Sunday 15 October 2017

Norfolk Coast 2 Coast - 2017 Update

Great Yarmouth


There have been a couple of new additions this year including Cruis ‘n Blast, Daytona Championship USA, Space Invaders Frenzy and The Walking Dead.

   






As well as the new Daytona, the original can still be found at Britannia Pier along with Sega Rally Championship.
   

  


   

Airline Pilots – Sega – 1999


A cool game and one you don’t see very often.  The game runs on Naomi hardware and the cabinet has throttle control, flaps and landing gear buttons.  There is also a DLX triple screen cabinet.  They had one on Southwold Pier, but I think it’s gone now.  Here is a video of my wife taking off a Boeing 777 and flying above Tokyo.


Aliens Extermination – Global VR – 2006
Having recently watched Alien Covenant, I was in the mood to blast some xenomorphs.  The game is good fun and really captures the feel of the Aliens movie, and the ammo counter on the guns is a nice touch.  I actually prefer it to the more recent Aliens Armageddon.


Some more pics taken along the seafront.

   


Pleasure Beach
The Pleasure Beach still has the oldest games along the seafront. 


   


I was pleasantly surprised to find that after many years Ridge Racer has finally been fixed!


The Simpsons – Konami – 1991

The oldest and one of the last few remaining traditional joystick games along the seafront.  I still remember the summer when the cabinet was first sited, with a crowd of people waiting patiently for a go.  The game has done well!



Sonic Blast Man, another game you don’t see very often anymore.




Carousel Amusements – Hemsby
It was great to see my favourite OutRun Midi cab still going strong.



Hermanus - Winterton-on-Sea

S.C.I.-Special Criminal Investigation – Electrocoin / Taito – 1989


I was really pleased to see Special Criminal Investigation cockpit cabinet still up and running.  I had a few credits and the game was fully working and played well.  I didn’t really notice before is how good the sound is on the cockpit version with the speaker positioned above the players head.  Here is a video of the game.


Sadly all the games were out of order except for The Simpsons upright, which has had a pretty poor LCD conversion.  I really hope S.C.I. doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Castaways Holiday Park - Bacton
The venue has been refurbished since my last visit.  Generally refurbishment doesn’t bode well for older games, but fortunately my concerns were unfounded with only Silent Scope EX disappearing from the line-up.


It was great to see my old favourite Chase H.Q. still up and running.  Unfortunately there were some graphical glitches, particularly round the black Porsche, but the game was still playable.



The Electrocoin Bar Line wasn’t working on my last visit, but has now been repaired.  The cab had a nice selection of Neo Geo MVS titles, including Aero Fighters 2, League Bowling, Puzzle Bobble, Shock Troopers, Tecmo World Soccer ’96 and Top Player’s Golf.


Unfortunately Street Fighter II’ was out of order.


Castaways seem keen on continuing to provide classic gaming with a modern multicade cocktail cab added to the line-up.


Grays Amusements – Mundesley


On my last visit most of the machines had faults and I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of these have been rectified.  At the back of the arcade they have Crisis Zone, Area 51, Tokyo Wars, Sega Rally 2, Star Wars Trilogy, Soul Surfer and Alpine Surfer.  All the games were working, except for Crisis Zone which was switched off.  The Sega Rally 2 twin has replaced the original Sega Rally.  It was great to see both monitors now working on Tokyo Wars and Star Wars Trilogy back up and running, although the controls were a bit off on the latter. 



Area 51 – Atari Games – 1995


You hardly ever see the later Atari games these games.  The game was good fun and played well.  I remember seeing this in all the arcades back in the day.  I was never a big fan, preferring to spend my money on Sega’s output, but appreciate it more now.  Here is a video of the game.


Soul Surfer – Sega Rosso – 2002


This is the only Soul Surfer machine I’ve ever seen.  The colours were pretty washed out (no pun intended!) on the rear projection screen, but the game was still playable.  It’s a Japanese import, complete with 100 Yen stickers!  The game runs on Sega Naomi 2 hardware.



2 comments:

  1. Really nice to see that Grays fixed all their machines- I was last there in 2016, and only Alpine Surfer was working. Sad that they seem to have got rid of the Ez2Dancer rhythm game though, their cab was one of only a few working ones left in the UK by 2014- there's none now.

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  2. Just to add as well as machines mentioned above, Grays now has a Fish Tales pinball, a Defender and a Space Invaders part 2. All £1 per credit.

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