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What killed the Arcade for you?

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Necro:
Went to Ocean City, NJ this past weekend for Easter - the wife's parents live there - and we hit the boardwalk and one of the arcades.  Was more than disappointed...

In no particular order:
- They took out pinball machines to put in 2 'always win' claw games...which they already had 2 of in another part of the store.
- They had an 'iCade' multi-machine...accepting quarters...with a 'hacked in' coin mech thing and printouts listing the games.
- I played Terminator Judgement day with someone, and our guns were all kinds of screwed up - for dollar a game, we were PISSED.  (I played on the right hand side, and couldn't shoot the right side of the screen...was hitting pinpoint where I was pointing it but it just stopped working on that side of the screen).
- Three games - a motorcycle game, car game, and boat game (all racing) were basically on the same hardware with different graphics for the gameplay.  Minor color/cab art changes and a bike on the bike one to lean with, a 'throttle' for the boat one, and pedals for the car one.  Bleh. 
- Major, unplayable burn in on 2-3 older games that really shouldn't have had burn in
- A bunch of older games (good ones), crammed into a corner, in a really sad shape.  :/

bobotech:
This thread reminds me of a couple of little stories.  We lived in a fairly small town known as Bethany in CT.  There was a newly opened ice cream stand near the center of town.  Billy's ice cream.  This was around 1982 or so.  I remember how all the kids on the bus would hum with the rumors that Billy's was going to open an arcade but that never happened.  HOwever they did put in a couple of arcade games.  Donkey Kong and Centipede were 2 that I remember.  And about a mile or few down the road, there was a AM/PM mart that had an arcade game in there.   I remember it was Vanguard and my friend and I had a blast playing them.  Not really arcade memory but still, fun.


Corbo:
What killed it for me was an increase in price and a decrease in choice.

Arcade machines had to be more and more powerful to keep ahead of consoles, and introduce ways of playing that couldn't be replicated at home.  As a result my local arcades filled with huge and expensive Sega Rally and Daytona style games, or vs fighting games which bored me.  £1 a pop for a small selection of games.  Within 10 minutes you're spent out.

Wind back to the late 80's and you'd find wall to wall cabinets all running different boards at 10 or 20p a go and you could lose a whole day in there.

If someone opened an arcade full of 80's games I would be down there like a shot.

DNA Dan:
So let's do the roundup, so far we have:

1) Girls (Or boys)
2) Them vanishing from existence
3) The declining value the quarter (Dollar a game  :badmood:)
4) Decreased selection
5) College
6) Work
7) Growing older (life taking a new direction)

Did I miss any? From the market view of things, it seems like the whole era was just a FAD. OMG, are we all living a LIE??? Starting to feel like the butterfly effect to me....

I'll throw one out there for the decline of arcades in general... How about the personal computer. Think of computer tech in 1990 when a lot of the old school arcades started to decline. You already had the first big gen home console market crash because the market was flooded with cheap, poor quality games. But then there's the personal computer, which offered a new level of graphics capability to the average consumer. In a way, it probably introverted our society. Also during this time it was all about SPEED. How can I get my drive thru latte and be at work in 5 minutes? The need for speed and efficiency from society meant less people hanging out at places loitering or wasting time.

Somewhere out there we all got sucked into the Borg and lost our arcade hangouts. :dunno

Donkbaca:
I think you missed
*) Wallet crushing addiction to high-end, imported European porn.

Other than that, I think we are good

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