Trevor ‘Smila’ Storey has just popped up on the Retro Remakes forums, telling us of his next project with Stuart Collier! That’s after their C64 remake Scarabaeus. Which is after their work on Final Ninja. They must be on RedBull IV drips or something.
Anyway, quoting the man himself…
“[Our next project is] a first person arcade with loads of arcade clones to play about on. The main room and outdoor areas are built…”
Here’s an early render of the outside of the building…
So it’s like Microsoft’s new Game Room for the Xbox 360. Except that Stu & Smila’s effort probably won’t suck.
Yes, why pay high prices to Microsoft to play what Jason Hill has labelled “an absolutely dire selection of retro games“. Stuart Campbell’s even less impressed, saying “It’s almost impossible to see how any less effort could have been expended on Game Room, or how it could have been any more cynical a ripoff.”
Game Room? More like Shame Room.
Anyway, back to Smila & Stu’s project. Here’s an interior view, from across the room…
Quoting Smila again: “We’re going to start with about 14 different games and each one will have a few clones. So we’ll end up with around 40 different machines. [There’ll also be] bandits (slot machines), pinball machines etc [but they’ll just be decorative] and wont be playable.”
Here’s a group of cabinets…
Did you notice Smila using the phrase ‘first person’ earlier on? Yes, unlike Microsoft’s Game Room, this arcade will be explorable, from a first person perspective. I’m hoping for a nice carcophany of arcade sounds, that mix/fade/rotate as you walk around the ‘level’.
Finally, here’s a closeup of 2 machines…
I wonder if they’ll have an online leaderboard? That would be cool.
And yes… we’ll keep you up to date @JOMG in coming months, with the progress of Stu & Smila’s arcade…
Just One More Game 
What an excellent idea and a (miniscule but always enjoyable) blow against Microsoft. Looks quite impressive too, and the first person perspective could work brilliantly.
This is more like it! By the fans, for the fans!
I personally don’t think that MS Game Room is as bad as everyone makes out, and the fact that they give you ten minutes free play for each game goes unnoticed (that’s a couple of hours of free arcade gaming right there).
But this is much more exciting. I can’t wait. Any news on the titles that will be available?
Stickhead, re: titles.
As this is a non-licensed “fan tribute”, they *won’t be the original titles… they’ll be clones.
But the guys behind it are more than likely to do a great job creating games that capture the same feel.
*There’s no point doing a version with lots of different copyrighted games, and getting a ‘cease ‘n’ desist’.
As the man says they will be clones not remakes of original arcades.
They will defo be early to mid 80’s style tho basicaly because anything later will take too long to do.
I’ve built lots of decorative objects now too –
All the pinball tables and slot machines are done , pool table, soda machines, air hockey, and the 2p coin drops ( if you remember them ) , and iam trying to find some good reference for that derby day betting game – think thats what it was called.
Thanks for the update Smila. 🙂
The 3D Arcade front end may also be of interest to readers:
http://www.mameworld.info/3darcade/
I’m curious if Smila’s arcade will have a construction kit to build your own arcade and options to include MAME games (which obviously can’t be packaged by default)?
Antiriad, thanks for that link; I was thinking of that frontend when I wrote the post, but I just couldn’t remember the name!
No idea re construction kit at this stage, and I personally doubt any MAME-linkage as this is not an emulation project, and it would just duplicate what the 3dArcade Frontend people are doing…
it will have clones of 80’s arcade games built into it so no it wont use mame roms, it wont have a construction kit either.