RARE First-Person Shooter Arcade Game Pickup!

RetroRalph·video·9m 21s·analyzed·Mar 17, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.019

TL;DR

RetroRalph acquires and restores rare 1999 War Final Assault FPS arcade cabinet with hardware upgrades.

Summary

RetroRalph documents the acquisition, restoration, and initial gameplay of War Final Assault, a rare 1999 Atari first-person shooter arcade game housed in a Midway cabinet. The video covers physical inspection, cosmetic damage assessment, power-on testing, brightness adjustment, hardware specifications (Atari Vegas/Midway Vegas board with MIPS R7000 CPU and Voodoo Banshee graphics), gameplay mechanics comparison to The Grid, and a planned CompactFlash drive replacement to eliminate the original spinning rust hard drive.

Key Claims

War Final Assault came out in 1999, one year before The Grid
high confidence · Direct statement by host during gameplay discussion section
War Final Assault is a first-person shooter while The Grid is a third-person shooter
high confidence · Host explicitly contrasts the two games' perspectives and control schemes
War Final Assault uses buttons for movement and joystick for aiming, whereas The Grid uses trackball for aiming and flight stick for movement
high confidence · Detailed control layout comparison made by host during gameplay section
Up to four War Final Assault machines can be networked together for multiplayer competition
high confidence · Host states: 'Another cool aspect of this machine is that if you have four of them you can network them and connect them together'
The cabinet uses an Atari Vegas or Midway Vegas board set (both companies used this designation)
medium confidence · Host states uncertainty about the company attribution: 'I don't know the story on that so if you do comment in the video description'
War Final Assault hardware includes MIPS R7000 CPU, 3D effects Voodoo Banshee video card, and DCS sound system
high confidence · Host provides detailed hardware specifications during technical segment
The original hard drive is being replaced with CompactFlash for improved reliability and boot speed
high confidence · Host describes hard drive as 'ticking time bombs' and performs the CompactFlash installation on camera
The game has hidden unlockables that the host has not yet fully explored
high confidence · Host states: 'There are some hidden unlockables and things like that too. I haven't really dove in that far to figure that out yet'

Notable Quotes

“War Final Assault came out in 1999, one year before The Grid. This game is similar in style but instead of being a third-person shooter it's actually a first-person shooter and the control layout is a little more difficult to use in my opinion.”
RetroRalph (Jon)@ 5:38 — Core positioning of the game's design philosophy and control complexity relative to contemporary competition
“These things are ticking time bombs, and I'll be switching this out for a CompactFlash ASAP.”
RetroRalph (Jon)@ 7:57 — Expresses common arcade restoration concern about spinning rust hard drive reliability in legacy systems
“It is definitely a rare title i don't know how many of them were made but there's definitely not a lot of them out there”
RetroRalph (Jon)@ 8:30 — Confirms scarcity status of War Final Assault in the collector market
“I'm definitely used to The Grid versus this so it's taking me a little bit to figure it out.”
RetroRalph (Jon)@ 6:44 — Indicates host's familiarity with The Grid through emulation creates muscle memory conflict with War Final Assault controls
“It does remind me of Doom or Quake or Unreal Tournament. Definitely that kind of thing.”
RetroRalph (Jon)@ 8:44 — Places War Final Assault within arcade adaptation context of PC-dominated first-person shooter genre

Entities

RetroRalphpersonJonpersonWar Final AssaultgameThe GridgameAtaricompany MidwaycompanyCaptain's AuctionorganizationJoe SabopersonKiller InstinctgameMortal Kombat

Signals

?
design_philosophy: War Final Assault employed button-based movement with joystick aiming (unconventional for FPS), suggesting developer experimentation with control schemes; The Grid's release one year later with improved trackball/flight stick layout may indicate competitive response
medium · Host speculates: 'I can't help but wonder if the developers at Midway saw this and went, man I think we can do it a little bit better.'
$
market_signal: War Final Assault confirmed as rare/scarce title with low production volume; secondary market availability limited
high · Host states: 'It is definitely a rare title i don't know how many of them were made but there's definitely not a lot of them out there'
?
product_concern: Hard drive reliability issue identified as endemic to arcade hardware of this era; described as 'ticking time bombs' requiring preventive CompactFlash replacement
high · Host states: 'These things are ticking time bombs, and I'll be switching this out for a CompactFlash ASAP. Screw this spinning rust, we're doing it right now.'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.028

0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I am so excited for today's episode because underneath here we have a very cool and unique and somewhat rare arcade game that you may or may not have heard of before, but it is very cool and it is worth sticking around. So before we get started, I just want to let you know I have a bunch of new hats, t-shirts, hoodies. Actually, I don't have hats yet. That's a lie. I have t-shirts and hoodies and stickers and a Chasing Nostalgia poster, all if you click the store link on the YouTube channel. I would greatly appreciate it. It gives back to the channel a tiny bit. I get a little bit of a cut from that and you get something cool in return. So no obligation, but if you're interested in that stuff, that stuff's available. Without further ado, and this time I'm armed with a box cutter because yeah, yeah, I read all those comments where you're like, why don't you have a box cutter? I don't know. I just didn't, but I do now. So let's unbox this thing and check it out.

0:57

that was the best this has ever gone okay so we got it off the pallet without killing ourselves so let's do like an initial inspection of everything we'll start right here at the bottom of the arcade you know a lot of times when you get these you look for you know chewed up bottoms and stuff now i got this at auction so i got it at Captain's Auction, so sometimes you don't see everything at auction, especially because I was online and I wasn't there. You know, there's some paint on the coin door, that's easy to fix. Let's look at the control panel. So, you know, that's one thing, when you're buying these at auction and you're doing it virtually, there's certain things you don't see in that. He's not gonna be like, all through, all through, soda stain. 808 and a half, look at eight and a half, one time, 800, eight and a half, eight and a half, one time, 800 going once, $800 going twice, third and final call, done all through, eight and a half, eight and a half, 850, so it's way $800. So you have to be careful.

3:38

Little gouge right there another one right there and again on this side same thing now this is typical for these if you look at a lot of midway cabinets like I restored the killer instinct one so oftentimes those are chewed up so if you're looking for used midway games like this Mortal Kombat killer instinct you'll notice these two typically get chewed up and think about it right these are butted up sometimes against other machines so this one's all worn away so again maybe some wood putty Bondo and that should be easy the t-molding it just looks a little chewed up in certain sections like right there we can we can kind of you know that's easy putting new t-molding on it is easy so overall my assessment of this is not bad like you know for buying it on captain's and I don't actually see it in person at first it's looking pretty good so what we'll do now is we'll you know cross our fingers power it up and hopefully it uh it made the trek okay and it works Alright let plug it in and fire it up Nothing on the screen There we go Alright so this is good It looks like it booting up So this game did use a hard drive. I'm gonna mod it and put a... they don't call it... it's not an SD card. Shoot. I can't remember what you call it. Compact flash. They have a compact flash mod for it. I'm gonna do that, but it looks like it's up, so that's good. The only thing I can tell right away is the screen brightness is really low. So, you know, I'm gonna take camera around back and see if we can just adjust that really quick. Okay we're around back of the machine now and you can see I could adjust the brightness on the main brightness on the flyback but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to actually grab this is a little breakout board you find these on basically every monitor really and what we're going to do is I'm going to adjust the black level just a bit and it should brighten the image up a little bit for us. So do that really quick and then let's take a look at the front see if that looks better. Much better. Sometimes just a simple adjustment is all it takes. Before we get into gameplay War of Final Assault came out in 1999, one year before the grid. This game is similar in style but instead of being a third-person shooter it's actually a first-person shooter and the control layout is a little more difficult to use in my opinion. The grid uses a trackball to aim and the flight stick to move. Atari decided to use the buttons for movement and the joystick to aim. I can't help but wonder if the developers at Midway saw this and went, man I think we can do it a little bit better. It's still really fun, it just takes a little bit more getting used to. Another cool aspect of this machine is that if you have four of them you can network them and connect them together so they'll link up. So you can actually have four people competing against each other. It's pretty cool and maybe one day I'll find another one and I can network two together, that'd be pretty cool. Alright let's do some gameplay and check it out. Okay so on the character select screen there's four characters to pick from. There are some hidden unlockables and things like that too. I haven't really dove in that far to figure that part out yet. Oh man. It's actually really hard to get used to these buttons. I've been playing a lot of the grid under emulation lately and see I'm getting confused but you kind of get used to it. Oh man I died. I'm definitely used to the grid versus this so it's taking me a little bit to figure it out. Aw, shoot. I didn't see that guy. Aw, man. The cool thing is if you have a ton of quarters you can just kinda continue where you left off but the game on free so uh the top button on the trigger gets rid of the weapon you have so if you find something else you want to pick up you can just press the top button and it drop that weapon the graphics are pretty good for a game that came out in 99 i gotta say oh man i'm getting butt kicked oh this guy must be a boss okay he is all right come on i gotta be able to kill this boss come on I'm gonna do this oh my gosh I'm getting dizzy oh boy oh no he was almost dead level clear oh I guess I killed him sweet let's focus on the hardware for a minute this is the Atari Vegas or Midway Vegas as both companies use this board set I don't know the story on that so if you do comment in the video description the CPU is a MIPS RM700 the graphics is a 3D effects Voodoo Banshee video card, and it has a DCS sound system. Unfortunately, this has what I call a spinning rust drive to store the game data. It's an old school hard drive. These things are ticking time bombs, and I'll be switching this out for a CompactFlash ASAP. Screw this spinning rust, we're doing it right now. You remove the IDE cable, super easy. Then you take the CompactFlash, put it exactly where the IDE cable was. You take the end of the power cord, you take it and install on the end that was going into the hard drive and boom you boot it up the things in a boot up super fast less heat more reliability that's what i'm talking about well guys i hope you enjoyed this quick look at war final assault i'm super excited to have this in the collection it is definitely a rare title i don't know how many of them were made but there's definitely not a lot of them out there i'm gonna be on the lookout for another one if i can so i can network them together it'd be really cool to have people over and do these deathmatch style games i think that'd be a lot of fun now It does remind me of Doom or Quake or Unreal Tournament. Definitely that kind of thing. And it was cool to see they were bringing that type of a game style into the arcade with games like this and The Grid. Unfortunately, they were short-lived. But still really fun to experience it. And again, I'm really excited to have it in the collection. Anyway, if you enjoyed this video, give me a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel. Put your comments below. I know what you think of this game. Have you played it before? Is this like something you didn't even realize existed? I definitely want to hear from you. And that's it for now. and we will see you on the next one.