Blog Post 1 Internet Arcade

1. Write about your experience playing, what happened during play?
2. How is it different playing on an emulator vs playing the game on the original hardware or an arcade cabinet? You can talk about browser emulation or anything that you think might be different.

I played the game Puzzle Loop. The payer is a cannon that has an infinite number of colored pearls that must be launched at a string of pearls that are approaching in a circular pattern. The string of pearls are randomized so the colors can be grouped or they can be separated by other colors. The player is to shoot the loaded colored pearl at a group of similar colored pearls. If the pearl lands on a string of pearls that contains three or more pearls of the same color, then that connected string of pearls disappears and the entire string gets shorter temporarily. Failure to do so in a timely manner will result in the pearls reaching the cannon, which causes the cannon to explode and the player loses.

The game was difficult at first to understand, because the controls were not straightforward. In order to start the game, you have to press F5 to "load the quarters", and then you would use Alt or Control to shoot the cannon. The instructions mentioned using the arrow keys to move the cannon, but those did not work as detailed so I was unable to move, making the game more challenging. Once the controls made sense, I was able to achieve as high as level 14, but the inability to move the cannon made it difficult to get anything higher. On an arcade cabinet, these controls would far more streamlined as it only takes seconds to understand that a joystick moves the player, and pressing the red button fires the weapon.