I know most of us are pretty young to have gone to arcades in their heyday, but I thought it would be nice to discuss them, mostly our opinions on them, any actual stories you remember from arcades, and favourite games.
For me, I did have a small arcade where I lived. It was a Sega park, and I don't remember much of it besides the fact it was there. I went in a couple of times with my brothers but I can't remember the arcade machines they had.
I did recently go to an arcade in London, I think I talked about it here but if not it was just a nice little arcade that had Initial D, Outrun 2, DDR, House of the Dead and other assortment of games there. It wasn't amazing, but I loved being able to play Outrun 2 and Intial D on an actual machine.
Adding onto random arcade machines I've played, there was an event a couple of years ago where I got to play Mr. Do, and the original Donkey Kong. They had a stand up Outrun machine, but I wasn't big into Outrun like I am now so I didn't play it.
In terms of favourite arcade machines. I absolutely adore Outrun, I still play Cannonball from time to time, as well as owning the 3DS version, and as I type this I'm listening to
Cruising Line. I also love Space Harrier. Both of those games are truly something else.
How about you guys?
I remenber there was an arcade in local Mall. When I first visited that place they had quite the decent catalog of games that spanned across two stories. The only games I can remenber at the moment are a ramdon FPS game featuring zombies and Marvel vs Capcom 2; but since I didn't have any money I couldn't play any of those games. When I visited that same place two years later the second storie was removed and so were all the "inappropriate" games, at least they had Initial D so I guess that was neat (but then again, I didn't even knew what Initial D was a manga back in the day). Not sure what happened to them as for now considering I haven't visited that mall in a while, but I wouldn't be surprised if the place closed altogheter.
Another Arcade I visited was one that was part of a 3 stars beach Resort. It was rather small and they only had about 7 games. The only game I played there was TEKKEN 3 and I got my ass whipped by the A.I (the reason for that is because before that happened I barely even played TEKKEN), they also had a pool table and a small stage for events and stuff. Then when I visited that same place a year later all of the Arcade machines were damaged and so was the pool table (some of pockets were replaced with plastic cups of water, for crying out loud!). The place was also filled with mosquitoes.
Granted, the entire Resort was in decay because less and less people visited that place due to the economic crisis, thus meaning the owners have problems with the maintenance, but I think the Arcade was the one who got the short end of stick.
So yeah, that's my expierence with Arcades.
I didn't have arcades where I grew up. I suppose the Mortal Kombat machine going into the Pamida was pretty cool. Then again the Ben Franklins had a small room in the back with at least 7 games and a pinball table (mom was too cheap to give us a quarter to play).
I did do an "internship" at an arcade that is now the next town over but told them to fuck off when they wanted me to run it by myself and fix the machines at the same time.
There is an older post I made on here about a crappy cocktail arcade machine I build (wait.. might be a different site), but that table is now gone. I gutted my Galaxian machine and installed my arcade machine. The board still works and hangs in my home office wall above my Ms. Pacman board. The screen was out of calibration and I spent over 70 hours total trying to calibrate it, just to give up and toss it away. The control panel stick was busted (roommates had a party but they deny anyone touched it). My roommate just got a truck, so depending on the space we have after the move I will be getting more arcade machines if possible.
My most memorable arcade that I've been to was the one apart of a Cicis Pizza that my family went to a lot. My grandfather use to give us $3 It had cabinets for Area 51 and Crusin' World, one that I believe I played at lest once every time I went there the other (Crusin') I never played because it was a $1 to play. Area 51 was my first and favorite light gun game. I never got far becuse I'm pretty bad at them. Among them were always changing games that I can't really remimber, along with The Terminator 2 pinball.
There was also the one in Holiday Bowl (Bowling Ally). This one had Sunset Riders (best game), a Superman game that you had to get on your knees to play (pretty sure it was just the cabinet it was in), and the Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. The Sunset Riders cabinet always had Cormano's side broken, which meant I never saw how he played, and I never made it past the brothers that flung dynamite. I was only able to pass the Hoth level in Star Wars. I don't remember the superman game due to it just not sticking with me that much. Aside from a wack-a-croc, a game where you shot clowns with balls, skee-ball and basket ball throwing, no arcade games stayed there.
There was also a Chuck-E-Cheese that had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade (not Turtles in Time. The other one), Simpsons Arcade, and a Episode 1 Pod Racers game (never played it, but it looked like the N64 game), but I went to this a handfull of times. Was able to make it to the Dream level of Simpsons with the help a strange that might have been an employee. Don't remember how far I made it on Turtles.
The last arcade that I remember anything about was when I went camping (possibly when I went to Hershey Park). The only game I played was Soul Caliber II, which I beat, I think with the guy with the stick.
I've been to a bunch of other Arcades, but aside from this really old Pizzaria that my mother took us to when we visited family (Mr. Gatti's in Brandenburg, KY, had to ask her) that had a multi cabinet with like ten different arcade games, nothing really stood out.
There are a few arcades left in my area. I most remember going on road trips to washington DC, the restaurants we'd eat at had various arcade cabinets. That's how I discovered Konami's Simpsons beat em up and how I discovered Midway's CarnEvil. There's a mall a few miles from me that still has an arcade, even some old rare titles like the Sega Jurassic Park game and the beat em up X-men game.
I'm pretty young but there actually was a sweet arcade right next to my local game shop. sometimes when there was a D&D weekend they'd let us use the space their (which was much bigger) because they knew tons of people would play the cabinets.
Then they switched owners, and started asking for a fee for each individual player, and did this a day before the meetup was supposed to happen...
yeah nobody really goes there anymore.
(12-12-2017, 03:23 PM)ZpaceJ0ck0 Wrote: [ -> ]I remenber there was an arcade in local Mall. When I first visited that place they had quite the decent catalog of games that spanned across two stories. The only games I can remenber at the moment are a ramdon FPS game featuring zombies and Marvel vs Capcom 2; but since I didn't have any money I couldn't play any of those games. When I visited that same place two years later the second storie was removed and so were all the "inappropriate" games, at least they had Initial D so I guess that was neat (but then again, I didn't even knew what Initial D was a manga back in the day). Not sure what happened to them as for now considering I haven't visited that mall in a while, but I wouldn't be surprised if the place closed altogheter.
So I payed a visit to said Mall yesterday. To my very own surprise the arcade was still open.
Now, as for whatever said arcade is in good conditions or not (I can't tell because I looked from afar) is a different subject.