When people at E3 asked what my favorite game I played at the show was, and I replied with “Mega Man 11,” they would say (sometimes rather disappointingly), “Oh, you’re an old-school gamer.”  Yeah, well, I may be old school, but I’ve still got it (I just don’t remember where I put it).  But being old-school isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as classic games are coming back in big and small ways!  I noticed it so much so at E3 that I’ve dedicated my final article of the show to all the classic gaming related stuff I saw!

Capcom

So since the cat’s out of the bag, I guess I’ll talk about Mega Man 11 first.  It was my favorite game I played at E3, so I guess it ‘wins’ the show.  But not only was the game cool, but how they presented it at Capcom’s booth was neat as well.  As you could tell by my previous articles, I don’t usually take pictures of myself at E3, even if there is a photo opportunity to do so.  But at Capcom’s booth, they had a really cool photo opp.  Being able to stand on Rush Jet and hold Mega Man’s arm cannon?  OH HECK YES!  I can check that off my bucket list now!  I will say that it was kind of hard to balance on Rush Jet, and I probably looked pretty silly trying to get off of it.

Mega Man 11 was one of the few games I was willing to stand in line for, but I played it first thing on the second day of the show, so I only had to wait about ten minutes to play it.  Even though it has all new graphics, it really plays like a classic Mega Man title.  So much so that I bet they could easily make an 8-bit version of it, and I could see them doing that as later DLC or something.  The stage you could play through in the demo was Block Man’s level.  Level design was fun, but also predicable.  Lots of falling blocks and conveyor belt obstacles, and you’d go through a set of three parts, then another set just a bit more difficult than the last.  Like a Mega Man game should be, the level was hard in places, but not WAY TOO hard, and I managed to beat the boss without seeing a Game Over screen.  There was one part of the level where you have to navigate little mazes of blocks while a spinning blade chases you, and I couldn’t jump to one level because it looked like I kept bumping my head against something that wasn’t there.  I don’t know if that was a bug, but by sliding quickly I was able to bypass that falling block section on another life.

The new gameplay aspect in Mega Man 11 is the gear system.  By pressing the L button, Mega Man can activate a gear that can make his shots more powerful for a limited time, and the R button slows down everything so Mega Man can bypass quick obstacles easier.  But you can only use these powers for a limited time.  And you don’t even HAVE to use the gears if you don’t want to.  Mega Man can also slide, fire charged shots, and activate Rush Coil by pressing the triangle button.

Block Man has three different attacks.  At first he’ll drop blocks from above, like the weapon you acquire when you beat him.  Then he’ll form blocks all around him and make himself a giant robot, and you must shoot a red weak point on his chest to break him up.  Finally he’ll stand in a corner and toss blocks at you quickly.  You can shoot them, but since they’re at different intervals you’ll have to jump and slide over some of them. I only wish that Capcom would’ve provided headphones for the demo, as I would’ve liked to have heard the music.

I also played a bit of the Mega Man X Collections, as there was no line for those.  There were two different ones: X1 to X4, and X5 to X8.  Now, why would you even want to own the second collection?  Well it comes with the 30 minute cartoon that was originally in the PSP Mega Man X: Maverick Hunter game, and that was a really cool cartoon.  The galleries were the same in both versions, but included some neat stuff like pictures of Mega Man X toys and whatnot.  Otherwise the games play like you’d expect them to.  The backdrop for this section of Capcom’s booth had a timeline of every Mega Man game for his 30^th anniversary.

Also around the Capcom booth were monitors with Mega Man trivia questions for you to answer.  I had to take a picture of this one, though.  It’s nice to know Capcom has a sense of humor and can make fun of themselves.

Activision

They showed a lot of games, too, but I didn’t visit their booth.  However, outside the show floor in the hallway lobby, they did have a display where you could play the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon collections.  Even though the Crash collection came out last year, it’s coming soon on the Switch.  The Spyro collection features the first three games in the series with improved graphics, although it was hard to see much since the display was out under the skylights and the sun made it hard to see the screen.  On the first day they had a costumed Crash character who looked like the one from the old commercials where he’d stand by Nintendo’s offices and make fun of them.  He made fun of me when I took his picture because I was using an older digital camera instead of a phone to take pictures, and he said, “Where is that camera from, 1997?”  Hey, it’s easier for me to take out and use, OK?  I told him I was bit old school and he said, “Yeah, I’m probably a bit old school, too!”

Atari

The name Atari is synonymous with classic games, and they had a few shown at E3 as well.  Their biggest was Tempest 4000, but since I already saw that game at PAX, I decided to focus some other offerings.  Like Night Driver.  Originally, Night Driver was a racing game from the 70’s, and was one of the first to have a first person perspective of the race.  Now they are making an updated version for mobile devices, and it should be out in a couple of months.  It’s a simple 3-D racer where you just try to pass as many cars as you can for points to reach a checkpoint, and it has one-touch controls.  You’ll drive through nighttime landscapes like a desert at dusk and a neon-laden casino strip.  You can level up your car and even drive the original from the arcade game!  If you get your car up to level 2, you can even unlock a version of the original game!

When I first got my PS4 a couple of years ago, one of the first titles I got for it was Atari Flashback Classics vol. 1 and 2.  So I was happy to see they had vol. 3 at the show.  This one even features some 5200 games, so I was happy about that.  There’s also a version of Atari Flashback Classics coming to Switch that’ll have nearly, if not all, the games from vol. 1, 2, and 3.  It’ll also let you tilt the screen sideways for vertically oriented screen games like Centipede, as well as touch screen support to simulate trackballs and such.  I can’t decide which version to get!

Square-Enix

One of the things I’ll miss about not being able to go to PAX West this year is meeting with Square-Enix in a private hotel suite to play their latest games.  Actually they offered to let me do something like that at E3, but it was all games I didn’t have much interest in, like the new Tomb Raider and Just Cause games.  But at the show they were still nice enough to let me squeeze in to check out Dragon Quest XI.  Now there’s an RPG series that’s the definition of classic.  I wanted to check out Kingdom Hearts 3 as well, but that was a ‘wait in line only’ game and it was about as bad of a line as Smash Bros.!

Before playing the 15-minute Dragon Quest XI demo, they had you watch an 8-minute video showing you some of the things you can do in the demo, since you wouldn’t have time to do everything in it.  The game is all 3-D and you can really interact with the scenery and do things like climb on roofs in towns!  There are no more random enemy encounters, you’ll just see them on the field and fight.  Battles are still turn-based, but you can customize how you attack and whatnot.  Unfortunately I had to jet to another meeting so I didn’t have time to play the demo, but the video gave me a good idea what the game was going to be like.

Bandai Namco Games

Namco is the company responsible for Pac-Man, so they’re as classic as you can get.  And that’s why they’re my favorite video game company, too.  They even had a display at E3 with toys based on their classic game characters.

But the game I was interested the most at their booth was Soul Calibur VI, one of the few non-family friendly game series I like.  Although it’s not overly bloody or anything either and I’d be OK with teens playing the games in this series.  Soul Calibur VI is a 3-D fighting game and feels like more of the same from before.  But that’s not a bad thing as it looks great and plays even better.  The guest character this time is from The Witcher, and uses magic as well as weapons to fight.  Fans who complained about the lack of single player modes in the last game will be happy to hear that the story mode in this game is more robust than any past game in the series, and features chapters and timelines for each character!  I asked if the game would have a character creation mode, but they said they couldn’t talk about that.  ARGH!  That was my favorite part of the last two games!  But there’s been a character creation mode since Soul Calibur 3, so I can’t imagine they’d cut it out of this one.  One really cool thing is that when I played the demo, another writer from a web site called Gaming Trend was playing with me, and he recorded footage of us playing together!  I asked his permission to link to the footage and he said yes, so follow this link if you want to see me losing very badly.  I love Soul Calibur games, but I’m not very good at them.  But it’s OK to enjoy games even if you stink at them, right?  Anyway, in the video I’m the one who picked Taki and then a new character if you’re wondering.  I need to figure out how these folks are able to record game demos at E3 like that!  Anyone know?  Oh yeah, one last thing.  Here’s a picture of people dressed as characters from Soul Calibur.  I thought they looked pretty cool.

One thing Bandai Namco wanted me to do was sit through a 45-minute theater presentation of some of their games.  At first I didn’t want to because I didn’t think I would have enough time, but on the third day of the show I had done pretty much all I wanted to do so I decided to take them on their offer after all.  And I’m glad I did as it felt like a mini press conference in there (even if it really wasn’t), as they had reps talking about the games shown.  They talked about Soul Calibur VI, and a special version of Divinity 2 that I wasn’t interested in at all.  But they also showed a new 3-D fighter called Jump Force, featuring characters from popular Japanese manga comics battling in the real world.  Goku from Dragon Ball, the One Piece guy, and Naruto battle villains like Freiza.  And at the end they had an Ace Combat 7 trailer.  And before I forget, speaking of 3-D fighters with character creation modes, they also had a cartoony fighter based on the popular anime My Hero Academia, and in it you could create your own super hero, too!

One thing I’ve noticed lately that’s been getting popular is companies making miniature arcade cabinets with playable games inside.  In fact, before E3 I even bought one of Galaxian at Hallmark that I may talk about later on.  But at E3 I met with four different companies doing these things, so we’ll conclude my E3 articles with those!

My Arcade

This company had the most shown, so I took a lot of pictures.  They had the license to do a bunch of Bandai Namco classics, and here’s a shot of Mappy, one of my favorites.

And of course, Pac-Man.

Here’s a shot of a bunch more, including Galaxian, Galaga, and Dig Dug.  They also had big arcade machines you could play.

Here’s a better view of the Pac-Man machine out of the box.

They also had the license to do some Data East games, so here’s Burgertime and Bad Dudes.

They also had handheld games that let you play a selection of Pac-Man titles, as well as more expensive cabinets that let you play a collection of games.

The only bad thing about these mini-cabinets is that to keep the cost down, some of these only let you play the NES version, not the arcade originals.  Although the collections are supposed to have the official arcade games.  But either way, they still looked pretty cool and I wouldn’t mind having a few of these in my collection.

Replicade

Another company was going for a more authentic approach with their mini-arcade cabinets.  These did play the originals and looked more like the old cabinets, but they’re probably much more expensive and harder to get.  They showed off a Centipede machine and a Tempest prototype.  I liked the display they had with Ken dolls playing the machines!

SNK NEO GEO

Another company took a different approach with their mini arcades that could play SNK NEO GEO games.  Not only could you play them on the mini screen, you could also hook them up to a TV and use a controller to play classics like King of the Monsters and Last Blade!  But they looked like they’d be a ways off, so we may not see them for a while.  But here’s a picture anyway.

Arcade1Up

And finally my favorite of the bunch were these guys!  Their mini arcades were more the high-end type.  They are releasing five arcade cabinets by the end of the year, and each one is about four feet in height.  Each one will have about 3 to 4 classics included, with original artwork on the outside.  There was one with Atari classics like Asteroids, another with Atari trackball games like Centipede, and one with Rampage and other Midway titles.  And there was a collection of Street Fighter 2 entries as well as one with other Capcom classics like Final Fight and Ghosts N Goblins.  They will be available at retailers like Wal-Mart and Target by the holidays.  They cost about 400 bucks, but that’s not bad if you see how much these arcade machines go at auctions and how well-made these were.  You put them together from a box, and they take about 40 minutes to build.  The good thing is they only weigh about 60 to 70 pounds, much lighter than a full-sized arcade cabinet.  I think they’ll be perfect for game rooms, man caves, and waiting areas in doctor’s offices.  I wish I could’ve taken pictures, but photos were not allowed in their private room.  They had lots of other things shown, but I can’t talk about them because they’re not ready for that yet.  But let’s just say that I wanted to take everything in that room home with me, and if I could talk about them, Arcade1Up would’ve “won” E3 for me instead of Mega Man 11.  Hopefully I’ll be able to talk about them more in the future, and I’ll definitely keep my eye on Arcade1Up!

And that’s all I did at E3!  In the comments section, let me know if you have any questions and tell me what your favorite games at E3 were and what you think of my picks.  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc