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Those were the days…
Continued…
More than anything, arcade gaming offered the chance to play games differently, in a way that consoles are perhaps only just beginning to emulate. Wandering into an arcade gave way to lightgun games such as Time Crisis and House of the Dead, games that never really worked at home. Sure, Nintendo gave us Duck Hunt, but when the PlayStation attempted the Time Crisis series it had lost all of its charm.
Aside from shooting, players could drive the latest racing cars while sitting in a moving car structure; they could sit down at a four-player cabinet and play The Simpsons; and, of course, jostle for elbow room at Street Fighter 2. These experiences took time to perfect on home consoles, and only now can a lightgun game be truly enjoyed from your sofa.
Goodbye, my old friend
Arcade gaming began its decline in the 1990s in the UK. With the price of cabinets going up, the price to play rose too. When playing a game went from 20p per turn up to a pound, younger players especially moved away from the arcades, citing costs as a repellent. Owners were now seeing that there was little point in fixing broken machines for them to sit there unplayed, and so began selling them on, replacing them with slot machines.
Venture into any arcade on a UK seafront now and prepare for rows of fruit machines with flashing lights promising a jackpot, rather than the music of The Offspring leaping from a Crazy Taxi unit. Owners of arcades can make more money from the average teenager pumping pound coins into the latest movie-related slot machine in five minutes than in an hour of 
Outrun SP.
An average “fruity” will cost 25p per spin nowadays, and usually pay out very little, giving owners plenty of income. And that’s before you even look at two-penny pushers and crane machines that also offer very little payout.
Worse still is the thought that half of the people who spend endlessly on these gambling machines will wander home and boot up Xbox Live for a game of Modern Warfare 2, rather than spend some of that cash to support the games that surrounded them in the arcade.
It’s a tremendous shame that arcades never really pulled out of this lull, especially in the age of gaming we now enjoy. Many people are looking to videogames as a way to relax or unwind. They aren’t just for kids, either, with grandparents hopping on WiiFit boards and enjoying themselves. The culture that gaming enjoys now is 15 years too late for our arcade scene, and more and more of these magical places are shutting their doors.
When I were a lad…
Things were different two decades ago. Technology has moved on, and the once-superior cabinets are overshadowed by home consoles and PCs. Online gaming has taken away the need 
to stand by your friends’ sides and watch them grimace as you dragon punch them yet again. The big screens of most cabinets are now smaller than your family TV. And why would you pay for 40 games of Tekken 6 in the arcade when you can buy the full version for £35?
But we wouldn’t be where we are now without arcades. Japanese culture still relishes the game centres around the country, and it shows in Eastern gaming. The Nintendo Wii is very much an arcade cabinet that sits under your TV, and the influence is clear to be seen. Tranplant the arcade cabinet of Crisis Squad for a TV with a Wii and Ghost Squad and you have the same outcome. Even Microsoft are emulating the old days, with Game Room on Xbox Live giving people a chance to play the arcade classics again.
Luckily, there are still developers out there trying their hardest to save arcade gaming. Capcom are obviously still putting out Street Fighter titles, and some arcades will even house Guitar Hero machines that capitalise on the latest craze of rhythm gaming. It may seem like too little too late, but if developers and arcade owners can see a potential, then we may get that chance to relive the bygone days of that tangy metallic scent on our fingertips.
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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.