What DESTROYED Arcade Games, Shmups, and Fighting Games? Analyzing the MOST RADICAL Shift in Gaming 

The popularity of mastery-based gaming has exploded in the last 5-10 years. "Roguelike" has become a marketing buzzword. Games like Celeste and Super Meat Boy give the player room for mastery wile also giving them progress. Timers have become an expected feature in most indie games because people want room for mastery. Games like Spelunky get by with almost no progression at all. The question we should be asking isn't "why did shmups fall out of popularity?", we should be asking "why aren't they riding the same wave as roguelikes and precision platformers?"

in my opinion what really "killed" the shmup genre is the lack of side content. most of the time you will have no story, no missions, no extras, a small roster of characters, and so on. thats also why the scores are still so important in shmups, they are pretty much everything you have to talk about. everytime i play beat a shmup i think "was that really it?" (except zeroranger lol)

Progression systems are fundamentally about psychology, and while they have often been abused, I think they have huge synergistic potential with mastery-based gameplay when used responsibly. In my view, the role of progression should not be as a replacement for the core, mastery-based gameplay loop, but as a supporting role to help the player understand the game and to encourage the player to play in fun ways, all without needing to tell them anything. As you mentioned, ZeroRanger is an example: the points granting continues encourages players to stay alive as long as they can, and the last stage's continues as lives + deleting your save naturally suggests the idea of a low-cc run without needing to explicitly tell the player. Unlocking the weapons in the first few stages also gives players time to get used to each one instead of overwhelming them at the start. Action games often do this well in my experience. DMC lets you unlock moves with red orbs, which serves the dual purpose of letting players get used to each move individually and encouraging high style ranks, since they give more orbs at the end of each stage. Crafting gear in Monster Hunter has you fight the same monster multiple times for materials, which encourages learning the monster's moves and plays into the core mastery-based combat systems of risk/reward and smart positioning. Shmups in my opinion really stand to gain from using techniques like these, as the "language" of shmups is obtuse and understanding how and why to play them is not immediately obvious. But from what I can tell (I'm still new to shmups), the genre has gone through a lot of iteration and polish, and a game that can keep that sharpened quality of the gameplay core while helping the player to understand and engage with it has the potential to shine very brightly.

I agree in most what you said. For me arcades died because people wanted a different style of games. With more content, stories, etc. This started happening on the ps1 era I think. But today we can see how fighting games managed to survive. On early 2000s the genre was almost death, like shmups. But they took a different direction. They transformed the genre into an esport. A competition. Today what maintein fighting games alive is tournaments (evo) and online play with a ranking system. Shmups should morph into an esport. With some kind of real-time competitive approach. This is how FPS are popular today too.

Really interesting stuff, I liked the rotation of videos that were related to the topic at hand too. Gives you something to connect the topic to. The mastery system versus progression system is a very good point that I've never heard anyone actually make. I think it speaks to a point I've been turning over in my head how many people don't want to get into shmups because they don't want to take the time to learn them, but this is the other piece of the puzzle. With shmups you have to work to get to the end, and the only "progression" comes from your actual skill improving which is somewhat intangible. Whereas with a progression based game with saves or leveling or whatever, no matter how much you play you are going to be given something tangible for your time.

I've been thinking about your video, and I think there's something really important about this mastery-based vs experience-based games thing. (just for clarity, not experience as in experience points, but games you play as an experience, for the story and the world etc). I think the problem for shmups is that people expect single-player games to be largely experience-based, and for any mastery based elements to be subservient to the experience. So even hardcore, mastery based games like DMC put a huge amount of focus on cutscenes, modern graphics, even puzzles, and the style points and rankings are something you can get into only if you feel like it. Multiplayer games are in a realm of their own, but pretty much all single-player mastery based genres have either transformed to tap the players looking for an experience (eg. beat-em-ups to 3D brawlers), or, like shmups, struggled. Shmups struggled more than other genres because elements like fixed perspective and autoscrolling don't translate easily to 3D cutscenes, to puzzles, and having a sole ship as a character limits what you can do in the story. Now I don't mind that for a second, because I love these pure, mastery-based, non-stop-action games. But the broader market started asking for something else. Save states helped facilitate that. And once technology advanced enough to be able to provide games that combined adventure elements with action, that's what a majority of the market wanted. I don't think the average consumer even undestands the point of a mastery-based game any more. So as well as save states, I think more generally the technology of the NES, which allowed for arcade-speed action along with longer, more varied games, which you could spend more time on at home, is "the culprit". Not just because you could play it at home, but because the technology took hybrid games to the next level, like Zelda/Metroid. I think a lot of the transition away from shmups happened over the NES and SNES lifetime. I don't think it's over for mastery-based games. Stuff like Dark Souls (just to give an obvious example) straddles the line. And if people went into shmups with the same attitude that they go into multiplayer games, they would probably get into them much more easily.

"... it's some random game you've never heard of, Zork or whatever." I'm so mad right now Mark XD

Great topic I enjoyed listening while working on some editing. I liked the notion of shmups killing shmups, meaning you can blame outside forces, but if we ever want to see a serious comeback, the real place to look is within and how it can change to fit current tech and social trends. Whatever that may be. I also liked the idea of mastery vs progression as that does make sense. I'll add that the idea of the 1CC meant even more in arcades, as nobody liked the idea of dumping quarter after quarter to finish a game. So being able to clear it on a credit wasn't just for bragging rights, but being able to go and get a ton of game time for only a quarter or two. Speaking of shmup rpgs, I was just talking in my SuperXYX video about homages to Tyrian. That game goes way back as a PC shmup with a story mode and upgrading your ship and progressing. I guess it didn't really catch on at the time, but I can imagine something modern like that today, but with an online social element to actually either compete against others, or play together with others through a real time world is an interesting idea.

I feel like From Software games are an interesting "meet in the middle" example where they have this relationship of mastery with their audience, but also elements you'd see from Legend of Zelda. Like, there's certainly progression and RPG-esque things to enjoy, but people do talk a lot about learning and building skill at the games.

Interesting video regarding most of the speculated reasons on why arcades died. However I have to disagree with your conclusion. The reason why I don't think that save features killed arcades is because in Japan and Eastern Asia, arcade games eventually added save features. You can buy an ID card that lets you have your own profile which saves your progress, how you customize your character, how much currency/xp you have, what you have unlocked etc. It is not too different to how most save features work in console games except your ID card or even phone app saves your progress. Some arcade games like the Kantai Collection spin off ( -whichisshitbecauseyoucan'tplayastheabyssalfleet- ) work more like how mobile games work with heavy emphasis on leveling up, unlocking characters and rng rewards so RPG-like genres are not completely out of the equation when creating an arcade game. Shmups are very different and in almost every case barely use save features aside from registering high scores but I can still see some features like new levels/unlockable ships/alternate score systems that you can acquire after reaching certain milestones and the like getting added without changing what makes them appealing that much. In my opinion what killed arcades in the west (since they were still a profitable business in Japan and some asian countries before Covid-19) is: The arcade culture in the west is vastly different than the one in Japan. In Japan arcade games can be easily part of your daily life. To explain this a bit better. In the US and most western countries you only used to go to the arcades on special occasions (with luck you would go on a weekly basis) while in Japan the structure of most cities which relies heavily on trains will almost always lead you to walk nearby some train station that would also be relatively close to an arcade center allowing you to visit them regularly, add to this how most people in Japan decide to spend their free time outside and how their home is mostly relegated for winding down after a day of work and sleeping. Now instead of playing that hard game only 2 times per month you can both play it and see the tactics others use when playing them more frequently, which along with how some arcade centers limit each machine to only allow one credit per session, allows 1cc culture to exist and thrive. Instead of playing some game only once by feeding it 12 coins in the same evening and then never playing it again that year, practicing it constantly becomes the norm so genres in which the core experience is mastering the game and it's scoring system are easier to understand and appreciate. I'm not sure if this was always true but at least in the US some arcade machines like Street Fighter Alpha would charge you 2 coins while the Japanese versions (at least in emulators) only charge one, so even brand new games could've been less expensive to play, although this might not apply to more complex machines with unique controllers. tl;dr In Japan arcade games were experienced more like a skill you honed on a daily basis while in the US for most people arcades were cheap thrills you would enjoy mindlessly on your birthday party/when dining outside with your family, with the main appeal being that you didn't have graphics that good in your console.

This is a really interesting analysis, and thank you for bringing it forth to us. In particular, the distinction between the two design philosophy of games strikes me as very significant. You use it to explain the downfall of arcade games and shumps, but it can also be used to analyze other phenomena as well. For example, the trend in the larger gaming industry right now: phone games and "service" games are taking up the place of traditional game genres like action games and RPGs. One of the most distinguishing feature of many phone games is that they are the culmination of the progression-based philosophy: people derive gameplay-based satisfaction from it mostly through owning more stuffs in game, to the point that mastery might not even be a factor anymore. Difficult games like the Souls Series or even Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy can then be understood as attempts at applying this mastery-based game design philosophy, and they catch people by surprise precisely because they point to a new way to derive fun from playing for many of the younger gamers. Anyway, I really appreciate your insight in this video. I am sorta of an academic myself and I wold like to do some more research into this a bit more in the future. If anyone have relevant reference materials that you think is related please suggest some and they will be appreciated!

I like the reason you are proposing, It does make a lot of sense in way. I remember eventually only really going to the arcades in order to play pinball or light gun games. The rest of the choices seemed to all be available at home or at a friend's house. I also remember getting frustrated with arcade games stealing my quarters fast. In my personal experience, I simply didn't enjoy playing arcade games anymore. They just seemed to be designed specifically to take my money fast, especially when newer games started to charge 50 cents or a dollar even. Really I think maybe once the personal computer started to churn up some decent graphics at home, that also seemed way more intriguing. The entire culture around video games had shifted and strategy games started popping up. Plus I think culturally there way a shift towards 24 hour news showering everyone with fear and influencing parents to keep their kids at home rather then letting them get on their bikes or dropping them off at an arcade. Parents of the younger generations were all too happy to keep their kids at home. So many factors that it would seem like arcades in the US were always doomed.

I've always found interesting the perspective of some of the japanese players. You might train and get good inside, but you would go to arcade to perform. Great video with a well thought out vision

I remember 2 things that took people out of the arcades in a big way in my country. 1: Consoles. Having a PS1 and being able to play Street Fighter Alpha at home, as much as you wanted, had me and my friends playing on console for hours and not going to the arcade. We still went but not as frequent. 2: Internet cafes! You could book these machines by the hour and you could play first person shooters, which was new and interesting in the mid to late 90s. It was the "new fad" and a lot of people was into it. Fighting games, in my opinion, didn't kill anything. It was breathing new life into the arcade scene. Atleast here it did. Funny thing is, that most people here didn't play versus but for score against the CPU. Still remember when they rolled in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. "WOOOOAH! It has 6 buttons!?" Good times We had 3 huge arcades in my town, and local pizza places, bowling alleys etc. also had 5 to 15 machines, but everything close down between 1999-2002

On the topic of arcades, one thing I noticed is that arcade games like Daytona and Virtua Racing were running on hardware that were many years ahead of their time, even beating high end PC graphics cards at the time, and thus there was a reason to go to the arcade to play them. Nowadays, SEGA just bundles a low-end PC with a cheap 720p 60Hz monitor and charges up the wazoo for an arcade machine that also requires to be a partner with Sega Amusements to even buy. Some of these games got ported to consoles and PC, where you can run them with higher resolutions and framerates (in the case of PC) than those versions of the game. Playing a game like Project DIVA on an OLED display with the framerate unlocker mod, or even on the Steam Deck or Switch OLED, feels more premium than going to one of the few arcades that have that game just to be on PC hardware that was antiquated the day it released and would only cost a couple hundred dollars at most for close equivalents on the second hand market. The fancy lights and big buttons and sliders can be done rather easily with third-party controllers, and it's simply not enough to entice people. It feels like more effort is put into the DRM and encryption of system files to prevent bootlegs, rather than a user experience that bootlegs would have a difficult time of rivaling. At least in my eyes, an arcade game running on high-end PC hardware and a high refresh rate display (like a 240Hz display) that also properly supports things like HDR (Where you'll easily be paying a pretty penny for that even on a console), would probably entice more people to go to an arcade. At least in areas like Japan where said PC hardware usually costs more on average than say the United States. Unlike movies at the theater where you could argue that gimmicks make it feel more like an amusement park ride, arcade games historically have sold primarily on gameplay and stuff that makes them stand out. Hell, even seeing arcade to console/PC releases, and a lot of them don't feel premium either. Groove Coaster and the recent Cotton releases on Steam come straight to my mind. Low budget games like Gal*Gun feel more polished, despite having the gameplay mechanics of a light gun game and never being available in arcades.

Thank you for adding the title for which game you're playing! Blazing Chrome looks AWESOME. I will say though, I rarely saw and shooters in th he local arcades here. Usually just 1942 or Raiden. I didn't really play an arcade shooter I really got into until Stikers 1945 came out and they swapped that out fast and that was a bummer lol.

Of course the progression based game design philosophy is ultimately what took hold in the mainstream (along with 3D, console/at-home gaming and online gaming) but you also have to ask the question of WHY that took hold, of why that resonated more strongly with people at large than mastery based game design. I would say that as most gamers aged, and more people in general became gamers (as the technology progressed, as game design evolved, or arguably devolved, stigmas attached with gaming dissipated and there was more marketing push to bring in more consumers as game companies got larger and larger), video games became less of an intense hobbyist pursuit and turned into something much more relaxed and casual, which is why heavily cinematic, narrative-driven, significantly lengthy, progression-based video games with light to moderate rpg elements are now the AAA bread and butter, with the exception of online multiplayer-based games of course (think CoD or Fortnite). In the case of those, the more "hardcore", or at least lightly competitive aspects of gaming crop up again (of course these games can be played at a higher level, but most people don't), but they can be played in short bursts at home with a group of friends over the internet, and each experience isn't going to be the same, as they often would be in a shmup, which is extremely linear and scripted. The ADD-heavy, social media dominated age we are living in today demands constant novelty, and this is reflected in more mainstream "hardcore" gaming nowadays. Shmups and the arcade mentality are always going to be niche from this point onward in my opinion, they are far too demanding at their baseline design philosophy on a person's time, energy, patience, skill and discipline, unless that person is very much so a hobbyist. It's like with people who are into speedrunning: it isn't "normal". You have to be very intensely interested and dedicated to hardcore gaming to even begin to have interest in doing something like that. It isn't far off from attempting a no-miss or high level score run of a shmup or run 'n gun. It takes a somewhat peculiar mindset. I think most people simply can't be bothered with this, or even close to most people. The golden age of the arcade was just a strange moment in time, a perfect storm of different factors, that will likely never be repeated.

I was listening to this in the background so I'm sorry if I missed this point or something similar. I think it would be interesting to explore the impact of Speedrunning on shmups and other arcade genres. This would've happened after the arcades already died, but I feel like the mindset of speedrunners and the mindset of shmup players are very similar. The speedrunning community really took games that have progression systems and added mastery systems on top of it, and they've been able to do so with games of basically every genre. There is even some overlap between the two genres in touhou speedrunning.

I'll make sure to keep the progressive gameplay in mind. I've had plans to work on a thunder force fangame that I can hopefully pitch to Sega in the future as a potential sequel and follow up to the discovery of the rynex's distress signal. Still trying to replicate a lot of the gameplay mechanics of thunder force in the unity engine. Now Im trying to figure out how skyboxes work in thunder force 6. I just need to sit down and do some trig and geometry. I really need to experience thunder force 6 in an emulator. I found that a lot of these games look easy but playing them yourself is something different

Figured I'd add something about role playing games since you mentioned them at 16:45 onwards! Namco actually tried to make an arcade role-playing game twice with the Tower of Druaga series, and a lot of those elements made their way into the home console games of the time. "The Return of Ishtar" is a full fledged action RPG with level ups and everything, and it was impossible to 1CC on default settings due to the time limit, but it WAS considered at one point. May have also influenced their SHMUP design as well especially super Super Xevious.

Amazing analysis. Also, as a huge ex FPS fan that discovered the shmup genre, I still love FPS but shmups are equally my favourite genre now, I feel both genres are amazing to play and I dont see them competing with each others, actually I feel like they are extremely complementary in the sens that they made both the shooting genre feel "full", shmups without FPS would be missing the crazy 3D aspect of it, and FPS without shmups would be missing the frenetic crazy precise constant dodging of the 2D gameplay. What could bring shmup back though, and I am furiously waiting for it, is actual fucking 120 Hz support, FPS games support 120 Hz since fucking Quake, we need a shmup framework that support modern tech, it is the future, as well as fighting games. Also online features are mandatory, online replay sharing, achievements, leaderboards. Someone has to make the jump at some point! I also feel like with the speedrunning scene being bigger than ever, and the deathless scene growing too (doom 2016 and eternal ultra nightmare modes became very popular) mastery game design is strongly coming back, there is an opportunity and I hope shmups will take it.

I just want another thunder force

i don't think it would be hard to make shmups popular again; the hype behind geometry wars and no man's sky are modern examples star fox 64 was beloved and never surpassed in the genre, even by its sequels, and it came out decades ago if people could just fly a ship around a galaxy and explore either procedural content or an open world, they'd have a blast most people just don't like repeating the exact same content over and over and feeling like they're only getting better through memorization

No disrespect to the fps, but I was birned out after the xbox 360 era. I'm a noob as far as shmups. But im glad to be delving in to them at this stahe in my life. I have a back catalogue of shooter goodness to last for me for years and I love it. Thamks for the quality content Electric Underground! I,learn something new every time you make a video. I'm currently putting together a good shmup fightstick from joystick to button layout.

Have you ever looked into various news sites, video/audio podcasts, and discord servers focused on arcade video games like Arcade Heroes, Wilcox Arcade, Indie Arcade Wave, and Arcade Hunters? They cover a lot of the niche field of arcade video games, which has its own set of unique experiences. While currently the pandemic has put the majority of the business under pause, the majority of arcade releases are unique to their field and not released to home consoles. I can also agree with your smoking gun on "save game progress", as it turns video games from the niche and old pinball / sports mastery-based experience to a more broad and story book / movie-based consumable experience. That paved the way towards a more lateral design away from intense mastery needed to beat short games. That turned video games into a mass consumer device-oriented experience like books and videos. You may remember talking about Exa Arcadia a few years ago with its CEO Eric (Shoutime) Chung, and one of the biggest value propositions to differentiate from consumer devices is mandatory exclusive content and balance changes to fit the arcade environment. Their goals is to bring arcades back to the public consciousness. It launched since November 27, 2019, and it has released multiple games, which for majority of first year titles, are upgraded "definitive edition" with new and exclusive content. Vritra Hexa is really the winner of the bunch due to not only immense amount of polish and added features, like 2p simultaneous and new weapons, but also hones in on the mastery-based design to a greater degree than home versions Vritra Complete and the mobile origin Vritra. The Exa Arcadia might be its own topic for another time. Also feel free to reach out to other discord servers focusing on arcade video games. You could meet diverse people who share your thoughts.

The business model of Gundam EXVS MBON is what exactly like you said - arcade release first - announce the sequel - home console port. This model works quite well for the gundam vs series since 2000 which is always one of the most popular arcade games in Japan.

In some parallel universe this particular game innovation known as saving never came to be and skill based games prevailed and we have arcade versions of Bayonetta, Vanquish, God Hand, 3D Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil... oh well, one can only dream.

Spot on analysis. The save system has removed the need to master the game like a musical instrument. You could still go for mastery, but you were not forced to. Speed runners master games with save systems. One of the main reasons mastery design died, is that it is not as profitable as the progression based system. Mastery has fewer followers bacause it is challenging. People are spoon fed currently with games that play on their own and give "achievements" on mundane tasks.

Can't really watch this video yet I'm at work ,but I would say in Australia we had arcades in the early 90s they went from 20 cents at the time to all of a sudden $1 -$2 a game .around the same time mortal Kombat 1 came out they also started filling with shitty people .I'm from Sydney Australia and arcades started becoming a rough place to hang .older kids would intimidate younger ones , steal there money or push them off machines .in the early 2000s there was even a kid that got shot over street fighter ! The fact that you could also play mortal Kombat and street fighter ports on the SNES and the megadrive/Genesis was a big factor. some time after that there was a bit of a lull when other things started to become more popular like basketball cards and stuff like that. When psx and N64 came out I think that was one of the biggest nails in the coffin for arcades here . In the arcades fighting games were still pretty popular as well as the more casual stuff but shmups kinda killed themselves because they were expensive to play and had such a big difficulty spike .

Emulation didn't help. Short story to demonstrate: I had an opportunity to pick up a , "big red" neogeo cab for free or dirt cheap but I passed on it. My emulation setup is good enough that I didn't want to be bothered with the headache of dealing with a cab.

the movie theater model sounds like something from an alternative universe

Off topic but there's nowhere else to put this: have you played Fast Striker for Dreamcast/Vita? I thought the bullet patterns were really fair even in the hardest mode but I haven't completed it yet. I got to what I thought was the last boss in normal mode but died on that boss.

Very good logic and reasoning, very thorough arguments. If you go to any Internet forum where someone is hyping a new game, the question that always comes up is: "How many hours is it?" The answer usually "30" or "40". No one hypes a new shmup and has someone ask them "How many minutes is it?" Totally different mindset.

We sadly never had a real arcade culture in (at least small town) Germany, cause most machines weren't accessible to people under 18. They were usually in gambling places, bars, discos. I remember in the early 80s we had like a Donkey Kong at the train station and one other machine at a department store, some machines had been hidden in a dark corner of an amusement park, but that was it. In the 90s, I even had to take a two hour train ride to play the Attack from Mars pinball. We used any vacation opportunity to play arcades, like going to England or Mallorca and the Neo Geo AES sure was my biggest treasure. Anyway, I think going 3D was way too early and most games, though in motion looked a lot better than on stills, made me shy away even on Playstation or N64. During that time, I shifted from Shmups, Platformers, Brawlers and Fighters to Racing Games mostly, cause those on the other hand (except for Fun Racers like Super Cars II, RC Pro Am, Mario Kart, Rock'N'Roll Racing) started to make sense to me as simulations. We played those very passionatly, made complete Formula 1 weekends along with the original Grand Prix, training, qualifier, race in real time, we even played the 24 hours of Le Mans including driver exchange one time. To me, in the arcades that was the next big thing as well. I did like the old cabinets like Space Harrier, Afterburner, Hang On etc, where you actually were part of an event with moving elements in cockpits or at least seats. Virtua Racing, Sega Rally and all that stuff was awesome as were the revived Light Gun Shooters like Virtua Cop and Time Crisis. Thing is, those machines are more pricey and not as easily maintained as your usual joystick and buttons. I just recently was catching up on the machines I missed after the millenium, cause I wasn't playing as much in general and arcades had been totally out of focus. A lot of the machines are way more complicated, but also involve the player a lot more. Drum games, DDR, that's maybe even a completely new audience, which is great. And I might even understand with the typical arcade games being presented at home in the same quality they'd look at the arcades, there'd be no reason to go other for competition. Quarters are rather cheap, in Europe arcade cabinets have been way more expensive, so you'd have thought twice what you put in anyway. In the US, I know one selling point for consoles was keeping kids away from the shady arcade halls, but to me a huge factor is saving money actually. Save games, yeah, well, SNK had a memory card for the AES, that I think you could take to the arcades, but I never used it. The idea of merging play at home and at the arcades though is interesting. It's hard for me to wrap my head around that anyway, as I'm mostly playing old school arcade style, puzzles, point'n'click, some Earthbound or Secret of Mana back then, some Pokemon maybe recently. Few Racers still and I do like the impact Limbo had on platformers. I don't need the big event that the industry seems to have tried to compete with. Actually, I would probably go to an arcade if there was one close. There are these museum type of centres though, just have been to a huge place in the Netherlands with plenty of well maintained machines and I was having the time of my life, even my woman had. And here's the thing. They charge 12,50€ for a two hour flat rate. Everything is free play. The place was packed with all ages on a weekdays afternoon. They have merchandise and food and are located directly in a mall. Despite some games are of course violent, it seems to be very family friendly. And it's suitable for an event people seem to look for these days. They don't just sneak in a dark hallway for a credit or two. What I noticed is the more modern games are more popular. Shmups were all free, I even set the first highscore on Gyruss. Even the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat cabinets weren't in use. Rhythm Games, Light Gun Shooters, Racers, some license brawlers like Simpsons, Star Wars, Tranformers, those kinda things were crowded. But it was a great wholesome collection and had something in store for everyone. That's probably the future, if there's one for arcades. What's strange though is, the functionality and psychology of arcades directly transitions to the mobile gaming market and micro transactions in general. For an arcade game, you had to catch the attention for the first coin and then be rewarding enough to keep players going even though throwing stuff at them to rob enough credits. I don't know if I'd play a machine like that, but adapting some of the newer techniques could be refreshing for the arcades. Like being free play in the first place, but then find another way to make players pay. Additional credits and maybe little helpers/power ups. Might be even possible to have individual player profiles to store ingame currency and loot or archivements. You could have complete statistics saved and maybe make those accessible online. Let's put it that way, I'd rather spend money on something like that than dumping my savings for a mobile game or most DLCs on a console.

Excellent analysis! Very interesting hypothesis on mastering vs. progression. I think the rise of connectivity, meaning multiplayer gaming and generally rise of computing power @ home are main factors. But "destroyed" I think is bit of a harsh word, after all Arcades are doing just fine in Japan (maybe not at the moment, but..). Think of LAN parties back in the day. Fond memories of those as well. Its all about people gathering, having fun, socializing, competing, whatever..

This has been my thought as well for a while now, interesting to hear someone else come to the same conclusion.

the NES game faxanadu had de-facto save feature inplemented via the password system

I would LOVE to see final fantasy 7 (at least the midgar section) in the arcades haha. Btw your channel is incredibly cosey and I am all snuggled up in bed watching this :)

Another point on the consoles is that while they took a certain number of people away from arcades, over a few years their existence also meant that the new up and coming kids weren’t even leaving home to discover arcades. There was less impetus to do so. So it was a double blow. I should say though that in nearly every Australian town over 25,000 people there was at least one arcade which are now dead, but the capital cities seem to have had a few survive, just with different games.

one step back to mastery based "game design" is the huge popularity of roguelikes that are meant to be beaten in one sitting & are heavily skill-driven, like binding of isaac or slay the spire. i kinda hate random generation in games, but i think it does show a shift back towards the arcade mindset

"Some random game you've never heard of - Zork or whatever" - You sweet summer child.

"some game you've probably never heard of called Zork" *laughs in boomer*

Technically early RPGs like Tower of Druaga WERE arcade games. Certainly something different from FF7 though (arguably more like Zelda). To me a lot of the issue is it's hard for arcade games to "wow" you anymore compared to home technology. It's all about the same -- no more of the arcade being able to push graphics that are just impossible on home consoles. That means that games have to rely on gimmicks (giant joystick, unusual control schemes, wind machine, whatever) to give you a reason to go, but a lot of those games are novelties that tire quickly. On top of that, (especially before digital distribution) an arcade game is a harder sell on consoles. There's the "value" issue you call out ("why buy this when FF9 is a million hours long?"), and there is also the fear that players will beat the game as a rental and not be compelled to buy it. I guess the silver lining of today's ecosystem is that it's viable to sell a game for less than full price. Progression is an interesting idea, but games like Zelda or Final Fantasy predate the death of arcades quite a lot.

Funny you say this. I was 12 when Playstation came out and I was saying this back then. I always loved very hard games and was so saddened when I knew that we would never get games that people couldn't beat like Ninja Gaiden and such. But games like Dark Souls give me hope.

I really dig your videos Mark :) Thanks for making them. About that Arcade destruction, I feel like is a normal part of evolution. What I hated in Arcades was that they took credits after credits to get better, on the other hand a lot of older kids and even adults were playing cabinets. Sometimes they were the owners friends so you had no access to the cabinet for a longer periods of time. Pretty crappy people came along, bikers etc. Like the Genesis was "Arcade experience at home" with, people wanted to play games in their own house with friends. Some genres are dead too, like rail shooters at the most part, adventure games are no longer the biggest hit on the market. And let's don't even get started on texted based once or even some classic RPG's like Eye of the Beholder :)

“Some random game” oh man I’m officially old lol Good analysis, my 7-11 had an SFII & Aero Fighters machine side by side and AF was perfect for keeping us entertained waiting for a chance on the SFII machine. I agree FGs helped save arcades and probably extended the life of shmups instead of hurt them. I did the same thing as you burning my final quarters on SDF Macross (that stage start cutscene tune is seared into my brain) after playing DOA2, SFA3, SF3 etc It’s surprising in retrospect that no one came up with savegame tech in the arcade. Enter a name & pass, stored on a save chip in the cabinet to come back to and resume your progress. Would’ve been great for action games but imagine Zelda or FFVII and some local kid is on the last dungeon or some important cutscene on his save with everyone gathering to watch some part of the game they’ve never seen because it’s 10 hours in...probably not great for arcades to make money off though lol combine it with a Legend of the Red Dragon style “X amount of time per day” limit?

Really interesting argument about the lateral development that took place in other genres. It does make me curious, because the era when shmups were most popular in arcades (I'd argue roughly 1979-1987) had also been the time when they as a genre had similarly developed laterally. Back then, we had: Vertical fixed shooters; e.g. Space Invaders (1978), Galaga (1981) Horizontal fixed shooters; e.g. Pooyan (1982) Horizontal scrollers; e.g. Gradius (1985), R-Type (1987) Vertical scrollers; e.g. Xevious (1982), 1942 (1984) Isometric scrollers; e.g. Zaxxon (1982) Multidirectional side scrollers; e.g. Defender (1981), Fantasy Zone (1986) Top-down multidirectional shooters; e.g. Asteroids (1979), Thunder Force (1983), Sinistar (1984) Tube shooters; e.g. Gyruss (1983) Furthermore, some bright spark had the idea to take the scrolling shooter but completely change the perspective and place the camera behind the character, creating the rail shooter. And then run and gun games had evolved from shmups as well, so we can add the following to the list: Rail shooter; e.g. Space Harrier (1985) Vertical scroller; e.g. Commando (1985), Ikari (1986) Horizontal scroller; e.g. Contra (1987) Multidirectional scroller, e.g. Kiki Kaikai (1986) Twin stick shooter; e.g. Robotron 2084 (1982) Shooting gallery hybrid, e.g. Shootout (1985), Cabal (1988), NAM-1975 (1990) And on top of _that,_ we had some examples of these various subgenres being mashed together. I'm not even going to try to list he different combinations here, but just for example we had Vanguard (1981) and Salamander (1986) alternating between vertical and horizontal scrolling stages, or even beat em ups like Alien Storm (1990) having a few stages similar to Cabal and NAM just for the hell of it. And while we had some examples of lateral development in the 90s, such as Space Invaders 95, Purikura Daisakusen or Bangai-O, these were often very obscure and Japanese-exclusive and so would have been unknown to the vast majority of people - shmup players included - at the time. Most of these subgenres had been abandoned by the early 90s, and for quality titles these days we basically just have vertical, vertizontal and horizontal shmups, and horizontal run and guns left. To an outsider looking in at the genre, it would probably just appear that for the past thirty years shmups have ran out of ideas, lack variety and have just been rehashing themselves over and over, which hardly gives them a good image. Personally, I think it's a tragedy that so many of these subgenres have just been left by the wayside, as I believe that many of them have a lot of potential if given the chance to grow and evolve. (Oh, and sorry for the long comment!)

I used to go to the arcade to hang out with everyone. Both of the arcades that I was regular at both went out of business. I guess you can't keep a business running if your main customers are 12 year old kids.

I enjoyed all of the video. You brought out some interesting points. I think that as for everything else games evolve together with persons. Back then when arcades started their fall, people wanted something different. Consoles evolved much more rapidly than arcades and people did not have many reasons to go to arcades. Also movie theater suffered the same date because at your home you are more comfortable. People got lazy ;) i wanted to do some video like this.. maybe in the future. Thanks for sharing!

I’m not sure if someone brought this up but your point about arcade exclusivity until a newer release is happening right now with the most popular cab in Japan, Gundam Extreme Vs. The most recent console version is 3 updates behind the arcade version and the arcade version is still thriving. Unfortunately Bandai won’t bring those cabs over to America :(

Hey, Mark! Love your thoughts on games, I go through your massive video backlog from time to time, this video was very interesting as usual. I do have an interesting colaboration to it though, hence the commenting. At a point in this video you mentioned the idea of passwords not being able to afford the same kind of progression-based design as the save system does, which is very true for the examples you've mentioned - Ninja Gaiden, Megaman, etc. -, but turns out that is kinda not exactly true. You see, the same year Zelda came out for the NES so did the first Dragon Quest - these games were released only a few months apart. And while Zelda did have a modded special cartridge that allowed the save feature to be implemented, Dragon Quest managed to do saves by using a very clever password system engineered by Yuji Hori himself to store pretty much all of the values relevant to the player's progression - recreating the save function of something like Ultima on a much less powerful NES with a clever workaround. Still, that wasn't something only Dragon Quest did, as password had been used to simmilar effect in a variety of games in the, at the time much more niche, home computer market, which leads us back to Zork of course - the game which did introduce save files. This feature grew in popularity overtime, and I think you did a good job in underestanding why so. But something else I find interesting to address in this conversation is that the kind of game designed that thrived in the arcades was very different from the kind that thrived at the home computer market, and also the boardgame market - which is severely underrated when it comes to it's influence on videogames. The more sports-like mastery-based games you'd find in arcades were very unique experiences, hard even to compare them to anything before them, but once you've got a nintendo at home you can now have a whole other pallete of experiences, the less reaction-based design slower paced games were always present at home - hence the board games, tabletop RPGs, and choose-your-own-adventure books that gave way to much of the most popular games in the home computing market - consoles just made that accessible, and those were always more accessible experiences by virtue of their nature. Take a game like Yuji Hori's own Portopia Serial Murder Case, which would attract mainstream audiences to the yet blossoming japanese adventure game genre, that game is essentially a visual novel - a progression based game - and it has no save function, yet it was still such a big hit that he'd get to make Dragon Quest after it - which would turn out to be an even more massive hit. It's a really intereting conversation, that regarding the death of the Arcade - can't help but feel sorry for it... We did get a lot of good games despite - sometimes even for - it, though. But also so much crap! lol

Very interesting and well-thought out takes @The Electric Underground. Loving the channel btw! I agree with the prevalence of saves owing to the death of arcades. To that end, I'm reminded of Sega/Midway/Capcom et al.'s respective push in the late 90s/early 00s to incorporate physical ways of allowing progression between home and console (Blitz and N64 memory card compatibility come to mind first and foremost) and the fact that many ultimately abandoned such plans, at least here in the States specifically, due to concerns over defacement. Well that and by then arcades were well on their way to dying off here -_-, . Anecdotally speaking I remember noting a lot of gum and other oddities in the slots in the rare case I stumbled upon such a machine (again, often a Midway title, probably tucked away in the smokey corner of some burger and/or pizza joint). Cheers and hope your 2021 is off to a good start~

Super interesting analysis, and I have thoughts: RPGs were there from the beginning of gaming, even before than arcades, but they were a very small niche genre even as late as 1997. At the time, all my friends loved arcade games, we would spend hours every day on Tekken and The King of Fighters. We were 7 friends, only two of us liked RPGs. RPG would become big only around in the next century, and arcade had been long dead by then. Consoles killed arcade. Consoles were now more powerful than arcade, and at home you had more time to play. But games were expensive. You don't want to pay 60 dollars for a game you finish in 25 minutes, so arcade games, were gradually disappearing or transforming. Beat em ups became action games, run n guns became 1st and 3rd person shooters, racing games became racing sims or open world racing games. Martian killers, as we call shoot em ups in Mexico, simply vanished from the gamers' minds. In game rewards vs skill. It hink that's what make Dark Souls and Sekiro my favorite games, they do both. There is a lot of replayability even but not game over. You die and you have to replay the same areas several times, not to mentions fight the bosses. But you also improve in game, level up or find new weapons or tools, but skill is still more important. But honestly, shmups need to evolve! I've asked people, and the best shmups are from the 90s. In 25 there's been no innovation. Make a shmup divided into several campaigns. Play and unlock new campaigns or select one from the beginning. Add a stage design oprtion so we can make our own stanges and maybe campaigns, and share them online. Add side content that make people more engaged beyond the mechanics, something to talk about (lore, secrets, special events). Add a couple of stages with a different gameplay like Contra did. And I'm sure someone who making games is their job, can think of more stuff.

I think it was the Dreamcast, GameCube, PS2 and X Box era where you could do arcade perfect ports with ease with more content. I think the technology of the consoles caught up too.

Look at a YT channel called "Arcade Heroes", they do videos on an arcade console called EXA Arcadia. They say it's the "Saviour of coin-op" and it's been around for quite some time. They have trailers of existing games with exclusive features for the EXA, interviews with the CEO, even unboxing & demonstrations. Check it out!

Nice reveal with regard to what killed the arcades and a solid argument for sure. Reasons why 3D didn’t kill it include how 2D platformers have remained popular in the indie scene and mainstream alike, as evidenced by Nintendo continuing to release 2D and 3D Mario games after Mario 64 came out.

I think an element that also killed the arcades was “arcade design”. When consoles started getting stronger around the Ps1/N64 era, arcade game designers (excluding fighting games) seemed to take the approach that more (both graphically and cost) is better. I remember going to the arcades around this time and being really disappointed that games started becoming above 50 cents for a single credit. Lots of games were 1 dollar for a credit (gun games, sport games, race car games) and it felt like a huge rip off, these games weren’t even necessarily more fun to play at or provide you more play time for your dollar. It was at this time i decided it wasn’t really worth continuing to go to the arcade. I think if designers stuck with more simple game styles (action games - final fight, TMNT, X-men). They may have had a longer lifespan.

Consoles were still definitely the reason for arcades dying...but the progression vs mastery arguement and saving is an excellent arguement. Definitely a contributing reason number 2 or 3. It definitely changed fundamental game design though.

17:44 That being said, there ARE / WERE action RPGs, rougelikes and even an IDOL RAISING GAME in the arcades...

Interesting take. My own favorite Shmup is Tyrian for DOS (well, they then created Tyrian 2000 for Windows) which does have saved games and purchased weapons (and shields and engines and stuff). Did you really assume that people have never heard of Zork? BTW, have you heard of Fate/Grand Order Arcade? It's a Japanese arcade gacha game where your progress IS saved on a separately purchased Arcade Game IC Card.

Emulation is a lifesaver but it cannot replicate games like star wars, pod racers, and mario kart arcade and such. This is why I want to go to japan bc they have some amazing immersive arcades games over there like that where in the us it's completely dead except for the dave and busters I go to locally but it's really no contest.

I feel like the movie theatre model would not work; it sounds good on paper but as soon as gaming on PC became a thing, people would try to come up ways to play the newest releases on the arcade on PC. Arcades would have died regardless, and the model would only slow its death down by a few years. Speaking of which, consoles are probably on their way out as we speak. Oh and nobody goes to the theatres anymore ;)

Arcades (as places or arcade like games) where "killed" by the same thing that killed Blockbuster (the movie rental service): Convenience. A console or a PC are just way more convenient that any arcade and paved the way to everything that lead to the decline, in sales, of arcade games. As computers became cheaper and smaller, it was inevitable for PCs and eventually consoles to exist so the fate of arcades was also inevitable. Blockbuster didn't change to counter streaming services and died, arcades couldn't adapt to a financially viable model and disappeared for the most part. I don't think arcades could survive in the style of cinemas as arcades where never mainstream and would need to offer something completely different to what you can get at home, in a way that's how arcades survived in Japan but it didn't take off elsewhere (and the current pandemic already claimed the famous Sega arcade). You already mentioned what gave the "killing blow" to arcade like games (and again, I feel it's just a product of convenience) but some genres just didn't evolve enough, Shoot'em Ups are among those. The genre could spice things up a lot more to appeal to more people and, by enticing new players, the fanbase of classic style Shmups (the ones we have now) could grow. Why not have a save feature? Shmups are very short but very challenging and most people seems to hate to repeat over and over the same stages, particularly if all that work was for "nothing" (but experience). Examples of progression on challenging games are Roguelikes and Dark Souls but if that is too far from the core experience then a simple save feature could bring a little more people in. Why not embrace more the vs multiplayer approach? Rival Megagun is a good example of this and even Tetris has a battle royale (Tetris 99). Why not more storytelling? Undertale is almost a bullet hell RPG. Why not embrace more the eye candy? Just look at Smash Bros Ultimate vs previous entries, it's the most focused on pure fighting (both casually or competitively) and the flashiest one, for example, when a character is likely to die the camera zooms in, the background changes and a distinctive sound plays; that adds nothing to the core mechanics but it feels so satisfying. I feel that Shmups as a whole haven't change enough and that's why now it's such a niche genre, the oddballs with unique quirks usually doesn't spawn much change in the genre’s industry. Plenty of Shmups have modes and options that are not ranked on leaderboards so there would be no problem to left some of the things I said as unranked modes. All this comes from someone that's NOT into Shoot'em Ups, for me this is a genre that I want to be good at but that I don't like enough to grind a lot... And since grinding is necessary to ever see the end of the game, I usually don't buy them (saving between stages for example would convince me to get some, coop is also now kind of a requirement for me). For the record, I’ve only played Chaos Field on Game Cube and a bunch of doujin Shmups from before 2010. The best ones for me are Cho Ren Sha 68K, Zen-Ichi and (my favorite) Reflex (it’s just such a great combination of visuals, audio and gameplay, bouncing back bullets it’s so awesome!), I haven’t completed any of those but got really close on Chaos Field and Reflex … Actually, I’d like to know what do you think of those and how do they compare to Ikaruga, Crimzon Clover and any other you have on high regard.

i think this is kinda OOT lil bit but i think that's one of the reason why old games are too hard than games today. about mastering vs progressing things...

I'd just like to say that I don't have any particular statement on what shmups "should" have done. I have ideas about things they could have tried, but I can't pretend that I know it would have been the magic bullet. Besides that, obviously I'm here because I like the formula as well. With regard to save games...yes, that makes some sense within the console space. Obviously home computer games have been able to save for about as long as they've been around; certainly nobody was getting through Ultima or Wizardry in one sitting back in 1981. And I think I'd take it one step further - specifically that if you look at save games it has to be in combination with the widespread adoption of optical storage. Cartridges with battery saves had been around since at least Zelda in 1987, but space limitations seriously impacted what developers could do. Even big budget late 16-bit gen epics like Final Fantasy VI were only about 30 hours long, most closer to 20-25 or less. The economics of going from a 4 meg to an 8 or 16 meg cartridge just weren't there for a lot of titles with modest sales expectations (look up the shmupulations interview with the Yuuichi Toyama, where he explains what they had to do to squeeze MUSHA into a 4 meg cartridge, as he points out less than a single digital photo today). But once they moved to optical formats where space was barely a concern and the cost of media was all but negligible, they were free to include as much text and game geography as their development budget could accommodate.

I think rhythm games contributed a lot to the death of shmups, while prolonging the life of arcades. The hook of the interface with rhythm games is more novel and inviting,and it's way cheaper for devs afterwards to create new arrangements for new songs than the insane effort that goes into a shmup level. Early shmups had the hook of the birth of arcades themselves, and massive early leaps forward such as scrolling screens. And I think they appeal to the same type of personality, who value execution of extremely difficult gameplay. Arcade themselves in the West are different matter.

In less words, what happened at the arcade stayed in the arcade but it was a great listen to hear you go over the other suspects. Great investigation, Detective Mark. The interesting thing about progression is that a lot of fighting games which started on console (or portable) decided to focus on unlockable characters, modes and costumes to keep a high perception of value. Some examples include Jump Superstars or Smash in general, but you know how home console ports of Tekken for example are no stranger to this. It is definitely a bit of a mess for TOs when they didn't need to do anything for some games but you need to buy characters (real money in DLC) if not spend tons of time to get all of them plus costumes for your setup. Cheat codes (which are passwords-lite) are seriously missed. The Wonderful 101 is a rare modern game with them which has progression but also a lot of focus on mastery even now. I'm sure some people here know that it has the spirit of arcade games.

arcades did get some progression with the cards you can scan to save your scores in rhythm games or win/loss stats and costumes in fighting games, ect… but they were arguably already dead by the time that came around

That's a great point about save states. This does not change the argument though. It was consoles that killed the arcade. Save states can't really be implemented in arcades. Sure there are a few examples of it but I wish arcade games had figured out a way to save high scores way back in the 80's. I think all you're leaving out is the economics, evolving technology and the psychology of it all. Where can we make the easiest profit and how do we design a game to keep people interested and what's the easiest way to get that product out? If you're a game developer you can sell 5,000 expensive arcade cabinets or upgrade kits to a very limited number of arcade operators OR you could sell 100x or even 1000x that number of games straight to the consumer. The gaming business model is ever changing but the market is so gigantic now. So big that there's room for everyone. There is certainly demand for arcades right now (though COVID took out some great ones like GRINKERS in Eagle ID). It breaks my heart to see a new arcade open and it's all stupid redemption games (like ka-ko-jo's in Idaho falls).

I lost interest in modernish shooters when Bullet Hell became the norm. These shooters also put a much larger emphasis on Boss fights instead of the journey through the level getting the attention which is another negative for me.

I honestly just think arcades slowly died out because of continues, lol. If you look at most of the classics from the "golden age" that most people remember and like almost none of them have continues. Almost everyone knows Pac-Man but nobody gives a damn about Dodonpachi. Why? Because one is easily recognizable as being basically the same thing as a pinball table, a fair score chaser whereas the other is a cheap, pay-to-win quarter muncher. This also explains why arcades continued to thrive for way longer in Japan, since a cultural stigma around continues developed and almost no-one used them. Developers and players entered a silent agreement where both would PRETEND the games weren't pay-to-win, even though they literally are. Through this lens Dodonpachi is 100% a masterpiece, but it is a very inaccessible one. Not because of its "difficulty" (Pac-Man kicks your ass at least as much as Dodonpachi), but because in order to even play it, you must first learn to pretend.

So the roguelike and the ironman and the no-equipment speedrun are the true successor to the arcade.

I think thunder force could do this with some larger levels and/or branching paths like in darius. Technosoft sort of did this with the wall switches in blast wind

I think societal changes played a role as well. Honestly I don't see how kids would be able to attend the arcades while being raised by helicopter parents, if you know what I mean. To the concerned parents credit, anyways, the bad reputation of the arcades was not totally undeserved (at least at a certain point in time and in certain parts of the world).

Great topic and many good points. When 3D and Open world games hit the market, I was done with 2d Arcade Games. It seemed new and fresh and really was the future of gaming.

Tetris was definitely mastery based. This is an amazing video

Finally got around to watch this. So I think there is a nugget of truth in your theory. But I would generally disagree with the notion that this is the one reason. I think your first mistake is to assume there is just one, single reason for the decline of Shmups. There can be multiple compounding issues. No reason to get hung up looking for that one culprit. The second mistake is that you dismiss 3D as a factor to quickly. If we pin down the end of the Shmup era at the end of the 90ies, you will see that it neatly aligns with the advent of 3D technology. You will also see that Shmups weren't the only game genre affected. Around same time you saw a decline of Point & Click adventures and classical 2D platformers. Point & Click adventures wouldn't recover until Kickstarter allowed for crowdfunded projects from the fan community. 2D platformers were almost completely supplanted by experiments to recreate that gameplay in 3D. This worked out but ended up being a different genre. Mario 64 is just not quite the same genre as Super Mario World. Classical 2D platformers returned because Indie Devs were keeping the torch lit for them - think Super Meat Boy. When Nintendo released New Super Mario Brothers after going all 3D gameplay for years - that was a big deal! It is true that 3D technology came out in the arcades first. The reason why we associate 3D with consoles (and PC) is that this is what really pushed 3D hardware sales. Manufacturers wanted to sell audiences on the 3D technology and so the console manufacturers focused on the genres that really benefited from the 3D capabilities. Anything that wasn't benefitting from 3D was de-prioritized. Generally this is also the point where we see increased focus on Consoles and big AAA game projects with exploding budgets. Games were supposed to become the next Hollywood. Games needed to be big and cinematic. A genre that is very similar to the Shmups are Fighting Games and they survived the transition just fine. Fighting Games benefitted greatly from 3D technology allowing for smooth character animations not achievable with 2D animation techniques. They also allowed for cinematic camera angles. Early 3D fighting games were good at showing off the graphical capabilities of 3D hardware by having fairly detailed human characters. This is due to the fact that there were only 2 characters on screen at any given time and almost no environment. You could put all your polygons into those characters and make them look fancy. Like 2D Platformers, Shmups didn't need 3D. If anything the limited texture and polygon capabilities of early 3D systems made those games just more awkward. Radiant Silvergun is just not a sharp looking game. There was also no good way to scale Shmups up to AAA level. What are you going to do? Add cutscenes? As for savegames being an issue - Savegames are largely irrelevant for Fighting Games, yet Fighting Games did fine. This is difficult for your theory to explain. Savegames also came out on consoles back in 1987. They were a staple of PC game design since the 70ies. That's like at least a whole decade too early to explain why Shmups disappeared in the late 90ies. But on the other hand it is true that a lot of Shmups still follow a very specific arcade formula that became less and less relevant as you described. You call it "mastery". But it's not like mastery doesn't play a role in modern games. Some of the hottest games right now are roguelikes and they often prioritize mastery above all else. There were Shmups that tried to modernize that old arcade structure to bring the genre up to speed. They just never caught on. And most games that the community holds up as the best in the genre were released on the arcades anyway. I do think that for a Shmup to strike big again it would need to take lessons from recent games like Hades or Disc Room. I think it is time for this genre to evolve past the arcade structure. Also, Mark, I want to see you play Disc Room. I want to see how your Shmup skills carry over.

Even Fighring Games Evolved, while Maintaining their Roots.

my city has like 4 pinball arcades, 3 board game arcades, 1 family arcade, no actual arcades. I hate this timeline.

I 100% agree with you, Zelda basically set a new standard for videogames

Great video, really excellent points, it's very easy to say the console killed the arcade i mean i was actually typing some long arse comment about it myself till you got to your final points on mastery

Saves allowed us to bring Gary Gygax to video games.

Cloud in a DRESS? LOL. (commenting for the algorithm)

arcades died in NA but thrived in asia; you missed it but totally mentioned the reason. Cars. Getting to an arcade sucks in NA. Getting to a place in NA sucks in general. The only reason I kept going to an arcade was to play Dance Dance Revolution. I had dance mats at home but they were trash compared to the arcade cabinets. Taking the 2 busses was worth it. Once the parity of games got "close enough" to out weigh the opportunity cost of travel it was all over.

Progress saving and the difference between mastery and progression... Interesting. Personally, well, if you look at the western arcade scene, I believe it make a lot of sense, and I agree with that. But when you look at Japan, I don't think it's that simple. In fact, I do think both helped the arcades survive to this day. The games that are designed for 1ccs are, well, dead now, but arcade games with progress saving in mind survive. Fighting games, rhythm games, MOBA, racing games, etc. And shmups are the most incompatible with progression-driven game design. Before that, my personal opinion of the main culprit for arcade death in the west is both consoles and geography. In the west I heard you can't go to many places without having a car, which is pretty inconvenient and especially detrimental for the arcades where you do need to go to a place that has an arcade cabinet. The value proposition of the consoles get much, much more valuable when this is taken in mind. Not so much in Japan. Japan is a crowded country. Having (literal) space at all is a luxury. And the positive side effect is you can go to public facilities like the arcades just by walking. There are even arcades within small neighborhoods! Perhaps you're on the way home from school or work, or waiting for a movie, arcades won't be too far. Heck, I think around 20% of Akihabara is the arcades for both old and new machines. So, yeah, consoles with a big asterisk: Geography. About shmups embracing the progression-driven game design... No, just no. We've groaned about Euroshmups and let us not fall unto the trap, at all. Just look at RXN. It's a Japanese-made shmup that uses stats progression and what did it get? Kusoge of the year. The levels thing killed its pacing a lot. But I do think there are things that can be adopted. In particular, mission-based structures. Something akin to rhythm games where stats-related things and mastery-related things are both inside and separate at the same time. Several rhythm RPGs even have this thing called Technical Score, separate from the stat-driven score. Plus, in the arcades having your records of mastery saved is convenient. I think using mission structure while keeping RPG progression stuff close to 0 is the way to go. Dariusburst Another Chronicle did try that on the arcades, though the progress is based on the publicly-available cabinet, not your personal progress, which made it far less successful than it should had been...

Back in the early eighties the arcade games were built for everyone and if you went to an arcade in 81 you would get every type of person in there, kids, office workers, parents etc. As time went on the games become more complicated and exclusive which drove away a lot if people and left only the hardcore gamers. By the time the ps1 came out this hardcore crowd switched to console gaming rather than go to the arcades. This killed the arcades imo

In my case it was home consoles get better and better. I admit at that time I was hooked with better graphics and moar stuff....i wanted moar. The irony is while you have games with incredible production value like Last of Us and Last of Days I could only play through them once and get that's it, I grew up with shmups and went back to them because they're just fun -- 30 minutes average just long enough to not get me bored and continue to other things...but I play them over and over, really the definition of insanity. The sad thing is there aren't any arcades in my local area....there's one but it's full of UFO catchers. I used to love the super realistic graphics, I wanted super realistic graphics, now I actually prefer the less photo-realistic games as they bring back the nostalgia - Super XYX is a great example of the old Amiga look and sound that I love, just perfect all around. I think cave does everything right.

I think i dont rly fit into that discussion because i never had experience with arcades. But i will still try. Fighting games AND FPS: They had smth very interesting. Competition. You had someone to play against. You even had a team game which is very interesting for everyone, shmups can not give that. 3D-Games: Yesnt. They became popular but they are not the Problem. RPGs: No, i dont rly think so Home consoles: Yes, they are the reason why arcades and the games died. But not from 100 to 0. Arcades still had better Graphics first, but Consoles got better and were everything arcades are but better, same with PC. And also a reason why shmups are dead: They are not a good money source. Save states: Yes, but it IS a good game design that shmups lack. But they depend on the lack of it.

Are not things like Nier Automata, or the new game from housemarke Returnal, some kind of evolution for the classic shooter in some parts at least?

Also upto very recently they were still periodicity arcade fighting games. So if they can make those...

All of the above, plus the fact that culture as a whole has moved to being home-based.

I just play Shmups, so it's whatever really. Ya like what ya like! Edit: I work part time at an arcade. It sees PLENTY of business... At both locations. Guess we're just lucky then lol!

*They were not DESTROYED, they just haven't become Mainstream and everything that is Mainstream, turns mostly to Shit ;)* *So, we thank God that they are a "Niche-Product" and have maintained a fairly high Standard, because if they would have become Mainstream too, they would all be Shit-Games, everything that BIG-Companies get their Hands on, turns into DIRT ;(* *I seldom play a Mainstream-Game, but very often Niche-Games and OLD-GAMES, because I usually get angry about the Mainstream-Games, they have no Soul and much Problems, DLCs, Bugs, Boring, Expensive, online Problems, on Consoles often shity Performance (under 30 Fps, very rarely 60 Fps, but Stuttering has unfortunately become Standard on Consoles, because 4k is a MUST, So i HATE 4k Games, better 720p, or 1080p and fluid 30 or 60 Fps, than 4k and choppy 17-25 Fps, or 35-55 Fps), and Mainstream-Games often do not keep what they promise.* *An much Niche-Games are not Niche-Games in Japan, only in the West they are Niche-Games, probably because most of the Japanese are a little bit autistic and therefore live in their own Bubble, separated from the Rest of the World and only Western-Nerds like us appreciate that ;)* *What I have also found, if you only play Mainstream-Games, then you also think Mainstream-like and if you play almost only Niche-Games, then you think more unconventionally and critically, you don't swallow any Dirt, so to speak, also in other Areas of Life !* *I love to be unconventional, critical and reject the Mainstream, i don't wanna be a Mainstream-Zombie, i wanna be me, I don't want to live the Life that someone else (Companies, Politicians, Lobbies, Media...) have wanted for me ;)* *The worst Part: "Unfortunately, I have to find out that a lot of me is deleted from the Internet, because I am critical and tell the Truth and the Truth is unfortunately no longer popular these Days" ;(* *Here in Germany, where I live, it is particularly bad with the Hatred, Brainwashing and the Division of the Population, the Media are practically waging a War against the People to make them stupid and that's what scares me the most, "the People who believe every Lie and happily join in every Shit" ;(* *Anyone who does not follow the Mainstream and is critical, is in Germany a NAZI, Right-Wing, Anti-Semite, Conspiracy-Theorist, or an Aluminum-Hat-Holder, ALWAYS, therefore, most Germans are afraid to say the Truth "and that pisses me off" ;(* *Even wearing the German-Flag in Public and saying "that you are proud to be a German" makes you a NAZI in Germany, Isn't it crazy how we Germans have been brainwashed ???! ;(* *It's so easy to be fooled and so inconvenient not to be fooled and follow the Truth and that in all Areas of Life, even when playing Games !* *In Short: "Better small but nice, "just like your Channel too", than big and dirty", like 90% of the Rest of the World ;)* *Much critical Greetings from Hamburg and like Bruce Lee said: "Be Water, my Friend" ;)*

Some modern shmups had some success, because they add these things, saves, rewards, feeling of progress, for exemple jamestown, you also mentionned zero ranger, some others add more than 3 difficulties, and even an easy one so more people would have the chance to have fun, for exemple touhou (who had success too), so people wouldn't feel like shit in front of a game which seem too hard. It's not just a question of skills, a lot people just can't beat a game like ketsui, garegga etc...and will never be able to. Of course it kept people away, and they have naturally chosen something more fair which seem doable and enjoyable. The minority are these guys who wanted to suffer until they encounter an impossible tbl who's here just to make you spend money because the devs didn't want you to dare beat their games. So you can also add that mentality which is not appreciated by everybody. The majority want to play games that seem fair, especially if it's a game you have to replay again and again. Shmups have to adapt, it won't make them less TRVE if they give more options, and if they give the tlb even at the lowest difficulties, all the players deserve to be rewared, not only the better ones. Old-school shmupers can still refuse the new options given to them by not using them, and to just play the arcade option of the game, the others would enjoy to play another mode with some kind of progress, with rewards, on a level of difficulty that they will find reasonnable and doable. Difficulty, strict mentality, devs who didn't want you to win, have been defeated by fair and friendly games. Maybe you are still searching for a more technical reason, but you gave the reason at the begginin of your video: Shmups killed shmups. But some devs have understood that and make their games more accessible and add more stuff in them, that's all you need to do, make your games enjoyable for everybody and not just for a few people, it keeps people away.

touhou games are also easily accessible cause all you have to do is download them from moriya shrine, some shmups are either region-locked or need to be emulated

The weak point of your theory is exposed when we look at PC players. PC gamers had access to save features since the early 80s and most of their games were "progression based", usually RPGs. Yet, this group of progression-loving, save-using, gamers still went to the arcades with everyone else. This proves there is room in the gaming ecosystem for both "progression" and "mastery" games. What killed the arcade was quarter feeders. In Japan 1 credit plays were the norm-- early Japanese arcade games did not even feature a continue feature. While in the rest quarter-feeding was the norm and arcades games were seen as "cheap, unfair games" not games of skill. Most of the gaming magazines echoed this sentiment. The average person didn't even think of arcade games as "mastery games". The 1ccers were a silent minority. Even today the average person see's arcades as "cheap quarter eaters" from decades of hitpieces by no-skill journalists and their no-skill readers. The judgement of arcade games have been made primarily by people incapable of understanding or playing them. No wonder they were rejected.

Just going to address some stuff as I watch it. FPS: I'd say they were a threat to light gun games. 3D: light gun games, driving games, and rail shooters all thrived under 3D. Don't forget 2D rail shooters like after burner. RPG: blame Deus Ex for that one.

What was the Beat'em Up he was playing?

Shmups only needs new mechanics. No need to try to improve what CAVE did at perfection level long ago. We need RPG elements, rogue-like elements, procedural generated elements, good story, in short: INNOVATION PLZ!!!!!!!!

i'm gonna give you a weird thought. You know what killed shumps, for the most part, for me in particular? It was how they almost became an offshoot of Anime. I'm not an Anime fan at all in the slightest. I don't ever want to hear Anime-esque music. I don't enjoy Anime-style characters. There was a point in time, probably around the 'death of the genre', where shmups became very Japanese. Not that I am racist against Japanese people. I just don't enjoy any of the esthetic. When I was a kid in the 80s Anime was 'those cartoons that only the mouth moved'. The genre started to feel like it 'wasn't made for me'. However, I think this same thing that turned me away ushered in alot of people who liked that sort of thing