I went to Gameworks this weekend and even there, there really aren't any new arcade games. I think the newest game was a Mario Kart that I didn't know existed that had Pac-man in it. It was copyrighted from 2005. **SIGH** I used to love going to arcades.
I hate the "arcades" we have in the area now. They're just a hole in the wall in a movie theater, no actual big arcades anymore. The closest thing we have is Dave & Busters, but the only cool thing they actually had was the battletech pods, and they took those out a while back. Most of their games are a few years old, and they get a new one maybe every 6-12 months. Combine that with the fact that I can't get drinks fast enough to actually get a good buzz going on, and their bartenders have no idea how to make half the drinks I'd get at a normal bar(common stuff too), the place sucks.
My dad used to own a few arcades--it was while he was in the Army, running small businesses was sort of a hobby of his. They were called Flickers--one in Ellicott City, MD, and the other three in Spartanburg, SC and Shelby, SC for anyone who lived there Anyways, I remember him talking about the industry going down in the late '90s, and that as machines became progressively more expensive to offer things that home systems couldn't, smaller arcades would be priced out leaving only a handful of retro-type establishments and the big operators like Dave And Busters. It gets me a little misty-eyed on account of childhood memories at his places, but then I see screencaps from stuff like Crysis.
Yeah we had a bday party at Peter Piper this sunday. Newest games I saw were Rush 2049 and Starwars arcade. I miss the good ol' days too.
I lived for playing Star Wars Arcade, Atari Model 1. And the controls on that game were spot on. I wish I could buy a stand alone for home.
i miss arcades. though saying that i'm probably alot better off financially. i must have put hundreds into the avp cps2 game.
Dungeons and Dragons Towers of Mysteria FTMFW!! Please Please Please Port it over to Capcom collections 3... Just call it Smahers and Twin-Twists and go around the legal crap.
There was a Trilogy near me up until a couple of years ago, but I refused to play it on the grounds that they were still charging £1 per credit despite the fact that it came out in about 1998 and had been in there for at least half of that. I can't say that I was particularly bothered when the place ended up turning into a shop since all it had aside from that was DDR, F35, Time Crisis 2 and a load of fruit machines. As great as it is, Shadow over Mysteria is one of the few games that i'd actually complain about being too long. My wrist ached for about 12 hours when I finished it and I can't imagine that many people have enougth spare cash to actually do it on a real charging machine.
Yes yes yes, that's why it needs to be ported over, so I don't have to play it on my PC or imported version on my Saturn.
I got chills the first time I blew up the Death Star and the vector created sparks were flying in front of my X-wing and you hear Obi-wan say "Remember, the Force will be with you. Always." That game killed my wrist and my wallet back in the day, but imagine if it had a "save anywhere" feature like in Sonic Mega Collection? Awesome sauce.
I'm assuming the reason they can't put that on a compilation is because of the rights to the DND name, but they did it for the Intellivision collection and just called it llamatrons and balls: shadows over mysteria.
You know what I miss most about the old arcades around here? No fancy games. Straight up Air Hockey. One weekend, must have been back in the early 90's, I raked up an incredible 36 game winning streak. *sigh* good times.
These pics do bring some nostalgia, but man arcades have been in the decline so long I have more frustrating memories with them then happy ones. I loved playing Street Fighter 2, Double Dragon(s), Final Fight, Street Fighter 3, Primal Rage, Turtles, Turtles in Time, APB, and Crazy Taxi. But once the arcade games stopped being that much better then what we had at home, they started using more and more gimmicks, making them more and more expensive. I miss them to a degree, but don't really want them back- or at least, not the way they were going, and I don't really see a way out of their slump.
I know. That made me scratch my head too. It just reminded me of the pizza joint and the table top I played on a number of times.
Universities can be good places to find coin-ops. At Iowa State, there's actually a dedicated gaming area with several machines, pool tables, and a concession stand that serves pizza and beer. The University of Iowa, where I went, has machines scattered around the campus - I recall Burger Time and Galaga next to a study area, Arkanoid by a dorm entrance, and a multi-game "UltraCade" in a cafeteria. That was a few years ago, but administrative indifference tends to give this stuff longer-term survival.
Ah man, the good old days. Almost every gas station had an arcade machine or two back when I was a kid.
man, life really was better back then. riding our bikes to the arcades after school,having sf2 and mortal kombat tournies, and just chillin with friends. what the hell happened?
