Half-Life 2 to hit Japanese arcades

Gordon Freeman might be able to save the planet from an extradimensional alien invasion, but can he save the arcade industry?

In a private exhibition taking place in Tokyo, Taito has revealed that it is developing an arcade edition of the Half-Life protagonist's exploits. A redesigned version of Valve Software's popular first-person shooter, Half-Life 2 Survivor is slated for a March 2006 release in Japan.

Half-Life 2 Survivor runs on an arcade cabinet that looks like that of a typical car-racing game, but instead of taking the wheel, players use joysticks on both armrests and foot pedals to control the action. The machine is based on Taito's Type-X unit, which is an arcade system built with PC components, running on Windows XP Embedded. The cabinet used for the game features a 32-inch LCD monitor running at a resolution of 1360x768 pixels, and it also has 5.1-channel surround sound. As usual for modern arcade games, the machine uses a smart card for storing player data.

Half-Life 2 Survivor is network enabled, so players in different arcades will be able to work with or against each other in a variety of modes. Battle mode lets players jump into a deathmatch, while mission mode calls on players to cooperate and take on various challenges. At the moment, eight players can enjoy the game together through network play, with the game providing bots to fill in empty player spots. Half-Life 2 Survivor is also playable offline with story mode, in which players take the role of the main character, Gordon Freeman.

For more on Taito's source material, check out GameSpot's full review of the original Half-Life 2 on PC.