the ColecoVision, that performs remarkably well in spite of the significant hardware gap between Coleco's console and the MCR-II that powers the coin-op. Here's a link to the game in action, courtesy of the always jubilant Willie from ArcadeUSA.
Space Zap
Played at: A bowling alley in Vestaburg
It's more of a reflex test than a video game, but Space Zap will keep you busy for the five minutes you'll want to play it. You control the defense cannon of a station set deep in space. Enemies arrive to rain fireballs down upon the station, and they're easy enough to dispatch at first... just point the cannon in one of four directions and blast away. However, just as you're lulled into a false sense of security, the attack intensifies, with ships appearing, firing, and vanishing in the blink of an eye. Then a satellite joins the fray, madly swirling around the station until you catch it with a laser blast... or it crashes into the station, causing a messy pixelated explosion. Sure, it looks like someone made it with the spray tool in Microsoft Paint, but cut the designers a little slack! This is a game from 1980, after all!
Space Zap isn't much for looks. There's not much of anything here, really, but it's an example of how to make an effective game with as little game as possible. It's a short thrill, but a thrill's a thrill.
Tapper
Played at: Uh...?
At the peak of early video game mania, even bars and taverns wanted a piece of the action, asking Midway to make an arcade game about serving beer so they could put it in an establishment serving beer, to encourage people to drink more beer. Maybe even BUDWEISER beer!
So Midway gave us Tapper, starring a bartender who serves mugs of beer the only way a video game character could... rapid-fire, to a thick crowd of rowdy customers. If a customer reaches you before they get their beer, you lose a life. If you serve a beer and there's no customer to catch it, the mug shatters, and you lose a life. If you're lucky, a customer may leave a tip, which you can grab from the counter... if you have a spare moment, and you rarely will. Such is the life of a video game bartender... you're five times faster than a real bartender, but also under five times the stress.
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| So, a cowboy, a punk rocker, and a football fan walk into a bar... |
Tapper isn't a deep game. You're racing up and down, slinging suds across four counters to wet the whistles of your throng of customers. Tips trigger a sideshow that catches the attention of your beer-swilling clientele, giving you a chance to catch your breath. However, it's more efficient to leave the tips on the table and just get your customers out the door. A distracted customer can't catch any mugs you send their way, and it's all too easy to throw them one by mistake.
Every two stages, you're given a shell game played with shaken up cans of beer, and a new set of customers, ranging from sports fans to aliens. (All life forms are united in their love of alcohol, apparently.) Tapper is presented in a high resolution with detailed cartoon graphics, and it's a big part of the game's charm. Things just feel more lively when your character cowers in fear of an unseen boss after a beer mug shatters, or when he's dragged over a table and thrown out the front door by an unsatisfied customer.
A later iPhone remake leaned hard on those cartoon hijinx, with artwork supplied by animation legend Don Bluth. Tapper also got a sequel of sorts in Timber, with two players chopping down trees as lumberjacks. It doesn't get the acclaim that Tapper does, due in part to the video game crash but also because deforestation doesn't have the same addictive quality as serving (or drinking!) beer. You could tip trees on your brother to irritate him... there's that. That's always a plus.
Trog
Played: MAME, but seen in a Battle Creek Meijer
Midway had a good thing going with Pac-Man, but after one too many creative liberties with the license, Namco took its munchy yellow ball and stormed home. Suddenly, Midway was without its star player, and found itself in dire need of a replacement. What to do, what to do?
Midway's solution was to take the core gameplay of Pac-Man and infuse it with stop-motion graphics and the hip, playful attitude of the early 1990s. The end result is Trog. While it's not the classic Pac-Man was (and feels out of step with the gaming trends of 1991), it's a fairly diverting mazer with more than its share of goofy Western charm. If you've ever done the Bartman, you'll want to play Trog.
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| I bet this guy would get along really well with Toejam and/or Earl. |
Trog casts you as one of four dinosaur buddies- or all four buddies at once if you've got three friends!- gobbling eggs while avoiding the game's pot-bellied Cyclopean cavemen. Trogs can be batted away with punches, but your tiny dinosaur arms demand exact precision, and if two Trogs corner you, you're dead meat no matter how ferociously you fight back.
Occasionally, power-ups will randomly appear in the island maze, with a lucky horseshoe granting you temporary invulnerability and an ice cube that freezes the cavemen in place. The grand prize is the pineapple, which bulks out your mild-mannered dino, letting you chomp all the nearby Trogs as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Munching blue ghosts in Pac-Man was satisfying, but it's doubly so in Trog, with your T-Rex taking big, bass-filled bites that shake the screen. Yeah! Who's on the top of the food chain NOW?
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| The pineapple is your golden ticket to T-Rex-ville. Population: All you can eat! |
It's a little sluggish and random compared to Pac-Man, but Trog's laid back pace is more accommodating to casual players, and the double-helping of animation makes it worth the quarter for arcade veterans. When Trogs eat you, they literally eat you, pulling out a fork and chewing thoughtfully as they strip the meat from your Claymation bones. Step in a tar pit and your dino struggles briefly, only to wave "bye-bye" as he gets pulled into the muck. Finish a stage and a super-sized version of your dinosaur buddy pumps his fists in triumph. It's fun enough to play, but Trog is a delight to watch.
Tron
Played at: Among other places, a Tucson laundromat
Like GORF and Journey, Tron is a variety pack of games, this time loosely based on scenes from the Disney film that sparked the imaginations of millions of budding nerds. Defend yourself against patrolling tanks! Fight through swarms of bugs guarding the stage exit! Infiltrate the Master Control Program by chipping through its firewalls with your trusty data frisbee! Trap your opponents in walls of light, set in the wake of the Syd Mead-iest motorcycle in virtual existence!
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| Plick through the rainbow walls of the Master Control Program, one of four mini-games in Tron. |
As games go, Tron is better than average... a little awkward thanks to its use of a flight stick for movement and a dial for aiming, but perfectly playable. However, as merchandise for the film, it's spectacular. Few film-licensed video games capture the spirit of the movie as well as the Tron arcade game. Onscreen objects pulse with energy, Wendy Carlos' electronica soundtrack is paired with angry hums, unnerving thumps, and violent digital outbursts, and the tension is kept high with tough opponents and tight time limits. When you play Tron, you too will feel like you're trapped in a computer, and you too will feel like death is always three steps behind you. The Dude does not envy you. He was trapped in a computer once, and it was a pretty bad scene.
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| Here's a game that knows its audience! |
Tron was followed up with Discs of Tron, which captured the feel of the disc duels near the start of the film. Perspective is used to brilliant effect, to both distance the two players and strengthen the feel of being trapped in a digital world... stark, barren, and most of all, dangerous. Watch your step on those silvery platforms... it's a long way down into oblivion!
Wizard of Wor
Played at: A roller rink in Crystal
Even in the early days, there was a vibe to Midway's arcade games. They were meaner, colder, and more threatening than the kind of game you'd get from a Japanese company, like Namco or Nintendo.
That may have something to do with the Astrocade-based hardware Midway used in the early 1980s, with its harsh blues, reds, yellows, and statics (yes, static is a color now. Ask the Astrocade!) set against a black void. More likely, that sense of desperation came from the creatives at Midway, who wanted to impart that hopeless mood into their software. There's no question you're going to die when you play an early Midway game. The question is, how long can you stay alive under the mounting pressure?
And that's Wizard of Wor. You're trapped in the Wizard's dungeon, crawling with all kinds of hideous monsters. Bipedal wolf-kangaroos! Six-legged hogs with antennae! Something that looks like a scrunched-up T-rex! And a humanoid wasp, who flits through the maze looking for Worriors to sting. You can fight back with a laser rifle, but something, somewhere is going to kill you. The worst part is, because monsters disappear if they're not in your field of view, you may not even see it coming.
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| In Wizard of Wor, you're hunter and hunted all at once. Check the radar... the monsters like to hide in the corners! |
That fear of the unknown causes tension. Tension that forces you to frequently check the radar for monsters you can't see in the maze. Tension that only grows when the monsters get faster, and the other player decides you're an easy 2000 points, and the robotic voice of the Wizard taunts you, and holy shit he's in the maze right now get him get him get him annnnnd he just got away. Finally nailing the Wizard is pure satisfaction... even the game can't seem to believe you did it, strobing colors and letting out quivering digital moans as if it was on the verge of a meltdown.
Wizard of Wor is an awesome game with awesome concepts, that unfortunately doesn't remain awesome when the Burwors, Garwors, Starwors, and Worwors get too fast to manage. You will definitely die. But you'll have fun fighting for survival, in those early stages where survival was possible.
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