Lunchtime Discussion: Arcades

I’ve lived in seaside towns my entire life, so arcades have always been a huge bit of my life. As a consequence I hate the song “King of the Swingers” from the Jungle Book, it was the default song for crane machines for years. Hearing it every day, wherever you go starts to drive you a little nuts. However I still love arcades; air hockey, pinball, light guns and normal arcade machines are all in easy access and are all brilliant to play.

It seems a shame that what I’d consider the ‘traditional’ machines have been edged out, games that are just there to be games have mostly disappeared now. There are still a few, but it seems if you can’t win money or tickets from the machine then no-one really wants to know. It seems a big shame, you may win something, but they aren’t as fun in my opinion.

That’s not to completely slag off those kind of machines, in particular ticket machines can be very enjoyable and it’s always nice to win something. The more advanced slot machines that include board games are good too, although obviously harder to win money on. Crane machines are great as well, somehow they manage to build up a good deal of tension when playing them.

The problem for me is that the two big arcades in Brighton, both on the pier, now only contain about twenty or thirty videogame machines between them, and most of those are Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero machines – did you know they made a Guitar Hero arcade machines? Insanity. Sure they still have some light gun machines, including Time Crisis, and a few four way racers but that’s about it. No Star Wars sit down machines (if you don’t remember these, they were awesome) and about one stand up cabinet, although it was so odd I can’t even recall what it was.

Of course the home console business has been killing videogames in arcades for many years, but I still miss it. From what I hear the situation is a lot better in Japan and the States, but they seem to have arcades that aren’t at seaside towns. From personal experience whenever I’ve seen an arcade in a landlocked town it’s just a large room filled entirely with slot machines. A few years back in Hastings there was an entirely Tekken arcade, and it seemed to do very well. It would be nice if other people tried that kind of thing, but maybe it’s not viable on a larger scale.

Now that I’ve finished a slightly down discussion, what are your thoughts? Do you miss videogames in arcades, or are you happier to stay home? Do you have any relationship with arcades at all?