First up, I want to say Woohoo! and Thank you! to everybody who responded so positively to our announcement of voice acting. I also know a lot of you want to audition but we aren't doing open casting calls at this time. We may open up one or more roles in the future, and if we do, you'll hear it here first. We promise. Until then, thanks for your patience.

Now, then! I had a long blog post written up about emotional sincerity, about how our game was meant to wear its heart on its sleeve and reject “lol cringe” attitudes... but it seems I already wrote that post like a year ago, so I had to scrap it. You can read it here if you like, though.

So instead of a pathos appeal, let's talk ethos. Let's talk about my past experience in game development, and how it lead to Arcade Spirits. This is Stefan speaking; Aenne has her own tale to tell and I'll see about getting her on the blog to chat about it later.

Most folks know me from two different paths I took -- writing (cough) anime fanfic and then original novels, and writing Neverwinter Nights modules. But truthfully Arcade Spirits first started out as an absurd little project from 1999 called “Culture Shock,” which was my attempt to write a visual novel engine in JAVASCRIPT to be playable in a browser. ...look, it was 1999, JavaScript was almost respectable at the time, okay?


It was a different time. A far weebier time.

Eventually I canned the project as I just didn't have access to the art resources I needed to actually do it, and JavaScript was clunky at best. Although there was this new thing I'd learned about at Otakon, attending a panel about... what was it called... Ren-py or something? Which seemed viable...

...but before I could dip too deep in those waters, Neverwinter Nights was released. And that changed everything. With a strong toolkit-based approach and an excellent dialogue editor, I was able to create storytelling adventures using a popular platform. I was in on it from day one, releasing Penultima, followed by Penultima ReRolled and the more horror-based elegia eternum series. Finally, I very nearly created an official Bioware campaign named the HeX coda, but corporate miscommunication resulted in the project being dropped from their roster and instead released for free.

(Interestingly, Fist of Discomfort -- the game-within-a-game of Arcade Spirits -- almost was a Neverwinter Nights module. I'd experimented with making a simplified brawler game out of the D&D based fightin' engine, complete with those flashy GO! arrows you'd see in Final Fight.)


All my NWN games were very character-driven, as you can see here.

But D&D wasn't really ideal for storytelling, because no matter how hard I tried I could never quite get the combat balance right. I could make stories featuring memorable characters, including some of the “dating” mechanics seen in Arcade Spirits, but it wasn't quite enough to really explore narrative potential. Exploring relationships -- both romance and friendship -- through game systems has always fascinated me. To make that dream a reality, I needed a different tool.

For about ten years I opted to go back to writing novels. I didn't need artists or musicians or coders to write a novel, just my own brain and a keyboard. It felt like a style I could actually work in without hitting the limitations I'd hit trying to be an entire game studio by myself. Meanwhile, the indie scene for games kept growing and growing, and visual novels started becoming more and more prominent...

Then in 2016, Aenne Schumann suggested working on a project together. She had friends who could help, resources we could tap. I had money to bankroll the venture and an idea that had been forming since 1999. Both of us combined had a diverse array of perspectives about arcades and arcade culture, which could be used to write a stronger story than either of us could have created alone. And we had the tool I'd learned about so long ago, RenPy. The time was finally right to make this work.

No more limitations. No more compromises. If I was only ever going to get one shot at making a professional video game I wanted to go all out -- hire amazing artists, collaborate with them, work with a publisher, get this in front of as many people as possible. If it tanked, I'd soak the loss and at least say “I did it, I crossed that off my bucket list.”

But if it succeeds. If this grand fiasco actually succeeds...

Well. We'll see, won't we?

Good news, everyone! We’re adding voice acting to Arcade Spirits! It’s our number one requested feature by far, something people kept coming up to us at conventions asking about. And now that we’ve got it in the works, I feel confident talking about this new feature with you all!



How about some Q&A about this new feature? Yeah. Let’s pull up a chair and straddle it from behind while turning our ball cap to a jaunty angle so we can rap, kids.

How will acting in the game work, given all the customization options?

We’re using a couple stellar games as our model for this — Octopath Traveler, Danganronpa, Dream Daddy, Fire Emblem. Instead of voicing every single line (which let’s be honest, would cost us a fortune) we’re voicing key emotional moments in every “level” or chapter of the game. Outside those moments, you’ll hear brief emotional reactions (“Yes!” “Woohoo!” “Hrmmm…” “I don’t know.”) to ensure you’re still getting some of that juicy voice flavor in every bite.

How many characters will have voices?

Fifteen of ’em. The core cast, of course, as well as any secondary character that keeps coming back in the story. And a few fun surprises.

Who has been cast so far? Can I be in the game? Please?

Alas, can’t tell you. The casting process is ongoing. We may also have an open casting future in the weeks ahead, so keep an eye out for details — no need to contact us ahead of time, we’ll be sure to let you know when it starts. Gotta be vague here because this is a work in progress and I don’t want to promise anything just yet.

I don’t like voices in my visual novels!

That’s fine! If you’re a streamer who wants to do the voice-over on your own, there’ll be a volume slider for voices, just like everything else in the game. You can turn it down or turn it off at any time. And if you leave it on it should automatically “duck” the volume of our amazing music a bit, so you can clearly hear the voices. In addition, you can leave the emotional quips and reactions in, while turning off the fully-acted lines if that’s what you prefer.

Will the demo be updated with voices?

We might update it with the short emotional reaction lines, but the demo’s dialogue script doesn’t have any fully voiced scene content since it’s using a time compressed / specialized chunk of the main game.

When is Arcade Spirits releasing?!

We’ve got a target in mind, but again, we don’t like to promise anything until we’re totally sure. It’s not fair to you if we make mistakes. We’ll have an announcement for this in future, though, we promise! You won’t miss it.

Oh, hey, while I’m here, what’s going on with the Patreon?

October is the last month of our Patreon. Thanks to everyone who’s been supporting us along the way! Anyone who contributes $25 or more over the lifetime of the project (including October) will get a few final beta versions, and a final release copy of the game. If you want to get in on that as a new player, you can! Just join with a “monthly” donation of $25, then cancel it a day later. We charge up front, so it’ll count! Or you can wait for the full release, that’s cool too. It’s up to you.

Regardless… thanks for being a part of Arcade Spirits. All of you. If you’re reading these words, you’re down the rabbit hole with us, and we welcome you. Let your friends know about Arcade Spirits, get the word out. The more successful we are, the more likely we can keep this ball rolling well into the future!

As production winds down on Arcade Spirits — we’re aiming to be content complete by December, to allow some time for testing and implementation before our Q1 2019 release window — I’m finding I have less stuff to talk about in the dev blog. Fortunately, we’ve got a strong community, and they had a good idea for this week’s entry: What are some of the key differences between our alternate timeline and the real world?

Now, keep in mind Arcade Spirits is a lighthearted game and not a history textbook. I know the Internet worships at the altar of CinemaSins and loves to pick apart every single logic gap as a “plot hole” but we’re going for a loose and fun interpretation of history. It definitely wouldn’t totally work out this way… but it’s fun to make believe, right? Right. So, what if…

The Atari 2600 Never Failed

Atari took their time to make a proper port of Pac-Man, and a really good E.T. game, and didn’t overproduce either of them. As a result there is no mass grave in New Mexico of unsold 2600 carts and the system continued to thrive. Without the power vacuum left by Atari’s death, Nintendo didn’t muscle in in 1985 to utterly dominate the home arcade scene — and Atari’s strength kept their arcade division going strong, maintaining the arcade scene in tandem with rising home consoles.

The three major players in the console scene in 20XX are now Atari, Sega, and Nintendo. In this timeline, the proposed Nintendo-Sony co-developed PlayStation never fell through, because the Philips CD-I didn’t get in the way of the project. Nintendo were the first to optical media, but Atari’s long-standing emphasis on backwards compatibility (you could play 2600 games on an Atari XL, for instance) means that they remain a force to be reckoned with.

The Mainstream Accepts Video Games

Since the crash never happened and Nintendo wasn’t forced to push the NES as a children’s toy complete with a toy robot, the momentum of adults and young adults playing games back in the 70s and 80s kept going. eSports rise sooner than expected, with organized tournaments like EVO launching early and staying strong.

While arcades never surpass more long-standing pursuits like going out to the movies or grabbing a pizza, they aren’t quite as looked down on as being only for nerds or children. It’s still a trivial pursuit, since they are games and games are silly, but generally they stabilize in the cultural consciousness.

The Inevitable Rise of Kiddie Casinos Still Happens, But Slower

Have you been in a Dave & Busters or Chuck E. Cheese lately? Basically they’re just gambling palaces with no traditional video games whatsoever. But this was a survival tactic, a way to keep their businesses afloat while traditional joystick gaming was migrating to home consoles for enthusiasts only. If arcades never died, these chain franchises wouldn’t have to rely quite as hard on prize games… but prize games would still be a major factor.

Everybody likes the rush of winning, and early ticket games like Skeeball(tm) (or ‘Alley Rollers’ to use the non-trademarked name) would prove the model can work. So while there wouldn’t be a mid-90s rampaging push towards abandoning ship on the arcade model, those who cared more about raw profit than tradition would definitely still migrate in that directions.

Oh, Also We Have Holograms And Sentient A.I. For Reasons

And here’s where I take a left turn into fantasyland, because Iris — your adorable virtual assistant — not only is amazingly sophisticated beyond any 2018 level smartphone tech, but I have a few cute pics in game of her literally sitting on the edge of your phone and extending away from the screen. It’s similar to the scanlines you see on the spotlights over Teo’s dance stage, or how Gavin’s tablet was originally going to have some hovering holograms.

This was something I debated removing to keep things realistic, but… instead, I just don’t comment on it. I let Iris stay adorable even if she’s implausible, because it’s cute and makes a nice visual and again, we are not a history textbook.

…although there IS a bit more going on behind why she’s so very, very intelligent. And I’d say more, but… spoilers.

I think that’ll do for missives from the year 20XX. I don’t want to spoil all the surprises. Hope you enjoy our alternate timeline when the game releases early next year!

We’ve been asked this quite often — “Will Arcade Spirits be coming out on Switch or PS4 PS VITA or XBox One or Ouya or Intellivision or the Fairchild Channel F?” Console gamers like their story-driven games too, and it’s perfectly understandable to want a port.

Let me say up front we are NOT ruling a console port out. But I figured this week, I’d let you peek behind the curtains and see why isn’t not as easy as checking the ‘Compile Switch Version’ box and hitting OK.

Arcade Spirits uses the open source Ren’Py engine, which is a wonderful Python-powered system that gets you up and running quickly when making a visual novel. It’s powerful and customizable and has many of the features we needed right out of the box. We didn’t have to code our own save game system, or our own history buffer, or any of the standard visual novel systems — it just does it for you without much fanfare.

Alas, one thing we hadn’t realized when deciding to use Ren’Py is that there are no console ports of the engine. It’s open source, yeah, but requires Python, OpenGL, and a host of other tidbits to be ported before it can even consider the possibility of starting to maybe work on another system.

It’s not impossible — anybody with enough know-how and skill could probably port it. But so far nobody has, so we’d be starting from square one on a task we are woefully unprepared for. There’s a reason I picked a scripting system for this game instead of coding it down to the metal in assembly, folks. I ain’t that amazing at coding.

(UPDATE: A new wrinkle in the works. For a Switch port, it’s not enough to port the engine — since it’s not based on Unity, essentially every individual visual novel would need to be one whole and cohesive project with a complete dev kit and development contract, and likely still need to involve Renpy’s development team. So it’s a much taller ask than I had anticipated in the first place. Not sure if this is the case for PS4 but it’s likely the same issue. Fortunately there is a UWP version of Renpy in the works, so XBox One is possible, but still a long ways off and may have other hurdles.)

So, what’s the alternative? Basically, moving the whole kit ‘n kaboodle over to another visual novel engine, one which already has console support. Notably any system designed for Unity would do the job. But porting a game, even one as “simple” as a visual novel, is difficult. How do I do the customized visual effects and UI, when I don’t know enough to customize Unity to my needs? What about future localization efforts? It’s a tough sell, especially when we’re releasing in Q1 2019.

That leaves us with three options. Figure out how to port Ren’Py (or hire someone to do it), figure out how to port the game to another engine (or hire someone to do it), or let it slide for now and maybe switch engines before starting a sequel.

I won’t say what option we’re taking because, well, we don’t know! Right now we’re focused on getting the Win/Mac/Linux version out the door in good shape, so you have a quality game from day one. But… if that game sells well enough, if it’s clear there’s a burning hunger for Arcade Spirits… who knows what may happen?

Apologies, forgot to upload last week's dev blog -- and it was a doozy, so let's make sure we don't pass it completely! I'll roll last week and this week into one post.

Today we're talking about the new animated backgrounds we're adding, one of which you can see in our updated demo. Nearly every single background in the game is animated, adding lighting effects and other subtle animation cues. Little things that bring the otherwise static images to life.

Today, let’s go over three scenes, and how they’ll be different under the new animation. First, we’ll look at the Funplex.



The Funplex has three main effects going on. The first, and most commonly used across all the revamped backgrounds, are glowing elements glowing brighter than before, with the extra glow fading in and out softly. It’s almost impossible to see unless you’re looking for it, but adds some life to the scene. next, the prize game at the bottom left has a shifting color scheme, to reflect the lights inside the game changing colors. Finally, there’s a simple animation of the UFO Catcher crane lowering and raising.

Next let’s go to Flotsam Beach, home of the Obligatory Beach Episode Where Everybody Wears Sexy Swimsuits.



The streetlights (in the niiiiiiiight) pulse, in a bit more obvious a fashion as this is an old Mid-Atlantic beach town under disrepair. Similarly, some of the tube lights in the arcade will flicker, showing the double tube bulbs before turning back on full strength. I considered a cloud animation, since the clouds animate during the daytime scene, but figured the lighting was more important.

Finally, let’s look at a scene from later in the game, which I won’t spoil beyond showing you this vague imae of a run-down arcade...



Lots of stuff going on here — glitched out game screens, pulsating neon lights, error codes, and more. It’s a flashier scene, to be sure.

“But wait!” you might say, as I’m pouring the gasoline and getting the match ready. “What if I don’t want to be distracted by fancy background effects? Also, put down the matches, please.”

Not a problem! We've revamped the Preferences menu. Not only did we improve the ‘Style’ option to show you what each of our three UI styles looks like, but we added an option for the background animations. It defaults to Slow, which should provide ambiance without being distracting — but you can turn them Off completely, or even make them Faster if you want something flashy and fun! It’s up to you.

As we finish up the story and start polishing up the game, we’ll have more new features to show you — including a pretty big one which we’re not ready to talk about yet. Let’s just say there’s a reason I had to crop down the Preferences screen…

Okay, with the technical stuff aside, let's do some goofy shenanigans next.

I like world building. Hey, who doesn't? And frankly I've been wanting to do more world building for 20XX, the timeline in which Arcade Spirits takes place, where the video game crash of 1983 never happened. How are things different? How are things the same? Let's find out.

Not sure if these are canon or not -- we'll know if we end up selling so well that a sequel becomes a good idea. So hey, if you want more... y'all know what to do. Spread the word!

Introducing THE (entirely fictional) 20XX TIMES, an (entirely fictional) Newspaper From The Year 20XX.

--- President Mitchell Embroiled In New Emulation Controversy – Tweets Focus on "No Hot Sauce Collusion"

New allegations have risen regarding President Billy Mitchell's most recent high score submission to Twin Galaxies for Donkey Kong. Independent investigators have verified that his video evidence was created using MAME emulation, thus negating his score.

When pressed for a comment, President Mitchell instead focused on another scandal facing the White House, concerning illegal campaign contributions made by a hot sauce manufacturer from Georgia. Sources say that he was encouraged to divest his own hot sauce company prior to election as President in exchange for a sizable campaign contribution, filtered through numerous individuals.

Twin Galaxies has struck President Mitchell's score from the record books pending a complete investigation. The White House has issued no comment, although press secretary Roy Shildt stated that President Mitchell remains adamant that any reports of falsified scores are “fake news” from “dishonest scoreboards.”

--- Nintendo to Announce the Nintendo PlayStation-U Pro, With Features Similar to Atari XLX

Sources close to Sony of Japan say that an announcement is just around the corner regarding a new release of the Nintendo PlayStation-U, dubbed the “PlayStation-U Pro,” which will have both advanced 3-D capabilities and better support for consumer-grade CRT televisions for full backwards compatibility with classic titles.

Critics have long lambasted Nintendo for having a distinct lack of backwards compatibility with still-hot retro titles and eSports standards, forcing players to re-purchase barely upgraded remasters of classic titles if they wanted to move forward to the next iteration of Nintendo hardware. Meanwhile, their primary competitors in Atari and Sega have maintained twenty-plus years of backwards compatibility, able to read and play any discs from earlier consoles through embedded hardware or emulation.

“Nintendo thinks they deserve the attention of gamers, just because they beat everyone to optical media back in the 90s,” an alleged source within Atari posted on Facewall today. “And don't get me wrong, the Nintendo-Sony partnership really moved the whole industry forward. But they did so at the expense of supporting home ports of arcade classics. Atari believes in game preservation, and will always maintain full backwards compatibility.”

While many game developers have pushed for adoption of HDTV for higher resolutions and crisper images, a counterpush by gamers for CRT support in order to properly display older titles was embraced two generations ago by Atari and Sega, resulting in the multi-monitor setups common today.

--- Exidy Partners with Gottleib For New “Indiecading” Push

With the rising trend of bespoke arcade games crafted by independent video game developers, it was only a matter of time before one of the big names sat up and took notice. In this case, two mid-tier players in the arcade scene are teaming up to scoop up the rights to mass-distribute several indie titles, under the “Indiecading” name.”

“Exidy has always pushed forward with innovative new gaming experiences,” explained CEO Paula Westenbach. “Together with Gottleib, we believe we can get a wider exposure for these great titles. No longer will you have to go to a smaller arcade to enjoy these amazing games – we'll be in Deco's Palace, DisneyQuest, and several other major chain arcades.”

Exidy-Gottleib are currently in negotiations for the rights to Magical Moon Cuties, the hottest independent title on the scene. If all goes well, we can expect to see this game in an arcade near you within the next fiscal quarter.

--- OpEd: MicroPlay To Unveil Revolutionary New Ultra-Responsive Arcade Joystick; Snake Oil or The Next Big Thing?

Here we go again, folks – another company claiming to have the next big thing in arcade hardware. MicroPlay, a recently formed mash-up of the decaying corpses of FunWare and Sinneslöschen, have announced their first commercial product, a new “psi-responsive” joystick.

According to Cooper Technologies, the parent company which bought out what was left of those two once-slightly-better-than-mediocre companies, this new joystick will “use bio-electric feedback to read the user's intentions, providing unparalleled responsiveness in arcade gaming.” So basically it reads your mind. Through your hand. Meaning... why tap the joystick at all, if it's just going to predict what you want to do based on your thoughts?

Yyyeah, I'm thinking this is yet another flop from Cooper Technologies. From my research, only ONE tech initiative of theirs has gotten past the investment stage – remember the Phantom Console, which ended up basically being a phantom? That was them. They also had a large market share in the technology behind the Nintendo 32x, that abysmal add-on. About the only thing they've ever done which went anywhere was “Iris,” a dime-a-dozen virtual assistant with extremely limited capabilities and a heavy-handed sponsorship by PizzaYums. But hey, she's cute, and people like cute apps, so...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again – arcades are driven by highly short-lived gimmicks, but ultimately are ruled by classic titles that bring people back time and again. All sorts of gimmicks have come and gone, including force feedback, and virtual reality. (Although recent moves by the Oculus-Ouya partnership suggest they may be taking a run at that cheeseball 90s helmet-and-gloves idea again.) So I wouldn't expect much of anything from these supposed telepathic joysticks.

Besides, with Fist of Discomfort expected to move on to optional USB controllers with its forthcoming iteration, who really needs built-in control innovation? Just bring your favorite input device to your local arcade, and have fun. Don't trust in the snake oil salesmen.

This small update adds two new features:

1. Animated backgrounds! The arcade lights pulse and glow, the crane machine moves up and down, city lights blink on and off. You can adjust the speed of these animations from the Preferences menu, keeping them slow and subtle, or making them fast and lively -- or turning them off completely.

2. Added visual examples of our three UI styles to the Preferences menu (Neon, Pixel, Basic). This option was always here, we just didn't have a good quick reference for what each of them meant.

As I was preparing last week’s blog post, which refers to The Pillars of Arcade Spirits, it brought to mind a topic I’ve been pondering lately — signposting success and failure.

One of the pillars of our game is clear signposting. We want you to make an informed choice. Maybe we won’t tell you EVERYTHING that lurks behind an option, but you should have a good sense about what will happen if you pick it. You’ll increase your Gutsey, Naomi will like you, you’ll pick one thing over another, etc. It’s never a vague mystery which then punishes you for not knowing you fell into a trap.

I liken it to LucasArts adventure games, versus Sierra On-Line. (90s kids will know this.) In Sierra games, you’d die constantly just for trying different things. The default method the game had of teaching you “No, that’s not the right way” is to kill you and force you to reload a save. But LucasArts did away with that — if you mess up, things simply don’t work, and you can keep trying until they do. It doesn’t punish you for experimenting.

I want Arcade Spirits to do the same thing — to have very, very few legitimately punishing choices, to allow you to experiment or run wild, and have the leeway to make a few mistakes without ruining everything.

But how do I signpost that…? How do I tell the player, “Hey, don’t fret so much about what you pick, you literally can’t fail this.”

For example, in our demo, there’s a point where QueenBee says “I hate seeing people get yelled at” and then looks sad. I have literally never seen anyone pick the option of telling her “Don’t you yell at people all the time?” which is a shame, because it’s got a funny response. They’re too scared of saying the wrong thing and ruining their chances with QueenBee, or think that you have to default to the nicest response because other games punish you for being even slightly jerky. As a result they get a fairly toss-off answer from QueenBee instead of a more interesting one.

Even if you do miss a “point” with QueenBee, the game is scored in such a way that when it comes time to choose your romance path, it’s VERY tolerant of failure. As long as you chose to spend time with a person and generally said things they agreed with, a few fumbles won’t wreck everything.

But again… how do I signpost that? How do I reassure the player that they can explore the game and not feel they have to take the safest, most cautious choices they possibly can out of fear of everything exploding as punishment? How do I do it without breaking fourth wall and telling them to just have fun with it and not worry?

Not sure. Not sure at all. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know. I’d love to hear your opinions on this. Thanks!

Ever since the PQube announcement, we've had new folks tuning in to see what Arcade Spirits is all about. Hello, new folks! We've got a blog (which we mirror to Tumblr and Steam), we've got a Twitter for announcements and arcade culture tidbits, a Discord to connect with other arcade fans, a Patreon if you want to support us on a deeper level, and finally a website. That's a lot of stuff! Just pick your favorite way to follow us, and enjoy.

But also, I'd like to direct you to an old blog post you probably missed, which describes the pillars of our game, and why we made the choices we did when designing the game. To summarize so you don't HAVE to go digging through the blog if you don't wanna, we've got four guiding principles in telling our lighthearted tale of love and quarters...

• We’re inclusive by not restricting player choice of romance. Be who you want to be, romance who you want to romance (or nobody at all). We're LGBTQ+ friendly without specifically being a game about LGBQT+. Notably: coding in restrictions based on your preferred pronoun takes effort and we're too lazy for that. But it's laziness in favor of player choice, so hey!
• We want you to be able to choose how to react to things around you. Player agency is sometimes missing in visual novels, so we want as much as we can pour in. We focus heavily on roleplaying and self-expression, letting you react as you like.
• There should be clear signposts for easy decision-making. We don't like blind choices, or needing to play with a FAQ open on your second monitor. We're going to be relatively clear what each choice is going to mean for you -- who you'll spend time with and how they'll react. You have some leeway, too, so you don't have to scoop up EVERY point to get the ending you want.
• One tale, with your own personal path chosen from beginning to end. We'll say up front this isn't about massively branching paths and multiple distinct endings. It's about a personal experience that's never exactly the same as any other player's, thanks to the choices you make along the way and who you decide to be.

We're aiming to deliver one heck of a tale for you, a story that you participate in rather than passively read, a story you can insert yourself into or play whatever other personality type you like. Play things straight, romance or don't, get wild, be snarky, do as you want. And we hope you enjoy that story.

...

Okay! That's our introduction out of the way. Let's talk this week's actual (slightly depressing) topic, based on Recent Topical News -- specifically Nintendo squishing several ROM and emulation sites with legal papers. Pirated retro games are no longer quite so easy to find, thanks to their actions.

In Arcade Spirits we've added a mini-documentary hosted by Naomi which is all about building your own emulation cabinet. It's pretty detailed on the hardware and software you'll need, but one thing we skim over is obtaining ROMs -- because let's be totally honest here, Nintendo and their ilk have every legal right to say "Hey, uh, please stop giving away our games for free, okay?" You just can't condone that sort of thing, not if you work in the game industry like I do. There's no ethical leg to stand on.

But unfortunately, this also poses a serious problem for video game preservation efforts. Many of these games are a tangled mess of copyright holders, many of which are out of business or were sold again and again, to the point where it's unclear WHO owns the copyright on a game anymore. Therefore, there is no legal way to play some of these games short of tracking down original arcade hardware and spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on it -- and if that hardware is just flat out gone, cabinets junked and sitting in landfills, a game can be lost forever. Look at the movie industry, where the majority of films from the dawn of cinema in the 30s are simply gone, because nobody thought to preserve them.

Emulation and abandonware archives were one way to keep those dimly lit and flickering candles alive. Legal? No, but given the copyright holders cannot -- or in many cases, will not -- provide a legal means of obtaining the game, not many options remain. Even games which aren't exactly in danger of vanishing can be withheld... Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a good recent example. It never had a physical release, only digital downloads, and as licenses expired it was pulled from digital storefronts. You literally cannot legally obtain this game anymore and likely never will be able to again, and because it was loaded on DRM-locked modern game consoles, any act of preservation runs afoul of the DMCA.

So... what to do? There's really not a good solution in the hands of gamers. And again, I can't and won't condone piracy. It's up to the companies involved to be willing to loosen their grip on these games, and many refuse to budge. As noted, they're even actively fighting websites that preserve games. And thus, an impasse.

Hopefully we as an industry will find a way past this issue, to make these classic games available conveniently and without legal problems. Either that, or as fans of arcade classics, we'll have to mourn the passing of more and more great games.

Welcome to the Arcade Spirits developer blog. Each week I post an in-depth look at some aspect of the game, or of arcade culture in general. Today, let's talk about one of the slightly more obscure influences behind Arcade Spirits -- the classic 1980s workplace sitcom.

As a kid, I grew up enmeshed in the world of the 80s / early 90s sitcom. Night Court, Cheers, Wings, things like that. "Must See TV." I wasn't really that interested in the standard family-based ones, though -- no Steve Urkel for me. I like workplace sitcoms. There's two key aspects to these, a sense of place, and a sense of belonging.

The place is obvious: wherever everybody works. An office, a bar, a courtroom, an airport, a diner, something like that. The locale is the same every week, and you get a feel for the flow of rooms and hallways, the background details baked in which make it feel unique and lived-in. Sometimes they're populated by extras moving around in the background, going about their lives... customers, usually. It feels like a living, breathing location and not just a sterile living room or something. This is where you come back to when you want to be somewhere familiar. But it's not a home, some generic suburban house; it's got a flow and a purpose directed towards whatever the business is.

When you're there, you belong there. You're family, without actually being family. The television family consists of the friends who you're close to, the ones you're emotionally tied to, working arm in arm towards a common goal or just choosing to spend time together. There's no typical drama from being stuck alongside a parent or sibling you hate because these are the people you've selected to be your family, rather than a coincidence of birth. (Shows where the family hates each other 90% of the time and all the drama arises from that are pretty much the opposite of what I want.)

I wanted those two things for Arcade Spirits -- a sense of place, and a sense of belonging. The Funplex becomes familiar to you, and your character grows to consider it something of a home. The staff and the regulars are more than just co-workers and customers, they're your friends, your family. Even the ones you aren't actively trying to romance are close companions, willing to help you and you them. There are conflicts along the way, bumps in the road, but you work through them because keeping the family together and keeping the home intact is important.

The story is even divided up like television episodes, with each contained story being its own "Level" of the game. Unlike an 80s sitcom, though, they feed into each other serially, gradually developing character arcs and plots rather than being standalone piles of gags.

Overall, I want the world of Arcade Spirits to be something you want to come back to not just to laser-focus in on your romantic target and woo them, but to be because it's a place you want to live in for a time. Familiar, friendly, warm, and inviting. And when the credits finally do roll, I want that time looked back on fondly. I hope I can provide the same feeling I had watching these sitcoms to you as a gamer.

Hello, hello! Stefan here, co-author and project manager (oooh, official sounding) for Arcade Spirits. Thanks for dropping by. And thanks to our publisher PQube for helping us get to this point! Everybody reading these words just earned a few free tokens.

We'll be using the announcement space here for weekly development updates, typically every Monday -- inside looks into the game's development, all leading up to our 2019 release. Hope you enjoy them! Follow, wishlist, like, share, subscribe, smash that bell, all the usual stuff so you can stay on top of all things Arcade Spirits-y.

Thank you so much for your support. Good times are ahead!