Silent Hill Hits Arcades

[Kaiser]

Via IGN

We're sure you're all hyped up for a next generation entry in Konami's atmospheric survival horror series, Silent Hill. But before that, you might want to take a trip to your local arcade, where the series could be making an appearance first.

Konami debuted Silent Hill the Arcade at the AOU arcade show in Japan earlier today. Yes, the horror movie/game franchise is now an arcade title. Which begs the question, how exactly does one go about converting a slow-paced adventure game into a quick arcade experience?

If you saw what Capcom did with Resident Evil when it brought the franchise to game centers in the Gun Survivor series, you'll have your first hint. Konami has taken a similar path with Silent Hill, converting the game into a gun shooting title eerily reminiscent of Sega's House of the Dead franchise.

Silent Hill the Arcade takes place in, you guessed it, Silent Hill. The game features an original story centered around the Little Baroness, a ship that appeared in Silent Hill 2, although the main characters, Eric and Tina, seem to be original. Generic protagonist names, check!

Aside from the background story and a few creepy monster designs, this appears to be standard gun game fare. You know the type -- shoot off the screen to reload, select your path at branch points, and so-forth. We couldn't find any attempt at doing something new with the genre, aside from the use of the universal e-Amusement Pass system, allowing players to save their progress.

From a visual standpoint, this clearly isn't the next generation of Silent Hill. The game looks like it's running on PlayStation 2 level hardware. Although this is apparently different PlayStation 2 hardware than the Silent Hill team usually works with, as Silent Hill the Arcade is downright ugly for a year 2007 arcade game. It's going to be tough to play this when Sega's Lindbergh-based House of the Dead 4 is right next to it.

We didn't see anything at the AOU demo today that would make us want to run out and play Silent Hill the Arcade (except for the hot nurses who guarded the demo stations). Maybe we'll have to force ourselves to take a look if Konami's true next generation Silent Hill is delayed.

[Amethyst]

This is a sad, sad event for Silent Hill fans everywhere. What happened to the psychological horror that gave fanboys a reason to bash Resident Evil? Silent Hill's become Resident Evil!

On a side note, you can save at arcade games now!? When did this happen?

[rmedtx]

I cannot imagine Silent Hill as an arcade machine... It just doesn't make sense. But hopefully they will come up with something really cool.

[Sonny_Jim]

On a side note, you can save at arcade games now!? When did this happen?

I believe waaay back in the 90's when SNK had their Neo Geo in the arcade cabinets, you could take a memory card from the the home edition and plug it into a slot on the arcade cabinet.

I've also seen on a recent trip to Hong Kong a Pro Evo Soccer arcade game that allows you to plug in your own PS2 joypads (two ports on the front of the machine).

Nothing beat the massive sitdown 3 player wierdo strategy game I saw. Three 'desks' for each player to sit at with a trackball. Looked like some capture the flag game. The twist was that you could use prebought trading cards and place them on a special position on the machine, which had some kind of magreader/sensor, giving the player powerups etc.

Also, I've had a good look inside a Time Crisis 3 and Ridge Racer 5 arcade cabinets. You'll be surprised to find that they have an actual Playstation 2 stuck in the bottom! In the memory slot is some kind of dongle/key.

[rmedtx]

It would be cool to play Silent Hill in Virtual Reality...
But I doubt that's the way it will be.