Spotlight: Arcade Games

At one point or another, you’ve probably played the arcade games in the Dance Lounge: Thin Ice, Astro Barrier and Bits & Bolts. These three games are by far the most popular arcade games on Club Penguin but they’re not the only ones. On numerous occasions, other arcade games have appeared, usually just for a couple of weeks. In this edition of spotlight, we’re going to take a look at some of these less famous games.

Let’s start off with Thinicestrobarrier. This game appeared as a result of the April Fools’ Party of 2008 and, as its name suggests, is a mix of the two games that were available in the Dance Lounge at the time. While the gameplay is identical to Astro Barrier, all the ships in the game (including the hidden blue ships) are replaced with the puffle from Thin Ice, and the text has been edited in some places accordingly (for example, the first set of instructions reads “Press the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to move your… um… puffle?”)

The design of the physical arcade machine is also quite interesting: just like the game, it’s a messy hodgepodge of the two games’ designs. The majority of the machine is taken from Astro Barrier, but the base is from Thin Ice. To the right of the Astro Barrier joystick, there’s also a set of Thin Ice arrow keys. Unfortunately, these details didn’t carry across when you were actually playing the game (as seen above)

Thinicetrobarrier isn’t the only arcade machine to have turned up in the Dance Lounge unexpectedly. After it was remodelled into the Arcade, a mysterious unplugged arcade machine was added at the back of the room.

This is Gary’s attempt at making a working computer programme. Although it’s normally left unplugged, we did get a chance to play it the Fairs of 2014 and 2015, when the machine was relocated to the Galaxy Park.

The aim of the game (coined 8-Bit or Virtual World) is simply to collect as much food as possible. Every eight seconds, a new item (an apple, fishburger or cup of coffee) appears randomly somewhere on the screen, and the player can navigate their penguin through the maze towards it for an immediate ticket reward. The game would only end when the player chose to leave via the green exit sign.

What makes this game special is that you’re not just controlling the penguin on the screen—you are the penguin on the screen. Gary’s device sucks penguins into the game to make it more interesting. This means that you can dance, throw snowballs, and communicate with other penguins inside it. As an added bonus, other players will see the same food in the same places as you do, and can collect it just as you can, which can transform the game into a multiplayer race. Other players’ names will show up as their penguin colour, too.

The reason the game is usually left unplugged was initially because Gary had predicted that it had a 27.84% chance of exploding when turned on for the first time. Thankfully, the machine didn’t explode, but Gary found there was still a danger of the modular VR matrix overheating if left on for long periods of time which would trap penguins inside. This would take quite some time as it was left running for three weeks straight at the Fair 2015 without overheating, but it was still safer to block it from day-to-day use.

Alongside 8-Bit, another arcade game was introduced at the Fair 2015: Super Hero Bounce. This arcade game is clearly the newest of all six as it’s the only one that doesn’t have low resolution, pixelated graphics. The game takes place during the Marvel Superhero Takeover of 2013 and has one simple goal: get as high as you can without falling. Whenever you touch a crystal cluster, you bounce a little higher and the cluster disappears. If you hit a cluster from underneath, you don’t get boosted quite as high, but you start a combo which gives you ten points more than the last cluster you hit for each cluster you hit until the combo is ended.

As you climb higher, notable objects will begin to appear: the Dojo appears first, followed by Tallest Mountain, then a floating grand piano, the hot air balloon from Jet Pack Adventure, Plok flying in his box, and a fish-shaped cloud (from the Cloud Maker 3000). After passing the special cloud, you begin to travel into outer space, passing the moon, a purple planet and a maroon planet with a yellow ring before the game ends with you destroying an asteroid full of crystals. If you run out of crystals to jump on, then your penguin falls all the way to the bottom, pointing their flippers downwards and creating a flame on descent before safely touching down on a landing pad.

Because this game was borrowed from the Marvel Superhero Takeover of 2013 where it appeared in non-arcade game form, this game takes up the full screen meaning you can’t see the machine when you’re playing. This is quite unfortunate as the actual arcade machine possibly has the most interesting design out of all of them.

There is one more arcade game that I wasn’t sure if I should mention and that’s because we don’t know anything about it. Coming in the form of the Arcade Game furniture item, the name, aim and rules to this game are completely unknown as the item could never actually be interacted with.

Perhaps you can figure out how to play based off the visuals on the screen—let me know your thoughts and theories down below, and until next time,