I played the game entitled “Dynablaster” where the goal is to place time triggered bombs on the floor to blast enemies and blast blocks to open new pathways and get powerups. This used to be one of my favorite arcade games when I was young and would play this with some friends. It is playable to up to 4 players at a time. My experience playing it at first was really confusing as there was no controls listed. I had to literally press every button on my keyboard until a menu showed up and found it opened with tab. After that figuring out all the controls was a piece of cake and I was able to start playing. It was very pleasing and much like the game I remembered it to be. It was as simple as I remembered and very fun. However playing the game I realized how irritating it can also be. Although it has simple controls and a simple goal, accomplishing killing monsters I found to be harder than I remembered. Most of the time I find myself not having enough powerups so a monster can chase me and kill me off right away, but when I destroy blocks to get powerups, it is harder to trap those monsters and kill them. Not only that but literally half of my deaths is me killing myself to my own bomb just because I trap myself or I keep forgetting the range of the bomb. Some advantages I see with playing on my own personal computer was that with the controls I had, it was much easier than playing on a joystick on an actual arcade machine. It is also very convenient to play on a laptop as you can sit, stand, or laydown (I was laying down) rather than being forced to stand. On top of it all, everything is FREE. Just to get to the boss stage of the first stage, as you can see below, it probably took me like 6 coins. I can see how this is a very good arcade game in that you die A LOT yet you still want to play. Although you can play as much as you want for free and have the convenience of playing on a desktop of laptop, playing the original arcade machine has a different feel to it. It feels more fun in a way that you are playing it the way the makers originally wanted you to play it and it has a nostalgic feel that emits the hidden arcade gamer in you. Also, games, especially like Dynablaster, where it is much more fun played multiplayer is better on the arcade machines as they have a joystick and buttons available for each (or they have 4 machines connected) however playing on the pc it is possible to play 4 players but rather difficult, and the aesthetic and original feel is not there and not as fun as the original. Overall playing this game brings back memories and was very fun. I will look into other games I loved as well and play those too… looking at you Space Defender.
Old and New Games 