[Arcade] Arcades: Now & Then

If its one thing I've always enjoyed about my childhood is that ever since I was 6 years old I use to go to the local arcade in my little community and even the town next to my litle community as many times as humanly possible.

I actually had a touch of Nostalgia very recently from a very unexpected location. I had went out to a company dinner last week over to Boston Pizza, and I noticed they had a few arcade games to one side of the bar area of the restaurant. Usually any time I see any arcade games in Fort McMurray more often than not their usually the light gun hunting games or stuff along those lines, but I actually was very delighted when one of the arcade games was an arcade collecion of about 30 to 40 games and they had quite a lot of good games such as:

Missle Command
Joust
Bubble Bobble
Road Blaster
Arkanoid
Puzzle Bobble
Mortal Kombat
Centipede
and many others.

Seeing that arcade game made me realize how much fun I had playing games in the arcade when I was a kid. These games are still challenging.

I'm 28 years old now but going to the arcade will always remain an enjoyable experience for me. It just feels like the games you see now at arcades aren't as enjoyable to me compared to all the arcade games I use to play from the mid 1980's to the late 1990's.

I think the only games when I play when I go to arcades now is probably some of the fighting games and ITG/DDR if its available, but I use to play a lot of the arcade games when I was younger.

I remember in my province in the 80's a lot of the smaller communities use to have an arcade but by the time the mid 90's came along you were lucky to find an arcade about 5 hours away from each other. Even now I only know of three arcades that exist in our province right now compared to the 40 to 50 of them that existed between the mid 1980's to the mid 1990's in a province that only consisted of a little over 500,000 people.

Obviously these days people would rather stay at home and play their games. I don't think arcades will ever be as popular as what they were back in the 80's and 90's. I just think that's just the nostalgia part of me talking that way because I tend to enjoy the classic gameplay of a lot of the older games compared to all the newer games. I just loved the satifaction of trying to beat the game or get a very high score on just 25 or 50 cents. The social factor of it was just great especially when it came to playing some of the 4 player games such as G.I. Joe, TMNT, X-Men. I obviously can't forget about pinball.

Basically there is a lot of things you could talk about in terms of this topic. To the GFF community what are some of your impressions about arcades now comapred to back then. What are some of favourite arcade games you use to play, and you could always talk about any fun or interesting experiences you've ever had at the arcade.

In closing I would like to tell you my favourite games of all time I use to love playing at the arcade:

Pinball
The Machine: Bride Of Pinbot
Demolition Man
Tales From The Crypt

Arcade Games
Willow
Golden Axe
Arkanoid
Captain America & The Avengers
G.I. Joe
Double Dragon
Bubble Bobble
U.N. Squadron
R-Type

Jam it back in, in the dark.

When I was young, arcades were a place of utter wonder and cutting edge sights and sounds. Compared to the old home consoles, the huge screens and surround sound cockpits and racing modules were on another level altogether, right up to about the time the Dreamcast burst onto the scene. From that point on (when the technology in the living room generally matched that of the arcades) I couldn't throw away quarters any longer. The "experience" just didn't warrant the endless coinage like it used to. Fast-forward to modern times, just two days ago I was offered money to play an arcade game with someone and I still refused and tried to get him to abstain as well, pledging we could go back to the house and play anything we wanted, either same screen or via LAN.

The only side route to this is the nostalgia factor. For instance, there's a retro arcade nearby -- 1984 Arcade - Home -- with all the original cabinets and visual appeal and is also quite cheap for an evening out.

edit: I didn't intend it, but my current sig image seems to encapsulate the trend away from the arcade rather well.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Arcades around here have actually been picking up a bit lately, prize machine space has been shrinking as actual arcade games replace them. One of got Street Fighter IV in a few weeks ago. Nobody plays it, but the mere fact that it's there is surprising! The new Indiana Jones pinball machine rapes my wallet. And I can get 2 credits on the Raiden DX machine for a buck. Ten seconds of gameplay!

I miss variety in arcades. Where are my beat 'em ups. At least it still seems to be a requirement that they all have Daytona USA. I've seen GTI Club around a bit too.

"GEE TEE EYE CLAAAUURRB DOOOOWW DOOOOO"

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by BlindMonk

Fast-forward to modern times, just two days ago I was offered money to play an arcade game with someone and I still refused and tried to get him to abstain as well, pledging we could go back to the house and play anything we wanted, either same screen or via LAN.

The only way the arcade is going to survive is with innovative games that can't be played at home due to special peripherals. Examples include DDR and other rhythm games (unless you've spent a crazy amount of money, you can't duplicate the arcade experience); games like After Burner Climax, with the moving, vibrating chair; and House of the Dead 3 and 4, with shotguns and uzis. Unfortunately, these types of games are expensive to own, which means that only the larger arcades, like Dave and Busters, or boardwalk arcades at beaches, can afford them.

I have fond memories of time spent in arcades as a kid, mostly because I didn't get to go that often. The closest arcade was 30 miles away, in the nearest enclosed shopping mall (in Hickory, NC). I'd tag along with my mom once a month or so and would be allowed to play as a reward for putting up with the hours spent in the fabric store. I don't remember exactly what I used to play, but I know Donkey Kong was a favorite. The local Food Lion grocery store had a Galaga cabinet, and I'd beg for quarters every time.

Sadly, most arcades I've known over the years have closed. The one in Hickory moved several times within the mall before finally closing sometime after I left college. My first job was at a Shoe Show in the University Mall in Chapel Hill, NC, and there was an arcade a few stores down. I used to waste time on slow nights in that arcade, playing House of the Dead, until it closed a few months before I quit. There was a small arcade in the UNC student union, also with House of the Dead and a bowling alley, but they remodeled the union right after I graduated, and when I went back this year, the arcade was gone, and the bowling lanes had been covered over for ping pong tables.

There aren't too many arcades in Baltimore, as most of them have closed during the time I've lived here. There's a small one on the east side of the city in mall with a laser tag place, the aforementioned Dave and Busters, and the bowling alley across from my apartment has a few crappy games.

If I want classic games, the closest arcade I know of is Flipper McCoys in Virginia Beach. When I was there in April, they still had a ton of old stuff, like Gyruss, Time Pilot, Dig Dug, Burger Time, etc. Marty's Playland in Ocean City, MD used to have a nice collection of old games, but they didn't keep them repaired, and they had cleared them out in favor of ticket-dispensing slot machines last time I was there. There are probably places in PA and NJ, but I don't go up that way much, since it gets expensive paying all the tolls on I-95.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The only reason I head up to arcade nowadays is simply for DDR or ITG. A nearby arcade that I go to (and used to work at, as well) has both a SuperNOVA machine and an In The Groove 2 machine that's hacked.

For any DDR/ITGer, it's obvious that the arcade experience is way better than any home version mostly for the metal pads and the community. It's either the community is really good, or really bad. Mine is pretty good and I'm friends with a good majority of the people I play with.

Kinda sucks that most of the games in my main arcade aren't really that good... The only nostalgic machines we got are Galaga/Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong/Mario Bros./Donkey Kong Jr.

I'd play them more if I didn't suck at these games so badly as well as the games being overpriced as hell.

There is another place about 20 minutes away from me that has way more nostalgic value than the one I go to. It's called 8 on the Break... Known for its pinball league (classic machines as well), the amount of music games the arcade has (beatmania, Pop'n, DDR, ITG) and an insane amount of fighting games this place has (Melty Blood, Soul Calibur III, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Darkstalkers... Among the majority).

I'd love to hit up arcade filled with classic games, but there aren't many (if there ARE any), around here. If I could find one in Jersey, then I'll probably hit up that arcade.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

The only way the arcade is going to survive is with innovative games that can't be played at home due to special peripherals.

Not necessarily true. You should have seen how many people saw Steel Battalion on release and kept saying "You could do this stuff on a controller." If you look at the current boom with Street Fighter IV and a certain Chinatown Arcade in New York, you'll see that keeping an arcade going means getting people involved. Convincing them that they're not just paying for a game, but for a social event and making more of an investment in their entertainment.

The one thing DDR and Street Fighter IV have in common - as Chaotic implies to an extent about DAN-SANG GAME - is that they have a dedicated player base and that player base attracts people because folks think to themselves "Me too!" when they see the kind of things going on. Arcades could produce the most innovative and awesome titles ever and it isn't going to mean shit if you can't attract and sustain a user base to propel it forward and keep it moving. Look at Time Crisis, that's an arcade experience defined and its move to consoles wasn't a response to the arcade game not pulling in money, it was a response to the arcade game not pulling in enough money.

You have little fundamental things that apply to a game's "scene", like competition and game quality. But the business aspect that most people miss here is that the arcade owner needs to breed an environment that is inviting to people. And if you look at most arcades (Read: The ones that eventually go under) the owner neglects their stocked equipment and expects the assumed user base to just come in and have at it.

It just doesn't work that way.

And as a sign of the times, Arcades in Japan are dying, so even with that, we aren't exactly in an economy where people can plunk the kind of cash on arcade titles that they used to be willing to do. It's more than just the games, and it's deeper than design and hardware. Arcades are definitely a business and most people who run them don't know the business of being able to survive. And it hasn't gotten any easier.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I don't agree that arcades are dying in japan. They have key arcades which are booming more than ever now with Arcana Heart 2, Street Fighter 4 along with the rest of the fighting games. Japan is the one place where arcades will be booming where no place else will.

How ya doing, buddy?

Namco blames Wii for arcade closures in Japan - Engadget

This would more support nutty's initial argument, though I find that Arcade tendencies in Japan play out differently than the successful arcades here in the US.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Well arcades may be slowing down of course, but their definitely not going to die like they around most of the U.S.

That article says namco wants to close 50 or 60 arcades and sammy wants to close about 100.....FIFTY or SIXTY...or ONE HUNDRED? And theyll still be making money in their key locations that arent closing.

How many successful arcades are in the U.S.? Barely any. In fact, I believe all Namco arcades have closed in the U.S. if not, must be a few only.

I live in Chicago, where they had about 5 or 6 namco arcades, all in malls, and they all closed down. The last one that was to go was supposed to stay but the mall wouldnt allow it because of the people it attracted. Stupid reasons.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You have no clue what the fuck "turning a profit" means and I don't aim to bother trying to cram it through your lead thick skull in this case.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah whatever you say there rotor...Point is, Japan will always have a great arcade scene compared to the U.S.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

That isn't what he was saying at all, garglefuck. Reading comprehension is super neato.

How ya doing, buddy?

Since I'm not big on fighting games and most of the great old machines like Galaga were rarish by the time I started going to arcades, most of my best arcade memories are of the brawlers. I remember going through a roll or two of quarters with a friend to almost reach the final boss in Die Hard, and neither of us even knew what Die Hard was at that age. We would've given Prof. Snape a good beating if we'd just had a few more quarters. Gauntlet Legends was another great one; still better than the N64 semi-port. 4-player games like that were great since they required teamwork to share items and weapons, and occassionally you'd meet some cool people who joined in.

House of the Dead is still a classic too, of course. I came into work with Nutty a few times while he was at Shoe Show and played the machine nearby. Not too much though, since that one was pricey at 75 cents.

Sadly, the only arcade I've got around here now is at the Biltmore Mall. It's just a dark, little alcove in a deserted section of the mall with 5-6 machines shoved in. They've got Gauntlet Legends and one of the Area 51 sequels, but it was kind of creepy back there.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Pew pew pew

That isn't what he was saying at all, garglefuck. Reading comprehension is super neato.

A moderator calling me names because I assumed something different, wow thats real mature.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by unknown_user

A moderator calling me names because I assumed something different, wow thats real mature.

Because assuming something is the height of knowledge.

ONE TO GROW ON.

FELIPE NO

I was the assistant manager of a video arcade back in 1995. It was an "Aladdin's Castle," which was operated by Namco. My town has always been somewhat lacking in activities for kids, so the mall - and subsequently, the arcade - was always a popular hangout. They'd kill time there while waiting for movies to begin.

We had quite a lot of space but I'd estimate that 75% of the cabinets languished in unappreciation. Every other Wednesday, I had to stay late and do a census (empty the token bins and track the play tallies.) It was typical to find only a smattering of tokens in anything that wasn't a head-to-head fighter. Some older games would routinely see no play at all. It was only the fighters like Mortal Kombat 3, Tekken 2 or Killer Instinct that saw the business. Business was fantastic within that genre but it was at the expense of most everything else (driving games did okay.)

I remember being eight years old and visiting the "Land of Oz" arcade (an early chain that was bought out by Bally's, and subsequently, Namco) at my mall in 1984. It was a different world back then, packed to the gills with people. My mother told me not to enter, it was bad for my eyes and would rot my brain. But my dad, who repaired pinball machines during his teen years, was as mesmerized as I. He and I would spend an hour in there. Those days were magick because the industry was still primitive, still full of surprises. Sure there was the Atari 2600 but that was a crude mockery of the true arcade thrill. (If you've ever played Pac-Man on the 2600, then you know.)

I think what constituted the demise of arcades (other than home consoles) was/is the proliferation of ticket games. They occupied roughly 50% of the game floor and offered no better experience than a traditional arcade cabinet. A few were fun if you had a buddy but most required no multi-player effort and were subsequently boring as hell. Many of them put ridiculous odds against the player and made no point to hide the fact that every play was basically a Hail Mary. Very few people are willing to buy into such scams.
What was worse is that the reward for playing those games had very little value. You received tickets, redeemable only at that arcade, with no representative cash value. The aggregate value of the tickets was completely arbitrary; the management could set the tickets-for-prizes cost to whatever they wished. Some prizes were deliberately overcosted just so that the staff would almost never have to bother with removing them from the "glamour wall."

I once calculated the relative costs of each prize, on a one-ticket-equals-one-quarter basis (Yes, sometimes you received multiple tickets for one quarter but there has to be a baseline standard.) The results were an insult to the intelligence of any customer. We had small bins of candy, stuff like Tootsie Pops or Laffy Taffys. To get a Tootsie Pop, you needed 20 tickets. The converted value of that was $5.00. It was theft and not even the small children were fooled. The large prize costs were obscene. A portable black-and-white VHF/UHF television required something in the neighborhood of 22,000 tickets. That's $540!

So when half the arcade floor is littered with undesirable pay-for-tickets games, you're wasting space and alienating an audience that seeks the experience and not the material reward.

Another contributing factor was the not-so-discreet inflation of credit costs. We had a regional manager who was a money grubbing son-of-a-bitch. He'd show up every week to look over the records, noting which games saw the most play. If a cabinet was overwhelmingly popular, such as MK3, he'd raise the play cost to see if the market would sustain itself. Sometimes it did, so he'd push the envelope further, to the point where addicted saps were dropping $1.00 for each play. But most people recognized the scalping for what it was and stopped coming around. I once suggested it'd bring in more revenue if we lowered the credit costs to attract larger crowds, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I was a moron, how could you make more money if you didn't raise prices?

Of course, modern arcades stand no chance. The operation costs have become too inefficient when compared to the similar experiences home consoles now offer. It's a natural progression and aside from the nostalgia factor, we're not missing a ton by losing the arcades. They were symbolic of an era, like 8-tracks, but have been obsoleted. It's also far more convenient to play the classics on a Gameboy than it is to drive all the way to the mall.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

It's a natural progression and aside from the nostalgia factor, we're not missing a ton by losing the arcades.

Until fighting games on consoles can consistently deliver from scratch, we potentially lose the body of quality assurance in the genre without arcades. You got Smash Bros, but then you also have Soul Calibur 3. And for anyone out there wanting to say it, there's no point responding back with Soul Calibur 4 because 3 was practically a beta test for that game. That game being a decent yet still rife with issues video game.

The doujin fighting scene makes good bounds, but the amount of revisions and play testing time that goes into that isn't exactly cost effect for most developers.

They're making progress, but developers still rely on those location tests for player feed back. And Arcades are crucial for that. Other than that... yeah, what Crash said.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Crash brings up a point with those redemption games. There's an arcade around here that's held on to a lot of old classics through the years, which has kept people coming in. I used to stop in and play a quick game of Arkanoid after class quite a bit. At the beginning of this summer, I stopped in one day, and everything changed. A third of the arcade was now ticket redemption games - Ski ball, put a coin in a chute and maybe get a ticket game, pay a quarter to push a button and win tickets - you know, all the fan favorite redemption games. Gone were a handful of games I always played. No more Arkanoid. No more Tetris. An older DDR machine was gone. Even Elevator Action Returns had freaking disappeared. 80% of the stuff I played at that arcade is now gone. Sure, it still has Golden Axe, and DDR Extreme, and a couple fighting games. But a lot of the games I would be putting my money into.

I talked with the owner, and he made no effort to hide that those games are a rip-off, since we both knew. But he said it was getting harder to make money, and he brought those in because it's easier to turn a profit on them. They require little maintenance, since the games just have flashy lights and dispense tickets, and they're cheap games. But those things don't attract crowds or get customers to keep coming back. They just get a couple dollars out of casuals who stop by.

What arcades really need are what other people have been talking about in this topic. They need something unique to arcades that want people to keep coming to arcades. It used to be that arcades could provide visuals far above what home consoles could, but those days are gone. The strong points arcades have now are innovation and interaction. Unique cabinets, like DDR machines and car racing machines get people to come to arcades for an experience they can't find elsewhere. And then a good competitive atmosphere can draw crowds back to a machine consistently. These days, the console market has been making more steps towards having those same advantages, so I'm not sure where arcades can turn once those advantages are gone. Perhaps it is time to move on, and admit arcades just aren't something than can stick around anymore.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

You have no clue what the fuck "turning a profit" means and I don't aim to bother trying to cram it through your lead thick skull in this case.

Try me.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bigblah

Try me.

You're not clever.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Can you guys please take your dickslapping contest elsewhere there's some serious and important intellectual debate going on in here

I was speaking idiomatically.

Hey, blah, you got a friend!

GET BACK IN THE CAPSULE, Mo0MARIA

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Mo0

Can you guys please take your dickslapping contest elsewhere there's some serious and important intellectual debate going on in here

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

You're not clever.

No, I'm genuinely curious as to why you're imitating Denicalis all of a sudden.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Infernal Monkey

He looks upset, I think he needs to release his anger!

He may not be the master of Zebius, but he is the master of MUSCLE MAN BOXING!!

As for me, well, I went to an arcade when I was like 5; some obnoxious fat kid pushed me off this game I was playing and made me cry. I then released my anger and became arcade king!

Spoiler:

Jam it back in, in the dark.