The true death of the arcade came at the beginning of this decade. It wasn’t when gamers started opting for the comfort and value of playing at home; it was when home consoles finally started equaling (and surpassing) the technological heft of the arcade cabinets themselves. Sega, one of the only surviving arcade giants, signed the death warrant themselves when developing the Dreamcast and its arcade-motherboard-twin, Naomi. Games at home and games in the arcade, identical for the first time. The move may have had the negative effect of killing off the already declining amusement center population across the Western world, but it also had a significant silver lining: the death of the shoddy arcade port. Approximations of more technologically demanding games have been a staple of gaming in the home since the 1970s, but, with the exception of stray PC-based ports, downgraded game experiences have largely disappeared since 2000. Today, in 2008, the fracturing of the console space seems to be bringing them back in force.
Just recently, Koei announced they’d be bringing Dynasty Warriors 6 — built from the ground up for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, they said — to Playstation 2, a move no doubt meant to make an actual profit on their development investment. Today, Capcom announced that they’d be porting Dead Rising, the Xbox 360 Dawn of the Dead-style zombie game, to Nintendo’s Wii. Dead Rising was one of the 360’s first great games, a weird mixture of Grand Theft Auto, Pokemon Snap, and Resident Evil, the game put the player in a mall overflowing with hundreds of zombies in a number of substantially-sized environments. It’s strange, then, that Capcom is making Dead Rising Wii a port instead of an actual sequel or side story. The Wii hardware simply cannot put that many moving, AI-controlled objects on screen at the same time. But more Japanese gamers, and very soon more North American and European gamers, own Wiis than Xbox 360s, so bringing a version to that system will surely bring Capcom even more coin from an already successful creation.
It’s one more facet of the diversifying platform space. As I mentioned just a couple of days ago, we’re not heading to a one console future, but a more diverse console selection. Game makers will always want more people to play their games and, so, the days of the port are returning. Hopefully we’ll see more Bionic-Commando-arcade-turned-into-Bionic-Commando-NES than Street-Fighter-2-turned-into-Street-Fighter-2-PC.