A sad trip to the past

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Shatterhand
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A sad trip to the past

Post by Shatterhand »

Today I went in the neighborhood where my Father lives for work reasons, and I acually had to wait 2 hours there before I could do my job.

So, I went in the mall from that area, and that mall had one of the biggest arcades I ever saw, which I spent a lot of my young days on. I remember spend lots of coins on Power Drift there, and then growing to go spend a lot of coins on Daytona Usa many years later.

I haven't gone there for about.. I dunno man, 6 years now I guess.

The place was like, 3 times smaller. They lost the 2nd floor and one of the rooms. The place was saddely incredibly EMPTY. They had a couple of emplyers cleaning the place, a couple playing some random dance game (And they only had ONE of them), and there was one guy, which were wearing dusty clothes and smelling horribly, playing The King of Fightres 97.

They still had their 8 Daytona Usa linked Up... all of them had some custom gear stick on them, and 2 of them weren't working (Ohh, those machines were responsible for the biggest lost of coins in my whole life). They still had some games from the last time I had visited the place. Marvel vs Capcom, The King of Fighters 97, Time Crisis, Sonic Fighters and that Police Trainer game (Which I just LOVED to play). They had some pinball tables which were so damn close to each other that I just think it would be impossible to have someone playing on all of them at the same time.

Most cabs had been raped... I remember they used to have a Die Hard Arcade there.. they still have the cab, but the sticks are changed, and they added 2 buttons on it, and those buttons weren't even wired.. and they had HIDDEN TIGER CROUCHING DRAGON playing on it (damn...:() . They also still had the Virtua Fighter 3 cab, but again with more buttons on it. They had a Blast City cab running Spike Out (Which I spend one credit). They didn't had this game before, and at least ONE of the sticks were still original, but the buttons had to be smashed hard to work.

Other than that, they still had most of their racing games. Sega Rally 2 was turned off (Maybe not working?), Indy 500, Rad Mobile, Cruisin'Usa and Super GT were there. Also that Jet Ski game from Konami, and a skateboard game which I had never played even back at the old days (I remember when the game was new there, and I never got interested)

Other than that, they also had House of the Dead 3... with LOADING times and PISTOLS instead of SHOTGUNS (Probably just a Dreamcast), and a section for small kids with just toys.

Gone was the cool Star Wars Arcade, F355 Ferrari Challenge, basically nearly ALL of their fighting games, all their shmups, the Sonic Blastman cab.. nearly EVERYTHING.

I know ,this probably was a long boring read, but it just made me sad, to see a place where I had so many good memories from my childhood/young days, being destroyed like that, and I felt I had to share with you guys. I bet some other people had experiences like that.
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Biteme
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Post by Biteme »

Look on the bright side, at least there is an arcade you can still go to. There hasnt been an arcade anywhere near me for years. I miss playing games with or against other people so bad. (xbox live isnt the same) Whenever I go to Vegas I spend most of money and time in the different arcades in the casinos. The hell with gambling.
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raiden
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Post by raiden »

Around here, this thing has been going on for quite a while longer. Back in 1992, I used to take a walk through town from one arcade to the next, always in search of shmups. When Raiden Fighters Jet came out in 1998, it was almost the only shmup left already. I played that religiously for several years, until they took it out, and about a year later I decided to buy the PCB. I´ve become afraid to walk into any unknown arcade already, not only in the city where I live, but basically everywhere in Germany. Because the only thing I can find is gambling machines, "photoplay" quiz games, and maybe a Virtua Striker machine. Arcades are completely dead around here, for years already.
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Icarus
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Post by Icarus »

The arcade I spent most of my childhood in is still around, but it's full of fruit machines and random dancing/racing/gun games now. It used to have quite a comprehensive collection of classic shmups and fighting games, but those days are long gone now.
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DC906270
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Post by DC906270 »

yes, where i live (Redcar, UK) used to have a whole sea-front full of arcade games back in the 80's to mid 90's, then suddenly they all went, now theres nothing much apart from fruities in there :cry:
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gameoverDude
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Post by gameoverDude »

I've had 3 Putt-Putt Golf & Games locations come and go. These I miss, since generally the owners were fairly decent about adding new games. The mall near me lost their Namco Time Out- but that was frankly a joke of an arcade and I was actually glad to see this one put out of its misery. It was like a walk-in closet with 20 video games at most and too many redemption games (GAH! I fucking hate those things). The corporate suits have a policy that a game must take more than something like >$200 a week for it to stay. Some of the new games were gone in ONE week. Having Time Crisis 2 (yup, 2) there for 75 cents a play is lame when they could have TC3 instead.

The Time Out was put in the mall's food court. I don't know if that was exactly the best location for it.

House of the Dead 3 is on Chihiro, so it would be an Xbox if they used a console.
Kinect? KIN NOT.
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Shatterhand
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Post by Shatterhand »

Yeah, you are right about the Chihiro X-Box thing :)

I also must say that the Virtua Fighter 3 cab was there, but NOT running Virtua Fighter 3. I think that one was running KoF 97 - They had KoF 97, Marvel vs Capcom 1 and Hidden Tiger Crouching Dragon and Sonic Fighters as their only fighting games... they used to have TONS of those... at least Sonic Fighters was still in its original cab, but as I didn't check it out. probably the stick and buttons were already changed.

I think I would be less sad if the thing was just closed or something, heh.
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Minzoku
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Post by Minzoku »

My hometown's mall now has NO arcade and NO bookstore :( There's barely even a video game store--EBX--and that might change by the time I get down there in a week :?
Biteme wrote:Look on the bright side, at least there is an arcade you can still go to. There hasnt been an arcade anywhere near me for years. I miss playing games with or against other people so bad. (xbox live isnt the same) Whenever I go to Vegas I spend most of money and time in the different arcades in the casinos. The hell with gambling.
In a way, gaming IS gambling ;) I lost 200 yen on Pink Sweets and didn't even clear stage 1, because I had no idea how to play :oops:
"This is not an alien life form! He is an experimental government aircraft!"
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