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Everyone knows how Nintendo revolutionized the home console market here in the states.
The NES rebuilt a dead market. No one debates this. But that’s not how it started. Nintendo’s
operations in the US started in the arcade sector in the early 80’s, back when arcades
were... y’know, alive. Back when there was a tremendous gulf between what the Pac-Man
in your local pizzeria could pull off and how that same game looked on your Atari. But
this machine creates a paradox: It’s an arcade machine, designed to play software
that is - in most cases - exactly what you’d get on a home console. There are significant
differences, of course: For its use on an arcade monitor, the video output is significantly
altered from how it’d be in an NES cart. The Joystick and Button layout drops the Select
and Start buttons into the middle of the console... which seems weird, until you realize that
very few if any 2-player games really made use of them. Mostly because, on the original
Famicom, the second-player controller didn’t have Select or Start buttons at all. No, seriously.
Go check it out. I’ll wait.
Back with me? Cool. Here’s what makes the whole thing run: the main PCB, with slots
up on that top right corner for 10 games to be installed. Each game comes on its own daughter
board, like Tecmo Bowl here, which connects via this wide array of pins. All you have
to do to swap games is change out these cards, slide the whole thing back into the cabinet,
and BAM. You’re running Walter Payton down the field... on an arcade machine. It might
seem a bit strange to buck the trend of arcade-hardware superiority in such a situation, but consider
the advertisement possibilities: You’re in the arcade already, when all of a sudden
there’s a sign on top of the PlayChoice machine reading: “NINJA GAIDEN! NEW GAME!”
and you know that, for just 25 cents, you can sample what this Ninja Gaiden thing’s
all about. Third parties liked this idea, so everyone from Konami to Capcom, Tecmo to
Technos, even Rare and Square lined up to make their games available on this arcade
hardware.
As for the machine itself, it’s in great shape after 30 years and two modifications,
first from Donkey Kong into a Vs. Duck Hunt (hence the inclusion of the light gun), and
then from Vs. Duck Hunt to this PlayChoice-10. Rather than charging players per continue,
the PlayChoice ran on a timer, with each quarter buying a chunk of time. That said, since this
is a modification of what are, essentially, home console games, it can get a little more
expensive than just paying for the lives you use. They released Mega Man 3 for this thing.
The fastest non-tool-assisted speedrun I’ve seen for that game is 37 minutes, which - at
a generous 5 minutes a quarter - would still cost you at least two bucks. It’s certainly
a different paradigm, and one that kinda breaks down if taken out of its moment. And stuck
in my living room. On free-play. ‘Cuz this machine doesn’t stand for warp whistles.