a lot of modern lightgun stuff is either nigh-unbeatable or actually just unfair and not beatable outside of credit feeding. such is the state of arcades
i guess its cool but im not going to spend all my fucking money on one game. its basically just an amusement ride with toll booths
looking directly at you, Raw Thrills
stuff like Point Blank, Time Crisis, and House Of The Dead are exempt from this, they are designed to require skill, yes, but they dont resort to cheap shit to extort quarters from you. im refering to shitty licensed stuff that does a lot of unavoidable or cheap shot damage to force a game over.
a good example of the cheap bullshit im talking about is Aliens Extermination's final boss basically having no hitstun and impossible to cancel attacks (unless you let loose all your special ammo, which then means you have nothing but Pulse Rifle rounds left)
the operator options even let you adjust the minimum time a credit can last before you can get a game over and how long to give iframes to the player after they take a hit
this is gonna be a slightly emotional statement but american arcades have no soul anymore, its just amusement rides with toll booths and thinly veiled gambling
racing games tend to be ok though, which is suprising youd think theyd find some bullshit to sneak in there too but theyve remained mostly ok
"wow thats a helluva generalization orchid but what about those places that carry imported rhythm games and stuff"
i hear about those places and ive yet to come across one. most of the arcade stuff ive had access to is either retro stuff in varying states of maintinence, or modern bullshit.
im sorry if you take offence to this, im just whining about the death of the arcade and the feasting upon its corpse that capitalism is doing.
you could say this was the end state from its inception i guess, the whole point is you arent going to be making money from the people who are good enough to beat the game or a good chunk of the game on minimal coinage. im just upset because that delicate "hard but with the tools to succeed and thrive if you learn how to best it" balance is completely disregarded in a lot of these licensed titles.
Goo Truther 
@lyncia oh what I would give for Time Crisis 4 at home, though.
@thufie time crisis is beatable. things from namco and sega dont tend to do what im being pissed about.
@thufie ACTION!
American light gun games = the euroshmups of light gun games
We've felt this way about them for at least 20 years. Even before we could pin down the differing design principles, we felt that most Japanese gun games came off as genuine challenges to the player rather than just succubus'ing their wallets.
@lyncia Nah, that checks out. the best I could ever find myself in Seattle was a Neo-Geo
@elfi hey at least its a neo geo
PRO SYSTEM MAX
@lyncia Actually I forgot, there was a singular ice cream parlor on the north end that took an hour by bus to reach that regularly rotated different 90s-2000s shmup boards
That was pretty sick
@elfi i have a place somewhat near me that has all sorts of neat retro stuff, even old pinball tables that used the spinning score tickers and stuff
like yes, arcade stuff is hard, but i have an eye for when stuff is doing too many cheap hits