OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but the truth remains that Dance Dance puts the "fun" in "funk." My parents' major concern about videogames, that they nailed me to the chair for a couple of hours a day has been effectively destroyed now that one can work up a sweat on the dance pad. Now, if someone can invent a game that also gets kids to go outside, childhood obesity will be eradicated overnight.
Here, I must make a confession. My snobbish attitude toward the modern gaming scene initially turned my head from such miraculous inventions as the EyeToy and Dance Dance Revolution. Had it not been for a Second Generation Player wanting to try the games whose incessant advertisements were strobed at her between Pokemon programs, I would have unwittingly missed out. And as part of our cross-generational exchange, I felt it was my turn to educate her in the delights of retro gaming. For that, we needed an arcade.
You see, I had to show her the best video game ever. Do you know what that is? The answer might surprise and irritate some of you. Others already know the answer and are just waiting for me to say it. The best game ever is Double Dragon. It's no use arguing, because if you disagree, you're wrong.
The reason Double Dragon is the best game ever is because it introduced cooperative gameplay (plus, you get to pull peoples hair and throw oil barrels at them). Up until this point in 1988, players were pitted against each other, rather than united in gratifying digital violence against an endless onslaught of generic enemies. It was a major turning point in the life of the struggling arcade scene and actively encouraged solidarity in the unsavory types who frequented such places.
The cooperative mode of Double Dragon represents the quintessential purpose for playing video games in public: instilling a sense of camaraderie in the players, infusing the atmosphere with a feeling of common purpose and providing an unabashed enjoyment of time in a futile and profitless way. The thrill of simplistic, fast-paced, noisy and brainless (yet sociable) game playing comes not so much from the specific game in question, but from its environment and the interaction - albeit, an often unspoken bond - with the stranger on the machine next to you. None of these experiences can be quantified, packaged or sold to the home market, and these are the missing ingredients in the lives of the Second Generation of Players. If we do not show them, they will never fully appreciate the gifts we were given by the likes of Ralph Baer (inventor of Pong) and Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari).
I am fortunate enough to be an electronics engineer, as well as a flamboyant wordsmith, and unhinged enough of mind to have only used that vocation in recent years to build myself a full-size, upright arcade machine housing a PC and more than a few emulators. In truth, this stalwart beast provides more hours of video game mirth than any previously owned console or computer. It is also the closest I will come to that dream of "an arcade at home" until I become president of the Rank organisation and move the company headquarters to Coral Island on the Blackpool promenade.
There would be nothing to stop me from installing Doom or Quake or some similarly impressive feat of contemporary technology on my arcade machine, but its purpose is not one of an alternative controller, but of re-enacting the original gaming experience. If your first encounter with Double Dragon is on a PC emulator, controlled via the keyboard and displayed in a small window on the desktop, it would be an unsatisfactory experience indeed, though not due to the game's age or technical inferiority.
