One of the Weirdest Arcade Games Ever Is Getting a Modern Console Release

Part of the beauty of gaming history is seeing just how singularly weird certain creatives could get. Developers from decades past were able to construct elaborate worlds and strange gameplay experiences that simply don’t exist anymore — or can’t, given the shift away from media like elaborate arcade cabinets. Especially in the realm of arcade games, publishers like Sega found a lot of fun ways to play with peripherals and create outlandish worlds for a strange gameplay experience.

In the modern era, most of those strange arcade experiences have been lost to time, a natural by-product of gaming shifting more into a home console and PC space. That’s where titles like Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties come into play, as they have found a perfectly fitting in-universe game reason to feature older arcade cabinets as bonus challenges. It’s a clever way to bring older titles to modern consoles, giving new players a chance to discover some of the weirder titles from decades ago while embodying the heroes and anti-heroes. This includes a charmingly weird train cart game that has to be seen to be believed – and is fully playable for modern consoles thanks to the latest Yakuza remake.

You Have To See Magical Truck Adventure To Believe It

Magical Truck Adventure is one of the strangest arcade games Sega was ever involved with, and I couldn’t be happier that it has survived into the modern console era thanks to its inclusion in the Yakuza series. Part of the appeal of the Yakuza games has always been the wealth of minigames hidden throughout the cities. While the main narrative may be rooted in combat-heavy city exploration and dramatic gang confrontations, there are plenty of side missions and mini-games to discover along the way. For Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, that also includes a number of retro titles from the earlier years of the publisher. While there are plenty of Sega Game Gear titles for Mine to unlock (including Pac-Man, Galaga 2, Sonic Drift, and Streets of Rage), players can also step into a number of small arcades littered around the city and find some obscure games to try out.

Among them is a particularly odd two-player game, Magical Truck Adventure, which has been updated so it can be played using a regular controller. The game follows a well-meaning young boy named Roy and a mysterious girl named Alma as they try to keep a powerful time-hopping stone out of the hands of a pair of thieves looking to harness that power for their own plans. The primary mechanic sees players pumping a railroad handcart and stepping down on the foot pedal to lean and jump around obstacles. The game’s stages quickly take the pair through robot factories, under the sea, and through a fantastical battlefield. It’s fast-paced, growing more frantic with each stage. It’s a delightfully weird time. With multiple endings that only get more bizarre, Magical Truck Adventure has been retrofitted to work on modern DualSense and Xbox controllers, with the hand pump of the arcade card replaced with the analog sticks. It’s hard to describe Magical Truck Adventure’s frantic pace and Miyazaki-inspired color scheme, all filtered through distinctly blocky 3D graphics from the turn of the century. 

Why It’s Important That Yakuza Games Keep Old Arcade Titles Alive

There’s something to be appreciated about Sega’s inclusion of the arcades in the Yakuza games. In the current gaming landscape, small arcades are a rarity – and niche games like Magical Truck Adventure would likely fade even further into obscurity if it weren’t for the inclusion in major releases like Yakuza. It works on multiple fronts. In-game, it’s a means of fleshing out the world that Kazuma Kiryu and Yoshitaka Mine can explore, adding elements that feel fitting for the real-life inspirations behind the game settings. They also serve as small libraries paying ode to the history of Sega, with cult classics and obscure oddballs preserved in a way they weren’t going to be otherwise.

It’s a clever way to make the games available for interested players while using it to add natural depth to another modern game. Sega’s legacy in the gaming world goes way beyond the more famous icons of the company, and it’s exciting to see the strangest arcade classics we never got to see get a chance to show off in the modern era. Coupled with quality of life improvements like pause and rewind, players can see the older games in all their dated glory. It’s the sort of thing Nintendo also does with classic games in the Animal Crossing titles and feels like a great way to attract unexpected interest in older titles by making them part of a larger game. Yakuza’s means of including some of Sega’s strangest games and preserving them for another generation is a great way to make sure the publisher’s weirdest chapters aren’t overwritten.