After much Internet dredging, I found an arcade within a reasonable distance that has the up and coming Arc System Works' Blazblue. Of course I pencil it into my schedule, and this past Wednesday, I was able to drop by the Tilt arcade of the Puente Hills Mall.
So how was the experience in general?
It was a pretty first rate trip. First of all, I'd like to say a Beard Papa is right across from the Tilt arcade, so that was a huge plus. What I did for change was basically buy a single creme puff with a $5 bill, and use the rest of the change on the quarter machines in the arcade.
Tilt arcade is a very nice, diverse arcade. It has very distinct sections for fighters, light gunners, and racers, with Blazblue being in the center of the arcade just for me!
Blazblue was of course my main attraction. I might have spent up to $5 in quarters on it. Doesn't sound too bad does it? That's because it costs 50 cents to start a game and challenge someone, but rematches are only 25 cents! That's a big plus to the mentality of the challengers, as it doesn't cost too much to fight someone else and improve your skills.
The game is a smooth, aggression oriented fighting style. With only four attack buttons, small link combos are easily achieved. The normal seasoned fighter mentality will work on these buttons. Mash the jab button twice or thrice, link a medium attack, link a heavy attack, and finish it with a drive attack, which is usually the strongest attack and includes the special effects that are unique to each character. For example, Ragna's drive attack absorb health and Jin's freeze his opponents. Advanced combos of course exist, courtesy of youtube for their existance, but the use of four buttons encourages less focus on manipulating buttons and more on rushing your opponent.
It's a very refreshing way to fight after two months of SFIV mania. You can full on run in this game, air dash and air block, and jumping in is actually relatively safe compared to the dragon punch fest in SFIV.
One of my gripes is that with four buttons, special move execution overlap and depend on arbitrary buttons. A quarter motion backwards with the heavy attack button yields a completely different attack then quarter motion backwards with the light attack button. This can be a little confusing when your character has plenty of special attacks, but I guess it adds to the sense that you should really main a character when you fight against other people rather then casually playing all of them (in fact, when you get a new challenger, you're forced to play as the character you were winning with. No character switching until you lose).
After Blazblue, there were other notable games. Let's Go Jungle is a SEGA developed game that houses it's gamers in a jeep shaped cabinet with gun turrets. Unlimited ammo, but limitless enemies, plus it mixes things up every once in a while with arcade style quick time events and even a segment where you use oars instead to whack frogs away from you with the right timing.
There was also Brave Firefighters, the arcade style firefighting game (with my partner strangely more interested in shooting water out at random then putting out fires) and even the Ferrari game which utilizes a three-monitor display to give you an enhanced peripheral vision experience.
I heartily reccomend Tilt arcade to anyone within range of it. From my location in Westminster, CA, it's nearly the same distance as to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, except the traffic never comes to a dead stop, so the drive actually feels faster.
note: photography was actually not allowed in the arcade. Consider yourselves lucky I snuck these photos!
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