Alpine Racer/Walkthrough

Once you have inserted your coin into the cabinet of Namco's 1994 skiing arcade game Alpine Racer, it will proceed to the screen displayed above, from which you will have eleven seconds to choose either Speed Racing (Normal) or Gate Racing (Technical) by using the Selection Buttons (MAME: Alt and Space), then pressing the Decision Button (MAME: Ctrl) to confirm your choice; you will then have eleven more seconds to select either Novice Course "Sweet Dreams" (which is 2.8 km long, and has a slope angle of 24°), Intermediate Course "Deja Vu" (which is 3.1 km long and has an angle of 32°) or Expert Course "Flashback" (which is 4.0 km long and has an angle of 41°) by using the Selection Buttons, then pressing the Decision Button to confirm your choice. If you'd selected Speed Racing, the screen will cut to a shot of protagonist Skier #27 at the top of the slope with four other CPU-controlled skiers on either side of him, as the text "READY" appears on the start line and the view changes to first-person (but you can change it to third-person by pressing the Decision Button, and back again by pressing it again) - and once it has changed to "GO" you will have to push the inner edge up to make Skier #27 start his descent down the slope (but if you are using MAME to play this game, you will not be able to control Skier #27 by default, so you must hold 9 and press F2 to calibrate its virtual analogue controls, otherwise Skier #27 will only be able to ski around in circles at the start line).

However, if you'd selected Gate Racing, the screen will cut to a shot of Skier #27 at the top of the slope with a timekeeper as the text "READY" appears on the screen and the view changes to third-person (but you can change it to first-person by pressing the Decision Button, and back again by pressing it again); once the on-screen text has changed to "GO", you shall have to push the inner edge up to make Skier #27 start his descent down the slope, and in this mode, there are no time-extending checkpoints, but there are pairs of gates (the odd-numbered pairs are blue while the even-numbered ones are red, and each time Skier #27 passes between one, his time will be extended by one second as the text "EXTENDED" appears under it). However, if you were unfortunate enough to not pass through even one of the gate pairs, the game will not go into "best-time" mode after finishing even if your total time was good enough to be registered on the table - so if you select this mode, make sure to pass through all the gate pairs if you want to enter your initials. The Novice Course has thirty-eight pairs of gates you must pass through, while the Intermediate Course has fifty and the Expert Course has sixty-three.