The gaming arcade is, sadly, dead in almost every corner of the world...except Japan. In the East the coin-op craze never really died out, with Pachinko parlours and rooms full of Street Fighter 2: Tournament Edition alike jostling for space. You rarely see anything other than updated Dance Dance Revolutions make it over here but occasionally there are some pretty interesting games made for the Japanese arcade market, including - against all odds and, really, rational thought - an adaptation of Half-Life 2 for the arcade environment, subtitled "Survivor", and co-produced by Valve and Bubble Bobble creators Taito. Half-Life 2 Survivor is a very, very different game from the one you're used to. You control Freeman using two joysticks and floor pedals, with the choice of Story mode, which cuts down the original game to just the shooty bits; Mission, where you do the same but multiplayer; and Battle, which adapts the deathmatch mode of the original game. Except it's got to work in an arcade, so there's bright colours and heads-up-display cluttering the screen, flurries of kanji, and it's basically Time Crisis with Combine forces. It's super weird.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
