Friday, April 8, 2011

Hacked Arcade Games

Back just a little before the video game crash of 1983, creating a new hit arcade game was a big challenge, and video game companies were running out of ideas. Well, maybe not the major game companies, but other ameture programmers or just some game designers and creators looking for a fast way to make a buck, by creating the next arcade hit game. Since coming up with a new game was very hard, those other gaming companies decided to create a hack and alter the graphics, sounds etc of classic games to create a new one. For instance, Pac-man is known to be a game that's been hacked soo many times, and turned into games like Piranah, Popeye Pac-man, Caterpillar, etc. At first I thought that it was a new game, but it was just a hacked game.
Other games were mostly copied and had a few things changed, like Donkey Kong. A company known as Falcon had created clones of this classic game called Crazy Kong and Crazy Kong Part 2. Mostly the colors and sounds had been changed, but it's always the same game. I've seen Space Invaders type games that looked different or altered,. Like one version had the invaders individually come out of the ship and fly around in space, and you had to shoot them. You only got one life and it costed 50 cents per play. I think I saw this at a rest stop somewhere. It's just a way to keep the gaming industry running, but are those hacked games worth playing. Well, for the most part, these games are alot cheaper to purchse for store owners looking to make a buck, like grocery stores, or maybe an indoor flea market.
Overall it seems like a good attempt, but in the long range you don't get the value and good quality that makes the origianl more special.
Sometimes, the programmer might do something really stupid to make the game more challenging like speeding up the gameplay, adding a few things, or whatever they can come up with.