KNOWLEDGE
TALK/ARCADE
Soundbytes
Game commentary in snack-sized mouthfuls
“It’s incredibly
irresponsible for the Army
and the Navy to be
recruiting impressionable
young people... via
livestreaming platforms.
War is not a game.”
US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aims to
prohibit the use of funds for recruiting via gaming
platforms. Nobody tell her about World Of Tanks“I don’t envision us going
back to everybody
being in the
studio five days
a week again – ever.”
Kelley Gilmore, head of 2K’s new studio Cloud Chamber, on her team’s
successful transition to working from home. We concur: at this point, if we
saw each other’s real-life flesh-faces again we might screamARCADE
WATCH
Keeping an eye on the
coin-op gaming scene“Imagine a town that only
allowed Target, and
disallowed any other
stores. That’s totally
un-American and
uncompetitive. That’s
exactly what Apple does.”Given who’s running the
country these days, Epic CEO
Tim Sweeney, it honestly
seems pretty American to us“I’m going to bring new
eyes to their service,
they’re going to bring
new money to my
bank account, and –
I’m just kidding.”American rapper Logic retires
from music, then signs a seven-
figure exclusive streaming deal
with Twitch. Not quite the
Bahamas, is it, but it’ll doGame Pengo! Online
Manufacturer Sega
Once the beating heart of the
arcade experience, the idea of
friends crowding around an
arcade game is, for now, a thing of
the past. To counter the need for
arcade-goers to socially distance,
manufacturers are adopting online
multiplayer to allow players to
compete with others on separate
machines in arcades across the
globe. Sega’s release this month of
retro reboot Pengo! Online serves
up not just nostalgia for a classic
game, but goes some way towards
sating our need for a good old-
fashioned multiplayer experience.
Pengo, released in 1982, was
Sega’s first ‘mascot’ game and riffs
on Pac-Man’s theme of a hero
chased by monsters. The ice-blocks
that form the game’s maze are
pushed by the titular penguin to
squash the chasing sno-bees, which
can also be stunned by shoving the
outside walls of the play area,
letting you run over them. Bonuses
are earned by lining up diamond
blocks, and if you survive for two
minutes without completing a
round, any remaining sno-bees
turn into aggressive, faster blobs.
The game proved even more
fun in multiplayer when Sega
released an eight-player version to
Japanese arcades in 2010. Pengo!
Online is essentially that game,
but the addition of online play
means fans can safely team
up with other players
anywhere in the world.
It’s a lovely idea that
reminds us of the joy of
playing arcade games
with others and connects
people around the world
at a time we’ve never
felt quite so
disconnected from
everything. Even a
pandemic, it
seems, can’t kill
this most resilient,
adaptable and
beloved corners of
the gaming scene.
Long may it live.