The life and death of the American Arcade

[QuiGonJ]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3...ath-of-the-american-arcade-for-amusement-only

A nine-minute video talking about the state of the arcade, with interviews from Nolan Bushnell and others, and a really long text article giving the history of arcades from the 1930s onwards. A must read for anyone who lived in that era, and I think anyone who posts here, for sure.

 

[Fungi]

Wow, Nolan's looking a little beat up now days. Thanks for the link. I love this kind of stuff.

 

[Advalle]

Nice thx

 

[Sumez]

"We’re a bar with games. Most of our stuff is from the ‘80s, because that’s what we like." Fighting games are one of the things he attributes to the decline of the industry. "Fighting games are all the same," he says, "if you look around here, the games produced in the ‘80s, they’re really varied and creative."

Cripes....

That aside, excellent article! Really an interesting read!

 

[Fuseball]

I agree. That quote is a bit short-sighted. The industry was already in decline with clones of Space Invaders / Galaxians / Pac-man etc. flooding the market, both on home computers/consoles and in the arcades. The original Street Fighter II is up there with the "Golden Age" classics as a near-perfect game IMO.

 

[Sumez]

Street Fighter II is still one of the best fighting games created, it's really timeless.

It's odd to think of how Mortal Kombat was considered a competitor to SF2 back then, but playing that game again today, it should be obvious that it's a much worse game, while SF2 has been able to stand the test of time.


Both Street Fighter IV and the new Mortal Kombat for consoles are great games, though.

 

[gooche77]

I was amazed how close the SNES and Genesis ports were to the arcade. At the time, that was unheard of.

 

[QuiGonJ]

I agree that's why arcades are of the past. We have more computing power in a cell phone than those machines ever had. But I really miss them as places for people to meet and have a communal experience, watching the really good players strut and so on. But I am glad folks here liked the article.

 

[Hackcell]

Great article. Here in Costa Rica the killing shot to the arcades came from the bingo machines. Even back in 2005 arcades were quite popular and profitable in spite of the fact there were not too many new games around. People was still playing KOF 2002 or MvC2.

 

[robotronjohn77]

A lot of things drove the decline of the arcades. Saturation was a big problem. A shift in the mindset of the American population. The home console industry took a huge bite from arcades income as well. Tim Arnold said it well. People used to stay home to eat and they went out for entertainment. Now we go out to eat now and stay home for entertainment. It used to be the arcades drove the innovation of the games and gaming technology. Now its changed and all the innovation emerges from the home markets...


If the decline of the arcades were due to controllable problems we would still have them. The decline was a multi faceted problem and there is no way we will ever recapture what we had pre 90s... even Japan which enjoyed a longer run of arcades than we did has seen a huge decline and are near extinction there as well.

Sad but true....

 

[Bowflex]

Multiplayer is a big issue too. Even though you could get a very exacting port of an arcade game on a home console, you were limited in who you could game with. Can't just have people over whenever you want if you live with your parents. But you could meet at an arcade. Now you just go and play over the internet. Arcades did get filled up with the fighting games and NEO-GEO games but there were the unique experiences that can't really be duplicated in the same way at home. Any driving games with the giant sit down cabinets, the virtua skiing or jetski, boxing, and DDR. Honestly without those gimmicky games, arcades would have been killed off 3-5 years earlier. The biggest thing nowadays is the retro games that you can find at the few arcades still around. Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor has managed to stay popular by having classic arcade games, pinball tables and air hockey/foosball tables. Any other arcade around is typically all about redemption tickets (Dave N Busters, Gameworks, etc.).