Blog Post 1: Internet Arcade

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Today, I played the arcade game Frenzy. It is from the year 1981 and is about traveling room to room killing robots. I ended up finding the game to be very difficult, yet satisfying and fun as well once I got the hang of it.

As the player, you can run around shooting a projectile in any of the 8 directions, and that projectile will kill most enemies in a single shot. However, enemies also kill you in a single hit, which becomes problematic when they start shooting. Because of these factors, the game felt very precise, dodging and shooting to efficiently wipe the screen of enemies.

There were also a few bonus mechanics that made the game more interesting. First, projectiles ricochet off of grey surfaces making it more fun to aim, but also trickier to dodge (especially because you can accidentally shoot yourself). Also, if you stay on one screen too long, a much more powerful enemy shows up to encourage you to keep moving.

I think there are a few differences between playing on original hardware vs emulation. Firstly, the game had a joystick which would have made controlling the character feel different. I found the controls to be slightly clunky, and that may be because of this, or just because the game is old. Also, if I was playing this in the arcade actually having to spend money, I believe the experience would be vastly different. Because of the high risk of instant death, it would feel a lot more tense because each death would drain a little more money from my pocket. When I'm just playing in the emulator, I'm a lot more laid back and willing to take risks.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this game was quite challenging and fun to play.