The Firecracker Arcade Updates It's Games

By Bixyl Shuftan

Last year as part of Montecito Bay's renovation, among the new buildings was a video arcade. The games were provided by Mateo Firecaster, and there were a lot of them. There was one not so small problem though. The majority of them relied on Flash to play, a program that would no longer be supported after the end up the year. So Mateo has been updating them.

In late December, the following games no longer needed Flash:

Killer Instinct, Puzzle Bobble, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, Splatterhouse 2, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Ghouls'n Ghosts, Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III - The Manhattan Project, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV - Turtles in Time

More recently, it was announced a second set of games were ready to play:

Kong Classic, Altered Beast, Sonic The Hedgehog, Dr. Mario, Moonwalker, Castlevania Bloodlines Special Edition, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Jurassic Park Rampage Edition, Metal Gear MSX, F-Zero, Breath Of Fire, Sailor Moon R, Metroid, StarTropics, SimCity, Kid Icarus, Super Tetris 3, Super Street Fighter II: The New Challenger, Final Fight 3, Thunder Force IV, Ms. Pac-Man, EarthBound, Tetris, Mega Man X, The Lion King, Dragon Quest IV, The Revenge of Shinobi, ToeJam & Earl, Jurassic Park, and Dragon Ball Z Hyper Dimension.

As mentioned before, many of these games weren't in real-life arcades but in home console systems or from 21st century app gaming. Sim-City is really a strategy game that one could save some progress on their cartridges, but that's not an option here yet.

Mateo also had some instructions on how to play the games.  

How the arcade games work: A̲r̲c̲a̲d̲e̲s̲ ̲n̲o̲t̲ ̲w̲o̲r̲k̲?̲

Our arcades works without Flash Player, games are now playable perfectly without lag, but you have to update your viewer to the newest EPP release.


H̲o̲w̲ ̲t̲o̲ ̲p̲l̲a̲y̲:̲

Right click the cabinet and select "Sit Arcad", your camera will automatically focus on the screen.
A menu at the right top of your screen will open, you can choose your gender bento animation, adjust the pose or close the menu.

C̲o̲n̲t̲r̲o̲l̲s̲ ̲S̲e̲t̲t̲i̲n̲g̲s̲:̲

By default, keyboard controls are "z, x, c, a ,s d", RETURN and ← ↑ → ↓
You can customize your own controls by click the gamepad icon at the bottom left of the cabinet screen.


M̲u̲t̲e̲ ̲s̲o̲u̲n̲d̲:̲

Click the music note icon at the bottom left of cabinet screen.


R̲e̲s̲t̲a̲r̲t̲ ̲t̲h̲e̲ ̲g̲a̲m̲e̲:̲

Click the arrows in a circle icon at the bottom left of cabinet screen.


H̲o̲w̲ ̲t̲o̲ ̲s̲t̲o̲p̲ ̲t̲h̲e̲ ̲a̲r̲c̲a̲d̲e̲ ̲c̲a̲b̲i̲n̲e̲t̲s̲?̲

You only have to turn off your media player of your viewer.

 Have fun playing the games you spent hours on in your younger years, or want to take a crack at the classics.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Montecito%20Bay/39/29/23

Bixyl Shuftan

The Gacha Show Premieres on Templar

By DrFran Babcock

I am not an oldbie, but I have been in Second Life™ long enough to have witnessed many ideas sweep the grid. Some come and go, and some stay. Right now gacha madness is in its ascendance, and few residents are without at least some awareness of what it’s all about.

What is Gacha?

The main gacha event is the Arcade Gacha ( http://thearcadesl.com ) held several times a year. Major content creators are asked to create a series of items, and place them in a machine where residents pay a fee to get the prizes that have been placed within. Most creators make one or a few items RARE, in that the odds of getting them are more difficult. The real coup in designing this event is that the items in the gacha machine are no modify, no copy, but transferable. This means, if you don’t like what you got in the machine, you can trade it for something else. An entire Gacha Culture has sprung up with residents running yard sales to sell their extra and unwanted items. In addition, some items that are RARE, especially items from earlier gachas fetch prices of several thousand Lindens! There is even an entire sim devoted to the sale, auction, and display of gacha items: Gachetopia.

Gachetopia is a sim-wide yard sale along with several stores dedicated to selling items from the past gacha events. The sim is the work of Morbid and Luke Templar, who are dedicated gacha addicts. They have been selling items and holding auctions for a while now, but on Saturday, November 16^th, they hosted the first of what should be many live shows called: The Gacha Show. Each show is planned to host a content creator, and an interview with them to explore their work, their lives, and their gacha goods.

I am fascinated always by the content creators with consistently innovative, detailed and improving work. For the first show Morbid Templar interviewed the genius behind O.M.E.N.: Damien.

Damien and O.M.E.N.

A sampling of the wise words of Damien is below. Damien was very measured and wise in his responses, and the crowd was clearly eating out of his hand. He even got a marriage proposal from someone in the audience by the end.

 I found out that O.M.E.N. actually stands for Ominous Meaning Elude No one, that Damien created as a comment on all the business names in SL that actually mean nothing.

Creative inspiration that might be saleable is hard to come by, and Damien admits that he does rely upon his manager, Aarin Jennifers, to help him with his creations. He has several ideas that were rejected by his manager  (farting tacos ), but he has held on to them for the future. His personal favorite gacha creation of his own is the Panda Sushi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/75496317@N07/8799819073/ )

Morbid bodly brought up the subject of the odds on the machines. My own experience has been that some RARES in the machines are harder to get than others, and my visits to yard sales have confirmed that certain objects are much harder to find. Damien felt that no RARE should be impossibly hard to win, especially if someone plays a machine very often.

He was asked what other creators he admired and he mentioned two of my favorites, Apple Fall and Anya Ohmai (Nu’ville), and one I didn’t know: Rose of Olive. Of great interest was the fact that all of the designers in the Arcade Gacha Group get free copies of the gacha items. This tidbit had the crowd murmuring in jealousy.

However, no matter how much the crowd begged, Damien would not let people know what would be in his December 2013 Arcade Gacha, but he had sage advice for new content creators: Be willing to embrace being small to be big.

FREEBIES!

A big surprise was announced after the show. Each person who had attended was treated to a detailed globe made by Luke Templar that was only for this show, and would be retired. In addition, Damien promised a free gift to the attendees of this first Gacha Show.

The next guest is already lined up, and is Contraption, who makes…well, contraptions. It is set for November 30^th on the sim of Templar, and if it is run as professionally and welcoming as this first show, it will be a hit.

If you are interested in joining the Gachatopia group, you can teleport to the sim here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Templar/121/179/41

DrFran Babcock

The Elusive Arcade

By Gemma Cleanslate

I have been trying for two days to get into the Country Club region to visit The Arcade. 

This is an Event at The Arcade and it is the first birthday. It is always full! This event will be here until the 30th of September, so sooner or later you may be able to get there. It is billed on the website as, “The Arcade is a brand of gacha events within Second Life, featuring some of the grid’s best content creators.” Read about gacha events here on the website http://thearcadesl.com/about/the-event/ . 

As I hung around in the air at the edge of the sim with others waiting and hoping we got a message from Archibald Gachum, who shouted, "Enter The Arcade photography contest, featuring prizes from 12 beloved brands. 1st place gets early access into our next 4 gacha events (December 2013 - September 2014)! http://thearcadesl.com/contest/how-to-enter “ in the chat. 

As I cammed in on the inside of the Arcade, I could see that the games are definitely arcade games from the past. Each game has a prize connected with it that is displayed on a small billboard next to the machines. I don’t know how much it costs to play yet, since I am still hovering on the next sim edge but it looks extremely popular and I wanted to let you all know about it so you will have time to try to enter. The build itself is worth a visit and perhaps if you are a photographer enter the contest. 

As I looked around at the three sims next to Country club I found 34 avatars hovering in the air or on the landing ship in Casablanca Bay, or Club Road and Park Drive. If you are a member of the group I read that you are granted early admission to an event.  As I left there were still 31 people inside The Arcade. Good Luck!! I will try again tomorrow! This is the first time I have written about a place to which I have never been! 

Thanks to Daniel Voyager for getting the slurl!
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Country%20Club/167/114/3132

Gemma Cleanslate

Editor's Note: The games I noticed in a visit in June cost 25-100 Lindens each round to play. It's possible others could be higher.