Retroware Arcade

“Home is on They Might Be Giants’ minds, and now in their sights. But as they head north, they cannot pass up a stop in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where they play skee-ball, and eat saltwater taffy that was made in 1996...” ☄️🍬

Skee-Ball is an arcade game and one of the first redemption games (tickets/prizes). It is played by rolling a ball up an inclined lane and over a “ball-hop” hump (resembling a ski jump) that jumps the ball into bullseye rings. The object of the game is to collect as many points as possible by having the ball fall into holes in the rings which have progressively increasing point values the higher the ring is.

Skee-Ball was invented and patented in 1908 by Joseph Fourestier Simpson, a resident of Vineland, New Jersey. Simpson licensed the game to John W. Harper and William Nice Jr., who created the Skee-Ball Alley Company and began marketing the thirty-two-foot games in early 1909. The game’s first apparent mention in the press is a The Press of Atlantic City advertisement of April 17, 1908, mentioned that it had Skee-Ball available for play, and its next day’s issue noted that “this new and novel game is being exhibited on the pier.” About two months later the first alley was sold.

The game gained notice across the United States and beyond in July 1909. was soon sold to locales beyond Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Salt Lake City’s “Saltair” resort featured Skee-Ball by May 1910, and F. J. Cossey opened his “Skee-Ball Parlor” in Monterey, CA in January 1911, installing the game also in Napa, CA that March. The New York Times recorded Manhattan’s first Skee-Ball appearance in May 1915. Skee-Ball is now a social sport played in bars in North America, with leagues forming under various banners.

Did you know the history behind this arcade classic? Stop by with renewed appreciation at Retroware Arcade and play a few rounds 🙂

(Sources: skeeball.com/our-story, theatlantic.com/technology/…/509117)

Déjà vu 🎶
I’ve just been in this place before
(Higher on the street)
And I know it’s my time to go!

Initial D is a Japanese street racing manga series written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno; its original run spanned from 1995 to 2013. The series was well-received and beloved by many; as of April 2021, Initial D’s various volumes has had over 55 million copies in circulation.

In the Initial D video game franchise, players race against different opponents through various mountain passes featured in the manga. Vehicles that are featured in the game are mostly Japanese cars, such as the Nissan Skyline GT-R, Mazda RX-7, Subaru Impreza, Honda Civic, as well as the Toyota AE86.

Initial D 3, released in 2004, improves upon the winning formula in many ways. The Lan Evo Team’s home course is one of the new courses, such as Akina Snow (only night), Shomaru, which was initially an exclusive for Special Stage and Tsuchisaka. Also, new opponents in the game are Tohru Suetsugu, Atsuro Kawai, Miki, and the Tsucisaka Lan Evo team. New cars featured in the game are the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution V, Lancer Evolution VI T.M. Edition, Mazda RX-8, and the Nissan Skyline 25GT-T. The game features original Eurobeat songs from artists including Matt Land, Powerful T., Ace Warrior, and Marco Polo.

In total, the Initial D Arcade Stage series has sold approximately 7,111 hardware units (in Japan) up until 2007, grossing approximately $24 million in hardware sales.

Which race track is your favorite? And which song gets stuck in your head the most? Let us know in the comments (or by dropping by our Retroware Arcade locations)!

“Hey! Why don’t you just get up and dance, man?” 🎶🕺

Wacca is a 2019 Japanese arcade rhythm game developed and published by Marvelous in collaboration with indie record label HARDCORE TANO*C. Development for Wacca commenced in 2017, and the decision to collaborate with HARDCORE TANO*C – Japan’s largest record label focused on hardcore techno music – was made during the early stages of development, as the game’s producer, Tatsuya Yokoyama, was a fan of their work. Marvelous, having prior experience in developing games of various other genres, developed Wacca as their first arcade music rhythm game; they had previously developed the handheld rhythm game IA/VT Colorful for the PlayStation Vita in 2015.

During the early stages of development, 20 different prototypes of the arcade cabinet were drafted, with various discarded proposals including DJ desk motifs as part of the control scheme. Once the final design was solidified, the game was developed under the tentative title CircuRing (サーキュリング). The final title of “WACCA” was selected due to the perceived sense of disharmony of how the name sounds, and that it would be able to differentiate the game from other rhythm game titles by intentionally omitting music-related tropes. The game features character illustrations by LAM.

While it is commonplace in other rhythm games to adjust gameplay difficulty according to the tempo of the music, Wacca utilises the 360-degree touch panel to make difficulty adjustments using elements unrelated to the tempo, such as hand positioning. The game features collaboration songs from franchises such as Touhou Project and Senran Kagura as part of its music repertoire.

Which Wacca song is your favorite? Let us know! 🎵

(sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20220408200155/https://www.4gamer.net/games/436/G043627/20181022022/, https://web.archive.org/web/20220624071847/https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/202[…]22/wacca-rhythm-game-ends-online-service-on-august-31/.186936)