Son Of General Retro Discussion

rubadub wrote: »

Back in the 80s I would go to arcades since the games/technology was far better than what I had at home. This gap has closed so they would need something very special to get me in an arcade. I think a big turning point was SF2, where people had a snes which was very close to the arcade.

For me it was the social aspect, as well as the game technology. I was in arcades a lot in the early nineties, up till about ,93 or ,94, around the time that home consoles had started to get almost as good as arcade hardware, and even though i owned a SNES and a megadrive at the time, i knew that there was always going to be a bunch of lads hanging around the Street Fighter 2 Hyper fighting machines in the local bowling alley, and whether i knew them or not, i could bring a couple of pounds worth of 20p pieces, and jump in and shoot the sh1t, instead of just playing almost the same game alone in my room.

It's funny, most people feel that it was the affordability of home consoles like the SNES that killed the arcade scene, and while that's probably true, it only gave you the game fix. For the most part you lost out on the social aspect, and particularly on being able to learn tricks and secrets and measure yourself against other players in a pre-internet, pre-online leaderboards era.

It was another ten years before consoles got properly connected with things like live chat and xbox live, and could even come close to recreating the social buzz of an arcade for me, with a bunch of people all playing and chatting together, but by then arcades were as dead as a dodo anyway.

keithgeo wrote: »

Its all gimmicks now with arcade machines, Huge machine guns, or steering Boats, dancing games. No wonder the places are dead

I know a small arcade in a little village in Wexford near our holiday home that's been practically unchanged since the mid nineties. It was never up to much then, but sadly, it's the best arcade i know now. Not because of any conscious decision by the owner or anything, but just because they haven't spent a penny on getting any new machines in in about twenty years. The scene died, and they just kept the place open, and kept blowing the dust out of the machines every so often. Every now and again one goes bang, and they just wheel it out to a shed full of old cabs that would make anyone on this board's eyes pop.

There's still a Neo Geo in the corner, running puzzle bobble on a big screen CRT. It's funny, i own my own cab, and puzle bobble is rarely off it, but I still look forward to going there at least once or twice a summer and throwing 50cent pieces into it and remembering what things were like back in the day. There's nothing like the real thing....:D