Arcade's how I miss them

[mas]

Its Saturday morning. The sun is rising it's 8:30 am and your just waking up. You get dressed, get some cereal, Lucky charms or captain crunch, plop yourself on the couch to watch saturday morning cartoons. The year is 1987. You get a phone call from your friends to ask what time to meet him around the corner. You get your allowance from doing chores all week for this one afternoon. You meet up with your friends with your bmx bike and everybody rides to the arcade for the day. How I miss those times. Playing gunsmoke and skee ball, mat mania, the food, grease from the pizza the mountain dew. Fast forward to 2010, I'm 34 now with 2 kids and yes even though they had a little experience at my old arcade there too young to remember or wasn't even thought of when my generation went out of the house and actually walked or rode their bikes to the arcades with no issues. I just drove by the last remaining arcade place and even though it's been closed for a while now I just wish there was a place that actually has that retro feel to it. A penny arcade place where the it would take one token to play a game and you get 10 tokens for a dollar. That's all in the past but does anyone else who lived in the 80's or even the 90's era miss these times? Remember beating street fighter 2? lining up the quarters and kicking ass with your friends? Or beating bad dudes for the fist time with your friend? yeah it took alot of money but when you beat a game in the arcades it felt awesome. Or lastly doing your first fatality with sub zero on mortal kombat? Please let me hear some of the stories guys and remember how it was. I'm very thankful i lived in those times. OH year my favorite Nintendo play-choice ten. Remember that cabinet?

[Japhei]

Its Saturday morning. The sun is rising it's 8:30 am and your just waking up. You get dressed, get some cereal, Lucky charms or captain crunch, plop yourself on the couch to watch saturday morning cartoons. The year is 1987. You get a phone call from your friends to ask what time to meet him around the corner. You get your allowance from doing chores all week for this one afternoon. You meet up with your friends with your bmx bike and everybody rides to the arcade for the day. How I miss those times. Playing gunsmoke and skee ball, mat mania, the food, grease from the pizza the mountain dew. Fast forward to 2010, I'm 34 now with 2 kids and yes even though they had a little experience at my old arcade there too young to remember or wasn't even thought of when my generation went out of the house and actually walked or rode their bikes to the arcades with no issues. I just drove by the last remaining arcade place and even though it's been closed for a while now I just wish there was a place that actually has that retro feel to it. A penny arcade place where the it would take one token to play a game and you get 10 tokens for a dollar. That's all in the past but does anyone else who lived in the 80's or even the 90's era miss these times? Remember beating street fighter 2? lining up the quarters and kicking ass with your friends? Or beating bad dudes for the fist time with your friend? yeah it took alot of money but when you beat a game in the arcades it felt awesome. Or lastly doing your first fatality with sub zero on mortal kombat? Please let me hear some of the stories guys and remember how it was. I'm very thankful i lived in those times. OH year my favorite Nintendo play-choice ten. Remember that cabinet?

I miss arcades so much I built one in my house. All the arcades are going the way of the dinosaur. In fact my local gameworks one of the only places with recent games went out of business this past monday. Really sux to because they had all you can game night from 7pm-3am on thursdays for ten bucks! God I will miss those nights of Virtua Cop 3, House Of The Dead 4 , and Rambo.

[AppleQueso]

We had a nickel arcade that used to be pretty cool, I used to play Samurai Shodown II in it.

All the games were slowly replaced by those "insert tokens get tickets" things, (how I loathe those) and eventually the whole place shut down.

[Weekend_Warrior]

Well... I think I miss being young more than I miss the arcades.

But in the early to mid-90's, the arcade was the place to go to see all the latest and greatest technological advancements in video gaming. Meaning, the games with the best graphics were really only experienced at the arcade. And it probably wasn't until when the Neo Geo AES console came along that those lines began to blur and we started to see real arcade quality games available at home (for a price, of course). Sure, games like Galaga on the NES and Street Fighter II for the SNES were great ports and seemed very close to arcade perfect. But regardless, they were still just ports. With the Neo Geo AES, you could play the actual SNK arcade games at home (if you or your parents had the money). So that was kind of a big deal.

It is a shame that arcades have really lost their place in the gaming world. Because they were a unique experience. Especially when you take into account certain games like Hang-On or Afterburner which had big dedicated arcade cabinets that you could sit in or ride. Those kinds of things alone made them special. I mean, nowadays you can buy a third-party steering wheel or flight stick and sit at your computer or tv screen and have at it. But it will never match the same quality experience as being in an interactive arcade cabinet with perfect dedicated controls.

[Pulsar_t]

There also were the local tournaments and the "come get some" exchange students who used to consistently beat me at 2D/3D fighters, not to mention the encounters with 'misguided' youth and their cheap leather jackets.

[skyknight]

It doesn't help that negative associations with arcade was present in the 80's and 90's, such as a place for playing hokey on school days, a opportunity for drug dealers to distribute drugs to young kids, the dirty atmosphere (look at the early the Simpsons eps); which was the reason that Chuck E. Cheese came to rise.

With the advancement with home consoles and on-line interaction, it does render the arcade experience as obsolete; I mean would you go to an arcade that is located in a hot spot full of crime or just stay at home and chat with your buddies on-line?

I don't know how Game Works is doing these days (which is owned by SEGA), as it tries to combine food and gaming in a very casual atmosphere.

[LBJeff]

I don't know how Game Works is doing these days (which is owned by SEGA), as it tries to combine food and gaming in a very casual atmosphere.

Well, last time I went to the one in Seattle it was pretty run down, had the same games from the previous year I had gone, and the same games that weren't working last year weren't working this year.

You can pretty much repeat that paragraph and insert each year from about 2000 until now and that sums up the sad state of the arcade scene.

[Pulsar_t]

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2009/09/w ... -republic/

[CRTGAMER]

I do miss the old arcades. luckily our mall has one still thriving.
There is also a Dave and Busters which is too unfriendly for my kids.
Adult escort required and having to buy expensive cards to play, no more fun.

[DCsegaDH]

Gameworks is the closest thing to the old arcades.

I miss arcades too, I remember in the 90's the arcade part of bowling alleys were very popular and packed with games like that scene in Terminator 2. Sometimes I go to the bowling Alley just to play DDR, but the arcade part is really scaled down to maybe four arcade games sometimes even less.