Having relatives in Singapore means I periodically get to spend some time in South East Asia, which is great for a retro arcade fan like myself. Video game arcades are hugely popular here, and although they don’t bristle with the latest titles as in Japan, retro arcade games are a very common sight. This could be down to operators happily running old stock or an indication of the popularity of retro-styled titles (games like Metal Slug and shooters like Raiden 2 are still played frequently here.) Either way it’s a great thing to be able to pop into an arcade and play Outrunners, Virtual On, Strikers 1945 and Marvel vs Capcom, especially when the comparative UK experience today is nowhere near as enjoyable (unless you’re solely into light gun games and racers that is).Here are a few recent pictures taken during a jaunt around Malaysia, in February 2008. I didn’t spend my time looking for arcades, but I stumbled across a few nice ones while awaiting various boat and train connections, and captured the sights, the sounds, the smells (cancel that last one. Ed) of their innards for you lucky Retro Gamer blog readers. One last thing though, if you are thinking of travelling to South East Asia for retro arcade game hunting, avoid Thailand. Video game arcades are banned there…By Retro Gamer freelancer Mike Bevan

Here’s something you don’t see every day - eight-player linked Outrunners.



A sit-down two-player Virtual On with a rack of eight-player linked Daytona in the background.



The impressive kit for Namco’s 1988 System2 hardware heli-shooter Metal Hawk. Wikipedia erronously thinks this was only released in Japan.



The beautifully constructed original cab for Sega’s G-LOC. They didn’t have the hydraulic version mind.



Mahjong and puzzle games a-plenty.



Ever fancy playing Bomberman on a 50-inch Super Megalo?



Super Megalo city: Metal Slug X, Rival Schools 2, X-Men Vs Street Fighter and many, many more on the big screen.



Shoot-’em-up heaven: A bank of Astro City cabs featuring Raiden 2, Strikers 1945 II, Raiden DX and Raiden Fighters 2.



Two of the finest shmups of all time in their natural arcade environment- Raiden DX and Battle Garegga.

Namco’s Metro Cross is a pretty decent arcade game, it’s just a shame that U.S Gold didn’t think so. Instead of getting a man to dress up in orange Lycra they forced some jerk to wear blue pyjamas and demonstrate his ‘O face’.  

For some reason, they also felt that this…    looked like this… 

Right then, we felt that the blog was the perfect place to run a highscore competition, so we’re going to start off with my favourite game. All you need to do is post your score in the comments thread and send proof to our website (for verification). The person with the highest score by Thursday gets to pick the next game.This week we’ll be playing the Mega Drive version of Strider and it should be on default settings with no credits. I’ve had a few warm-ups and the current score to beat is 55,300. Good luck everyone.   

   So one of our freelancers, Ashley Day, has just come back from Japan and given us these rather cool LCD games. Stuart received this copy of Elevator Action, while I have Sega’s Hang On. The question now, is should we open them or just leave them to gather dust? 

For those who didn’t catch last night’s episode of The Apprentice; here’s a very brief rundown of what happened (and we’ll probably keep these updates going, seeing as it gives us yet another excuse to talk about something Amstrad related). Anyway, Sugar decided that he had enough of the bitching that had somehow manifested itself from the group of calculating salary-addicts, and would decide to split the teams up using this quite brilliant equality equation: 1 x Boys / 1 x Girls = 2 x Boy/Girls.  In keeping with the show’s usual ploy to try to drag everyone from off their comfort zones and watch them drown in a random set of circumstances that seem to have absolutely no bearing on the actual job that everyone is so desperately vying for, both teams were tasked with setting up a photography stall inside a giant greenhouse somewhere in Kent. One team would opt for ‘glamour’ as their theme, wrapping customers up in curtains and toys, and the other for a ‘get your picture taken with a David Beckham looka/soundalike’. Both teams would succeed in drumming up some business but would falter when it soon became apparent that none of them actually knew how to work a USB cable. The ‘glamour’ team would eventually lose the task after making Sugar a tiny loss, and it was poor Simon Smith, that excitable chap with the funny voice, who would get a firing.

The Amstradometer 

The number of times ‘Amstrad’ is said (not including the voiceover guy at the start of the show): 4 times

The number of times the CPC 464 is mentioned (including the voiceover guy): 0

The number of times the phrase “I used to play Jet Set Willy on my Amstrad” is said (including the voicoever guy): 0

“Why aren’t I cool enough to be lampooned in a videogame?” wondered Stephen. 

Here at Retro Gamer we’re huge fans of beat-’em-ups and spend the majority of our lunchtimes playing the rather excellent Garou: Mark Of The Wolves. Originally released on the Neo-Geo AES and MVS, Garou was SNK’s answer to the excellent Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, with the two games featuring many similarities with each other.

Reaching a very respectable third place in our recent top 25 beat-’em-up feature (read about it here http://www.imagineshop.co.uk/item_show.php?itemID=852&action=maglist), it’s quite simply SNK’s best-ever fighter and makes other entries in the series look rather dated.

It also happens to be Stuart’s favourite 2D fighter, most probably because he kicks my ass at it every lunchtime. Indeed, all this week I’ve been valiantly plugging away, and while I’ve shown a fair amount of progress with Terry Bogard and ‘Hobo Strider’ (well that’s what I like to call him), Stu is still making me suffer.

And what was our new designer doing while we were enjoying Garou?

Playing this.

“Get ’em while they’re hot ladies”