‘Tis the season of classic arcade remakes or sequels, or at least it seems that way. We have the excitement of a new four-player Pac-Man game, a new Darius and now we have another classic returning to arcades with Pengo. I never have played the arcade version of the original Pengo but I remember playing a port on the Atari 8-bit computer as a kid. Pengo may not carry with it strong name recognition like some other Sega games but perhaps that will change with the new version. The original had you pushing ice blocks around, trying to squish the Sno-Bees, who are chasing you. From the pictures it looks like the new Pengo will stick to the same basic formula but support for up to eight players. Judging from the picture above it doesn’t look like they are going to push the graphics envelope at all, relying upon the multiplayer aspect to carry it through. We have been talking a little bit lately about four player co-op so this certainly ups the ante – eight-players-on-one-cabinet games in the arcade sector aren’t new but they haven’t been done in quite a while as far as I know and with the right game, they can not only be a lot of fun, they can hold great earning potential as well. Will that work out with classic graphics though?
Sega will find that out as the game is testing at Club Sega Akihabara right now.
Exit question: In your opinion, what other classic games would work using a multiplayer update?
Via: AM. Net.jp Source: “Today’s dinner (with fish) blog”
I always loved the ‘idea’ of Pengo, but found the baddies a little too hard to avoid, due to the lack of walls (a la Pacman) and their random movements.
If this 8 player version is ‘baddie free’ (ie you just flick blocks at other players) then I’d certainly give it a go.
After all, anything that reminds me of Saturn’s 10 player Bomberman – in an arcade – sounds awesome!