What did you like about the arcade environment back-in-the-day?

[VectorGamer]

Most of all I recall going to an arcade, not far from Sleepy Hollow, in the mid-80's and ogling over the women. Leery eyed, lecherously and rudely. Creepy. I was a slobby, smelly, acne-laden teen. I laid eyes on the most gorgeous hottie on the whole damned planet. The whole damned Solar System. Pants so tight I swear an emergency tailor was nearby. Metal leather. 80's big hair and all that. She was playing DOT environmental - one of my more favorite immersive sitdowns. I was never any good at it, and it was darker than the already-dark arcade. I liked that. It was also close to where they pumped Oxygen into the place. I was intoxicated. All my 80’s movie crushes dissipated instantly.

 

In the many times I went there I saw her on occasion. And finally one day they had a metal grating across the entrance. I was devastated. On several occasions I came this close >|< to asking her to get something at the snack bar. Now that would never happen..

 

 

[Keatah]

What *IS* that crap?

[cimerians]

Love it or hate it I still remember when Dragon's Lair came out. You could never get on the machine to try playing it and when you did it was 50 cents! Sometimes you would get lucky and see someone go through it all and beat the dragon.

 

I also remember how games started getting really good before it all ended. I was really impressed with Stun Runner, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, Road Blaster and who can forget first seeing the big 4 player Gauntlet for the first time! We poured 5 bucks of tokens into Gauntlet sometimes.

 

Things were getting really good but it seems like it ended all too quick.

[Keatah]

"The End" was rather drawn out for me. I slowly gave up hope over a number of years as rail shooters and fighting games took hold.

[otaku]

Back in the day was the 90s early 2000s for me lol. I liked a pocket full of quarters. The noise and excitement. The competition, Friends. All of it. Hell I still go. We have a great family arcade here called Pojos. WE have popular somewhat adult places called Big Al's and such, and now we have these things called barcades two in my metro area. One within walking distance focuses on the classic nintendo and atari games mix that with beer and good sandwhiches and you have a frequent hangout for me lol

[bigfriendly]

I always like to compare the sound of an 80's arcade for a kid to the sound of a casino for an adult. When you first walked inside it was so loud but once you started dropping quarters everything just faded away. I also remember that certain sounds from some games always stood out and were easily recognizable. The thump of Centipede with the jumping spider and the low hum of the fleas was always relavent in my mind. When Eastdale Mall opened in 1977 it had Aladdin's Castle and I can remember hunting for a stool when I first got there so I could see the screen when I played certain games. I was 7 years old and I will never forget what a magical place it was. I played games and socialized at that arcade/mall all the way through high school and it's one of those memories that I would not trade for anything. Great thread guys!

[Keatah]

Indeed the arcade was a magical place at the time. I even felt like I was experiencing the forefront of computer graphics - because arcades were typically 3-4 years ahead of home consoles.

[sprazzi]

It might sound simplistic, but the arcades were the places where the videogames were!

and nowhere else!

That was amazing!!!

[AtariTexas]

Definitely the sights and sounds of the machines....meeting up with friends.......girls rockin the tight Jordache or Gloria Vanderbilt jeans....

[Gentlegamer]

Love it or hate it I still remember when Dragon's Lair came out. You could never get on the machine to try playing it and when you did it was 50 cents! Sometimes you would get lucky and see someone go through it all and beat the dragon.

 

I also remember how games started getting really good before it all ended. I was really impressed with Stun Runner, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, Road Blaster and who can forget first seeing the big 4 player Gauntlet for the first time! We poured 5 bucks of tokens into Gauntlet sometimes.

 

Things were getting really good but it seems like it ended all too quick.

 

STUN Runner was one of those late 80s 3D games that really awesome. Great graphics, gameplay, all in a cool environmental.

 

That's the other thing that cannot be experienced, even in emulation. Many of the old great games were environmental and there's nothing like it now.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

I didn't start experiencing and playing arcade games until 1986-1987. When I was 5-6 years old. It wasn't the time like the golden age from 1979-1984. I lived in Tacoma, WA at the time (25 miles south of Seattle). Often went to the B&I Marketplace. Inside was Mikey's Funland. A huge arcade joint located inside. From 1978-2013 it was a retro gamer's heaven. It had all the arcades you could think of plus billiards, foosball, skee ball, mini golf, giant carousel, and a food area plus bar. I remember in 1987 My dad helped me steer and ride the Hang On actual ride on motorcycle arcade and Outrun. Both were fairly new at the time. All the classics like Donkey Kong, DK Jr., Mario Bros, Pole Position, Space Invaders, Tempest, Missle Command, Centipede, etc. Newer games like Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Turtles in Time, fighter games. One of my all time favorites was Hard Drivin and Race Drivin. For 1989-1990 it was a groundbreaking game. A real driving simulatorbwhich feels like you are really driving a high performance vehicle, great graphics despite they were polygon, a realistic 4 speed stick shift transmission and I credit this game for teaching me to learn to drive a manual transmission. Stun Runner is another great one as well. Just all the sounds and glowing from the screens plus cheesy 80's new wave music was very nostalgic.

[BillyHW]

Hard Drivin' ++.

Edited July 10, 2015 by BillyHW

[bkrownd]

The graphics and sounds of the video and pinball machines were mesmerizing, and the noisy bustle instantly chased away boredom. (bowling alleys had a similarly pleasing loud cacophony and dark dungeony atmosphere)

[homerhomer]

Arcades were great little places that would showcase new technology. I loved walking into an arcade and seeing a new game that was years beyond what you could get at home. Seeing Sega's Hang-on in 1986 was mind blowing. R-type was so creepy and colorful looking. Killer Instinct, would always have a crowd of people around it. Virtua Fighter looked unreal. For awhile there, it seemed like every time went to an arcade there was something new and amazing. When the arcades stopped getting new games I lost interest in them.

[Keatah]

Looks like I never finished up post #75..

[AnapsidWatch]

The arcade ambiance was very different. It felt safe in there, I felt very accepted even though it was also a competitive environment because you were surrounded by tons of kids your age who enjoyed gaming, even though adults also came to arcades for their own amusement. On some days, you'd find old people playing the slot games alongside their grandchildren playing Galaga, or something, Suchh a shame arcades today (the few that's left, anyway) are shady, scary destinations now.

[VectorGamer]

Suchh a shame arcades today (the few that's left, anyway) are shady, scary destinations now.

 

I don't agree with that. Many of the arcades I have been to in recent years are clean, family-friendly establishments that revel in nostalgia.

[Keatah]

Suchh a shame arcades today (the few that's left, anyway) are shady, scary destinations now.

 

Not really. There are good and bad arcades, and like anything else it depends on the area. There are serious arcades and family arcades.

[Keatah]

I'll skip describing the delinquent activities and escapades we conducted in what was a dying arcade scene. And people that have interest in masturbation will have to look elsewhere for their jollies.

 

…That was the first of many arcade closings in the area. The people that fueled the first generation of arcade with their quarters were now getting serious jobs and didn’t have time for them anymore. Or they were burned out and nearly homeless – thus the arcade would be the last thing on your mind. Eventually all arcades would succumb to slowing business as home consoles started improving and PC gaming exploded upon the scene. People supposedly took the attitude there was nothing magical in the arcade experience and that much of it could be had at home. I didn’t necessarily agree. But nevertheless I had long ago taking a liking to Doom and Raptor and some other 486/586 era DOS games. And I was convinced home gaming would forever maintain a lead over the traditional arcades.

 

Part of it, too, was that operators weren't maintaining the machines. CRTs naturally picked up burn-in and started fading. Cigarette burns on the control panels. Worn-through carpeting. Age was beginning to show. It wasn't localized to one arcade, all 7 of them exhibited decay in some fashion. I decided to leave the scene around then. It was much more fun playing Doom than anything in the arcade anyways.

 

Even today, at 257, I played Tempest and the acceleration was turned up enough that the colors were overdriven toward monochromaticity. What was needed was a new tube, or conversion to a proper LCD display. Nevertheless within a half-hour I had the high score. Their Lunar Lander machine had burn in from another game. They had/have a good selection of games and crowd to go with them. But people had their faces buried in smartphones as opposed to actually playing the classics. There were too many bright lights and little-to-no 80's music. And they're too big on the Pac-Man theme. Way overdone. Pac-Man this. Pac-Man that. Yeck! They even had a Pac-Man and Space Invaders watch for sale. Each was something like $20,000 or something. I don’t care if the SI watch has real moondust in it or not. With all the dirt in my house there’s bound to be lunar tektites that have sublimated out of the atmosphere.

 

But back to the past. Galaxy World was among the last to close I believe. And I stopped going there before that happened. The place got pretty run down. I had my high-score on Super Space Invaders '91 and finished RoadBlasters there. Something like that. I even completed Blasteroids and Assault! But I felt the end coming soon. I felt a big dry spell coming on in videogames and arcades.

 

Instead of hanging out at the arcades and chasing girls I started hanging around with guys from the gym and all that. We typically did the higher-class establishments in Downtown Chicago. Soon I was spending $600 bucks a month down there. Maybe more. It certainly was a different world than borrowing mom's car to get to the arcade. This went on and off for several years. And during those years a certain kind of Supreme Enlightenment eventually took over from the 90's and early dotcom era. I stopped baggie-chasing ridiculous graphics card upgrades. Trashed all my overclocked GaMeRz computers. I think I even hated them for a while. And today I feel like an idiot for thinking how cool they were. Today I like elegant computing, not the Dream Machines of Maximum PC. No mere mortal could afford to build those unless you were some rich dude.

 

It would be some number of years after the Spring Hill Aladdin’s Castle shut down. I was growing up and becoming a man! Me an my buddies did the gym circuit and bought DeAngelo’s dating coach material. And we listened to Tom Leykis. One nondescript evening at the dawning of the 21st century we were out haunting the best Chicago has to offer. The finest. I remember watching the airplanes come out of the distance and descend into the fog below us for landing at ORD. Definitely Cat III. On the lakeside there was a low weather front rolling in. And you couldn’t see the Pier. But you could see space and the bright evening stars. With significant imagination you could imagine being aboard a starship hovering in the atmosphere of an alien planet. Or maybe we were on a square-shaped Cloud City of a sort. Down in the murky streets far below I could envision a wet BladeRunner setting. You see, I think about such things all the time. Constantly interposing Sci-Fi daydreams between fantasy and the real world is a lame pastime. I know. But it's a fun one.. This time was no different. I hung around contemplating the activity surrounding us. Wistfully wondering about the video arcades of yore as I often do, among other things. The good times. I had to take a piss. I told the guys I’d catch up with them soon enough.

 

Completely unbeknownst to myself the stage was being set for some seriously funky deja’vu. So improbable I wasn’t sure it was real. It would take time to register and reconcile the scene unfolding. You know, let it sink in. It appeared to be that one hot chick from the twilight days of the arcade. She was hanging out in a nondescript area in the lounge above the restaurant, as were me and my buddies. I did a double-take and a triple-take. And a look from the other side. Though it was many years since I last saw her playing DOT-E, there was a certain something in the air tonight. A way she presented herself. But I’d recognize that demeanor anywhere. Gone was all the 80’s metal poser garb. Big hair was now small hair.

 

A seemingly once-in a-lifetime 2nd opportunity to orchestrate a proper and formal introduction was at hand. Right here. Right now. Being older my modalities were tempered, seasoned.. Refined. Elegant. Considering that I just hosted a number of symposia this week, I was still in a professional state of mind. And that was a big plus. This time I didn't fuck up. Didn’t chicken out.

[Gentlegamer]

Suchh a shame arcades today (the few that's left, anyway) are shady, scary destinations now.

 

What are you talking about? That's the authentic experience.

[MaximRecoil]

I didn't spend a lot of time in the typical type of arcade. Occasionally, I'd go to Space Port in the Bangor Mall, which was a typical arcade, but Bangor was 45 minutes away, so I wasn't there often.

 

In my small town, there was only one typical arcade (i.e., a dedicated, dimly lit room full of arcade machines); in this case, a room with no windows in the back of a general store / gas station. It was very similar to the arcade at the truck stop in the movie "Maximum Overdrive". However, I only went there a couple of times, because it was gone by '82 or '83 (when I was 7 or 8 years old), which was 1 or 2 years before I got hooked on arcade games. The only game I remember playing in there is Front Line, one time.

 

The vast majority of my arcade game playing was at the laundromat (not dimly lit at all, and no dedicated room for them) where there were 3 video arcade machines and 2 pinball machines on rotation, and at Fossa's general store, which had 5 or 6 video arcade machines on rotation (also not dimly lit, and no dedicated room). At the laundromat, starting in '84, I played Karate Champ, Punch-Out, and various others. At Fossa's, starting in '87, I played mainly Super Punch-Out, but also: Double Dragon, Rampage, Legendary Wings, and various others. Fossa's was an especially popular place for kids to hang out after school, and despite the small size of the store, there would usually be 20 kids or so there after school, playing, waiting to play, or watching people play the 5 or 6 arcade machines there. Double Dragon was a particularly big hit at that time.

 

In the early '90s, I had a part time job at a place next to a LaVerdiere's drug store, and that long-since-defunct chain of stores had what they called "Action Family Arcade", complete with their own tokens. That was a typical arcade, and it is where I discovered Street Fighter II, but it was fairly small (about a dozen machines), and I rarely saw anyone else in there. I have some good memories of the place though; i.e., playing a lot of 2-player Final Fight with my recently-deceased best friend, Corey.

Edited September 6, 2015 by MaximRecoil