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.
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.
