Me and my bro played SWIV2 cooperatively for hours, just the carnage and mutiple vehicles kept us entertained happily. And because it was coop we were less likely to beat the hell out of each other, except in the "you should've done this" scenario against a boss.

But your right, is it a confidence issue maybe, or just the market doesn't go for it. Or maybe because MAME is so rockin' these days there's no need?

I always thought that historically with PC games the lack of arcade games was down to a lack of decent controllers (remember when everything was a flight stick?) and old VGA cards struggling to manage smooth scrolling and solid frame rates.

The Amiga, underneath it all, was a games machine, and had controllers and decent video hardware.

Later I think the lack of arcade games comes down to the fact that fundamentally PC games are about pushing the hardware hard, as much as they are about gameplay. Not much scope for 2D shooters there.

Also, and there is some truth to the stereotype, the kinda spoddy PC user who'd rather play games on a PC rather than slouched in front of the TV is probably more interested in World of Warcraft than Devil May Cry.

It's interesing that you pick up on the controller point. That was one of the key reasons that came to my mind when putting the question.

Before MS released the Sidewinder series of game controllers the PC had a real shortage of decent controllers and usually only a single gameport, when you consider that a lot of arcade games survive on the strength of either coop or competative play it wasn't going to be easy to sell arcade games on the PC platform.

The Sidewinder for me made a big impact. By allowing controllers to be daisy chained together it enabled multiple players to compete on a level footing. Sadly I think it was too little too late. USB now gives the same level of functionality, but the PC scene is too far gone now for arcade style gaming to make a resurgence.

The motto then is games platforms must have 2 joystick ports, which makes the success of the PC Engine even more striking

Nice cheap multi-taps

Was the multitap available from launch? Did the launch linup include Bomberman (makes sense seing as it's a Hudson game and the thing runs on Hudson chips).

Bomberman was vol. 34 I think, so there were a fair few games before it.

Not sure when the multi-taps were first released, I think the first version was a three port tap.

It can't have taken too long to release them, but I can't think what the first multi player game would have been.

3do had daisy chaining pads... jusy fyi.

I've got that sidewinder pad shown above it's actually pretty good and has a great layout for playing SF and the dpad is easy to use than the xbox's monstrosity.

The other funny thing about arcade gaming on home computers is that the public domain scene in this area is still thriving even though you can't buy the games commercially anymore. Maybe this has something to do with it too? Mind you the stuff that I have played is usually tarted up clones of existing games but they are still a lot of fun to play.

I guess the PC is just more accessible to homebrew devs. There are plenty of packages out there to help and with a limited knowledge of programming and enough time and determination I'm sure most people could produce a simple game.

The sidewinder pad is from memory actually pretty good. I had 3 at one point iirc. I've also got the FF racing wheel, Precision Flightstick and I used to have the stupid tilt sensitive pad. Back in the day these were all really great bits of hardware. The wheel inparticular was rugged and provided a good strong force feedback response, coupled with a MS game like Monster Truck Madness it did an excellent job or recreating the bumps and jolts of uneven terrain.

The pad was comfy in the hand too. I couldn't believe it when I held an XBox pad for the first time. Somehow MS hardware took a step backwards with that initial XBox pad design.