Tecmo Classic Arcade – Final Play

The flagship title on Tecmo Classic Arcade is Tecmo Bowl, and it shows. Whether you’re a gridiron fan or not, there is plenty to like here. The original arcade cabinet ran across two monitors for that extra widescreen feel, and this aspect ratio is duplicated on the Xbox seamlessly. The graphics stand up to the test of time, with some of the sideline crowd members popping out in excellent caricature. While cycling through my receivers, I could almost feel the texture of the arcade: stale candy smells, the sounds of forty different catchy theme songs, and the rough metallic feel of your dwindling cash supply rubbed between two fingers.

The interface is simple, you choose to pass or run by passing or running; there is no playbook of any kind. Avoiding tackles and blocks is accomplished by a wild spinning motion of the analog stick, which is a good metaphor to the actual motion and translates to the tough Xbox controllers perfectly. Your receivers are aided by a mystical white cross appearing on the ground where the ball will land.

Multiplayer is where the real fun is in this game, and four players are supported with 2 on 2 action. It’s disappointing to find no live support for multiplayer, but I’ll settle for the more arcade-like experience of having your opponent within easy shoulder punching range. My gaming buddies and I were shouting and gesticulating at each other within moments of picking up the controllers. This game was easily the most fun of the collection. However, fans of the NES version should note that this version only has two teams, and none of the official NFL licensing we’ve come to expect from football video games.

Star Force

Star Force is a very basic top down space shooter reminiscent of titles like Zanac, Don Pachi, or Ikaruga. However, this game is little more than a scrolling version of Space Invaders, as there are no weapon or ship upgrades of any kind. This classic quarter muncher reduces you to memorizing the movement patterns of your various foes, shooting for that ever elusive gaming target, the High Score. This highlights another feature that would have been a lot of fun for Tecmo Classic Arcade, a online scoreboard so you can see how horrifically you suck compared to the other classic gamers out there.

Tecmo Cup

This title covers European football, more commonly known as soccer to us colonists. The game plays well with its simple controls. Goal shots and passes are done with the same button, and steals are as easy as walking in front of a player with the ball. Goal tending is a disorienting affair because your control automatically shifts to the goal tender when a shot is made. Unfortunately the graphics have none of the style or flair of Tecmo Bowl, and the game lacks anything to hold your attention or bring you back to it.

Bomb Jack

Bomb Jack is an interesting little Pac Man clone that has you collecting bombs instead of pills. I guess Jack might be part of some extraordinarily prolific one man bomb squad of the future, but the story doesn’t cover this, so we’ll just have to resort to assumption. Jack puts Mario and Luigi to shame with the height of his jumps, and clears his one-screen stages by artfully dodging between enemies. He can also collect power-ups, which implausibly allow him to eat all of the badies on the screen. This game is an entertaining romp through famous monuments and cityscapes all requiring Jack’s debombing skills.

Pleiads

This four mission game is extraordinarily difficult and repetitive to boot. Released in 1981, this game came as either a table top or stand up cabinet version. If blasting waves of pixilated aliens is your cup of tea, then this game is for you. However, Pleiads makes only minor improvements over your basic Space Invader clone. The added detail in the backgrounds is nice, but because of the limited color palette, it can be difficult to pick out the enemies from the decor. Destroyable cover is also present in Pleiads, but doesn’t feel nearly as visceral as the per-pixel damage we saw in Space Invaders. The cover in Pleiads is either present, or destroyed, leaving you without the feeling that you’re hanging onto your final shred of safety.

Swimmer

This game is comically bad. Released in 1982, it makes its predecessor, Frogger, look like a Rembrandt. You are in the strange position of controlling a man dressed only in palm leaves on his fantastic adventure of swimming around and under logs. His journey is highlighted by the occasional bout with a river turtle or the dreaded rogue log. The rogue log bounces back and forth against the banks of the river, and is apparently poisonous as well. This game also has a slot-machinesce mini-game at the end of your round, which promises another chance if you win. For comic value this game is a gem.

Senjyo

As near as I can tell, Senjyo is the misspelled Japanese word senjou meaning battlefield. I don’t recommend typing Senjyo into Google however because the misspelling has a different meaning entirely. Battlefield sums up the game nicely, which takes place entirely in a bombarded desert locale. You control a powerful tank which can rotate in a circle or angle up or down. The passable 3d visual effects are accomplished by parallaxing several backgrounds in relationship to your movement. Your enemies peek over each horizon sequentially or swoop in from above and launch giant orange fireballs at you. It is pretty challenging to dodge the fireballs and line up your return fire at the same time.

Tecmo Bowl, Rygar, Solomon’s Key and Strato Fighter are the stand out games in this compilation. The other titles provide everything from historical background to comic relief. The lack of Xbox live support is a definite letdown. Also, a quicksave feature would have been nice, especially for Solomon’s Key. The nostalgia card is often played in defense of classic compilations, but when reverting to happy childhood memories isn’t possible the games have to stand on their own merits. That said, there is a lot of fun to be had in Tecmo Classic Arcade, even if you haven’t played any of the original titles.

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