F-Zero Draws Console Gamers To Arcades?

Thanks to Gamers.com for their report discussing the newly revealed synergy between F-Zero's home and arcade versions (here's an alternate article at GamePro.) According to the article, "..customized racers are freely interchangeable between the arcade and console versions of the game. Just save a custom racer to the GameCube memory card with either game, and you can transport it from one game to the other." As well as this, "..winning a race in the arcade game can unlock.. ships or tracks as a special bonus - save that data to a GC memory card and you can play an otherwise unavailable ship or course in the home game." You'll also get a special magnetic License Card for high scores in the arcade version, in this interesting attempt at providing incentive for players to return to arcades.

Why?

[redune45]

I love playing in Arcades, but unfortunately I just don't see the reason why anyone would go to the effort of saving their game to a memory card and taking it to the arcade.
Why not just play the game that you already own from the comfort of your couch rather than standing feeding loads of quarters into a machine?

This will work

[Hellraisr]

This will work. Now if they could find a way to link all the arcade games together and have a high score monitor in the arcade itself, I think that would also be cool.

Nothing helps progress like competition. If people can show off in front of a whole arcade or a whole city or even the whole world, of course they're going to do it.

Other game companies should get in on this action.

Re: Import

[DrWho520]

I purchased an import version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes for my Dreamcast. It also had this kind of connectivity, but in the form of points earned from playing and victories. You need victory points to buy the hidden characters, uniforms and levels in the game. Much to my chagrin, there are many things I cannot unlock because the import version requires points you can only aquire by playing people in the arcade. I have not been able to find a machine in the US...and I no current plans to visit the land of the rising sun. :- /

Re: Import

[wickedj]

Yeah, it will definitely suck in a few years when you want to play F-Zero for nostalgia but can't unlock everything because the arcade version is no longer available.

The idea does sound intriguing though. But if you ask me, I think your standard cabinet arcades are dead. It's cheaper and more fun to play on your favorite console at home. Now, notice I said cabinet style. If you to attract more people to the arcade, you have to make a setup that isn't feasible as a home option. Dance Dance Revolution is one idea. It has a large dance floor which is a million times better than the home pad version. Another idea is BattleTech and virtual reality. These setups are too costly for the average user but I've seen people readily hand over 5-10 bucks for 10-15 minutes of playtime.

Most of the arcades where I am from are dying or are dead. It's kind of sad really.

Can't trust a shark

[August_zero]

Great idea, but there is something that is going to ruin it in the blink of an eye:

Cheat devices

People are going to use these to hack together overpowered super cars and drivers, and then take them to the arcade and try and dominate the score boards with them. This may be worked around if Nintendo implements some careful cheat protections, but I think that something like this is more or less doomed to being hacked to death. PSO on the DC anybody?

Seems like an extraordinarly bad idea...

[Sancho]

Yes, but I'll go you one better. I bet there aren't any buffer overflow checks on that arcade machine. Why should there be? They've (almost) never had to worry about this sort of user input in the past. Even with the Neo Geo systems, it would be really difficult to put your own code on the memory cards, but there's a memory card available from Lik Sang that has a USB port on it so you can back up your games to the PC. All you gotta do is hack up some code, toss it on the card and plug it into the arcade game. Boom, anything from crashing the machine (and resetting high scores) to wiping people's memory cards to free games, depending on exactly how many priviledges the game code in the arcade machine has.

Class warfare.

[Jeffool]

Simple. Just institute classes of racers/vehicles. Those withing 'normal' bounds and those above. Surely it's not hard to check a few key numbers and report whether they fall into Class A or Class B.

I'm just pissed that they haven't instituted a unified memory card system yet.

And for that matter, why don't arcades offer fighting games where people can import their own fighters fully made from, say, a small program freely available on the Net. And with a single memory card they could import the character to any console version of said game....

Jeffool.
Hey, I'm onto something here!

Instant LAN

[nanojath]

Maybe the future of arcades is to provide instant LAN setups... Replacing low income games with banks of gaming setups with boxes, monitors and comfy gaming setups. Random groups get together and Doom out, or whatever it is you kids do these days.

Replace the GC memory card with the USB RAM keychain...

The Arcade Is Not Dead!

[WuWarrior]

What made the arcade great was that you couldn't find any of those games or experiences anywhere else. Now with most arcade games being released for home consoles, the demand for arcade games have diminished.

More creativity has to be put into arcade games. Look at Japan. The arcade is still as big as ever because many of the games they have aren't available at home or would not be able to be played on a console/pc anyways.