I’ve been thinking about old arcades lately. This article, brought to my attention by Chris Remo @ teh shack, has prompted me to put my thoughts down too.
When I was a kid, I played arcade games in two places, as the article intimated. I got to play in great big arcades (”the amusements”) with rows and rows of machines when I went on holiday to Blackpool, Scarborough, Great Yarmouth, Torquay, Paignton. My mum and nan dropped me off while they got away from the cacophany, leaving me with a handful of 10 pence pieces and fantastic gaming opportunities at every turn.
Back home in the city was a different story. Sometimes I’d get lucky and the local supermarket would add a machine - for a while, Morrissons had an I, Robot cabinet. My mum would never take me into any of the actual arcades in Leeds though, because they were such crapholes. Of course, I’d sneak in with my friends when we went to town on Saturday afternoons, pocket money in hand. I don’t even remember the names of them now, but the two main game holes were both next to pubs, one was under a train bridge, the other nestled in an alleyway, and they were both populated by dodgy-looking men and foul-mouthed kids.
I might not remember the names, but even now, 20 years later, I can close my eyes and remember the layouts of all these places, whether they were grungy or great. In the grungy places, I remember a distinct tightening in the stomach watching my friend Peter Miles play Punch Out, innocently making comments about his dark-skinned opponent, not realising that a rather large black man was standing beside me. I remember wasting money on the Space Ace machine, it seeming so out of place amongst the other arcage games and the fruit machines that made up the majority of the hole-in-the-wall area. I remember spending more time with Temple of Doom in this place than in any of the seaside amusements.
I don’t share the author’s fondness for these dirty, smelly places though, not really. I might remember the games, but I didn’t like having to go in there. I have much happier memories of the giant (or so they seemed at the time) seaside amusements, where kids would run around like idiots without worrying about pissing off Big John or catching the eye of the greasy-haired pervert. Instead, I’d happily graze the cabinets, going from Karate Champ (FULL POINT) to Super Mario Bros. to Combat School to Outrun to Dragon’s Lair, where I’d lose a couple of quid in approximately 38 seconds.
As time went on, there were more places to go to play games in Leeds, places that actually had lighting and cabinets that weren’t covered in bacteria. More games showed up in the bowling alley, which is where I first got to play Operation Wolf with the Uzi. As more of the industrial area became commercialised, a laser tag place opened up as part of a larger “entertainment centre”, near the old Jolly Giant. I went a couple of times with my friend Jason Holt - we were old enough to no longer be worried by the dingy arcades, but it was still nice to play shiny new machines, and I remember we were both blown away by Virtua Fighter. He also destroyed me in Street Fighter II. I can’t use the fact that I was using a new character (Cammy), because he was using the new characters too. Besides, I’ve always been terrible at Street Fighter.
Which brings us to today. I’m in a different country, with a different arcade history, but oddly enough, arcades are in a state that falls neatly between the two British types. You’ll find them in malls, and they’re not really dingy - they’re billed as “family entertainment centers”. But they are getting smaller and smaller, and they’re filled with old games nobody else wants to play anymore, often with barely-working controls.
One thing has remains the same however - I always get a twinkle in my eye when I walk into an arcade.
After a playing a bit of Mario Kart 64 recently though, I’ve come to realise that I’m probably going to get schooled online when I eventually get my DS.. ..so maybe I should stick to the calming environment of