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The Convention Dimension: Replay FX Surprises, Wishes, and Misses (Part 1)

Replay FX was a great time due to all of the different machines they had to play. As I mentioned in my review, I mostly stuck to arcade games with a few pinball machines. Many of the arcade machines that I saw were ones that I expected to see. For every Pac-Man or Space Invaders machine, though, there was something that surprised me, something that I never expected to see at all.


F-Zero AX (Nintendo, 2003)
Nintendo's futuristic racer came to arcades via an agreement with Namco and Sega. I remember seeing an ad for this when the GameCube counterpart, F-Zero GX, came out. You can unlock some stuff in GX by inserting your memory card into the AX machine. That's so cool! It turns out that I'm really bad at F-Zero AX, but it was great to see it at Replay FX.


Magical Truck Adventure (Sega, 1998)
I was so surprised to see this game! I had just played Love Love Truck a few months before this, and I figured that that game was entirely unique; I guess not! Magical Truck Adventure was released the year before Love Love Truck, and I assume that the latter was inspired by this release from a bigger company. This game requires more physical action than most arcade games. The players need to pump a minecart to travel through the various game worlds, avoiding obstacles while still keeping up speed. Kaiti and I tried to play it but didn't do very well; we really didn't know what we were doing though. I wish we had tried again, but there was just so much else to do.
Be sure to check out my Love Love Truck review for PlayStation Basement.



Crazy Climber (Nichibutsu, 1980)
Crazy Climber is a classic arcade game that I had never seen before and only recently heard of. I think I just read about it or something, but I also got the PS1 Arcade Hits - Cracy Climber not much later. I didn't actually play the game at the convention; it was just neat to see it.
I did play the PlayStation release for PlayStation Basement.


Truxton (Taito, 1988)
My friend Tyler talks about Truxton everyday. I didn't know much about it when I saw it at Replay FX, and I still don't really know anything. I really hated that you had to press the fire button instead of being able to hold it down. The first few enemies took so many shots. I just kept dying without getting anywhere and wasn't having any fun really. I hear that Truxton is sort of the bridge between bullet hell games and classic shmups like Gradius. Even though I was so bad at it. it was cool finally see this game in person, and there were not many shmups like this at the convention really. Tyler says that the Sega Genesis version is much better than this arcade release, so I'll have to get that instead.


CarnEvil (Midway, 1998)
My friend Shane and I almost beat CarnEvil over 10 years ago at Kennywood Park. Unfortunately, the game actually crashed on one of the last levels. We got a technician to reset it, but then he just walked away. Since we had already spent a few dollars on it, we didn't want to have to go through the whole game again like that and walked away. It was a really gory shooter and a very visceral experience with the large shotgun-shaped controller. I was glad to see it at Replay FX, but it seems like countless others were as well; I never got a chance to have at it blasting clown zombies once again. Maybe next year.

Have you played any of these games before? If you were at Replay FX did you play any of them? Which games were you happily surprised to see at the convention this year? Let me know in the comments below. I'll be back soon with the games that I didn't see at the convention buy would have happily played (or tried to play) if I did. See you soon!

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