Tugboat

Tugboat is yet another Moppet Video production, and while it's slightly more interesting than Pirate Treasure or Leprechaun, it still is not that exciting for anyone over five. Moppets might have fun with tugboat-steering, horn-honking action, but even they would probably prefer to just pretend to play something more exciting like Donkey Kong. In Tugboat, you steer the titular slow-moving vehicle down a poorly-rendered Mississipi river, all while avoiding logs and collecting lighthouses. The controls are simple, consisting of the ability to steer left AND right, and the power to honk on your horn, which really serves no gameplay purpose at all, but might entertain an easily-distracted child, but only in the early 80's. Today's children require much more visceral entertainments, and the blocky graphics would be laughed off the screen, even by a preschooler.

Pirate Treasure, or, moppet treasure island

Pirate Treasure was yet another simple kid's game from the child-loving company Moppet Video, who made a business out of smaller, simpler arcade games aimed at the really young crowd. It plays almost like a palette swap of Leprechaun/Pot of Gold, with similar treasure hunting/chase mechanics. You have to get to the treasure island and not get hit by various infamous pirates such as blackbeard and captain hook, though all of them have the exact same ship, all while gaining points through running over the islands, which can be then transformed into killer volcanos by the pirates. If you hit a volcano, you sink, and so the game goes. Though the volcanoes make the game a bit more interesting than Leprechaun/Pot of Gold, Pirate Treasure very quickly gets mundane, though for a moppet audience it might've been just right. The graphics also fail to excite, and the sound is just sort of there.

Leprechaun/pot of gold

Just in time for St. Patrick's day, here comes Pot of Gold/Leprechaun, a single screen arcade game where you must seek out the little green man's pot of gold all while evading the evil warwick davisesque leprechaun. The longer you avoid the leprechaun, the more points the pot of gold gives you, as well as the trees that you can run through and change the colors of.Not much to say about this game, really, it's just a sort of mundane chase game with a unique setting and goal, and two versions, one for the wee laddies and lassies, and another for the embittered potato farming catholic drunkards. Leprechaun is the easy version, from the appropriately named "Moppet Video", and supposedly came in a special cabinet just for kids, whereas Pot of Gold is much more difficult and was for the adults, or at least the sullen, smoking adolescents. Not many games got a special kid's version, so i guess that makes this one different, but there just ain't much to it.

Ultra Balloon

Ultra Balloon is SunA's take on the perennial arcade classic Bubble Bobble. Though it again features repulsive art direction and puzzling surrealism, Ultra Balloon is surprisingly quite playable, all things considered. Instead of a cute dino, you play as an almost as adorable penguin who must, yes, trap enemies in bubbles in single screen levels in order to advance. This is despite the fact that the story screens feature an ugly little boy, but we should probably be glad to be spared deformed child protagonists ala Hard Head. The game plays exactly like Taito's prehistoric bubble-popping classic, down to the collectible points-giving tchotchkes, trapping bubbles, and swarms of enemies, only with different, more unpleasant graphics. However, the weirdness is actually sort of charming, and the game is smooth enough to be much more playable than the majority of SunA's output. SunA only put out 7 arcade games, only 6 of which seem currently emulatable, and while none of them were classics, all of them have enough quirkiness to be at least worth a quick download. Ultra Balloon and Back Street Soccer were their last titles, and came after a 6 year absence from the scene. SunA no longer exists, probably swallowed up by some random Panchinko company, but their odd legacy still remains with us today.