It’s our first show of October, and tradition dictates spooky content. So join us in welcoming Podouken cohost Adam, who’ll help us navigate through some of the most memorably fun horror-themed games ever to hit arcades. Then it’s on to Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Shawn Layden leaving Sony, and the classic game series you’d like to see get FMV offshoots.
Question of the Week: Ever had a scary, spooky, or just creepy experience in an arcade? Tell us about it.
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Theme song by Matthew Joseph Payne. Break song is Big Bunyan Ride from CarnEvil.
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gonna guess the top 5’s #1 gonna be Darkstalkers or Splatterhouse. If we exclude pinball, can’t think much of horror themed arcade games..off the top…House of the Dead, Darkstalkers,Splatterhouse…uh Chiller? Cant wait to listen to find out!
Smh…how could I forget Ghosts and goblins!
My family cottage is walking distance from an arcade on the beach. Today it’s a shell of itself, but back in the mid 90’s – early 2000’s it was the only place I wanted to be. The creepiest it gets is the intermingling of the kids at the arcade, and the only bar in town literally attached to it. Pretty greasy after dark, I imagine.
The only time I was ever remotely scared, is when it started clicking w the manager that I had programmed the jukebox to play Biggie Smalls’ Gimme The Loot on near infinite repeat. I was sure we were gonna get kicked out, but I don’t think they ever found out who set that up.
I was very much afraid of the Wack-a-Gator game found in most Chuck-E-Cheese’s especially when it would say “Now, I’m REALLY Angry!” along with it’s squeaking parts. The same goes for Namco’s Cosmo Gang light gang, where a crew of aliens slowly moved threateningly towards where you. I’m not sure if the original game had an attract mode, or if the arcade owner had just reset the machine, but one day while standing next to it the unit began to come back to life as the aliens came out and lights flashed all on their own.
QotW: I own an arcade and was upstairs in the supply room during closed hours. I hear the distinct voice of a man from downstairs so I hustle down thinking I accidentally left the door unlocked and a curious customer wondered in. There’s no one there. Door is locked. Maybe I just imagined it? I go back upstairs.
A while later I hear the same voice again, but saying something else. Again, back downstairs to find an empty arcade. All the games are off (a rarity) so there’s nothing in attract mode that I’m hearing. Now I’m in a heightened state. Is there someone hiding waiting for me to leave so they can rob the place? After searching every spot a person could hide I again went back upstairs. This time I pulled up the security camera feed on my phone. I was going to catch them this time!
A few minutes later it happens again. I’m listening for it, look at the camera, but there’s no one on the feed. Plus, I start to realize that this voice is very familiar. He sounds a lot like… Homer Simpson. It was then that I remembered we installed a Simpsons talking clock a week or two before. I had never heard it over the noise of the games being on. D’oh!
my scariest arcade moment had nothing to do with games and more so the fact that i endended uo cheatong at video round up
QotW: https://youtu.be/oJTqoDzeJJA
Bonus callback to this episode at the end, just for you – it is the only time I have ever used that PlayStation share button.
QOTW: Alright picture this, a young Matt on his 5th birthday, innocent and hopeful for the future. My mother decided to throw a surprise birthday party for me at Chuck E. Cheese, this being my first time ever going, seeing the huge arcade I was blown away and so happy…. That was until it was time to go to the show room and have the “band” ie. The giant devil robots sing their happy birthday song to me in front of all my friends. All was well, that is until chucky had a catastrophic meltdown on stage, glitching out like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man after he jumped out the window BAD ENOUGH HIS HEAD STARTED TO SMOKE UP AND THE CHUCKY FACE BEGAN TO WARP AND MELT OFF HIS ENDO SKELETON. The staff didn’t think to remove the children and close the curtain til the damage was already done, I spent the rest of my birthday hiding under a table refusing to come out and face the skynet abortion. To this day I still have a fear of animatronics so bad playing FNAF {any of them} sends me straight into a panic attack. GOOD TIMES
So glad you guys brought up The House of The Dead 2, because that was a grievous oversight on the recent localization episode and I’m deeply ashamed. “Suffer like G did?” was that same category of bad localization as “That’s IT! That’s the SPIRIT!” where it’s bad in a particularly nuanced way that suggests humans weren’t even involved in the process. Also see the weird end dialogue where the final boss (“Goldman”): “In time…a csuccessor will cawawam.” Yes, he actually says “csuccessor.” Someone still needs to fucking explain themself for The House of The Dead 2.
https://youtu.be/ylY1npyyJiQ?t=269
QOTW: This isn’t really a “boo, boo, eek, rip” kind of scary story, or even really a story at all, BUT:
In one of our earlier attempts to get an official Capcom podcast off the ground, it was me, Brett, and Seth, and the two of them were swapping arcade electrocution stories. I think both involved ill-advised arcade cabinets at their local swimming pools, and I distinctly remember SETH distinctly remembering that when he got shocked, he could feel it all the way in his teeth. You’d think that would’ve been the end of his Street Fighter fascination or at least the end of his swimming fascination, but I have since seen him partake in both. We also had a guest speaker that week, one of the cool dudes in QA, and he was lamenting having recently lost a friend to an arcade cabinet that “arced on him” while he was tinkering around inside. (Let that be a lesson–those things hold a dangerous charge for awhile even after they’re unplugged).
Seemed like everyone had an arcade electrocution story except for me. At the time, I was still quite shy and deferential after so many years in Japan, and I remember feeling like I was spoiling the podcast with my gloomy, never-been-electrocuted-by-video-games presence, and of course once you’ve gotten it in your head that you’re bombing, you’re destined to bomb. The podcast lasted another two episodes before the last of the life faded from Brett’s eyes.
THAT SAID, when I was nine my grandparents treated our entire family to a luxury cruise, and there was nothing for the minors to do except hang out in the game room. It had two arcades–Final Fight and Pit Fighter, which was like choosing between diamonds and dogshit. Luckily most of the boat’s passengers were off doing fun adult cruise stuff like gambling and having one-night stands with fellow divorcees, but aside from my older brother and me, there was this one heavyset grown-ass man who was ALWAYS on the Final Fight cab, hogging it. He played with a fervent physicality I’ve rarely seen in a gamer since, pounding the buttons and heaving, and most notably, SWEATING PROFUSELY. After seeing him sweat all over the control panel twice, my brother dubbed him “sweatboy” even though he was, as I mentioned, a grown-ass man, and I of course followed suit because, as the youngest, I had no free will. But I mean also, it was a cartoonish amount of sweat. PUDDLES.
On our third or fourth visit to the game room, we were chagrinned to discover the Final Fight cab was out of order. Holy shit! Sweatboy had sweated it to death! That left only Pit Fighter, so we spent the rest of the week taking turns barfing off the deck and rewatching Joyluck Club and Grumpy Old Men in our quarters.
Despite our struggle, we all had a good laugh at sweatboy’s expense, but I realize in retrospect we were body-shaming him, and I’m pretty sorry about that. I do hope he got electrocuted though.
Oh geez, please tell me my comment isn’t gone forever.
Nm there it is! It disappeared momentarily? Carry on.