The heydays of arcades may be behind us, but that hasn’t stopped the trend of games that have previously released on consoles and PC making the backward leap onto arcade cabinets. The latest game to make this transition is Minecraft Dungeons, the top-down Diablo-esque dungeon crawler. Mojang, the Swedish developer that created the all-conquering megahit, has teamed up with Play Mechanix to create a custom version of Minecraft Dungeons specifically tailored to this retro platform.
It’s not the first platform that would come to mind, but Play Mechanix wants to make this arcade version a great experience in its own right, with a control scheme that is inclusive of newcomers. The game is ever so slightly different from the original console and PC version, with nine levels and dedicated buttons for melee attacks, dodging, and ranged attacks laid out on the cabinet. The game doesn’t support saving in the traditional sense, instead opting to use physical save cards. Will Carlin, creative director at Play Mechanix, explains:
The original release of Minecraft Dungeons released almost a year ago and received a mostly positive reception, but the consensus was that it didn’t hold up to other games in its genre, or even Minecraft itself. Despite having Minecraft in the name, the game featured no mining or crafting, which was an interesting choice. The dev team followed the game up with a number of DLC levels and content to add to that experience.
