Kids have it so good these days in the video game department and they don't even know how good they have it. When I was a kid the best games were in the arcade. Unless you were a millionaire or the child of an arcade owner, you either had to spend all your money at the arcade, or hope that a version of your favorite game in the arcade would come out for your computer or console system. So, six times out of ten if you had a current piece of game technology they would have your game, however, it was never the same as the arcade version. For this reason I am starting the "Arcade Compare" entry in the blog, where once a week I will compare an arcade game to it's computer or console version. This week it's gonna be one of my very favorites "Altered Beast". The left image is the arcade version and the right is the C64 version. Graphic wise there's really no comparison. "Altered Beast" is a late 80's arcade game built on 16 bit hardware, so it's clear that the 8 bit C64 can't compete. So game play is better on the C64, right? Wrong, game play on the C64 is clunky as hell. The C64 joystick's lack of more than one button kinda kills the feel since the arcade version has multiple buttons for kick, jump and punch. However, for a port of such an advanced game I have to hand it to the C64, she does a good job with what she got. As a kid in the 80's I didn't balk at the low grade ports of arcade games like "Altered Beast", I was just happy I could play it at home and would overlook the short comings. It's just how it was back then, you never expected to get a game that was as good as the arcade, that's why you went to the arcade. The exception to that rule began with N.E.S. and when Sega Genesis came out, the tides began to turn. But I still remember a day when I would play the ported versions of games on my C64, Atari 2600, or Colecovision, and be grateful for it . And I would walk to school in the snow uphill both ways and eat dirt for lunch too. You kids have is so good.
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