Arcades

[Jadty]

1- Probably NARC, on the most unlikely place to have an arcade machine: A bakery!

2- Never got to the ending of any arcade game, but I may have beaten Street Fighter II: The New Challengers at some point with Bison, can't remember well.

3- Arcades were big here in DR until about the time when Mortal Kombat 4 and Soul Calibur II came out. Those 2 machines were BIG in the local scene. There is still this place called Funtastico where I used to go, but it's shit nowadays. They still have the same machines from when I was a kid, and even less than back then. The only new machine I saw they have is the Guitar Hero Arcade machine.

[Barone]

There is still this place called Funtastico where I used to go, but it's shit nowadays. They still have the same machines from when I was a kid, and even less than back then. The only new machine I saw they have is the Guitar Hero Arcade machine.

Just told about the arcade scene in Brazil as well...

[StarMist]

Something in the Asteroids//Galaga//Millipede line. A passing play. Trackball exp early on to be sure.

SFII Turbo.

Arcades were killed by the increasing depression of the economy and oppression of teenagers since the early `90s. Mobile phones also hurt, being a constant distraction, ie rather than go do something/anything one just picks up the phone. All told the same thing that happened to cinemas and everything else.

[gamevet]

1 - I remember playing Tank (Kee-Games) at the local roller rink around 1975.

2 - It was probably Star Wars (Vector), but the game just starts over again with tougher enemies.

3- The arcades started dying when innovation was replaced with countless fighting and racing games. I used to frequent the arcades in the 80's, because there was always something new to play. By the mid 90's I just stopped caring about going to an arcade, because it was always the same games I'd seen 6 months earlier.

[Splatterhouse5]

01. It was either Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr. I can't remember which.

02. Double Dragon

03. I'm too lazy to think of something that hasn't already been said, so I'll just leave it at that.

[twoquickcapri]

1. Not sure, but most likely Pole Position or Hard Driving

2. Metal Slug, But I own a stand-up MVS with a Metal Slug Cart. So does that count?

3. The number Atari's, Genesis, Pc-Engine, and Saurn sold games and systems on bring the arcade experience home. But at the end of the 16-bits and into the era of Sony dominance the style of games changed. The big hit games were no longer quarter poping quick fun but story driven. Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy never would have made it to the arcade.

[Nobi]

1. First Arcade game I played I can't really remember. My earliest arcade memories are of Shinobi, Pac Man, and Castlevania(at a bar my parents used to take me along to), but I can't remember which one came first.

2. House of the Dead was the first arcade game I ever completed, spent about 20$ in quarters.

3. Not only have arcade's died around my parts(northeast Texas), but the arcade cabinet itself has pretty much dissapeared around here. You used to be able to go to places like laundrymats, and convenient stores, and find a Primal Rage cabinet, or at least Mrs. Pac Man, but now all you see is the digital slot machine/video poker gambling machines. I have to agree with a fellow Texan who posted previously. Somewhere between 1998-2000, actual brick and mortar arcade rooms started to get hard to find.

[kool kitty89]

3# Depends on region (I think the US arcade scene died off earliest). Reasons would be home consoles growing in strength and capabilities (Arcade games lost their impressive "wow" factor), and things like internet cafe's taking off which were much cheaper.

This is really true, but region isn't just by country either: different regions of the US saw substantially different market conditions too.

There's actually still a fairly active arcade scene in the areas around where I live (Northern California), though few to no standalone arcades (Nickel City is the only one I can think of), there's a number of quite active arcades attached to other businesses/attractions (like movie theaters or amusement parks).

I actually didn't realize how active the modern arcade scene was in my area until a few weeks ago . . . I knew about some of the fairly decent arcade locations within San Jose (like Golf Land and Nickel City) and a few others in the area, but most with fairly run of the mill (often older -ie at least 7 years old) games, but there's actually a lot more if you know where to look.

But a couple weeks ago, a friend got me (and Apolloboy) to go to the Sunnyvale Golf Land on a Saturday night and I was pleasantly surprised to not only see a fairly active scene of gamers there, but quite a few new arcade games. Most interesting perhaps is that they had a bunch of Japanese imports there (making up most of their newest games). SFIV, Blazblue, Tekken 5 (and 6, but it wasn't working that night), several newer Namco and Sega racers (mostly imports). Plus some others like Mario Kart arcade (domestic release), SFIII Third Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Capcom vs SNK 2, Puzzle Fighter, several light gun shooters, and some pinball games.

3- The arcades started dying when innovation was replaced with countless fighting and racing games. I used to frequent the arcades in the 80's, because there was always something new to play. By the mid 90's I just stopped caring about going to an arcade, because it was always the same games I'd seen 6 months earlier.

From what I understand, in the US, it seems like there's a few different factors:
the biggest would probably be what happened in the mid 80s with the arcade market crash in '83 (slightly before and only somewhat related to the console crash), and from there on out the North American arcade market had been weakened, and slowly recovered into the early 90s with the fighting game boom pushing arcades bigger again (though nothing like they'd been in the early 80s), but then the increased competition of home consoles/PCs (among other things) led to further decline of arcades, especially dedicated/standalone arcades in NA. (Europe took a bit longer, and Japan didn't really ever die)

There was also the parallel problem of depreciation/deflation of the value of arcade games. One of the things that kept the JP arcade market strong was considerably higher play prices for the games, and consistently increasing prices (vs the US that didn't see that so much, and saw significant depreciation with the introduction of tokens rather than cash money play).
Those factors (popularity and profit) made Japanese arcade companies much more lucrative, and gave much more incentive for more/new (and relatively expensive) arcade hardware and software.

Mark Cerny actually addressed some of this in a recent interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKxns90v_qs

(see 1:20)


As for lack of variety . . . more or less true, though it's more than driving and fighting games that make up the majority of modern arcades: you also tend to see a lot of light gun shooters and usually a few puzzle games (albeit usually older ones). There's a few others too, and some interesting branches off of mainstream games too. (like the Mario Kart arcade game -would be interesting to see an arcade SSB derivative for that matter )
Then there's still the electro-mechanical games too. (pinball, air hockey, etc)

[MIZPHIT]

Austin, Tx's Pinballz Arcade and Arcade UFO both get the thumbs up. Pinballz has an insane lineup of pinball machines and a very nice mix of old school and current arcade cabs. Arcade UFO is cool as shit because 95% of their cabs are Japanese imports. Mostly candy cabs. The place is really 'blink and you'll miss it' small too.

[theredlineboss]

1. Ms. Pac Man

2. Haven't beat an arcade game, though I have destroyed the death star in Star Wars Pinball

3. Have no idea for my area. I played very few arcade games when I was a kid, so I wouldn't even know where the arcades may have been in the 90's.

-Rob

[Cornholio857]

Chucky Cheese...

I went there about 3 years ago for a birthday party. I was actually surprised at the amount of arcade games they had. Mostly from the mid-90's and up. Also, every game is one token. Can't beat that! (They also got rid of Virtua Fighter, which is one of the games I played there BITD.....damn...)

EDIT: They also still serve beer. Which is a good thing.

[Breetai]

1. I don't know. Maybe Pac Man or Ms. Pac Man? Does pinball count?

2. Golden Axe

3. In my hometown? Early 2000s. In Japan? Still going strong, although not as strong as a few years ago.