It has been a while since I last wrote a “Missing In Action” article, where I cover a style of game that at one point in history was popular or common to find in arcades, covering the history of said titles. If you haven’t read those here are the links: Space Combat games, Puzzle Games, Scrolling Fighters, Tanks, Planes, Mechs and more,and Adventure/RPG games.
Lately as I have been watching what people play on the computer network at my arcade, I have noticed a trend in people playing a genre of games known as Tower Defense. It’s interesting to see how these kinds of games have been increasing in popularity recently, not just with browser games (where I see most of these titles being played) but also in standard releases with games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Defenders, Plants Vs. Zombies, or the South Park tower defense game which won an award at the SpikeTV VGAs. I have read that this idea as a genre has been inspired by a particular game mode in Warcraft 3, where hordes of enemies follow along a certain path and the player has to strategically place defense towers that will blast the hordes away as they follow a path to a particular objective. It’s a relatively simple idea, especially when it comes to RTS games and it’s one that has some roots in a few arcade titles (believe it or not).
It is true that in the arcade world we haven’t seen many games which follow a formula exactly like the one used in many TD titles I have seen (only Rampart would fit that bill and it would honestly be the first real tower defense game, prior to Warcraft 3) but there have been a number of popular coin-op titles which deal with defense concepts that could be seen as important influences in the popular tower defense genre today. I personally feel that tower defense games could be adapted into coin-op arcade gaming, given the right idea and I will get into that, after we take a look at some of the history behind the genre we are looking at, which you can jump into at the link below.
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