Continues

Today is a good day to die.

We think of the phrase "Insert Coin to Continue," or something like that, as an essential part of arcade culture. It is a screen that comes up constantly, especially in the quarter-draining beat 'em ups and shoot 'em ups that are more prominent in later years. When we originally discussed this, before playing any games, we talked about a 5.00 limit, split between us. We set this as a high, but not totally unrealistic amount to be able to spend in an arcade session from our youth. While we would rarely, if ever, spend all of our money on a single game, it is still a useful round number for the purpose of this blog. All of this being said, as soon as we started with the project, we were bluntly reminded that games did not always have continues.

I developed a love of pinball during college that has given me some appreciation for this style of game, with the entire focus being on your high score for a single round. Even so, many modern pinball games are able to be toggled into a mode that support continues, albeit at a higher price. There may be delineated high score tables, to differentiate between a "pure" game and one bolstered with additional money, but still, there is some form of a continue.

Why does this matter? For games like Battle City and Ice Climbers, which are designed around self-contained levels, continues wouldn't do much, and would even trivialize them to a large extent. While we were able to get through enough of Mario Bros. to see the entirety of enemies and obstacles, we were unable to accomplish the same in Joust, due to the sheer difficulty of the game. After doing some supplemental reading on Exed Exes, we learned that, while were able to continue in the game, doing so dashed any chances we may have had of actually "beating" it by achieving 5,000,000 points.