sorry guys to mention such an old thing but you have cover allmost everything....
i am bored.....its late.....so lets remember....

Although there were significant internal differences between the psx and saturn
( my opinion is that the psx was a more polygon pusher,whereas the saturn boasted strong 2d abilities) both were clearly very capable formats. so capable in fact, that the huge gap which had always existed between home consoles and coin-ops seemed to be lets say diminishing ?
sega and namco were not worried about their valuable arcade market,however , because both were working on more advanced tech ,-namely model 2 and system 22. instead they used the power of the 32bit consoles in cheap arcade boards :
namcos system 11 and segas st-v (titan).this was the key event in the history of videogaming it meant that for the 1st time truly arcade-quality games would find their way to home because truly they developed on consoles.this was the beginning of the end for arcades and the enriched of consoles markets.......
i mean we were able to have the coin-ops (almost) in our warm homes and forget the arcades ? call me romantic or anything else you want ,but i love the sound of coin-ops, i love all the poeple in the line fighting , i love the atmosphere inside these rooms.....anyway i hope not to make you bored.
thanks for just reading this......

I miss going to the arcades myself. I loved seeing new games that would eventually come home for console play. There' s just something about an arcade that you can' t replicate with home consoles, even if you put them in a cabinet and play them while standing up. In my opinion the best arcades were dimly lit, always had people and had tons and tons of games that you wanted to walk around and see.

Now arcades barely exist anymore. Sure, we have a few of those " do everything" places like Dave and Busters or Red and Jerrys here in my state, but those places really suck. I hate them.

If Terry is alive (I' m not too sure he is), then expect a good response from him as he was fond of arcades.

thanks joe i was beginning to think that i was the only one here with this
feelling



" i wish sometimes to find a timemachine or something like that.... "

thanks again

My love for the golden age of arcade gaming knows NO bounds. I am and feel that I always will be an arcade gamer at heart, with console gaming coming in a close 2nd place.

You' re right in that the PlayStation and Sega Saturn closed the gap between console and arcade games by a significant margin. Alot of ports weren' t as watered down as they were during the 8 and 16-bit era, which was kind of a double-edged sword.

I totally agree with both of you in that console games lack that special feeling that arcades provide, and regardless of whether you shove your console in an arcade cabinet, it' s just not the same as dealing with true blue quarter munchers. There' s just something more exciting about playing the NAOMI version of Crazy Taxi over the Dreamcast version, the same applies to A LOT of other games as well.

I remember I used to spend entire days at my favorite arcades. On several occasions I spent 10 - 12 hours at one of my favorite arcades in Florida. Going there when they opened at 10 am and leaving there around 10 - 12 midnight, taking a short lunch break soemtime in the afternoon at a nearby 7-11, gulping down hotdogs and Slurpees and racing my butt back to the arcade! AHHHHHHH those were the days!!!!!

I was so friggin heartbroken when they finally closed the arcade down, I literally cried. I had been going there since mid-1985 till the place shutdown in I think, the year 2000. I remember when they first got Double Dragon II in, I almost crapped myself and was traumatized watching Marian get gunned down by the badguys. It took me years to finally accept that she had been killed and for the most part I' m still in denial about it, lol.. Then when the Neo-Geo MVS units first hit the arcade scene those were some truly happy days! Magician Lord and Nam-1975 WOWED the hell out of me back in the day! And Baseball Stars Professional just looked too fun to miss out on.

I feared the place was in danger of possibly being shutdown due to the dismal state of arcades at the time. Leading up to that point, traffic had slowed down significantly. The flow of gamers wasn' t as steady in the daytime, and the place was no longer packed with little breathing room on Friday and Saturday nights.

I still get my arcade itch scratched occasionally at the China Town arcade in New York City but it' s not the same as the late 80s - mid 90s arcade environment. They' ve got a decent selection of games but it' s certainly not the ideal arcade for me since a lot of their games are fighting games. I try to go there several times a month and enjoy satisfying my twitch gaming fix with games like Viper, Mars Matrix, Giga Wing, Raiden Fighters, and what I still consider to be the best Street Fighter game ever made: Super Street Fighter II: Turbo.

Do you go there on a lunch break or something? Cab rides must cost a fortune!

lol, nah I walk... It' s only 2 stops away via Subway ride. Walking is around 10 - 15 minutes.

I never got into the arcade scene. Either I was too young, or the town I live in is too " back country," I don' t know. I have some experience and memories related to arcades (I LOVE pinball machines), but they don' t stack up to the stories I hear around here. It' s kind of dissheartening, as I feel I' ve been cheated of something when I listen to others reminisce about " the arcade days."

You young whippersnappers will NEVER know how awesome the arcade experience was!

Hey Terry good news! I found a cheap product to take that grey out of your hair. I tried it and it works!!

I think one of the coolest things about arcade was that not only you playied for fun - each coin was your chance and you had to get as far as you can on this one fuckin coin :)

It was very challenging , plus the competition was there and places were filled with love for games.

Back in the days when games were considered stupid and for nerds - Arcades were our asylum, our holy land.

Online is cool but it' s never like playing with someone next to you - it' s a fact.Same goes for online chats - they can' t replace the face to face conversation.Online play is great because it allows you to connect with gamers , but it' s not like playing in one arcade.It' s as good as we multiplayer can get actually since Arcades are almost dead and not many people around us play games.

I agree with you Gangsta. One quarter! The best is when there was a que of about 5 or 6 quarters, and you had to wait if you lost! Man, that made it SO intense!

My fondest memories come from Mortal Kombat II! We were Mortal Kombat junkies, and when my friend told me they had MK:II at a local bowling alley, I damn near shit my pants! Then when I looked at it, and Kung Lao was looking back at me, I DID shit myself!!

Good times!

I still have a callus on my right endex finder from spending hours play darius gaiden.

And i hope it never goes away.

Best shmup Evar!

I have a nice local smokey arcade within walking distance of where i live. We tend to get new machines on a regular basis, and the arrival of HotD4 meant that 3 had to be moved right to the very back and 2 was taken away or sold or whatever happens to older arcade machines.

We have Mario Kart GP, which is a blast and F-Zero AX (i love arcade racing games!), but i spend more time playing KoF2002 than anything else.

I want VF5 and a new air-hockey table (the one we have is ruined) and i' ll be content for the rest of the year!

What a good thread -

I am very sad at the demise of the arcades.

We had two arcades locally and although they havent shut up shop completely they are now just full of gamblers (fruit machines)

if your lucky the odd pub has the odd jamma cab in a corner with a dodgy hantarex polo monitor playing some surreal football title I' ve never heard of - with a picture about the size of a stamp!

I miss the ehady days where pubs actually had a few coineys. Kinda sad really.

actually this thread has made me depressed - but at least reminscent in some ways.



are they still going fully strenght in Shibuya and Akihabara? I always planned to go over there!

I used to always try and find an arcade wherever I went, if I went on holiday or something or at the motorway service stations heh. The one I used to always go to is actually still open! It' s in one of the nearby malls. Although you used to find a new machine in there every visit with some new beatemup, racer or shooter.. now they' ve kind of lapsed. The last new arcade was Dancing Stage I guess.

I' ll always remember games like ridge racer, afterburner and street fighter 2. They had some wierd ones too, like ridge racer on a small cinema screen and a full sized car, an afterburner style shooter with a huge mounted cabinet that could go upside down, and also that virtual reality headset game where you walked around and shot some wireframe pteradactyl! :P

It used to be 10p a go, but now its £1! So you basically play one game once, die in 30 secs and feel like you' ve spent enough, heh. [:' (]

two years ago I went to tunisia and I found an arcade :)

There were only 2D games - Metal Slug , Street Fighter 2 - it made me feel so nostalgic - those guys, they were looking at me saying " americano americano" hehe they even got me to play with their SF2 champion - guy knew some moves so I just blocked him and attacked with what I know :)

check the photo (SF2 arcade is at the back - I suppouse it' s the most popular game there) :

I never really had money to play many
arcade games but I still went and looked

I used work with my father and he would
buy me and my brothers a game and sometimes
take us to the arcade
Arcades never been in walking distance
when I started walking that far All the arcades
were gone except one which I am not so sure about now.

That arcade is WAAAAY too bright!

Reminds me of one of the arcades I played at when I went to Bangladesh when I was younger. You' d pay the eqiuvalent of like 5p at the front to get in, and get to play for free till you got bored!

Did anyone ever play those pirated SF2 machines? You know the ones where Zangief would do yoga flames from his legs when doing his spinning punch, and you could do multiple huge fireballs that would move really slowly across the screen and such.

I played one where you could jump while you were in mid air a limitless number of times, so you' d both immediately fly off the top of the screen, the fight would take place somewhere up there, and then one guy would lose who would fall to the ground, and the winner would land afterwards to celebrate. Pointless but so much fun, heh.