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What killed the Arcade for you?

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geomartin:
College killed them for me.  I hung out in arcades all through middle and high school, in fact on Friday and Saturday nights have of my high school could be found at the local arcades.  Graduated High School in 85 so I was there for what I consider the glory years.  My dad's business was going belly up just as I was starting college, so I basically financed my own education which meant work and school and little else.  By the time I tried to go back to the arcades there were no games that caught my interest.  I do make a twice or thrice yearly migration to Santa Cruz to play in the boardwalk arcade which still has a classic games section and 15-20 pinball machines.

NiN^_^NiN:

--- Quote from: danny_galaga on April 25, 2011, 09:13:07 pm ---
Them disappearing kinda killed the arcades for me...

--- End quote ---

Only arcades around here in Victoria is timezone :( very sad indeed as the local timezone is all redemption machines with 2 lightgun cabs and a mario kart cab and one huge showcase cab that has metal slug x

That and the skill testers are the only thing worth playing there

I was born to late to go to an arcade the only places i got to play arcade games was either a videoshop that had one cabinet (Bad dudes vs dragon ninja hell yeah) and fish and chip shops almost always had a cocktail cab with space invaders some had standups but that was the standard in the late 80's and early 90's

We had Timezone back then but that was mostly redemption machines like skeeball and fighter and gun cabs and a huge saloon that you use to shoot at stuff with a bb gun to make them do stuff liek you shot a guy in the back then he came to life and played the piano etc then they replaced it with a lightgun version.

For me there was no arcades altho im in australia so i don't know if i missed out on the arcade experience or not but it has always been 1 or 2 arcade cabinets in different venues never one place with a huge log of them

But the fact that it went from 20c to play a game to $1 and now it's usually $2 to $3 doesn't help either but still i think they just weren't as popular and thats why redemption machines started to take over in the places that are still around.

yotsuya:
At least I have Castles N' Coasters and can share it with my kids. One of the proudest moments I had as a parent was when my daughter got to the second level of Donkey Kong on her own on the machine upstairs.

Howard_Casto:
I think it was really a combination of all these things for me....

No arcades to go to.

The ones I could find were poorly maintained and lacked a variety of games. 

At some point regular arcade games starting costing as much as the ride-on arcade simulators.  That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. 



Btw... the 90's was the BEST era of the arcades.  In the 80's you played one player games and tried to beat each others high scores.... that's akin to a time trial.  In the 90's you actually faced EACH OTHER in MOORTAAL KOOMBAAT!  That's like an actual race! Or you could optionally band together with your friends or strangers on a 4-player beat em up to play some TMNT or Xmen... again high scores are irrelevant, your mission is to defeat the bosses and thus defeat the game itself.   Most of your best arcade games came out in the early to mid 90's. 

Mind you I like games from the 80's as well, but the list is far shorter than the games I liked from the 90's, even excluding all the fighters half of the community seems to hate. 

popsicle:

[/quote]

In the 80's, arcades and cabs were everywhere. I lived in a podunk town and there were about half a dozen locations with arcade cabs (with <5 cabs) within biking distance. The population of my town averaged 17 people. Driving to the main town yielded far more cabs. Drive to the nearest city and you couldn't walk into any public location without hearing the bleeps of a cab. I remember walking into an office and seeing one in the waiting room.

[/quote]

This is so true.  I distinctly remember many restaurants, stores, etc. being associated with different games. And I can still remember... 

Amy Joy Donuts is where I played Mrs. Pac Man
IHOP housed a Phoenix, Pac Man, and later Gorf
Cunningham's Drug Store at the corner shopping strip had Berzerk and Omega Race, then later Championship Baseball
There was a Galaxian and later a Herbie Goes to the Olympics (no, really!) at Zayre
Uncle Bill's had a Donkey Kong and Frogger

On another nostalgic side note, there were many times when my dad liked to browse at Sears after dinner out, and I would hang out and play their Telegames version of the 2600 on display.  I'm sure many of you did the same.



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