Something I've thought about from time to time is the idea of owning my own arcade when I've finally gotten a bigger place, and saved up enough money. That, and the fact that in all probability, opening an arcade nowadays is a great way to go bankrupt. Which leads me to the question: Did the arcade fad just die, or did the arcades themselves kill it? Is it that people just don't want to go to the arcade anymore, or are arcades not offering the right games and hence, people aren't going? I can think of a ton of arcade machines I'd love to play, i.e. Afterburner, Street Fighter, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Galaga, etc. But when I go to my local arcade/family fun amusement conglomerate, I often find myself just standing around thinking "Okay, there's just so much here....that sucks". We're talking rip-off F1 games that look like they were made in the late 90's, shooting games where you shoot "bad guy" targets, fireman games, and a who other schlew of games that shouldn't have even been made. I know I would go to the arcade a lot more if I knew that for my money there was a quality selection of machines available instead of a handful of generic racing/shooting/skateboarding games, and some vintage 80's machines that I never see anyone play. To me, an arcade should be where you play the games you cannot play at home, or would take a very inconvenient setup in order to do so. (Like the Afterburner sit-down machine in the late 80's.) Which brings me back to my question, what do you think: is the American arcade dead for good, or can it be revived with the right touch and a focus on games people actually want to play?
This'll seem blasphemy coming from an 80's child, but I don't miss arcades. Sure, the golden age, they were great. After awhile, they attracted rifraff, and game hogging bullies, and it wasn't fun anymore. That's WHY we all stayed home with consoles.
(hangs out with Techman) Remember "Pinball Wizard", the machine? And the sound they'd make when you won a free game? (stares morosely into fire, remembering long-lost and now-irrelevant glory)
Waitaminute! What you guys say is impossible. Surely there had to be other games besides pinball. One of the arcades downtown has a few machines where even TV screens weren't in them, it was just a gun and a few targets. The score was one of those rotating wheels that spun to a new number if you hit the target.
There is a pretty good Timezone still going down on the Gold Coast, don't go very often since it's fifty minutes drive away. It thrives partially because it is in a massive tourist location but as because they have filled it with stuff you can't replicate at home. Laser tag, dodgem cars, full banks of racing machines, afterburner-esque machines where the entire machine turns based on your controls.
Yep, they had those mechanical games, and they pushed 'em about as far as they could go before video games hit. They were kinda the bridge between pinball and video. The only survivor of that era is table hockey.
Sometimes you still see them at county fairs and stuff. You get the booths with the guy hawking the basketball game and convince daddy to win his little girl a teddy bear, and then there is always one booth where there are several guns, and a bunch of mechanical targets. There is something creepy about those, but they are still fun, and I try to play them at least once.
I had a home "portable", mechanical game. It was oh, about the size of a streamlined PS2. The game was you were like this little Space Invaders tank that fired missles up at planes flying by. Played like a video game almost, but the tank and planes and missles were on backlit pieces of film moving on motorized tracks. And you had to wait 2 seconds between each shot for the missle cell to mechanically retract back to the tank. Pretty fun, actually. Noisy as hell though. The motor that ran it sounded like a remote control monster truck.
You would have to target adults, so something like a bar with a lot of arcade games might work. But it's getting to the point when young adults didn't grow up going to arcades so they're not nostalgic for it.
People still dish out tons of quarters to play DDR in an arcade where everyone can see their mad skillz, rather than just playing at home.
There is such a place in Boston. It's on several levels -- one is pool and darts, one is traditional arcade (complete with plenty of nostalgia games and non-video entertainment such as skeet), one level is bowling. The great thing, of course, is that it's all a bar, so no punk kids anywhere. I haven't been in a few years, but spent quite a bit of time there back in my college days.
Yep. There's a place called "Ground Control"(?) in Portland too that has classic 1980s games and seems to stay in bidness. The key is to realize you have a niche product and need to be in a city where there are enough disaffected hipsters to support the bidness. 10 year olds are at home with their X Boxes and Playstations.
Games with gimmicky controllers are the only real thing seperating arcades from the home market. When you start getting really good at Dance Dance Revolution/In The Groove you just can't play at home without spending upwards of a grand on a nice metal pad and system. Dropping three tokens for ~6 minutes of play time (~8 minutes on marathon) is a pretty good deal and it definitely keeps me going back. Also the stand-along arcade is pretty much dead. They're always together with laser tag/bowling/mini golf/etc. And the biggest money maker by far has to be those damn ticket games. It's almost obscene how much money kids (and adults) shove into those things to get enough tickets to redeem a $.25 plushie.
Always preferred the "mechanical shooting" and Skee-ball kind of stuff. One reason, I think, is that the arcade machines basically daunted me. Basketball and football always look so awkward, and I've never been interested in spending several tokens on a fighting game just to figure out whether it would be fun to spend even more tokens on getting marginally competent at it.
The thing that pissed me off about complicated fighting games, and long ass sidescrollers in arcades, is they vacuumed up your quarters, and you had nothing to show. You beat Final Fight all the way through, a nozzle should pop out and give you soft serve goddamned ice cream.
I like going to Dave & Buster's with my classmates. We usually dine in, head to the bar for some beer, and then just waste time at the arcade. It's a lot of fun, but I think arcades can only survive in places like that which offer a variety of attractions (restaurant, bar, arcade, some TV screens). Pure arcades are dead for the most part.
I never cared for arcades much because I didn't have the spare cash to spend in order to actually get good at any of the games. My allowance was a pittance, even by early 80s standards, and all of my spending money was earned by me at my after school jobs. I didn't feel like blowing it on games when I could use it for gas money and the occasional date. That being said, the first console game I owned was the PS1 I got for Christmas in 1997. Ataris and such in the 80s just couldn't compete with the graphics of the arcade games and I didn't want to settle for second best.
Another reason I don't care for arcade machines is that, about 10-12 years back, the Tilt at the local shopping mall started stressing arcade machines and neglecting or tearing out all the machines that I liked. I dunno why--fad? fewer mechanical problems? projections of cheaper electricity costs and higher rates of token input? (And, yeah, later they started really installing those stupid ticket machines.) It was a bustling, prosperous mall back then. As of . . . wow, about 2001 or so . . . the business there has dropped off a cliff. Personally, I trace the start of all the trouble back to when they put in those blasted arcade machines. I know there were other factors, but in my mind, that was the turning point, the beginning of the "end".
There was a place I went to in Seattle, back around early 1983 this was, that was a "family entertainment center". It had a bowling alley, multi-screen theatre, HUGE arcade, fast-food joint and an upscale restaurant all under one roof. Oh, and a gift shop IIRC. Always thought that was a great concept. An entertainment mall rather than a shopping mall.
