this just in: arcades aren't dead.

by **geesehoward** on Wed Feb 20, 2002 12:17 pm

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/ne ... 71,00.html

expect some intersting games

by **ivwshane** on Wed Feb 20, 2002 12:35 pm

Interesting..
kinda reminds me of the heydays of the PSX.

by M on Wed Feb 20, 2002 1:30 pm

When did you arcades die? [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

by **ivwshane** on Wed Feb 20, 2002 2:04 pm

For my area it was about 4-5 years ago.

by **RabidYak** on Thu Feb 21, 2002 12:59 am

Bah, real arcades have been dead for years. The only ones you find around nowadays are clean, brightly-lit, suit-owned boredom centres full big cabinets containing a bunch of identikit racing, dancing and gun games.

Bring back the days of dingy halls with red or black walls, worn carpets, row upon row of uprights and change booths occupied by the depressed middle-aged chain-smoking owner where you cant decide what to play - partly because there are so many decent games and partly because you cant hear yourself think.

Arcades are dead.

[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: RabidYak ]

by **TheLastKamikaze** on Thu Feb 21, 2002 3:28 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by RabidYak:
Bah, real arcades have been dead for years. The only ones you find around nowadays are clean, brightly-lit, suit-owned boredom centres full big cabinets containing a bunch of identikit racing, dancing and gun games.

Bring back the days of dingy halls with red or black walls, worn carpets, row upon row of uprights and change booths occupied by the depressed middle-aged chain-smoking owner where you cant decide what to play - partly because there are so many decent games and partly because you cant hear yourself think.

Arcades are dead.

[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: RabidYak ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Damn those were the good old days...

The best job I ever had was being a paperboy, (in get this)... THE MALL. What a sweet ass job that was, best part being my last drop was... The Arcade [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] Heh, never made much money (on collection day, I'd spend almost all of it playing the newest games!) ... Ah but the memories... [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] BTW ? this was in the late eighties and early nineties?

by **Pdaimaoh** on Thu Feb 21, 2002 5:12 am

strange, I thought the Rabid one was a euro...

if so, then arcades over there are/were like in america, too

dead now
and all the other stuff

the only place to find a new arcade game around here is a sports bar
and all it has are giant racing game setups with five or more cabinets together, pick your style: car or motorcycle
they usually have one dance game, and the giant shady games like that skiing one and some cheap knockoffs/predecessors of the cool Konami/someone else's MOCAP stuff

no lightgun games on this side, which is a total shame

oh yeah, and once a year, the Lennox theater near campus upgrades three of it's games

recently we got this shit lightgun game that has so many extras sitting around it, I'm ill (a bunch of boxes and fake oil/waste drums) it's not even that good of a game, and when it was practically brand new, neither gun was calibrated correctly! arrggh!

nobody around here carried MvC2
only the arcade that died out had an early revision of Soul Calibur about an hour before they closed down

......
they also had the giant screen I had only ever seen NeoGeo games hooked up to at Alladin's Castle but it was for CAPCOM GAMES! (which is good cause they only used shit Neo games at AC, like world heroes and that other really shit one, while good samurai shodown and good metal slug were relegated to the dinky ol' regular cabinet

you know what killed arcades?

Sega

stupid fucking Model 3 games that were cabinet specific, so you had to buy Virtua Fighter 3 for 14,000 bucks and you could NEVER just buy 'other' model 3 boards at a lower cost, as the cabinet wouldn't accept them!

do you know how long an arcade that has NORMAL AMERICANS takes to make back 14,000 bucks on VIRTUA FIGHTER??

you'll sooner find out how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop because the only arcades that had that game died away before they made back their money...let alone a profit!

what was that big 'sit down' racing game (I think) that was model 3? the flamingo had that one, too, so I'm sure that's what killed them (being that they only got two 'popular' arcade cabinets AFTER that, and the rest were broken hand-me-downs that were ten years old and half baked

by **isamu** on Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:14 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by RabidYak:
occupied by the depressed middle-aged chain-smoking owner where you cant decide what to play - [ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: RabidYak ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

LMAO! So true!

Speaking of Model 3 games, I always wanted to buy a Daytona 2 or Scud Race pcb board but I can't find a place that sells only the boards *ANYWHERE*! Plus I hear you need a special monitor to play them on. Is this true? Can't I play them on my big screen via my Super Gun?

by M on Thu Feb 21, 2002 11:23 am

Well, over here (Austin, TX) there is a very nice privately owned arcade that has all of the best fighers, flyers, drivers, shooters, hooters, jumpers, humpers, and Neo Geo games that the world has to offer. It's not too bad.

I guess they can put all of that in there because the arcade is as big as a High School gym.

by **adidas** on Thu Feb 21, 2002 4:55 pm

Ha! You should have seen the guy at my local arcade!

He was in his mid twenties and worked at the arcade for at least four years. He was a real greasy looking Italian guy with the typical "arcade guy bad dispostition"

Ask him for change, give him your bill, and he would just send the changing bouncing across the counter lol

This is the same guy, that when I got cut on their stupid pinball machine (Tales of the Arabian Nights) just said "If you want to play anything else, you're going to have to go next door and wash your hands)

Every once in a while you'd see him playing some of the games. He was sooo cool because he had mastered Arkanoid and the like [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

I went to Funcoland once after the arcade closed, and the bastard was working there!

by **RabidYak** on Fri Feb 22, 2002 1:13 am

The problem is with the advances in consoles and the attitude of kids nowadays. They would rather sit on thier arse at home playing dull ultra-realistic crap on thier POS2's rather then go down to thier local arcade and play real games.

The result of which is that arcade manufactures have to make bloody huge and expensive specilised cabinets with control systems or features that cant be replicated properly on home consoles, which arcade owners then need to buy to lure in new punters.

Then all the non-corprate owned arcades that are used to buying a new board and slotting it into one of thier uprights are driven out of business because they cant afford to buy the new rediculusly huge and expensive games and all the kids who wouldent know a good game if run them over with a bus think "Why come here and play this old stuff when I can play Tomb Raider 27 and Driving Test Simulator 9 at home?"

Hence you get a glut of generic racers, dancers and gun games that take up so much room you cant get more then a dozen games in your arcade. Then gamers like us who are used to having arcades full of a good variety of quality games are totally shafted and have to put-up with a load of ghetto games that arnt in the least bit interesting.

Well thats how I see it anyway.

[ 21 February 2002: Message edited by: RabidYak ]

by **geesehoward** on Fri Feb 22, 2002 7:41 am

hence the true purpose of emulation

by **Sabin** on Sat Feb 23, 2002 8:14 am

You're arcade might be dead but you just described mine to a T. Has pretty much every game you could want to play from pacman to VF4. Has gun games, dancing games, sports games, driving games...everything. Even has sengoku 3, KOF2k, Garou, Metal Slug 3...in other workds, lots of the newer NG stuff. Also older ng and cps2 stuff. If you live in or around Toronto Canada you should check it out. Is called funland arcade and its on yonge street (still the longest street in the world) just north of dundas.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by RabidYak:
Bah, real arcades have been dead for years. The only ones you find around nowadays are clean, brightly-lit, suit-owned boredom centres full big cabinets containing a bunch of identikit racing, dancing and gun games.

Bring back the days of dingy halls with red or black walls, worn carpets, row upon row of uprights and change booths occupied by the depressed middle-aged chain-smoking owner where you cant decide what to play - partly because there are so many decent games and partly because you cant hear yourself think.

Arcades are dead.

[ 20 February 2002: Message edited by: RabidYak ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

by **draxe** on Sat Jun 15, 2002 3:16 am

Oh, the days of Chucky Cheese/Showbiz Pizza, when all the kickass games were still around. I've been back there recently, and it was depressing, to say the very least. All the animatronic puppets are different (along with the familiar tunes), and the Joust, Roadblasters, Super Mario Bros, Sega Turbo, and Pole Position are gone......ALL GONE!!! :cry: