My Trip to Funspot - Part 1 - The Arcade Experience
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What was the most fun for me was (re)discovering the real arcade atmosphere and the arcade games themselves. I've always been more of a home gamer - I'd rather put the $5 towards a cartridge than spend it on a few minutes of fun. Don't get me wrong, I like arcade games, but I always played home games more. Didn't help that I wasn't even a teenager during the arcade heyday, so getting to and from the arcade wasn't easy, and nowadays it's just a lot cheaper. Funspot made me remember the huge gulf between the coin-op and home ports, and just how freaking cool and fun arcades are.
Playing Asteroids, for example. I never noticed the amazing deep bass of the thrust sound. It hits you in the arcade. The home ports play similarly, but they don't recreate that chest-rumbling sound. Same for MAME - I've played Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe in MAME cabs recently, and neither of them had the amazing thrust sound. It's cool to be able to play those games emulated, but the experience isn't quite the same. Not to mention the gorgeous vector graphics which are hard to reproduce at home. The monitors on Funspot's Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone and Quantum looked brand new. Completely sharp and clear - they looked stunning (especially Quantum, but more on that later).
I played Super Hang On in the sit-down cab, and while I loved Hang On on the SMS and Genny, it's just more fun sitting on a motorcycle leaning left and right. Of course there were games like Battlezone, Sub Hunt and Sub Roc, which just come alive in the cabinet with the periscope - you can't replicate that at home. It was so fun to play for real.
I was also blown away by some of the 3D background artwork in games, which you just can't get at home. I had a Warlords cocktail in my hometown arcade, but Funspot had a standup cab with an amazing 3D background behind the playfield that was just gorgeous. It made the castles recede into the distance underneath the game artwork - completing the top-down view. I love Warlords, and it just looked incredible. There was another game where there was full artwork on the inside three panels of the cab. It was a cityscape that wrapped around and really drew you in. Can't remember which game, but it was really cool. This pic is from a cool game I'd never heard of - "Video Pinball." It was a b/w game with a gorgeous, glowing 3D-ish pinball playfield on top of the screen. Honestly it didn't play all that great, but it looked really freaking cool.
Another cool aspect of the "arcade experience" was that one of the isles of games strongly smelled like a pizza parlor. Not sure why it was just that one isle, perhaps some of the games there came from a pizza parlor, but it was instantly recognizable and to me was synonymous with arcade gaming. A lot of the games I played growing up were in pizza places.
Sort of along those lines, you can't beat walking into an arcade and hearing Lita Ford, Van Halen and other 80s rock. It totally brought me into the experience.
To sum up, Funspot sort of reminded me why arcades and coin-op games are so cool. In the rare event I play a coin-op game now, it's in a laundromat or airport or something. Being in a real arcade like this was a different experience.
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