My trip to Dave and Busters, fun, but sad

[bdsjake]

i've heard about D&B, so my wife and I were in St. Louis yesterday and decided to go.  I thought this woudl be a regular resturant/bar with a few oldies.  Holy cow was I wrong.  I was a bit overwhelmed by the carnival type mechanical games, horse racing, sink the titantic, skeeball, then waded through I don't know how many $10-15,000 setups of 2-4 driving or shooting games, actually had an 8 player linked daytona. Finally, found some oldies. well, not old cabs but the 2-1 or 3-1 types.  A couple was on the ms pacman/galaga so I never got to play it, but did the space invaders/qix and the cenipede/missile command/bowling.  Saw an ultracade but it was packed and never got to play.  Since I had already bought a $10 chip card I used it up on a couple driving games, did have a cool racing simulator that was hard, not arcadey.

So it was fun, but I realized how much times change and we'll never have the good ole days back, except in our own basements/garage/gameroom that houses the family mame.  No pizza joint is going to afford to put in a couple of daytona's or house of evil!

I am wrong or are all new games (1) driving (whether car, motorcycle, go cart, snowmobile, waverunner), followed by (2) gun games, and a distant third to golden tee.  Only saw 1 fighting game which surprised me given how popular those were in 90's.

[Apollo]

For some reason my local arcade has quite a few tennis games. Go figure.

[patrickl]

The arcades I went to seemed to favor the ones with weird controls. There was a snowboard simulator (with a snowboard to stand on), ski simulator (ski's to stand on) and a fishing simulator (where the control is like a fishing rod!) I hardly saw anyone play on those contraptions though. It's rare to come by a a single classic (even the x-in-1 versions) in the Netherlands.

[abrannan]

Re: Fighting Games.  The thing is that there really isn't a fighting game out there that you can't play on a home system, so they tend not to do as well in the arcades.  So you end up with the only things gettin gplay time are those game you can't get at home, which means all manner of special controls.  As more and more console games are online-enabled this is only going to get worse, as you won't even have to go to an arcade to get the experience of playing against another person.  

[GameDork]

Just be glad you have an arcade. The only one we had in town closed for lack of business. Now all there is is a few down at one of the bowling alleys.

[paigeoliver]

Wow, that is MY Dave & Busters. I work right down the street from there.

Their ultracade machine is no good. The joysticks on it favor the diagonals.

[Stingray]

I am wrong or are all new games (1) driving (whether car, motorcycle, go cart, snowmobile, waverunner), followed by (2) gun games, and a distant third to golden tee.  Only saw 1 fighting game which surprised me given how popular those were in 90's.

I think you're right. The last "arcade" I was in only had about 10 video games and not one of them used joysticks.  

-S

[hulkster]

ah yes, but doesnt this make your cab build all that more gratifying?  i mean, yeah the arcades of today suck, and gone are the days of coming together with total strangers to take out the Shredder, or Mr. Burns...but the glory of the arcade lives on!!!  i should be a commercial guy or something.  

but wait about 10 years after arcades are completely gone, and people come over and ask "oh man!  i remember that from when i was a kid!"...well more so than they do now

[GameDork]

I have recently thought of opening a retro arcade of sorts with Pacman, space invaders and even alot of jamma games. But I am super anal when it comes to someone playing my arcades, so I would be like the crabby old owner (I'm only 26 though) looking over everybodys shoulder so they wouldn't scratch one of my machines!!!

How good of business  do you guys think it would do? It would defintely only pull in the mid 20 to mid 40 crowd. The young punks would scoff at the older stuff!

[Generic Eric]

How good of business  do you guys think it would do? It would defintely only pull in the mid 20 to mid 40 crowd. The young punks would scoff at the older stuff!

Its been asked here before.  The answer was not too good.  My take on the deal is to open a bar, charge $1 to $2 more on the beer and drinks and set all your games to free play and maybe a small door fee... maybe.


bdsjake:  I wasn't too impressed with Dave & Busters either, at least not as far as the arcade went.  The steak in the resturant was good.   The bar in the arcade was definitely cool, but there wasn't enough games for me to even come close to getting a nice buzz going.  

On the other hand, if it wasn't an hour drive through traffic, I might go more often.

[NOP]

I have recently thought of opening a retro arcade of sorts with Pacman, space invaders and even alot of jamma games. But I am super anal when it comes to someone playing my arcades, so I would be like the crabby old owner (I'm only 26 though) looking over everybodys shoulder so they wouldn't scratch one of my machines!!!

How good of business  do you guys think it would do? It would defintely only pull in the mid 20 to mid 40 crowd. The young punks would scoff at the older stuff!

I think it's doable, but it all depends on how many 20-40 year olds you can reach.  
There's a place in madison wisconsin that is doing exactly what you're describing:

http://www.aftershockretrogames.com/

(go there just to see the website; it's really cool)

The place not only has lots of vintage games for 25c each, but also sells retro console machines.

Madison is very much a college town, but I'm not sure if that's a requirement or not, considering most of the kids in college today were born after donkey kong was released!  (damn kids!)

-jeff!

[Trenchbroom]

All this talk makes me wonder---how the hell does Happs stay in business?  Almost all new games are japanese "rides"--pretty tough to be churning out joysticks and upright coin doors when the demand is drying up for them.

Seems to me that the BYOAC gamer is about the last new avenue of profit that Happs and Wico has left.  Again, very sad.

[Tailgunner]

All this talk makes me wonder---how the hell does Happs stay in business?  Almost all new games are japanese "rides"--pretty tough to be churning out joysticks and upright coin doors when the demand is drying up for them.

Seems to me that the BYOAC gamer is about the last new avenue of profit that Happs and Wico has left.  Again, very sad.

Not really, both companies supply stuff to the gaming (gambling) and vending industries as well.