A Slow Arcade Death

How much do arcade machines cost? $1,000?

DDR is now the successful arcade draw

I think another one of the reasons that arcades don't do well is that the gaming model is changing. The only times I see arcades busy are at places that normally draw people, like parks or bowling alleys. People don't usually get together to "go to the arcade"

Yeah the arcade thing used to be a place to hang out. But now that demographic hangs out online. Instead of having a few minutes of fun at the mall arcade, you can have a BLAST all day with your own LAN.

Think about it... if people had star-trek-ish food replicators at home, do you think McDonald's would keep growing?

This sux. The only reason I liked to go to the Mall was Arcades. I know of one mall in eastern mass that still has an arcade. It was an old, dumpy mall, but it had some good classics in it. Galaga, Pac Man, Joust, etc. In a few weeks, my wife, daughter (14 months) and I are vacationing in Winapasaukee, NH. They have this place called Funworld that has a arcade game museum. I'm there for the day! I'll blow at least $20 playing those old games I bet.. I can't wait. I remember how amazed I was when Sinistar had those digitized quotes. And when all those 3d games like Zaxxon came out. I miss them all already. Thank god for emulators... :)

Games that greedily ate all my quarters:

Indy 500
Pac-Man
Defender
Sinistar
Space Fury
Space Duel
Star Castle
Omega Race
Tron
Space Invaders
Asteroids
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong, Jr.
Victory Road
Contra
Ajax
Black Tiger
1942
1943
Heli-fire
Galaga
Galaxian
Gyruss
Tempest
Missile Command
Robotron
Joust
Spy Hunter
Hyper Sports
Track and Field
Rush'n'Attack
Street Fighter II
Super Off Road
Gauntlet
Smash TV
Ring King
Super Punch Out
Scramble
Super Cobra
Battlezone
Jungle King
Popeye
Mat Mania
Frogger
Time Pilot
Red Alert
Space Zap
Time Pilot '84
Ghosts'n'Goblins
Altered Beast
Death Race 2000
Berzerk
N.A.R.C.

Whew what a list! ..and I surely forgot a few...that happens when you're old. Despite their simplicity, a lot of these games were a blast and more fun than 90% of the "bleeding edge" titles out today. Nothing matches the adrenaline of Robotron. Nothing. If anyone has an arcade version they would consider selling, preferably the standup model but cocktail would suffice, shack msg me.

TMNT and TMNT2 are the greatest arcade games in history. Even today, playing with 3 other people in MAME is just awesome.

Greatest arcade game ever... Star Wars.

Watch out for those laser turrets!!

My friend and I used to pimp the arcades. We were like 10. We'd go in there with these lil black books full of fatalities and secret moves (who knows how many were actually right heh). We would play MK II (one of the best games) and Killer Instinct. I wish I could have arcade machines of both those games. We grew, and watched the games change. We waited and anticipated new releases of our old favorites, but they seemed to fail and diaappoint. Eventually we moved away from the arcade scene, watching it die from a distance. I remember being there playing games til atleast midnight, in the dark arcade with loud music, just being little kids. We must have been pimps :)

It's the popularity of fighting games that are killing the arcade industry. I went in an arcade a couple days ago. I'd say there was about 90% shitty fighting games, 6% stand-up games with plastic guns, 3% racing, 1% misc. And techno music too.

I miss my youth so I started collecting those arcade games. Check out pics on my site of my games;
http://pages.infinit.net/tlavier

Yeah...Dance Dance Revolution is pretty much the best arcade game ever. A local one here in Austin just got 4th Mix (japanese). If anyone's interested, message me, we'll play sometime :)

REpost: get mame with kaillera (or compile it yourself) at http://www.kaillera.com

that way you can play networked games :)

Speaking of retro...

I just hooked myself up with a Limited Edition Super Metroid Poster (the one that glows in the dark)

I think it's from Nintendo Power Catelog from about 7 years back..

Does anyone know anything about them or possibly how much they are worth???

Don't they have any good VR arcades out there? And by VR I basically mean honest 3D stereoscopic graphics, with a big FOV and obviously high resolution and 60fps. I don't really care if I still have to control it with some kind of pad or stick. I'd play that, and I'd play old school arcades (in vegas two summers ago my brother and I got a $10 roll of quarters and played all the way through the D&D arcade, which I forget the specific name of.)

I think the closest thing I've seen was this POS at a local amusement park. The display was head-mounted and from what my brother said, you basically got to play Rise of the Triad on a virtual big screen. (FLAT screen in the goggles) What make it even more sucky was that it was like $5 for 5 minutes, and had to be staffed by a real person. The thing was based off a PC and you could watch it boot into DOS and load the game every time they reset it.

I'd pay a couple bucks if it was a cool action game in real 3D, even if just for 15 mins or so.

The one arcade game that my friends and I keep going back to...X-men!!!!!!!!! That game fookin rocked heh, 6 player mayhem and what not...probably my fav arcade game, next to Ridge Racer when it first came out...

This has been touched on already, but i've gotta point out how much the architecture of arcade games have changed since their heyday in the early 80's.

All the classics like Space Invaders, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, Star Castle.. Those games were one quarter games. You paid once and could play a game for up to and over an hour on that same quarter depending on how skilled you were (and how much free-time you had). Most of the earlier games didn't even have a 'continue' option.

Then games like Golden Axe, Gauntlet, TMNT, (all great games btw) came on the scene with the concept of inserting additional coins to continue playing. This changed everything.

Suddenly if you're doing really well in a game, no matter how skilled you were, the machine would throw more enemies on the screen or simply increase the difficulty so you were forced to die and keep popping in coins.

I can understand that machines aren't 25 cents per play anymore. I'd be very willing to pay a dollar to play a killer new game if it weren't for the fact that the dollar is just enough to play for a few minutes no matter what.

I flipped Galaga on hard!

The only arcade game that ever SERIOUSLY addicted me was Ghosts and Goblins.

Well 4 things killed arcades for me:

The types of games at an arcade are all fighters, racing, gimmick(silent scope/sking/crap), i miss the old co-op 4 player games like TMNT and such. Dont get me wrong, i like fighters, but come on...

Price: 50 cents a game sucks, especially for fighters where your money is gone in less then 30 seconds. Now fighters are around 75 cents a pop and all those racing games are a buck. I remember when 5-10 bucks would keep you in an arcade for almost 2 hrs.

The Internet took the mystery out of games, games like SF and MK were great when they first came out because there were months of learning new shit. Now when a new fighter comes out, theres guys who know all the moves and those 100hit combos the first day.

Also the console hardware has caught up with arcades, you used to wait a year for a port that was usually 40% like the arcade version. Then the PS/Saturn made 99% arcade ports. The DC and newer systems are 100% ports. Why make an arcade game when you can just slap it on a console even faster now.

The people you really want to be thanking at Midway are people like Ed Boon, who along with John Tobias, created Mortal Kombat. The first game was built with just three people developing it. Amazing eh?
George Petro was the master of the shooter. He worked on Narc, Trog, Terminator 2, Revolution X and War Godz before forming his own company.
Eugene Jarvis, who needs no introduction. He created Defender, Robotron, Star Gate, Crusin USA and so on.
Mark Turmell and Sal Divita, who in partnership created NBA JAM, WWF Wrestlemania, NBA HANGTIME, NBA SHOWTIME, NFL BLITZ and others.

These are the people who need your thanks. Not me. I was just a grunt.

And yes, there are stories - like the original release of NBAJAM Tournament edition that had extra characters to select from Mortal Kombat. If you pushed over a player using Raiden for example, he would set the players on fire. About 200 machines actually got out into the world before the NBA got to hear about it and threatened lawsuits all over the place. Mark Turmell had 'forgotten' to actually tell anyone this was in the game. The 200 machines had to have replacement ROM's burnt and sent out. Apparently there are still some of them out there somewhere..

Jake.

>>> It seems to me that basically arcades can no longer [do] anything impressive with game content itself but are relegated to just trying to offer equipment to interact with those games that people just cant afford or fit in their home. <<<

Steve hit the nail on the head with this comment. This is exactly why arcades have fallen by the wayside, they are no longer the technology/gameplay breeding ground they once were. About the only thing arcades have over home systems and PCs is highly specialized controllers that perfectly fit the game. But this alone cannot save that industry.

As a developer in the thinck of things for well over a decade, and as a professional game writer for years before that, I never once heard anyone aspire to being an arcade game developer. The majority of top-tier developer talent, at least in the States, gravitates to PCs and consoles.

Scott, 3DR

I worked for Midway for 7 years - through Mk, MK II, MK III, MK IV, NBA JAM, NBA HANGTIME, NFL BLITZ, WAR GODZ, REVOLUTION X, WWF WRESTLEMANIA and more. There were a ton of people supporting the arcade effort. Forget just the developers. You have the Electronic board guys, that create the PCB's they used. The Chip guys that built the custom chips - like the stuff Crusin and MK IV used. The electrical engineers that built things like the guns, and the wiring harnesses for the cabinets. The cabinet builders, and then there's the actual factory that built all these cabinets. Midway spent a bundle buying a cabinet maker - they used to make cabinets for other people even.
Making Arcade games = big money. Midway was always aiming for the cheap market, not the expensive market. Those big ass projection screen games that cost 11 grand they left to Sega and Namco. Midways bread and butter were the 'street locations' - the 711's and the movie foyers, not the arcades. They had to sell lots of games cheaply rather than a few really expensive ones. A run of more than 8 thousand cabinets was considered a good deal. NBA JAM did 25k, which was huge at the time.
Most games when released were around the 3k to 4k mark, depending on what the game required. Those three gun Rev X's where damn expensive. For some reason there was a 4k limit - people just wouldn't buy a game that was more than 4k.

Man there are sooo many midway stories I just can't tell you.;)

And if you think there won't be another MK coming on the home consoles, well, think of it this way. There is a huge brand recognition for that product. You just KNOW they must be doing something with it. It would be a shame to no capitialise on the only game property to make money at the movie theatres...

Jake Simpson

My local arcade that sucks total ass got Silent Scope 2 the other day

that's it's only good game >:(

It seems to me that basically arcades can no longer anything impressive

you sure you went to high school steve?

SF* >>>>> MK*

I love the Star Wars trilogy coin-op game.. the Hoth battle sequence owns me. I easily pump 5-10 bucks into it each time I head up to Salisbury beach (our local trashy arcade strip) As far as nostalgia - I was the local Tempest god until I couldn't find working games anymore.

I like ESPN Zone. They have cup holders attached to the games so you don't spill your gin & tonic.

Arcades are to damnes expensive now. U go to an arcade and the games are anywhere from 50c to 1$ per credit... thats wack. U need like 20 bucks to play for 40 minuts.

Streetfighter 2 Turbo was the last great fighting game. I started going to arcades less starting with Super Streetfighter 2. That and every fighting game that came after it just plain sucked...

Anyone remember 'Moon Patrol' :)

Oh and 50 cents should last you for 4 to 6 hours on Gauntlet with decent players wif you :) I had 25 last me through the end of the game (level 255) :)

Tron.

That is all.

I remember way long ago, my brother and I were talking about how Mortal Kombat could not be ported to the PC or any other home computer because it was too complex (yeah, yeah I was young, OK?)

The same day that afternoon, we go by a friend's house and BAM! Perfect conversion of Mortal Kombat playing on his PC. WOW :)

Midway = gave some good competition to Japanese arcade manufacturers :) It was good while it lasted.

Damn I miss Gauntlet. That was such a great game. Right up there with Smash TV. :)

OK does this mean we'll finally get arcade quality fighting games at home? Or do I have my head up my ass, I'm not sure

being a broke boy with no sense for strategy back in my days, my arcade memories basically center around being in a crowd behind a pro at MK2 (and MK3) for a while, and hearing the loud gasps and cheers when someone pulled off a fatality no one had seen before.

BEWARE, I LIVE

BEWARE, I HUNGER

AAAAARRRGH!

Taken from William's Sinistar

Thanks!

-Lex

Hey anyone have any high quality samples of the Sinistar?