Driving and shooting have been pretty
common arcade themes for quite a long time now for very understandable reasons.
Even if driving or shooting take a degree of skill to do properly, the
fundamentals are basic enough that a casual arcade gamer can apply them pretty
quickly and flexible enough that they can drive a respectable amount of
variations and sub genres, not to mention the appeal of the novel control
methods these games offer, even if the steering wheel or light-gun is a more
common control method than the joystick in many arcades.
The dominance of these genres is pretty
clear at Portobello, although there is a notable exception in Virtua Striker 2 '98. There hasn't been
an update to this series since 2006, although its bright, saturated style would
perhaps be a neat alternative on modern consoles to the largely more realistic
style of the more popular football franchises around now. The cabinet appears
to be in good condition, although I unfortunately didn't get a chance to play
it as it was surprisingly pretty popular and I have to confess to not being
particular eager to wait around for it to become free with the likes of Crazy Taxi and The House of the Dead II trying to magnetically draw pound coins
from my pocket. (This is a lie, pound coins are not magnetic, so the theft
magnets installed in Crazy Taxi
cabinets don't work in the UK).
