They generally have gone the way of the dodo. It's always either full of redemption games, fighting games, or both if you're lucky. Then there's the occasional oddball, like some 3D atari FPS game in the arcade.
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Yeah, it seems to me that a lot of the problems that the old Arcades had were location and atmosphere based. I used to live in Columbia Missouri and often went to an awesome arecade in the early 80's called Pin Pan Alley. This was a family owned and operated arcade that was around for quite a few years before it was sold and renamed Gunther's Games.
The feel of the arcade itself was really pretty cool. The building that it was in was an old turn of the century general store that had 10 foot ceilings. Above the arcade machines (well over 250 in all if I remember) there was mock up of a big city fire escape that wrapped around the inside of the entire establishment. It kind of reminds me of the cheesy New York sets from the TNMT movies (Was never into the TNMT, probably a little too old at the time but my kids love them now). The arcade itself was well lit and smoke free. The kids that frequented the establishment were treated with respect and so were well behaved and took care not to damage the machines. I think that we had a sense of pride that we had a local arcade that catered to "our generation".
The arcades in other sections of town were darkly lit and more than a little seedy. The kids smoke and drank and were generally deliquents. This didn't set well with the Bible Thumpers (Nothing against the Good Book by the way) and they made it their personal goal to stamp out ALL of the arcades giving the rally cry, "Idle hands are the Devil's playground!"
Tin Pan Alley sold the business and it became Gunther's games and after it did so it soon became a Universtiy of Missouri collage Hangout, where college kids came after drinking to blow off a little steam. Unfortunately this also meant that most of the classics went out the doors to greener pastures or were just hauled off to the dump. They were replaced with more and more testosterone fueled fighting games (Don't get me wrong, I like many others can appreciate the a good Beat-em-up with the rest of them, but the classic arcade sound and feel was gone.
I hit the net and did some searching for Tin Pan Alley and Gunther's last night and found that they reopened at a new location in April 2013. I wish them good luck, but as I live in Japan I don't think that I will be visiting them anytime soon.
Sorry for the nostalgic rambling. It tends to happen when get past 40.
Anyway, pics to come SOON!!
Jigenjuke
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