Well, to all people living in Scandinavia I have great news! Sweden has a place which rivals the best of what Asia has to offer! I am of course talking about the arcade in Liseberg, the biggest amusement park in the nordic region. I was there in July, and was very impressed with what they have to offer.
First of all, the Google street view! Liseberg is located in the city of Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden.
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The entrance fee to the park is less than 20 USD. That doesn't really let you take any rides, for that you need a ride pass or separate tickets for each of them. That didn't matter to us, though. It's very nice to walk around the park even for adults, and at night time they offer live entertainment and a romantic atmosphere.
Although Liseberg has so much more to offer, this post will only focus on the game arcade. I'm sure you can find pictures and descriptions of their rides and attractions both in their official web page and elsewhere.
Why am I talking about this, anyway? We all know I was there to play games!
The building that houses the arcade is quite large, with three floors full of games. What's surprisingly good about Liseberg is that the games are in mostly good condition, and they swap them out now and then. It's just been a year since our last visit, but many of the games had been replaced since then.
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| The entrance. The sign says something like "The house of games" in Swedish. |
Our tour begins in the third and top floor, and we'll work our way down to the bottom. I have tried to snap pictures of most if not all of the games, except for redemption games and some duplicates. Liseberg has a nice mix of driving games, shooters, pinballs and others. I'd say there's something for everyone. There were a lot of people visiting the park that day, many of them were attending the Gothia football cup. We have ended up visiting Gothenburg at the same time as that cup is held two years in a row now. That's not a clever move, because all the hotels are full, and it rises the prices of the few rooms that are still available. We managed to find a nice hotel south of the city, with bright and modern rooms, but reasonable prices.
OK, back to the arcade! One of the many racers was this four player Star Wars. It didn't get much love while I was there, and it's not one that I play very often either.
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| Final Furlong 2 is an exhausting horse racing game. Take a look at the Youtube video I found! |
F355 Challenge may be a bit dated, but it's still a good game. They had really gone wild with the decorations on this wall! That looks like a half car up there, and the large Ferrari emblem posters help set the mood. This looks simply great, and it attracts visitors to test the game.
Just next to the Ferraris we have the shooting game Jurassic Park - The Lost World and the boxing game Real Puncher.
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| A shooting game which utilized a projector. It looked like it was switched off while we were there. |
Liseberg has a nice selection of pinball machines. I remember playing Medieval Madness there a couple of years ago. That has been replaced, but in a somewhat dark corner they still have Lord of the Rings, Simpsons Pinball Party and Addams Family.
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| The little note on LOTR says that it's not working. |
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| Club Kart from Sega. I didn't actually try this game, because there were so many others that I want to play. We were there for at least 4-5 hours, but time flew by so quickly. |
Liseberg really has a great selection of driving games. Not only do they have many good titles, they often have 4-6 player capability for each game! You've seen it in the pictured above, and here's a six player Manx TT Superbike!
...and a 4 player ATV Track. I tried taking pictures when no-one was playing the games, but that wasn't easy. Many of the machines were in constant use. I guess that's a good thing, and I hope it ensures that this great arcade won't fade away and vanish.
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| Sorry for the blurry picture.. |
We have seen the great Ferrari up on the wall. Another nice decorating feature in Liseberg's arcade is the collection of old Pinball backglasses in light boxes hanging from the ceiling. It helps set the right tone, and these beautiful pieces of art hold their own even out of the pinball cabinets.
Next to the pinball machines they had a "test your strength" kind of thing, and a nice Dancing Stage Fusion. Liseberg had a number of these DDR games, and we'll see more of them further down.
Although most of the games were in good condition, some of them had their problems. For example this row of Harley Davidsons. Two of them had really blurry monitors, and the third one was dead. Next to them is a skiing game, and Star Wars.
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| The King of Route 66 |
I mentioned that they also had a bunch of redemption games. Here are some of them. They also had the typical roll-the-ball-into-the-right-hole-and-the-horse-moves-forward game and some others.
Just next to the stairs was a trio of older games: Virtua Cop, Terminator 2 and the arm wrestling game Arm Champs 2. Seriously, who plays arm wrestling games? Anyone? :-P
Two girls were sitting on these Wave Runners constantly. They weren't playing, just talking. I took the picture from far away, so I didn't look like a crazy guy taking pictures of girls. No no, I'm not like that! I'm just a crazy guy taking pictures of arcade cabinets.
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| Sorry for the blurry picture. I was 20 meters away, and it was dark. |
OK, that just about sums up the third floor. We walk down to the second floor. Or is that the first floor? Anyway, it's the floor above the ground floor!
The first thing we see is four nice Terminator Salvation shooters. This is quite new, and a nice follow up to the old Terminator 2 shooter. Here's a random YouTube video showing the gameplay.
I guess the Guitar Hero craze is over for now, but it's still a great game. The arcade version is much of the same, and lots of people were playing it while we were visiting Liseberg.
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| Another Lost World, and four racers which I can't identify. Please leave a comment if you recognize them. |
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| One Blazing Angels and four very nice Sega Rallys. |
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| Sea Wolf? Apparently it's based on the 1976 classic, but the graphics have obviously been updated. I found another random YouTube video! |
Now this is where things get interesting for me! For those who know me, you know how much I love Outrun 2 SP. Liseberg has a four player deluxe model! Sadly, the first one was dead, and the second one didn't accept coins, but two player mode is better than nothing.
I prefer the stick shift of the regular version, not the steering wheel paddles that this one has. But it's still a fantastic game. My wife and I tried to play it together, but for some reason we ended up playing separately.
There couldn't be many people playing route E that day. I didn't play too well, and arrived at the finish line with just 2-3 seconds to spare, but I still ended up as number one on the hiscore list!
Sega had an online worldwide ranking list where you could enter your score, but it seems to be dead and forgotten. That's a bit sad, I wish someone would remake it. Not that I think this score would get me anywhere, but it was a nice feature.
Just behind the Outrun 2 cabs was my favourite DDR, Dancing Stage Euromix 2. This has most of the songs I like to play, including the great B4U by Naoki. Here's a YouTube video of it. I used to be quite good at this, but that's got to be 5-6 years ago. When I tried it now I just failed miserably. Maybe I shouldn't have chosen difficulty: HARD. I learned that I am getting old.. What a surprise!
Liseberg also had a nice collection of Stern pinballs on the second floor. The greatest attraction was definitely AC/DC. It was more or less in constant play while we were there. The theme is obviously very popular with men my age, and I'm a fan of the band myself. A nice feature is that you can choose the ingame music. I tend to end up with You shook me all night long or TNT. There were also other Stern titles, like Avatar, Rolling Stones and World Poker Tour. None of those are among my favorites, but AC/DC got my money. I can see it becoming a highly sought after title on the second hand market, when all those 40 year old guys want it in their basement!
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| Sorry for the very blurry picture |
Just opposite of that, next to the pinball machines was an Extreme Hunting 2. I'm not a big fan of those hunting games. For some reason I find hunting "real looking" animals kind of boring. I prefer shooting zombies. Or pirates. Or better yet, ZOMBIE PIRATES! ARRRRR!
Daytona USA 2 is aging, but it was still popular among the football boys. To be fair, these cabs were in very good condition, and they look very tempting, so I can understand why they are popular.
Next to the row of Harleys was the 2010 driver Grid. Looking at the YouTube video I really wish I had given it a go, but it was frankly so popular that I didn't want to wait in line. Grid was developed by Codemasters, which I'm sure many of you remember from the Commodore 64 days.
Moving on, there was a Stacker redemption game. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:
The goal of the game is to align rows of moving blocks on top of each other. A player who can stack 11 rows will win a minor prize, which is usually low in value, sometimes lower in value than the amount of money the player paid to play the game. A player who gets to the top row wins a major prize. The major prize varies from machine but will often include present day game consoles, cellular phones, and mp3 players.I have enough of those things anyway, so I wasn't going to try it.
Coming closer to the second floor exit, there was a fantastic row of four Sega Rally 3 Deluxe cabs! It's nice to see that Liseberg is investing in new games. I'm sure this will keep the arcade alive and popular for years to come.
And there it was! Our old friend Deadstorm Pirates! Of course my wife and I couldn't pass by this one without playing a few credits. In the end we cleared all levels except one.
We love this game so much that I'm considering to buy a Playstation 3 and light guns. It's a shame they didn't release it for Xbox 360.
Next to the Sega Rally row was one more Dancing Stage Fusion. Liseberg has the largest collection of DDR games I've seen for years, and people were actually playing them.
Talking about games that have passed their height of popularity, Singstar type of games must be in that category. This looked much like a passport photo booth, except you could record your own CD, complete with cover.
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| The Swedish instructions say: Here you can record your own CD. Choose a song from the list on the left. |
OK, that was all for the second floor. We slowly move down to the ground floor, which was the most crowded that day. There were people playing on almost all the games, but I managed to snap some pictures anyway.
Their collection of shooters also impressed me. Here we had one more Lost World, and a less common Ocean Hunter.
They also had another of our favorite shooters, Let's Go Jungle! This one had serious graphics problems. It looked like a clipping bug in the 3D engine, so parts of the polygons were stretched to the borders of the screen. It looked really freaky, like people were having poles shooting our of their bodies. I wonder what could have caused it. Maybe bad ram?
Anyway, we felt that we wasted the two credits we had just bought, so we quickly moved on to other games.
I didn't really test these two. It's the same boxing game as on the third floor, and a Fast Gunman redemption machine.
Even more racers! Is this great or what? Sega Rally, with Manx TT in the background.
Here's what KLOV has to say about the Namco game Quick & Crash:
[...] a novelty shooting gallery that tests player accuracy and reflexes to the limit. It's a throwback to the mechanical shooting games of the past with a few futuristic twists.
Here's a better view of that Manx TT.
Now here's something different. Mad Wave Motion Theater! It's like those roller coaster simulators that go up and down. Take a look at this random YouTube video for a better view.
Primeval Hunt is a shooter which I never saw before. I didn't test it, but it looks like an updated version of Lost World. At least it's dinosaurs.. and it was released 10 years after.
Another oldie, Sega's Wave Runner. People were playing this one too, I just managed to take a picture when there was no-one around.
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| Star Wars and Sega Touring Car |
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| One more shooter that doesn't interest me, Big Buck Hunter. Well, at least it's better than the pinball version. |
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| I don't like these diagonal DDR machines, mostly because I'm not very good at it. Never change a winning concept! :-) |
I guess I have mentioned before that I am a fan of Sega's Dreamcast console. One of the games I remember having high hopes for was Re-Volt. I was a bit disappointed when I finally got to play it, and I never picked it up again. Needless to say, I didn't test the arcade version. And one of the monitors looked dead.
At this time my camera display was starting to blink: BATTERY LOW! Oh no! I tried to hurry and take pictures of the remaining games:
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| 18 Wheeler |
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| Fast and the Furious, Sega Rally |
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| What is this game? Please leave a comment if you know. |
But of course the camera's battery ran out of juice, and I had to use my phone for the last couple of cabinets.
In addition to the deluxe version of Outrun 2 SP, Liseberg also had an ordinary Outrun 2. As I said, I prefer the stick shift on this model, but I got a surprise. I never knew that the difference between Outrun 2 and SP was so big, but the tracks are laid out completely differently. I was taken by surprise when I played against a group of random boys, and I didn't recognize the track at all. It turned out that I had only been playing the SP version for all these years! I crashed and messed up a lot, but I still managed to win.
..and the last picture of the day. A beautiful row of four deluxe Sega Rally sitdown cabinets.
That's it for now! Liseberg is a fantastic place, and I recommend a visit to anyone in the vicinity of Sweden. Heck, it's almost worth a visit to Sweden just in itself! Bring your family and have a blast!
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