At the end of May 2018, I was on holiday on the island of Crete, Greece.
I had a good time overall, but there was one thing that stood out about it compared to other holidays I've been on- I saw just one arcade game.
Usually, I find some time to check out the nearby arcades whenever I'm staying in another place, but Crete was different. In 2002, all arcade games on Greece occupied soil were banned entirely, after some machines were being illegally converted for gambling and at the centre of a government corruption scandal.
Everything fell under it - even racing, lightgun, and dance games. The arcade scene there died a death immediately, and even with a repealing of the law some years later after much criticism by the arcade and gaming industry, arcades in Greece never really recovered.
So, I went into this holiday expecting to get away from everything, even one of my main interests in life. But to my surprise, I found one solitary arcade machine at the resort I was staying at; a broken and battered twin Sega Touring Car Championship.
Sega Touring Car, for those unaware, is one of several arcade racers developed by Sega in the 90's. It ran on the advanced for the time Model 2 hardware, like the widely-regarded classics Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship before it- but unlike those two games, it never received a sequel on the upgraded Model 3 board.
Because of this, it isn't quite as well remembered, and the people who do know of it usually associate Touring Car with its Saturn console port, which is well-known for all the wrong reasons. Flickering, inaccurate graphics, jerky controls, lack of content, the game is terrible.
In fact, it could be argued that even the arcade version is a poorer game compared to Sega's many other arcade racers; as despite a typically cheesy Eurobeat soundtrack that predates Initial D Arcade Stage's use of one, there just isn't much character in it, and the gameplay feels nowhere near as tight as Daytona.
But anyway - the machine was located in a very small games room next to the bar, with it being the only reminder of anything resembling a video game there, sandwiched between claw machines and a whack-a-mole game.
It was clear from when I first saw it, that the machine had been subject to a lot of use. The marquee lights had blown, the screens were converted to LCD, seat decals reinforcing the Sega Saturn console brand were torn, no sound seemed to be coming out, and the right side didn't appear to be working at all.
This wasn't a good indication that the game would even be playable at all- but still, I paid the 50 cent price a few times to have a few shots at it. Of course. I didn't get far.
Once playing the game, I soon realised something was clearly wrong with the gas pedal. Even with putting my foot down on it hard, it wouldn't go as fast as it could. The force feedback was either ridiculously strong, or not even working. The gear shifter wasn't even safe, as it turned out to be a game in itself of chance finding out if you'd changed gears or not after moving it.
The furthest I ended up getting was the second course, and while I'm not the best at it anyway, I have done much better on it than that on other machines. With the cab in terrible condition, I didn't play the machine much afterwards, but I would always pass it on my way to the bar, or to the restaurant.
Every time I saw Touring Car afterwards, I couldn't believe how just sorry the machine looked. No-one was playing it, only children climbing on the seats and pretending to drive. Only one attempt was made to fix the right side- and nothing appeared to have changed afterwards.
The machine will likely never even be bought and restored by someone back to its former state, with very little interest in arcades in Greece, and of course the negative consensus opinion on Touring Car too.
To me, this twin racing machine embodies the complete decline arcade games had in many parts of the world during the 2000's. They may as well have been banned here too - more arcades than ever have no games to speak of, just prize redemption and claw machines.
I'm going off on a depressing, woe-is-me tangent here to be honest, but the feeling of visiting an arcade and not seeing one racing, shooting, or fighting game is all too familiar now.
The final day of the holiday soon came, and I decided to have one last play on the game. It was still broken as ever, but I tried to enjoy it a bit more by listening to the game's Eurobeat soundtrack on my phone- because as I mentioned before, the sound wasn't working.
Leaving the island, I was half expecting to find a similarly broken arcade machine at the Crete airport, but there wasn't even one there.
Why I cared so much about this dilapidated, broken arcade game in a hotel, god knows - but as one of the last of an already very dead breed in the area, I thought I should at least give it some of the service it was designed to receive - even if the game wasn't a particularly good one.
My opinion, like many others, hasn't changed on Sega Touring Car Championship. I still think it's inferior to most of the company's other arcade racers, but the game means a little more to me after this holiday, which I definitely was not expecting to happen going into it.
I wasn't planning even planning to write this this originally, but did want to get something out about this machine - having already spoke about it on my Twitter, I felt just a few posts weren't enough for something which could symbolise the decline of an entire genre of video game in some parts of the world.
Ted
