Arcade games of the new millennium

If Space Invaders is your idea of fun, it's obvious you haven't been inside an amusement arcade for a while, writes CATHRIN SCHAER.

In the future, your sons and daughters may never come out of their bedrooms.

They'll be in there shooting at mutant cyborgs with plasma stun guns and conquering other worlds. They'll be using their PCs to access some online shoot-'em-up game that's more fun than the real world.

Now if this sounds like a long, long way from the Space Invaders or Pacman game in the corner of the local dairy that thirty-somethings remember so fondly, that's because it is. And video arcade owners know it. Amusement arcades have evolved so much that some games are now completely indecipherable to the newcomer.

"In the early 90s things started to change," says Mike De Ruyter, managing director of Space Tec Coin, a Wellington distributor of games and owner of several Time Out gaming centres.

Arcades went from standard cabinet games to more complicated dedicated games. Where once arcade owners would simply swap games from cabinet to cabinet, these new cabinets were built for only one sort of game.

For instance a game such as Terminator 2 would have a big screen and a special platform and control panel. You could not have programmed it for any other game.

Simulators were the next big trend - games such as Daytona Car Racing.

Daytona players sat in pods, on car seats with a steering wheel and pedals in front of a big screen depicting the racecourse - a form of virtual reality.

"However by the mid-90s I was getting a bit worried about the industry," De Ruyter continues his story of the arcade business. "There were simulators for everything - bicycles, aircraft, motorbikes, skiing, river rafting. They've even bought out a truck-driving one. It felt to me like the people who made the games were running out of ideas."

And then there was the ever-growing popularity of PlayStation and Gameboy machines. It cost arcade owners around $40,000 to buy a simulator, but the players were staying at home and using similar games plugged into the telly.

"The main difference between the arcade and home experience is depth of the title being played," says one experienced game player. "Arcade titles need to cater for a few minutes of fun, whereas home games typically take 30 to 40 hours to complete."

"There's no doubt about it," says David Blackall, one of the co-owners of Stages Time Out, "PlayStation made a huge impact; the industry went into decline. Which is why - about three or four years ago - we changed direction."

A big part of Blackall's business now involves selling Nintendo machines and games.

And back in his video game arcades - now known as Interactive Entertainment Centres or IECs - they are making sure the games are bigger and better than anything the customers can get at home.

"The latest thing we have is called Police 24-7," Blackall says, enthusiastically. "It's a gun game and has the player shooting at the bad guys while trying not to hit innocent bystanders.

"But it also has motion sensors so the player has to duck and dive and hide behind pillars. The game senses them doing that. You certainly can't get that at home."

Musical games provide the other big area of expansion. If you think you could be a DJ, a drummer or a keyboard player - or you don't mind hopping about from one foot to another in front of a crowd - these games are for you. Basically you push buttons (with your feet if you're playing a dancing game) in time to music.

The profile of arcade customers has also altered, although most are still males aged between 18 and 35.

Out have gone the schoolkids smoking in dark corners and spending only 20 cents. In have come the business suits, coming in at lunchtime to spend $20 on their daily dose of stress relief.

The latest crowd pullers are tournaments - Stages Time Out even runs a friendly corporate competition where opposing law or accountancy firms race and shoot at each other.

And the next big trend in the world of arcade games? Online gaming.

This is an extension of the earlier Dungeons and Dragons multi-player computer games, and it's taking off overseas. Individuals play the game, which they have bought, on their own PC. But far from being a solitary process, the game is also on the internet and anything from two to 2000 gamers can compete at the same time, from anywhere in the world.

Games can be as simple as poker or blackjack, but one of New Zealand's most popular games is called Counter Strike. Up to 16 gamers become either terrorists or anti-terrorists and try to outwit and out-shoot each other.

Internet cafes, where the computers have fast modems and big memories, are the new venues for these gamers, who are easily spotted - they're the ones with headphones on, grimacing and swearing at the screen.

Science fiction writers such as William Gibson have speculated that this is a future youth movement: the antisocial gamers who form clans, stay in their rooms and communicate with the real world only through their computer.

In the nearer future "what might happen is that manufacturers such as Sony take PlayStation games online," says Thomas Mahoney, store manager at Gamezone, an Auckland store that sells online and standalone computer games. "And it's going to be hard for arcades to compete unless they change what they are doing."

He doesn't have to tell Blackall and De Ruyter that.

Stages Time Out will soon be adding expensive headphones to the gamer's computers at its on-site Internet cafe.

And one of De Ruyter's latest acquisitions is War, a game played online, from special booths within his Courtenay Place Time Out facilities. "People are queuing up to play that one," he says happily.

But what if you just want a good old-fashioned game of spacies?

Well, Blackall advises that you look in the cobwebbed corners of your friendly neighbourhood Interactive Entertainment Centre - there are still a few around.

Or if you want to buy one for your own personal use, a distributor such as Space Tec or Stages can track one down for you - at a price anywhere between $700 and $3000.

Better start saving those 20 cent pieces ...