Trigger Happy
The slogan for Apple’s freshly minted Arcade subscription service is “Play Extraordinary”, which is presumably a deliberate update of the old adverb-agnostic slogan “Think Different”. It was peculiar, then, that one of the games proudly shown off at the launch was a version of Frogger. Seriously? Guide a frog across a road, avoiding traffic, in 2019? Most potential customers won’t even remember the original.
Well, perhaps the whole thing is quite cleverly demographically targeted. recalls blurry childhood memories of lurking in videogame arcades during rain-lashed summer holidays. After all, people who are really into videogames (eg readers of this very august organ) already play the games they want on their phones and consoles, and don’t need a curated set of comforting retro and family-friendly diversions. Apple Arcade is for what we used to call the “casuals”: another way for your phone to fill in every blank moment of existential dread, or possible independent thought, until you die.
