Yesterday while I walked around Yonge street in downtown Toronto, one of the longest serving arcade game center there, Funland Arcade, closed its door after more than 20 years. It's quite sad because I was there so many times playing fighting games and some pinballs.
While these days many people would rather stay at home playing online games instead of going out to their local arcades, which are keeping disappear. Here in Toronto, I can only find surviving non-Chuck-E-Cheese arcades only in Asian plazas where fighting games, driving games, DDRs and photo machines are their staples.
Street Fighter 4 is now out and should be a major attraction in any arcades. But considering current situations, I don't know if popularity in arcade will ever come back.
If you are in Toronto, check out Pacific Mall — they have an arcade with some cool games such as Progear, Brave Blade and Raiden DX. I believe they also have Third Strike and some good players there…
It is indeed sad that people don't even appreciate arcade style game play… its like no one even plays games for score… they would rather play simulated realistic war grinds for 60 hours only to never play them again or have a reason to revisit such a game and find techniques to better their play and raise their score…
Not really, that's why they have leaderboards on online games, people do like to get their scores up. I think the biggest reason for the decline in arcades is the accesibility of good games at home.
During the days of street fighter 2, no home console was able to replicate the power of arcade machines. Now, the home consoles have become so powerful that you really can't think of games you can't play at home.
Not really, that's why they have leaderboards on online games, people do like to get their scores up. I think the biggest reason for the decline in arcades is the accesibility of good games at home.
Yeah thats kind of true…
I enjoy tracking the online leaderboards on Xbox Live. I think it is a very underrated feature of the service… most people would rather link up online for deathmatches and neglect the concept of playing a game for a hi score…
*back to playing Raiden Fighters Jet to move on up on the leaderboards*
I grew up in the 80s when arcades were prevalent. During the 90s I went to college and arcages were still a hit especially with the fighting game crowd. You couldn't go to a respectable arcade and find less than 5 Street Fighter machines. It's a shame they're a dying breed. As home consoles are narrowing the gap between themselves and stand-ups, spending your quarters is not really worth it anymore.
I'm kinda miffed everytime I go into Dave and Busters and all their arcade games involve an accessory, like a light gun, or a steering wheel, or some kind of helmet screen.
Why don't they have any regular video games?
They have one old machine that lets you play old school games like old Madden, Street Fighter II, etc. But those games are old. I don't want to spend money on them when I can download the rom for free.
If Arcades want to survive, they need to start investing in some VR technology, because that will be the next big thing. Wii was just a stepping stone.
My friend recently had a 21st birthday party were he went out and hired NBA Jam, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mortal Kombat 2 and a couple other arcade machines. I think I spent a good 45 minutes on TNMT, I used to love that arcade game as a kid. I remember back when they only cost 40c to play, not $2 like they do now.
I used to love going to lock in's too. Pay $10 and get to play a whole bunch of video games for 3 hours. Where I live, the only places that have arcade machines now are in the movie theatres.
Arcade
