Maker:
Year:
To Play:
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Raw Thrills Inc.
March 2024
$5
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I happened to play this monster of a game at Logan Arcade in Chicago. Like many arcade VR games you see now, it's less of a game and more of an amusement park ride. Standing at 11 feet tall with the marquee attached and 9 feet wide, it's the size of an SUV standing on its end. There's two seats, one for each player (though you can play by your lonely self as I did) with VR goggles, six-channel audio, rumble effects, a base that moves on hydraulics and... a fan. Yep, a fan blows air in your face. If this cabinet also had sprayed the smell of burning buildings and gunpowder as you played I would not be surprised. There's also two big 65" screens that show spectators the view that each player sees, so you aren't just watching two people scream and move around like crazy fentanyl users on public transit.
To play, you sit down in the seats, put in the money (in this case, five whole dollars) and adjust the VR goggles on your head.
I have large glasses and they still fit very easily into the goggles, which is a good feature. Unfortunately for me I have progressive lenses, so the view was not perfect - blurry in some places, misaligned in some others. For the vast majority of people think this won't be a problem. Still, even with my lens problems the VR gave me perfect isolation, taking me away from the arcade to a... flying gunship? I think that's what it is.
It's a shooter on rails. You have a two-handled gatling gun that you blast away with by holding down either the thumb or finger triggers. Didn't really matter which. You start the game by selecting one of two chapters - one where you fight Megaguirus and one where you fight Manda. They both have similar gameplay, just different areas of Tokyo to fly though and get destroyed. Megaguirus involves more flying around burning skyscrapers while Manda involves skirting around rivers.
You basically just aim and shoot, killing all sorts of little mini monsters and robots, with the occasional giant monster encounter as you fly around in some undefined gunship. I could not see any way to actually "die" in the game. You just seem to fly for the duration (it felt like about 5 minutes but might have been shorter) and try to rack up as much score as possible.
The Megaguirus and Manda encounters involve very video-boss like behavior, where they come at you with claws, feets, sharpened mouth parts, or just blasting fire/energy. You have to shoot targets on the Kaiju (in dramatic slow-motion) before they deal you serious hurt.
Both chapters with you facing the magnificent Godzilla himself. Your imaginary pilot sends you flying away from him as his awesomeness tries to destroy you and Tokyo, with you occasionally stopping to blast away and his encroaching hands, feet or mouth. Eventually you will defeat Godzilla (though we all know he can never be defeated as long as he makes Toho Inc sweet sweet lucre) and you will go to the scoring screen. Then you have the option to shove another five dollars in or end the game and go back to the reality of the noisy arcade.
Definitely a fun time. It's pricey but not too much more expensive than any other enormous "ride-like" games you would find in an arcade. Though I am a lonely bastard I could definitely see it was significantly more fun with two people. How many times in life are you going to have fun shouting "SHOOT GODZILLA'S FEET" to a friend or lover? Very few.
--Shaun Clayton
June 9, 2024
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