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Those were the days…
Games were once played in bustling, busy places. These days, that’s rarely the case. Daniel Lipscombe chronicles the history of the humble arcade.
DUST – A layer of dust thick enough to write your name in for the world to see. This was the only thing to be seen on the Tekken 6 cabinet. No people; not even a passing glance was thrown towards Law, and Paul, and their comrades. A 50 pence coin rolled around in my palm, and after a momentary pause I was choosing my fighter. I lasted around six minutes in total. In that six minutes not one person passed through that dingy corner of the arcade, and my fingerprints were the only ones that would be left in the dust.
I walked out from my lonely hideaway, nodded solemnly at the Tekken 6 machine, and weaved in and out of the remaining cabinets. Time Crisis 2, Crisis Squad, Afterburner and Sega Rally all stood languishing with black screens, not even a flicker of life. This was once the stomping grounds of gods. Once the place to be. It’s nothing more than a graveyard now.
Arcade gaming is dying. There was a time when arcades would be packed from front to back with people moving from one game to another; when a constant milling of spectators stopped by to watch a match of Street Fighter 2, or to view the final lap of Daytona USA. It was once the backbone of the videogame industry. Now, it’s breaking, and no one is there to watch it take its final breath.
Ancient history
Arcade gaming was always tough in the UK. We Brits could only play these games when we venture to the coastal towns on holidays, as arcades were always seen as a tourist feature. 
Unlike in the US and Japan, there was rarely a ‘local’ arcade – unless you were lucky enough to live by the sea. The problem was always there: arcade cabinets weren’t getting enough footfall, and arcade owners were becoming understandably impatient.
At one point, arcade graphics boards were outstripping home consoles in performance, and players would gather around huge, colourful screens, mouths agape at the technology. This wasn’t to last, as home consoles became more powerful and offered more to their owners. Televisions were becoming bigger, and typical arcade titles were landing in bedrooms. There was less need to play in poorly lit arcades.
In the UK, arcade owners were ditching their gaming units in favour of gambling fruit machines, toy cranes and penny pushers. With such a high profit to be made on each of these machines, and the niche audience moving away from their gaming fix, managers stopped ordering spare parts and buying new games.
Arcades were once a haven for all walks of life, not just in the ’80s and ’90s but ranging all the way back to penny arcades in the 1930s. Games back then required very little playing, and were more “interactive entertainment” than anything. Some machines would simply require a payment in order to display a scene from a play or poem, and you may have been able to use buttons to change the lighting and such.
One notorious arcade thrill was a machine called What The Butler Saw, an early piece of adult entertainment that allowed the player to look through a viewfinder, turn a 
handle, and see ladies from the ’20s and ’30s in various states of undress. Not exactly a game – but penny arcades used machines like this to give people something that they couldn’t find at home.
Games would soon follow, with cabinets containing mazes in which you would guide a ball into a goal, or a clockwork duck-shooting gallery. Many of these games were sophisticated, and allowed players to socialise and create a competitive situation. Of course, modern arcades followed on from this tradition, but used technology to heighten the interactions and sportsmanship.
Can you come out to play?
Arcades were a place to gather with friends and experience videogaming in a very different way. Perhaps even the best way, particularly for the more competitive titles. There’s a gladiatorial feeling of popping in a ten pence piece and drawing a crowd while you and a friend hammer the buttons of Track and Field.
Trips to the local arcades would last the week through stories and tales told to friends missing on that previous Saturday. High scores were bandied about, noses were rubbed in defeat, and plans were made for the next trip.
Continues…
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The arcades in Weston and Minehead were awesome. Minehead had this giant robot ride you could sit in too, and at one point a Merlin’s Grotto interactive walk thing in the basement, that ended up getting flooded. And Bournemouth’s Sega World was cool. I always used to go for games like the Turtles and The Simpsons, as well as ones like Mad Dog McCree with my dad on Weston Pier. Then later it was House of the Dead, Point Blank and Time Crisis in the Taunton Hollywood Bowl. The arcades always used to offer something different, that you just couldn’t capture at home.
http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/gameslounge/ is worth visiting, only a handful of machines but it is nice to drop some 20ps into some old original machines :)
The reason nobody was interested in the Tekken 6 machine is because that game kinda sucks.
But, yes, one of my fondest, most nostalgic memories of youth was going to Weymouth to play Tekken 2.
I miss it sometimes, but the last time I went into an arcade I got completely battered at Street Fighter III and it was super humiliating.
Portugal has similar problems to UK in finding arcades to play these games. The fever started only around mid 80s. But I was lucky to live in Cascais, home for the summer Heavy Metal concerts and a favorite tourist spot of many Europeans. We didn’t have 1, nor 2. We had three arcades. One of them, the biggest, set up on a subterranean floor. The one which I have the fondest memories of.
Arcades defined my entry into video gaming. This was the machine that I will always hold closest to my heart. Exactly for everything you describe. The atmosphere, the crowd, the rituals… and the games.
http://www.mamedb.com/ holds the database on about every game that went into an arcade machine, here in Europe and in other countries in the world. Complete with screenshots, cabinet artwork and all information you will ever want to know.
http://mamedev.org/ Mame is an emulator that can play these games on any decent computer. It reads real dumps from the actual chips on the gameboards. It doesn’t get more accurate than this. But most of the games are still copyrighted and have not yet been given for full distribution. So most of the actual games that are made available elsewhere on internet to play on Mame are considered illegal. There are however a few games that have been allowed to be distributed.