Do you like ARCADES?

[Gitty101]

I used to like Arcades quite a lot, but now it seems (at least in my local area) that they've phased out all the really good games in favor of scam machines. No more House of the Dead or Time Crisis, just those annoying cranes and coin machines. Oh and racing games.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I cant imagine how much money i wasted on arcades as a kid but they were a huge part of my childhood. I remember when I was 10 they had the fair in Barking Park and i found £20 on the floor. I used the whole of that on arcades. lol. There was also one i used to visit in Romford, every Sunday you could pay £5 and have free play of all the machines all day. Granted alot of them were old machines, but still it was fun. Even the arcade in Trocadero, London is gone now - it used to be Sega World.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I spent a lot of time in Wunderlands as a kid. There were two, one where everything is a nickel to play. The other had a cover charge and then almost every game was free to play. The ones that gave tickets weren't obviously.

I liked playing D&D, X-Men, and the Simpsons brawlers. And they got Doom 64 too, but the stick wouldn't move far enough to actually allow you to run/jump over narrow gaps so you literally couldn't get past like level 2 or 3. That was about it. It was basically were my step brother and I got dumped when it was too late to be dumped at the wave pool for a few hours.

This was in the 80s b4 DDR, not that I like DDR. About the most high tech thing they ever had was Dragon's Lair in hologram form.

I've been to other arcades in malls etc. but they pretty much suck if you aren't into racing, light gun, or DDR games. Which pretty much sums up why anyone would go to an arcade these days.

I never went to one with F-Zero Arcade, which I would have loved to play.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I sorta bypassed arcades but I did like to watch people play and I suppose its how I started playing Street Fighter 2 and in turn other fighters.

Trouble is arcades near me are almost non existant and those that are about are dominated by gambling machines. I did find a Super Street Fighter 2 cabinet once and only one of the buttons was broke so thats probably the best I have managed in the last few years.

There is an arcade in London I want to visit called the Heart of Gaming. They charge on the door and then the games are free so I want to check that out but its quite a trek for me to get there. Apparently one is opening up much closer to me next year probably within 30 miles so I will be visiting that.

The arcades I visited in Japan were amazing though. I have never seen anything like it I absolutely loved playing there and getting thrashed even my friend who dosent play game much enjoyed the scene, its just got such an awesome atmosphere in most places.

 

[Eve Charm]

Eh no they are just huge disappointments really. I walk in " oh they got time crisis or silent scope. " machine takes my money " oh the guns are calibrated all to crap and their are guys I can't kill.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I like the idea of unique gaming experiences that they can offer, but at this point in my life the likelihood that I'll invest time to find one again is very low.

 

[loc978]

Damn, I came in here hoping to learn a new acronym... but that was just capitalization for... emphasis? Or something?

OT: I liked arcades when I was a kid, in the 8 and 16-bit eras when a wireframe 3D tank shooter was crazy new tech, and the idea of sitting in an arcade cabinet with independent tread controls was really novel. Nowadays they don't have anything I can't do better at home with friends... especially lightgun games which need calibration. The Wii does those better than the arcades ever did.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I don't. They rarely have any games I'd enjoy, and when they do, I usually suck at them on account of not playing them before and end up getting a game over in minutes, and I'm not interested in wasting five dollars worth of quarters to keep playing. Unfortunately, I only ever enter them when I'm with a group, and they always stay for a long time, leaving me bored.

 

[Racecarlock]

I do like arcades. They remind me how fun and engaging games can be. How bright and colorful and creative they can be. How not-including-two-minute-homework-scenes they can be. How not making me clean toilets in prison they can be.

It seems forced mundane tasks are becoming more and more a part of modern gaming. It's fine if they're optional. I understand if someone wants to just be a blacksmith. But when I am directly forced to clean toilets, set tables, shave, and make cheeseburgers at mcdonalds, screw them.

Whenever I end up forced to do one of these chores, I end up thinking about all the cool things I could be doing. Gaming has saiyans, superheros, the hulk, spaceships, lots of fast cars, tanks, tron worlds, and so much more. Yet here I am, stuck doing this mundane task because the game wants movie oscar awards or something.

And then people wonder why I avoid those games.

I like arcades, though, because they do have a lot of fun and engaging games. You'd never see pacman make you clean toilets.

 

[TrevHead]

I like arcades, though, because they do have a lot of fun and engaging games. You'd never see pacman make you clean toilets.

Yeah the fact most ppl only last minutes with a credit with the ending credits rolling within 30-45mins means that they have to pack in as much fun as possible with no filler and unlike many other games fun was the main commodity that arcade devs had to make money since unlike EA and co they couldn't throw money at marketing to sell their games. Like how roller coaster design has improved over the years only the most fun games were successful.

Sure the games were hard, unfairly in some cases to make money it's imo a damn sight better than how the business end is dragging down game design nowadays. Infact I'd say for skilled players an arcade game is one of the purest ways to play, no Skinner boxes, DLC or F2P monetisation or MMO hybrid BS to put up with.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think standalone arcades would work better with a different revenue model. Perhaps £5 for entry, for an hour, allowing you to play any game as much as you want.

Prizes are good. Make every machine print out some tickets or add points to your card.

Or do you think that arcades are terminally dead, and forever niche?

If there were a way to have your game info on a card (high scores, amount of time put onto a single game, etc) that can then be translated over into a point/ticket system which can in turn be translated into a prize system, that would be amazing and awesome. Another great incentive (where a prize system is concerned) would be a tier and, King of the Hill system where if you frequent the place and maintain a high score for X days, weeks, months it can add a multiplier to the amount of tickets one can earn while gaming. This begs the question: what kind of prizes would be given out?

ANYWAY!

I just moved away from an area where I had a Dave and Busters within about 10 minutes of me but I never really went there. The selection of arcade games was lacking and I just generally didn't have the spare cash. They had a decent selection overall and split arcade games with ticket/prize games.

I would love to be in an area with a good arcade though but my definition of a good arcade would differ from other peoples. For one thing, I would rather an arcade omit prize and ticket games so as to conserve space for better things like Pinball machines. As for arcade cabinets, Guitar Hero Arcade just isn't worth it...not when that same amount of space can be used for After Burner or Space Harrier or even Outrun. Another staple of any good Arcade: Konami beat-em-ups. The D&B I moved away from had no Konami beat-em-ups.

 

[KaZuYa]

Arcades are utterly dead, the thing is there is no money whatsoever in it, The only way to make money is to have a huge turnover in customers which you won't get because people don't go to an arcade in any numbers like they did in 80/90's due to home and mobile gaming, it was a social place to go as kids. Also since the 2005 Gaming Act in the UK arcades can no longer split themselves into Arcade Games/Fruit Machines and allow under 18's to enter even if the over 18's area is monitored and separated with barriers. The only Arcades you will ever see now are now attached to cinemas or bowling alleys because they can leech custom for that business and gain passing trade.

Arcades or their like are still absolutely massive in Japan simply because it's still a huge social thing to do and they have utter embraced a type of gaming and trading which totally incorporates mobile/home and arcade gaming as one entity.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

the only arcade around where I live is a "Cluggy's Family Fun Center", and a "Family Fun Zone" in this dinky little mall. It used to be an Aladdin's Castle when I was a kid playing in it all the time, but it got bought out and replaced. Not that it mattered, they just used the exact same game cabinets anyway and then added a few new ones. It's such a shame they're dying out...sure, we got home consoles now, and even mobile consoles, but there's NOTHING like playing a game in an arcade. No amount of home light guns, motion sensors, or racing wheel can fully emulate the feeling of playing a game, having other people watch you, or sitting in those cockpit seats. If it's a decent arcade, I almost always go in for a bit, regardless of where I am. Vacation? Arcade. Shopping mall? Arcade. It's become rare for me, so I try every chance I get. Old games, classic games, new games, they're all usually a hell of a lot of fun.

What's even more sad, is none of my gaming friends share my passion for arcades. I always imagine us going to one, and having a blast, but anytime I bring it up everyone is just "Eh *shrugs*" or says "If you want to go, go ahead. I might just sit." I usually have to force my friend to play a coop game with me, at which point pretty much all fun is sucked out when you know they aren't trying. The only person that enjoys it as much as I do is my younger brother and my father. (My mom too to an extent. Usually things like Skeeball or simple gambling games)

Captcha: Live long + prosper. Let's hope so.

 

[Aramis Night]

I use to spend a lot of time in arcades myself throughout the 80's and 90's. After that they all went to hell. Too much emphasis on gun and dance games. I was all about games like Double Dragon, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, Samurai Showdown, The Simpson's, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's, Knight's of the Round, The Avengers, X-Men, Gauntlet. I loved fighting and multiplayer co-op. Now its actually hard to find a working version of any of these types of games in any arcade.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Arcades are great, unfortunately I live around only 2 arcades that require me to drive 10min to get to them, they usually have less then 25 people in them (I predict one will be shut down by the end of the year), who are usually only there to play 2 rounds of something then leave, and hardly stick around for a chat.

They're great, probably fantastic if you can share the fun with friends, but the magic they used to have died a long time ago.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I wish I could go back in time to when Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike actually had an arcade scene in the US so I could take advantage of it. Now I basically have to go to Japan.

 

[Kinitawowi]

I vaguely recall Bob doing a piece once which discussed the importance of the arcade as a social thing; before online gaming became the all-consuming behemoth that it is today, social gaming either meant going to your friends' house or to the arcade. And I remember it as a meeting place, as somewhere I could kick some old dickhead's arse on Virtua Racing, as somewhere where the most successful players could find themselves drawing an audience, finally stepping away from the machine to discover a crowd of people had been watching.

And yeah, my love of Bayonetta is rooted in those arcades. When I got to Chapter 14, it wasn't just 30-year old me sarcastically thinking "oh, another reference to some million year old machine". I was suddenly five again, and stood on Le Strange Terrace in Hunstanton, staring through the window of the Thomas's Showboat at the most awesome thing I'd ever seen - the full motion Space Harrier cabinet they'd craftily stuck right at the front of the arcade because old man Clive Thomas knew how epic it was. (Isla Del Sol may have caused me tears at that point. My body was not ready.)

We had a lot of arcades in Hunstanton; Clive Thomas's, the Showboat and the Bingo, were probably the best. The two Sellers buildings, the Pier and the CHS, were both a bit shit. There was also Andy's (okay), the Panama (pretty good), and one other whose name I've long forgotten (not that bad, actually), in the main central section of town. Further down the other end of town there was the Vegas (awesome), the Golden Sands (nearly awesome), and the Rainbow (mostly shite). Many a weekend was wasted touring the machines for forgotten change, and the odd few games for forgotten credits (highlight: the guy who stuck a pound into POW, played one credit and left. A friend and I shared the other four.)

They're all crap now. Pretty much all the games have gone to be replaced by slot machines (and about the only games you'll find these days are House Of The Dead); the Pier slid further and further downhill until it was destroyed by fire in what was very definitely not in any way an insurance scam (it was so badly damaged the investigators couldn't work out what started it), and has been rebuilt into something even worse. Clive Thomas kept a lot of his older machines in a side room in the Showboat where they operated as a pseudo-museum (and he had some seriously old and probably rare stuff in there), but he was forced to scrap (not sell, scrap) most of them because they just didn't make money any more.

I still go into arcades whenever I see them these days, hoping for another Space Harrier moment; or even just another sight of one of those classics. Invariably I'm disappointed. Still, there's always MAME - great for games, not so great for the experience, the sights and the sounds of being in an actual arcade. Maybe I should get some space and build a cabinet, or somehting.

 

[KOMega]

All the games I liked were replaced in my closest arcade. Plus I don't think I have the money to regularly go there anyways

 

[Pseudoboss]

I'm sad that there is only one arcade that is at all accessible, and that is 5 games in the corner of our local movie theatre, all of them new and rigged to be $5 a game or something ridiculous. It makes me sad.