Cherish the Arcades
 

Dante Reborn started a thread (which can be viewed here) and the following was one of the responses: I wanted to start a new thread with this because it goes off on an tangent from the original thread.

Anyway, that response just got me thinking...the primary school I attended held monthly parties at the local skating rink. My mom forced me to go so I would get away from my NES. I have no balance or coordination, and fell on my ass every time I got onto the skating rink, so I just played in the arcade. This is where I met my first group of friends. I moved away in middle school, and in my new town the only entertainment establishment was a bowling alley/arcade. I'm a terrible bowler so I, again, just played in the arcade. This is how I made friends in my new town. Throughout high school, when we didn't want to play DnD or organize a LAN party or play multiplayer games on the consoles, we'd go to the arcade. Even now when my friends and I come back home from college on breaks,when we're bored we go to the arcade (see the pattern?).

Arcades just don't seem to be appreciated anymore. I remember them as places where you could go and meet people who liked video games, perhaps challenge them, and win or lose come away with a new friend. No matter what, I had fun. So I say put the console away for a night, turn off the computer, get some friends together, and keep the arcades in business.

You know, I would...
But being 14 and having no car and no arcade within walking distance, much less within 10 miles, makes it rather difficult to go do that.

So I sit at my computer and play video games, and dream of better days.

If they want arcades to come back, they're going to have to stop charging $0.50 - $1.00 for a single game. Bring it back to $25 a pop and start producing simple-but-fun low-budget games again and they might be able to live on in some form, but as it is now they're doomed to die a slow death.

I agree with the Drooling One. Some of us can't afford to pay for games that cost $1.00 or more.

Arcades are becoming extinct. Last year there was a small 5 blocks from my house. The games were good, the prices fair, there was even a 4-foot high NeoGeo machine with Samurai Showdown! Alas, it went out of business after 6 months...blarg.

Arcades are dying. Here in the city at Metreon (Sony's large but somewhat dying center of capitalism) they just refurbished the arcade. They took a back room that used to be used for a huge simulation game and converted it into a "classic games only" arcade. With games like Tron and Ms. Pac-Man lining the walls, you can't go wrong. Is it popular? No. But I appreciate it.

It almost seems like companies are reluctant to make arcade machines anymore. Whatever happened to Nintendo and Sega's promise of F-Zero AX machines across North America? It's been months since they claimed the machines would be out, yet the majority of Americans and Canadians alike are having trouble finding one within a radius of 500 miles. I live in a major metropolitan city, and I have yet to find one myself.

It's very depressing, but as the technology progressed to a point where home gaming was equal to (or better than) arcade gaming, I suppose the transition was inevitable.

I hate the local arcades because some of the bastards who run them jack up the difficulty level so you can't even beat the second opponent in a game of MKII (I won a Mortal Kombat tournament, I don't suck). Maybe they do it because otherwise people like me come in and beat the game in one shot instead of pumping in quarter after quarter. Oh well. That's my 2¢.

No one plays fighting games in the arcades anymore.

Back home, like Video, the arcade was where I made most of my friends. Grantly I was still living in the same area I had grown up in my whole life, I never really was one for hanging out with people my age (most the people I hung out with in high school were two, three years younger than me)

After I got to college, I had friends that were in band and stuff, but I gained more friends from going to the game room that was a block away from the dorm rooms.

I didn't stay in college long, but after getting my job, I frequently the mall in my hometown a lot. I played SCII, and became friends with all the main players there. When we got DDR, I made even more friends, and on every Friday night we would all pile into the arcade and have mini-tournaments on the different machines. It was great...

The arcade here though... pitiful. They have hardly anything worth going to pay for. It makes me wish for the days when I would hang out with my friends and play in the arcade back home. *sigh* Oh well. Such is life I suppose.

I gotta agree when you say that arcades are dying. Though it will be sad to lose games like Metal Slug and Time Crisis *sniff*

The arcade I go to for almost 18 years is none other than Aladdin's Castle in Chicago Ridge, IL.

I used to frequent an arcade that was really cool. It had all the classic games and some fun new ones. Then, last time I went, it was 90% DDR machines. They had moved out some of the classic games for those stupid machines. I couldn't even find a sinstar machine for chirstsakes. DDR, with it's huge-ness and insane price per game is going to ruin arcades forever.