How to handle arcade ports (2)

A while ago I wrote about the genius way Sega handled continues in House of the Dead 2. That was in what they call Original mode, which is the arcade game remade for the home console. They also include the Arcade mode in House of the Dead 2 and that is the only thing you get in House of the Dead 3. Me being me, I ofcourse had to beat House of the Dead 2 in both Original and Arcade mode. In the Arcade mode they handle the continues differently.

Every time you lose the game you get more lives, when you have maxed out your lives you start getting more continues. You have to be insanely good to beat the game with the amount of lives and continues you start out with. Even with the maximum amounts of lives and continues the game is still challenging. This makes a very short game like House of the Dead last a while and when you finally beat it you will feel like you have truly mastered the game. I like this approach to handling continues better then just having unlimited continues but the way it is handled in Original mode is more interesting and it does a better job at encouraging the player to get as far as possible in the game every time.

If you want to read my old post about how continues are handled in Original mode you can easily find it by clicking the "House of the Dead 2 and 3" label at the end of this post.