Romstar's Forgotten "Downtown" Arcade Game - With Rotary Joysticks! - Remastered

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joe's Video Games back with another really cool arcade game video for you like we always do about this time. This is one that you don't see too often for several reasons, but this is 1989's Downtown. We thought was appropriate. I'm downtown right now. There's cars driving by and everything. But this is a cool, interesting game. Kind of quirky. If you like quirky, this video is for you. Like I said, 1989 and this is a kit game. I don't think you could buy a dedicated version. I think you had to put this in your own cabinet. Of course, you could have bought what they called a kit cabinet, which was a cabinet made just for these type of games. But this is a nice clean one. I believe we got this in that lot of games that we got from Kentucky that we shot a little video of. So if you saw that video, this is one of those. It came out pretty nice. It's in a nice solid cabinet and plays good. It's kind of unique, so we left it. It's going to stay this. This is not a game that you can really convert back to what it originally was. This cabinet originally was a Future Spy. Future Spy was actually a Sega game that was the sequel to Zaxxon. So it has bad burn-in, actually. If you look at the monitor, you can see the lines. Like on Zaxxon, you find a three-quarter thing. So basically, the whole time that it was a Future Spy, it showed over and over again the background in that weird Zaxxon view. So it is burnt into the monitor. But this isn't a really expensive or super desirable game, so we're not going to replace it or anything. It's working good and we've rebuilt the monitor. So that little bit of burn-in, the new owner of this game is just going to have to live with. Like I said, it's a kit game. So basically, whenever they got the kit, they would have rewired the cabinet, put the game board in it, put the artwork on the control panel, put the bezel on it, the artwork around the monitor, put the marquee on it, the artwork at the top, and put the side art on it. And they did a really clean job, so it looks cool. So I'll show off some of this art. Now, you can see whoever did it wasn't thinking and got the side piece on a little crooked. That's all right. So it's 1989. You get this little brick design here with a spotlight on it, I suppose. Then you get these two dudes. I like the way they did the art. If you look real close, like if you look at his shirt or whatever, it's like little halftone things, like little gradients to make it a certain color, blah, blah, blah. Pretty cool. And so you got the one guy, and he's got a pipe in his hand. And then you got this other guy, and he's got a machine gun. I would bet he's going to win. But I don't think. They're probably buddies. They're probably not fighting each other. And then you got all this trash on the ground down here under them. Because remember, they're downtown. Let me just tell you, if our downtown area was like that, I'd be calling City Hall. Can't have that. Look at our downtown. Look at those streets. That's how you keep stuff clean, folks. No trash out here. Anyway, back to my video. So I don't know where their downtown is, but they need to clean the place up. All right, here's the marquee. I'm not trying to convince you that this is like the greatest game ever. I'm just trying to say that it's a thing. You know what I mean? This is a game. Somebody did this, and this is the way they did it, which I think is cool in all of its 1989-ness. So you got the guy over here with a mohawk. And again, look at the way it's silkscreen. Like little gradients to make it a slightly darker color, blah, blah, blah. So the guy's got a... Look, I think he's got like a feather hanging off of the back of his hair. I think that's what that is. That was a thing for a while. He's got spikes on his vest. Then you got a guy over here with a ponytail getting pimp slapped. And then this is one of our heroes. And then you got this guy over here who knows that karate. For since it's the 80s there, he was probably studying taekwondo. And you see what he's doing? He's kicking a police officer. I don't know if it's disrespectful to say cop. I don't know. He's kicking an officer of the law. And then you've got this officer of the law over here, has his gun out on him. And they are fighting not only the bad guys, they're also fighting the po-po. So we'll get into that here in a minute. And so this side of the cabinet, same thing, same art, just for the other side. A couple little interesting things. Here's the Future Spy sticker. And check this out. Here's the serial number 296. Future Spy, I believe, came out in about 1984. And let me tell you, arcade games were hurting in 1984. They weren't selling all that well. Because I think they had overdone it. They'd made so many games that it kind of hurt the market for a while there. So that was kind of when the arcades were in the valley, so to say. So here's the control panel. Now again, this would have been a Future Spy control panel originally. So the way they made these kits was you had one big sticker that you put over your control panel. And then wherever you ended up putting your buttons and stuff, they had these little removable stickers that you could put on so that you could line it up with however your control panel was. So that's certainly how they did this one. But they did a really good job, I think. Got a couple guys over here fighting. And again, these are your two hero characters. Then you got this guy over here. Who knows what he's up to. And it's hard to see because they covered it up, but this is like a mob character paying off the police. See the money there. And then they also put the bezel on it. Now it's behind tinted glass, so it's harder to see it, but we'll read it. ROM, star, it says at the top. Again, there's such a reflection you can't really see what's going on. But this guy's in front of a roll-up door and he's kicking a barrel. This guy is a flame, uh-oh, fire breather. And then this hero character down here has a gun. More trash on the ground. And he's shooting over at this guy who he has done shot dead. This game is kind of violent, by the way. Don't tell the kids. And then again, you've got this shady looking character here who's dropping money all over the place. And you've got this big guy who kind of looks like King Kong Bundy. All right, and then up here, here it says play instructions. Now it's gonna be hard to read this, but I'll read it for you. Live through me. Play instructions. You witness a payoff. Oh no. Now the whole gang is after you. The cops are on their side. The police officers are on their side. I think that's rude to call them that. I don't think they like being called cops. If there's any police officers watching this, I did not say it. It was ROM, star. The cops are on their side, so your only hope is to bring the boss to justice. So in this game, even the cops are crooked. Joystick moves man. Rotate joystick top to face enemies. Punch, kick, pick up weapon, use weapon. Battle the street gang to find the boss. Use punch and kick to fight the enemies. Rotate the joystick top to face the enemy. Capture weapons from enemies and use them to your advantage. If time runs out, your man dies of exhaustion. Let's make downtown a safe place. I can get behind that. So as you just read, one of the interesting things about this is that they used the cool rotary joysticks. Since this wasn't a super popular game though, you don't really see this game too often. And then that you have to have the special joysticks to play it, so that even further limits the, really people. Here I'm trying to film a Hollywood style, is the guy honking his horn at me? Downtown, you're getting all kinds of trouble downtown. Anyway, you know, a lot of games you can just throw in a cabinet, but this one has a couple of reasons that you can't just throw it in any old cabinet. First of all, the monitor is vertical. Most games in the late 80s had the monitor horizontal. And then second of all, it doesn't use regular joysticks. You have to have these rotary ones. So you had to pretty much make a game, make a cabinet specifically for this game. And I don't know how many people were in the mood to do that. So I don't think this was like a real popular game that you saw in the arcades a lot, but I like it. Cool game. This cabinet's in nice shape. I've got one other thing I'm going to show you. Now who would do such a nice kit? Bally's Aladdin's castle. So Bally themselves converted this game from Future Spy to a downtown, so that they could put it in one of their Aladdin's castles. Very cool. So there you go. I'll set up the tripod and we'll film a little video of it, and maybe we'll clean up downtown. All right folks, we are back. We're going to film a little bit of RomStars downtown and show you what it's all about. Again, it's got the SNK rotary joysticks, which are super cool, but I don't know how to play this game. I'm not very good at any arcade game, so don't expect a full tutorial showing you all the cool stuff and everything. I'm just going to play through it. This would be like if you walked up to the game back in the day and dropped your quarter in and didn't know what to do, because that's my skill level. So here we go. We will add a credit. Please push only one player's start button. Please push one or two players start button. Let's add a couple more, because this game looks fun. I'm sure I'm going to want to play through a little more of it. Let's see here. Uh-oh. Let's get him. I've got a punch and a kick. The cops are after me. So you rotate the stick. Man, they walk around you in circles trying to make it complicated. Yeah, take that. Oh, no, I'm dead. It seems like it's hard to hit them with a kick, like they come right at you if you do. I've got 4,000 points, people. I need a gun. Look, I don't think there's anything wrong with me ratcheting up the violence since they're double teaming me. Okay, it's just spawning bad guys. Come on now. How about one of them? Bam, bam, right in the face, bam. Again, can you see the burn in from when it was Future Spy? It's like the diagonal things. Oh, come on. He's got a pipe and I don't have a gun. Oh, come on. It ain't right, folks. It ain't right. Yeah, now what? Oh, come on. Yeah. Okay, now I've got to beat up a chick, or I think that's a chick. Might need proof that's a chick, that's all I'm saying. She don't fight like a chick. And I think she's got a beard. Yeah, now what? Cameras are against me. Where'd the gun go? Is that it? No. It's a beard. The purpose of those are. I condone this, people. I'm being forced to do this by an electronic video game. I think I just beat up Vega. Somebody and then run over them. Stage two, folks. Face. Police officers. Luckily, he's not too good of a shot. Man, the police in this town suck. I mean, they've got guys walking around with rocket launchers. Half the cops are crooked. Messed up. All right, so there you go. You guys get the gist. And girls get the gist. RomStars Downtown. What a cool game. I like it. Now, by the time you see RomStars Downtown, it may have took the police cruiser over to someone else's house. So we may not even have this game for sale anymore. You can see what we've got for sale right now by going to our website. We're at lionsarcade.com. We've always got tons of games here in our shop. You can stop by and see us. We're in downtown Rock Hill, about 15 minutes south of Charlotte, North Carolina, in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And if you're not in the area or maybe you're not even looking to buy an arcade game, that's fine with us. Just subscribe to us here on YouTube and we will be filming a ton more videos of all these old arcade games whenever we get them in. We love these things and we get different ones in every week. So we will see you on the next video.