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… you said it. Remember that gulf I’ve often mentioned, regarding the disparity between
what you could do in the arcade and what the NES or the SMS or the Atari could handle?
This is one of the prime examples. The original Paperboy was easy to spot in arcades, because...
well, instead of a joystick, it had a set of handlebars (complete with rubber grips),
thus making any home version woefully inadequate. (Shy of some trickery with electrical engineering
and a dismantled Huffy.) While I’ve covered the NES version of the game rather extensively
- owing to playing the paint off it back in high school - there’s a number of significant
differences that make the arcade release superior, including the use of vocal clips to express
the “total bogus”ness of a given situation.
You’re familiar with the premise: You’re a kid just trying to make his two bucks in
this dog-eat-cyclist world, by delivering newspapers to your subscribers up and down
Easy Street, Middle Road, and Hard Way. See what they did there? The higher difficulties
play much the same, but include more hazards (that’s bad) and a score multiplier (that’s
better). You’ll recognize most of the troublemakers: Breakdancers, berserk lawnmowers, cars, go-karts,
hearses, and... death itself. Man. Arcade games back in the day sure were morbid. Anyway.
The primary difference is in the control scheme: Whereas in the NES version, you travelled
at a constant rate of speed unless you held up to accelerate or down to brake, here, you’ve
gotta pedal. And by pedal, I mean push the handlebars forward to speed up and back to
slow down... when, when you think about what you’re doing when you actually ride a bike,
seems completely backward. You’re not gonna pull the bars to you when you brake, that’d
just send you right over the front of the bike! Anyway. In this particular Gamecube
version (on the Midway Arcade Classics collection), all that nonsense is handled by way of the
analog R button, where at least you default to braking.
Speaking of breaking, you’ll notice that there seem to be many more designs of house
windows, statuary, and other things ready to crumble when struck by oncoming news. Yes,
the advanced graphics of the arcade version allow for weird stone snakes in addition to
ramps along the side of the road, in case you need to hang ten real quick before getting
back to your rounds. It looks and plays better than its console cousins, and if you can find
a copy in an arcade somewhere - make that, if you can find an arcade somewhere - it behooves
you to put your baseball cap on and drop in a quarter.