Vandyke

Vandyke is a 1991 arcade release developed and published by the Japanese company UPL. The name means more to collectors than to the general public today, even though UPL was a regular supplier of cabinets through the eighties and is the studio behind the Ninja-Kid games and Atomic Robo-Kid.

The entry lists a side-on view and support for more than one player. On a 1991 cabinet that usually means two people standing side by side, working through the game together and splitting the enemies between them. It was the commercial peak of that idea, since a single machine could take coins from two customers at once.

Arcades were changing that year. One-on-one fighting games were taking over the floor, while titles built around cooperative progress through stages were still holding their own. Smaller firms such as UPL survived in that environment by leaning on bold graphics and immediate action that needed no explanation.

Games from this layer of arcade history now exist largely thanks to emulation. Original boards decay, cabinets were stripped for parts, and for many titles a home conversion was never made at all.

European arcades also bought their games differently from Japanese ones. Operators rarely purchased a complete machine with dedicated cabinetry; they bought the board alone and slotted it into a generic cabinet with a standard connector. One cabinet could therefore host ten different games over a few years, with the sticker on the glass as the only thing that changed.

You can take Vandyke for a run right in the browser on OldGame.cz, no original hardware required.