So I spent all day at my arcade working on getting things ready – fortunately I was able to fix the Tokyo Drift monitors thanks to a tip on the KLOV forums. It turns out that the pin for the sync was in the wrong pinout for these particular monitors – I moved it over and it worked fine. Then I had to figure out why one cabinet didn’t have any sound – I couldn’t see anything wrong electronically so I moved onto setting up the network which didn’t work until I decided to read the manual and I realized that I needed to use the proper DIP switch settings and during that the cabinet without sound suddenly got it so after applying the artwork the cabinets work great.
Anyways about attract modes – this is one thing that any employee of an arcade gets annoyed by very quickly. Now attract modes are necessary as they show people walking by a glimpse of what is going on but so many games have such short spans that after a half hour you already know everything the game will do during that mode. Of course you do have the option to turn the sound off, loosing some of the attraction part of the mode but I wonder why they don’t work to make what happens in attract modes longer and more varied. The game can be programmed to play demos by itself instead of pre-made footage and you could have more voice overs than one or two (as when there are few voice overs it doesn’t take long to get those stuck in your head). I like attract modes where something different is always going on and when they record a variety of voice overs just for that mode where something is occasionally thrown out at you. I have found that The House of the Dead 4 has the most irritating attract mode at my arcade – after hearing “Give it all you got!” for the fifth time I preferred to just shut the sound off. The games from Raw Thrills seemed to have the most varied attract modes of the games I have. So for you, what games have your favorite attract mode and which ones grate on your nerves?
Daytona gets on my nerves. Big Time! I recommend to run the attact mode on 1/4 of the games and then next week run a different 1/4 of the machines and so on. This is what we did in our arcade because it will drive you to the wall.
The sound should always be off on attract modes. It really drags you out of the game you’re currently playing. I was in an arcade yesterday and the sound levels on all the cabinets were fucked. This seems to be the case everywhere I go. You can hear the attract sequences of the cabinets to either side of you, but not the game you’re actually playing.
On our route of arcades, we have always turned off all attract mode sounds for over 30 years now. Then we can run a higher volume level, and the people actually playing seem to appreciate that. It also prevents annoying machines from being unplugged by people that are irritated by all that random noise.
Only three games really annoyed me when I ran my arcade. Street Fighter 2, Sega’s Spiderman, and Daytona. ESPECIALLY Daytona. UGH.
I can remember being able to hear Crazy Taxi from the other end of the shopping centre when Sega Park had it. I love that game, but man was it ever irritating (especially when lacking in funds).
Most annoying attract mode sound wise is Tokyo Cop! “Gaelco presents…” with a police siren and a 70’s era music. It gets on your nerves very quickly (I think you can hear it on he game’s official website).
On the other hand, OutRun 2 SP is great with its cool melodies.
Soul Calibur is pretty cool (“Transcending history…”) if you put aside the “hyaaa!” and “Ataaa!” of training characters.
But whatever the game is, it becomes irritating when you’re hearing it all day long, every day. The trick is to alternate sound between games and change every two days or so…