Good evening, VG Masters Club!

Alright, you can put your pitchforks and torches down- I know, I've disappeared for a while. However, last weekend I was at a retro-gaming event called R3PLAY (in Blackpool in the UK) with an entire exhibition centre filled with video games on all manner of platforms, with everything from the ZX Spectrum to an insane Gamecube set-up ready for 16-player Mario Kart. It was an excellent convention- I met a ton of lovely retro gaming people (many from the Retro Gamer forums) who spoke my language (including one who had visited my website and liked it!), there was an impressive shop with some great stuff to gawp at, and there were some great games there!

More importantly, there was a nice selection of arcade machines, provided by Arcade Otaku and some of the members of NTSC-UK. The majority of them were games I'd never actually played myself (despite being a retro-themed event, most of the games were from the late 2000s) and so it was a unique opportunity to give these games a good seeing-to, and to see if some of them lived up to the unbelievable internet hype. A warning to shmup fans- the images that follow after the break may make you weep for your genre. Let's go!

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So here's part two of the final edition of Arcade Alley. Nine more games will be covered, including my two personal favourite arcade games (one from the 80s, one from the 90s) and then we'll wrap things up, putting this series out to pasture once and for all.

This will be the final battle of Arcade Alley.

LET'S GO!

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Hohoho, look at this, Arcade Alley finally rolls out of bed, late as always! A little shy of 40 weeks on the trot, and can I get the damn thing out on time? Can I buggery! Anyway, it's been fun and all, but the night train stops here. After this last assault, Arcade Alley will cease to exist.

Eighteen arcade games will be covered in all, a hodge-podge of old favourites and oddities, and some of them even come with funny stories. Because that's an insane amount of games, we'll be splitting this one into two parts, with nine in each. The second part will be out in a few days to let you savor in Part 1 properly.

Are you ready?

LET'S GO!

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HA HA HA, that whole 'two-part week' thing didn't really pan out, did it? Don't worry, folks, the person responsible has been fired. Again. Unfortunately, the person responsible was me. Again. Honestly, it's a wonder I can operate a toaster without bludgeoning myself to death given my incompetence. But let's move on from that, to some more Taito games! Like I said last time, I'm quite taken with Taito, and they're definitely one of my favourite developers. Rather than look at the cute and cuddly games, though, this week there's a focus on their more manly games, as well as two from their short-lived American division. Let's go!

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I hope your trigger finger is nice and itchy, because Arcade Alley returns to the gun range for some more light-gun action. This time we'll be looking at some of the late-90s classics of the genre, as well as one game I missed out last time, and two of Namco's electro-mechanical shooting games. Let's go!

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