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Games Entertainment

Midway Quits Coin-Operated Business 119

Posted by CmdrTaco from the end-of-an-era dept.
Robot writes "Midway Games on friday, reported it is exiting the coin-operated video-game market in order to focus its business exclusively on games for the rapidly growing home video-game market. The Chicago-based company said it made its decision based on the "ongoing declining demand in the coin-operated arcade video game market". Midway said its game development efforts will now be focused on games for next generation platforms including the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube. More information can be found at FunXbox." Another nail in the coffin of the arcade.
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Midway Quits Coin-Operated Business More

Midway Quits Coin-Operated Business

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  • Up at State College, PA (the home of Penn State University [psu.edu]), there exists a quaint little arcade filled with all of the classics. You got your Pac-Man, your Street Fighter II (the original), the Speed Racer racing game, you name it. On top of that, everything there is $0.25. Tons of games of every genre and quite the selection of pinball machines. Probably because of the nature of the area (college town), the place was jumpin at 3am on a Wendsday. For $5, you could mash buttons for hours on end. I'm not quite sure how this place stays in business, but whatever it's doing, it's doing a great job of it. I just wish I could re-locate that arcade to my home town.

    Dyslexic.

  • Oh, so YOU'RE that guy yacking over my shoulder. Get away, dude! I'm tryin' to maintain my bearings!
  • A $10,000 machine dedicated to a single game

    Eh? $10,000? I admit it has been almost ten years since I worked for a CoinOp company, but $10,000?

    In 1992 most CoinOps were about $1000, a tad bit under. MP Games (where I worked) was doing pretty poorly because we made the early 3D games (well, the early solid 3D games, others did vector ones, I doubt anyone did one before Atari's Red Baron). Our system cost about $1000 to build, and we had to sell it for more like $3000. That was a pretty tough fight.

    I expect prices to have gone up a bit, but $10,000?

    And what makes you think the machine is really dedicated? MP did 3 released games on the same platform (different controllers, and cabinet art). Plus 5 or so internal ones that didn't get completed. Sega has done maybe half a dozen or more games on an arcade platform that is almost identical to the Dreamcast - about twice the RAM, a ton more ROM, and no CD ROM...

    Even in the "old days" most machines had at least one conversion kit to turn it into another game, that normally includes new decals for the machine, and new ROMs. Normally the same controllers though. Tempest had Major Havoc. I forget what the other Street Fighter game was, but it sucked, SF was the conversion, and it was far far more popular then the original. Good deal for people too, because the conversion kits were about $200, and the old game was around $500, so for $700 you could get a box that did $400 to $1200 a week depending on the traffic in the area...

    Unbeatable playing experience. I'm sorry, but no PS2/Xbox driving game with a gamepad (or even a force-feedback wheel clipped on a desk)

    That's for sure. Game console controls all seem to be cheep, sized for kids, and flimsy. The dreamcast's arcade controller was at least kind of nice (metal joystick!), but the contacts do wear out.

    Even the PC controllers aren't as nice as they could be (driving rigs still tend to be small for example), but at least there the force feedback is good. Maybe as the arcades close up good controllers will at long last come home.

    Also I think the Xbox has real USB connectors so you can buy good controllers, at least if they make them (and the PC controllers seem nicer then consoles, even if they are nowhere near as nice as CoinOp controllers).

  • "[...]for next generation platforms including the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube."

    I'm wondering, did the submitter omit both the windows platform and linux platform, or was the omission rooted in the article quoted itself?

    I certainly believe that both the windows and linux platform are part of the future generation platforms for gaming.
  • Nah -- they need to preserve their intellectual property so they can make pointless remakes for the PS2 that have no saving graces except their name. Expect "Pac Man 2002", etc.
  • If this sig is meant to demonstrate that Microsoft can't count, it should be noted that on the dialogs in question, Next and Finish are one button. Granted the statement is a little confusing, but not incorrect with modified punctuation: choices: Back, Next/Finish, and Cancel
  • Another problem, I suppose, is that there's no Mortal Kombat on the scenes right now. There's no incredible game only for arcades (meaning, when MK came out, you had to go to the arcades to play it).

    Konami's Bemani series is the modern equivalent of Mortal Kombat. The games to look for are Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks, Drum Freaks, and Para Para Paradise. Some of these are available in home versions but you can't get decent controllers in the US. Especially for the dancing games, where even the import home controllers aren't good enough to accomodate some of the showoff techniques.

    DDR is one of the few arcade games that has a local fan base [ddrfreak.com] and regular tournaments. If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, they have DDR tournaments at the Metreon with prizes and judging expertise donated by Konami.

    The scene was a lot better in Hong Kong, though. And Tokyo's not bad either.

  • but speaking as a teen

    As a teen, it's apparent you have no grasp of satirical humor. Go read some Voltaire, Trevor, and get back to me when you've grown a few more pubes.

    I weep for the future.

  • Go int an arcade and reboot (power cycle) some machines. Many come up with a standard PC bios bootup and then load the software off cdrom. (you can watch it happen) the days of making custom hardware are done when for less than $1000 I can build a computer with more graphic/sound/processing power then I would ever need and then either program a game natively or run it in an emulator.

    Midway paved the way, and they recognize that the arcade is changing for the worse...

    Side Note: Where the hell is my VR games? we should have real VR available to us by now in arcades, although at $5.0 a minute for a dactyl game I dont think many would be playing.... also game plays are getting too expensive... 0.75 - 1.00 per play is nuts..
  • >The machines were expensive, not prone to
    >upgrading, and had hellish maintenance
    >requirements

    Actually, there were some machines that made upgrading a little easier.. The Pinball 2000 system.

    This was a Bally/Williams system that was basically a modular cabinet with monitor / pseudo-hologram system. You could swap out the playfield and backglass in just a few minutes with practice.

    Unfortunately, this meant the games were depressingly similar (if you're good at Phantom Menace, chances are you're not bad at Revenge From Mars).

    This also didn't address the maintenance issues, and the initial cash outlay was still pretty high.

    Check out http://www.pinball.wms.com/pinball2000/home.html for more info on the Pinball 2000 system.

    FWIW, I miss the original High Speed. >sigh

    -l
  • >Well, there's a program called Visual Pinball
    >Toolkit or something. It allows you to build
    >your own tables and set the rules and whatnot.

    The point is not the reproduction of the table layout or the physics of the ball moving around, it's the FEEL.

    I have yet to see a computer simulation of pinball that accurately models the tactile sensations of a real mechanical bumper or responds to the nudges or even feels right when putting a right flipper shot up the left orbit...

    Some things computers are very very good at. Pinball is not one of those things.

    -l

  • Exactly my point. You just can't do a slap-save with a joystick or keyboard.

    I've also never seen a really good physics simulator in a video-pin. It still takes too much CPU power to do full 3D collision detection and response, especially with curved (non-polygonal) objects. In a real pin you get weird bounces off a bumper or from a drop-target resetting underneath the ball; things that'd make you think there's a bug in the simulator if you didn't know you were batting a real steel ball around. That's the kind of thing that makes the game feel right.


    Chelloveck

  • Re:Arcades outdated (Score:3)

    by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Monday June 25, 2001 @03:33AM (#130728)
    As video game systems and computers became more advanced they could run every game that was in arcades and more.

    Not every game. I defy you to find any PC or console system capable of an accurate rendition of a pinball machine.

    Of course, pinball had its own problems in the arcades. The machines were expensive, not prone to upgrading, and had hellish maintenance requirements. It was finally killed by video games which only required the operator to wipe the screen and empty the cashbox. And of course, since pinball is entirely skill-based someone who's good can play forever on a quarter or so. Timed video games work. Timed pinball games went over like a lead balloon. (Although Capcom's "Kingpin" had a lot of promise. Pity it never got released.)

    Hopefully Stern can make inroads by marketing pinball as a novelty machine. But, having played Striker Xtreme just yesterday, I'm afraid I don't have much hope for them being able to reverse the trend that drove Alvin G., Gottlieb, Sega, Capcom, and even Bally/Williams out of the arena.

    But I'll give up my Black Knight and Big Bang Bar machines when they pry the flippers out of my cold, dead hands!


    Chelloveck
  • First "Infogrames" buys Atari (computers/consoles), and now Midway (who seemed to just swallow up Atari Games (arcade)) is dropping coin-op.

    Madness!!!!
  • Let's hope that some arcade collectors manage to get some documents and other items from Williams as they close shop. There will be a lot of information that is very valuable to the collecting community. At worst, maybe Williams can be convinced to eBay it.

    It would be a shame to have it all thrown away. Or sold to a dealer who'll resale for an outrageous forum. BTW, a lot of Atari documents were recovered by an alert arcade game collector in Ireland who had the opportunity to help clear out a warehouse that Atari onced used for its coin-op divison. Let's hope the same happens here.
  • Sorry you had that experience, and I want to thank you for your efforts. I have set up this page [galstar.com] on your behalf.
  • The PC is very much a minority platform in computer gaming. The market size of console games is about 5 times as large as that of PC gaming. Which is not to say that PC gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry - but it's still small fry compared to consoles.

    In addition, the video arcade business probably has a lot more in common with consoles than PCs (fixed hardware platform, similar interface design issues etc.) so it makes sense that Midway pursue consoles.

    And Linux as a future gaming platform? Based on what? The APIs really don't exist to support this claim yet (maybe they will in the future) - other than OpenGL (which only takes care of graphics) and perhaps SDL (maybe some competition for DirectX 3) there is very little to entice game developers to the Linux platform.

    --
  • the last decent game I played by Midway on PC was Mortal Kombat 3 for DOS. It went downhill from there...

    Right - which really goes to show why Midway should move into consoles and not PC games. I'm not a huge arcade buff, but Mortal Kombat is the most recent hugely successful arcade game that comes to mind - it even spawned a Hollywood movie. That fighting genre isn't really a good fit for PCs as there isn't really a ubiquitous, intuitive interface (i.e. 6-button joystick) in consumers' hands on the PC, whereas consoles are well adapted for this style of game (c.f. Tekken 1,2,3... etc).

    Windows 95 MK3 won't play fullscreen without screen distortion, MK Trilogy won't work at all on video cards less than three years old without a modified video driver, and MK 4 didn't see my Voodoo 3 3000 card as being Glide-compatible

    Again demonstrating they're better off sticking to well-defined hardware platforms than the fickle and unpredictable world of PC multimedia hardware.

    --
  • Hmm. Hopefully that's an indication of how much better the arcade games are over there, and how much in abundance those better games are...because if they're playing the same crap we [Americans] are, maybe we should've done them a favor and dropped a few more atomic bombs ;)

    Seriously, though, if companies like Midway walked in to any arcade (here in the 'States, anyway...), surely they'd take notice of the extremely high amount of crap available, and of the ridiculous prices they expect us to pay for that crap...and maybe then, they'd say, "Hmm, if we put out some better games, we'd not only be rich as all hell, but we'd also save our company and possibly an entire industry!"

    Heck, it worked for Square.* :)

    miyax

    * For those of you not getting that last comment...why do you think they called it "Final Fantasy"?

    ~Second thought~ Or maybe that's the problem with the industry over here...not enough nerd chicks :(
  • dunno what arcade you're going to man, but speaking as a teen, ddr is freakishly popular and no one really cares about ms pac man anymore...

    it just aggravates me when people claim the only good games are the old ones, and good graphics mean its a polished turd, to speak.
  • Current releases of MAME have led me to believe that being good at Mah Jong is a good way to get kinky sex in Japan. I was also under the impression that Japanese arcades would be similarly homongenous as American arcades. I thought that Strip Mah Jong would perhaps replace the gun games.

  • i don't think we're going to see arcades dying altogether. other posts mention that most games anymore cost too much and are bad copies of other games. that's entirely true. most games in arcades aren't worth playing, in my opinion. but there's other kinds of games now. ever been to a disneyquest and designed your own rollercoaster or? it's actually pretty cool. they also have some VR games where they stick a helmet on you or place you inside a "vehicle", but those still need some work.

    i think it's games like these that will keep some arcades going. providing an experience that can't be gotten at home with a console system of pc. or maybe not. time will tell.

  • Yea, Beamania games like DDR and Para Para Paradise are still incredibly rare when compared to stuff like Tekken or Crusin USA and the like. Hell, I think only like two states even have Para Para Paradise, and there are still a good number of states that don't have a single DDR machine, much less one close to them. Part of the reason is that these games cost quite a bit of money, but also that they are relativly unproven in an arcade owners mind. The stigma American people have about dancing in public is amazing, and a lot of owners dont' think DDR would do that well. Slowly though, arcades are relizing that DDR and the like can make them a ton of money.
  • My cat is considerate enough to barf smack in the middle of my home theater floor about once a week to give it that sticky, smelly movie-theater atmosphere.
  • Wow! Tough room. Great jokes tho. I kinda agree with the atmosphere thing when it comes to arcades, although it's getting harder and harder to pay full box office prices for movies when I can have as good if not better sound at home, can pause when I want, and the only f*&%$#@*# phone I hear while I'm watching the movie is my own. I also think Dave and Buster's has a chance to keep arcades going...although they're definitely not coin operated there.
  • I've never been much of an archade player. The price is way too expensive. I remember the good old days when it was 25c. Now, at least 50c.

    Oh well, back to playing my PS2 gear...

    -Craig
  • The coolest coin-op game that i've ever seen was this thing in the LUXOR in Vegas. I think it was called The Shocker. It looked like a normal game station, but with no screen. Instead of controls it had to metal rods; and in place of the screen were a series of lights that went up to a skull head. The object of the game is to hold onto the vibrating, electrical metal rods until the skull head lit up. There are three settings low, medium, and high. I tried medium, the vibrations/charge were so strong, that I could not make my muscles release. Its crazy sado-masochistic fun!!

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
  • A $10,000 machine dedicated to a single game knocks the socks off a PS2/XBox any day.

    While this may be true, you have to take into consideration, that the company would have to sell an enormous amount of them to make a profit, as opposed to focusing on creating home market games, which many have turned to and is guaranteed to make money.

    Heck yea I remember the days of playing Joust, Missle Command, Dig Dug, and others, but nowadays the games are expensive, they make too many to find a favorite, and way too many arcades no longer exist even in New York City. It's a losing venture for them.

    What is Shadowstorm Intelligence Layer [antioffline.com]


  • semi smart move (Score:3)

    by joq ( 63625 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @02:07PM (#130744) Homepage Journal
    Out here in New York City, the <sarcasm>good od mayor</sarcasm> has saw fit to ban many of the old arcades that once owned the Times Square area, since they claimed, the arcades posed a dangerous hazard to the citizens. The stated too many kids cut classes to end up their, pedo's went their to pick up kids, etc, etc.

    Anyways, I haven't seen a decent arcade in ages, and the ones I do see are all like Starbucks type places with bars, neon lights, etc. Well it may be nice to some, but no longer do most of those games take money but ATM like refillable cards, and they're not 25 cents like they used to be. Why should I spend 2.00 on a game when I could stay home playing PS2?

    Aside from that, hardly any pinball machines make money in todays world. Think about where the majority of p'ball machines end up, honky tonk pubs, and shit. Definitely not a money maker.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've "played" this game at the Dave & Buster's [daveandbusters.com] in Milpitas, California. I don't know if all the other D&B's have it, but I've heard at least one Chicagoland location has it... They've locations in several major metropolitan areas, so if there's one nearby you you can check.

    BTW... medium is for wussies ;)

  • It is about time that Midway left the biz... (Score:3)

    by smirkleton ( 69652 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @03:22PM (#130747)


    Even those here who steadfastly continue to trivialize the potential for videogames to permanently damage the psyche of impressionable children (yeah, YOU Katz) must be forced to reckon with the spectre of one of the most inarguably traumatic experiences of all our childhoods.

    Many games amused [digitpress.com] and inspired [digitpress.com] me, some even frightened [digitpress.com] and frazzled [digitpress.com] me.

    But Midway / Williams was responsible, nay, dare I say irresponsible for bringing to life [sinistar.com] one game [sinistar.com] that had the power to terrify [sinistar.com] through barbaric taunts [sinistar.com] and satanic jeers [sinistar.com].

    How many thousands of children were permanently scarred by the memory of this quarter-eating tormentor?

    How many millions of nightmares were spawned in response to this evil whose name we dare not speak?

    How many more nights will I awake to my own pitiable screams [digitpress.com], as I hear that demonic bellow [sinistar.com] again and again?



    He could not be placated... Only postponed....
    He could not be killed... Only delayed...
    His power was greater than all foes combined...
    The only way to win was not to play.
  • No, this was not the nail in the coffin of the arcade. The nail in the coffin was all the games that took $1 or more to play, and were designed to keep sucking quarters out of your pocket, no matter how good you were. Check out today's User Friendly [userfriendly.org] for a very good take on this.

    Back in the day, you could play any arcade game for hours on one quarter if you were good enough. Now, no matter how good you are, you will play for 5 minutes, tops. Now, why would I go to an arcade again?
  • This is a good move by MidWay. Most people must have figured out by now that paying $2 for 5 minutes of fun is worse than paying $100 for tens-of-hours of fun.

    (btw, that's Australian dollars)
  • Another nail in the coffin of the arcade.

    This is one of the most frustrating aspects of an economic downturn -- the fact that companies abandon all but the most lucritive markets in an effort to please the shareholders. Sure, making games for the consoles is a MASSIVE market, but I still believe in the merits of the coin-op arcade games and would find it sad to see other companies exit the business.

    Why the love? A few reasons:

    1. Despite the advances in console graphics/playability, arcade games are *still* the leaders in graphics/sound. A $10,000 machine dedicated to a single game knocks the socks off a PS2/XBox any day.
    2. Unbeatable playing experience. I'm sorry, but no PS2/Xbox driving game with a gamepad (or even a force-feedback wheel clipped on a desk) will ever be more immersive and realistic than a sit-in coin-op driving game with a real gearshift, pedals, speakers blasting into your ears, and a 50" screen in front of you. Likewise for shoot-em-ups (realistic force-feedback guns, like House of the Dead 2) and even fighting games (an arcade joystick on Ultimate MK3 is undeniably more fun to play with than a good console joystick.)

    Long live the coin-op arcade game!!

    nlh

  • There are really cool games out there, but some people don't have them. Look for either of the Silent Scope games (especially Silent Scope 2). The Skateboarding game is great too (I can't remember what it's called).
  • Well, the history of Midway games on the PC hasn't been a very good one, at least not as of late. Not including the Arcade Classics series, the last decent game I played by Midway on PC was Mortal Kombat 3 for DOS. It went downhill from there. (Windows 95 MK3 won't play fullscreen without screen distortion, MK Trilogy won't work at all on video cards less than three years old without a modified video driver, and MK 4 didn't see my Voodoo 3 3000 card as being Glide-compatible). For that matter, the last Midway game I remember seeing for PC was NFL Blitz 2000.

    I've heard it said before that PC gaming wasn't very profitable for them... so I wouldn't expect to see too much out of Windows versions of their games, let alone Linux versions.

    Just my $.02...

  • Its damn shame they are getting out of the coin-op world.. I can remember fondly playing tons of Midway Pinball games throughout high school. I even had waterworld(think it was midway) in my house after college for awhile...

    I wonder how long it is before the rest fo the companies get out?

    Will we see coin-ops go away? or will they morph in the next 5 years into vast multi-player linked worlds based on some form of adanvaced VR?

    should be interesting to see..

  • I haven't seen these here. Not that I go into the arcades all that much anymore. The last time I went was probably 6 months ago now. The only place that seems to have games locally is Dave and Busters and I don't know how often they upgrade.
  • Go to a coin-op arcade, if you can find one. It's a lot harder these days. What do you see? Half a dozen fighting games all of which look like Tekken or Street Fighter, a few racing games and a few FPS games where you've got a gun. The only thing these games have in common is that they suck your quarters down at a prodigious rate. For one thing, most of them are 50 cents or more. For another, you generally don't last too long in any of them, assuming they're not on a timer. Even if you achieve decent enough skill to last for a while, you'll find that you can generally beat the game in 20 to 30 minutes.

    The problem with the coin-op gaming industry is that it's currently showing no creativity in coming up with fresh ideas. A lot of games in the historical past are still more entertaining than today's offerings, despite the fancier graphics that we get with the latter.

  • What he's saying is that there's no exploration in arcade games. What Time Crisis does is it allows you to duck behind something, not explore the map.

    The problem with taking a game like Half-Life and turning it into an arcade game is that if you get more than 5 minutes of play per token, the arcade owner is not maximizing his profit on the machine. So, rather than have you spend lots of time going off on some time-wasting exploration, the arcade game just pushes you along the path to give you the most action and the most chance to get killed faster. Arcade games can't compete with games like Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid, nor should they try.

  • There is a certain "magic" to an arcade or a theatre that you just can't re-create at home with your PlayStation or VCR.

    There's nothing quite like grabbing a joystick that's slick with kid-sweat, or walking across a sticky theater floor.... ;-)

  • Arcades are simply going the way of the BBS's. For most of us, I'm sure that BBS's were our first online experience. They built local communities of computer users. Email could take a day or a week to reach the recipient, depending on how far away they were and how many hops the messages had to make. Door games were cool, because everybody played them and they were text-based; you could use your favorite macro program to give you a competitive edge in games like Trade-Wars. When you logged onto a BBS, you were a guest in someone's home. And, more often than not, the sysop's BBS was a labor of love, an expense that they probably couldn't afford if they were honest about it.

    Then the internet came along, and screwed all of that up. Yes, the internet is a thousand times better than the BBS scene, though many of the charms of the BBS's have yet to be duplicated. You're not special anymore, you're just a number. Instead of being the person tying up the phone line for an hour, now you're just user x of 10,000 hits this hour. Goodbye, Smallville, hello Metropolis.

    Arcades are suffering the same fate. The demand of the home gaming market has simply blown away the arcades, and it's time for the arcade to go the way of the BBS.

  • Sorry to hear of Midway's decision; the golden age of the coin-op arcade is indeed over.

    Now that we all acknowledge that, wouldn't it be refreshing if Midway took a clear stance on OK'ing the use of its ROM images for MAME [mame.org] and other emulators? It would be nice to see the "abandonware" concept explored a bit more courageously than it has been so far. It would be great for Midway to take the lead on this now that it's decided to leave the business.
    TomatoMan
  • The problem is the $10,000 machine is *maybe* twice as good at 50 times the cost. This means they have to recoup an enormous amount of $$$ while competing with home systems that approach arcade quality more and more over time.

    I think arcade can have a future, but that future is tied to the arcade experience. Hence the popularity of fighting games, shooters, and driving games. Fighting and driving games both offer muliplayer potential and the ability to show of your skills in public. Shooters have hardware that's generally not in living rooms. They give the player something unavailable at home.

  • More than rumor...its been offical for a while.. i dont know about any of this "last friday" crap.
  • I just REALLY hate Mortal Kombat.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, and billy gates hates pac man.

  • Have you been in an arcade lately?

    The newest rage in the arcades are the BEMANI music games by Konami! Dance Dance Revolution [ddrfreak.com], Beatmania, DanceManiax, Guitar Freaks, Para Para Paradise [bemaniac.com]....

    These games have been making a mint -- even at a dollar per play, a price previously thought impossible to get people to pay for -- because they're fun. Something new and different! DDR makes you actually stand up and dance to the game. PPP is probably the first game that you play without touching it at all.

    Try them. Midway's fault is for blindly pumping out generic fighting and driving games. Arcades are not dead -- yet -- the Bemani games are keeping them in business for now.


    Super eurobeat from Avex and Konami unite in your DANCE!

  • In terms of sheer adrenalin, the scenes that did it for me were all in Robotron. Seeing fifty Brains all launch their cruise missiles at you, or fifty tanks launching their bouncing fireballs, or even a few hundred grunts just following you around... yikes!
  • The first machines that were console machines in the arcade were the VS. Series which had mario brothers, duck hunt, or baseball, it only held one game, and featured 2 side by side units. Then the Nintendo Playchoice came out allowing you to try out console games for only 25 cents. You could slip in any cart into them, and it would play them. There was a followup unit called something else (had Super in it) that held 3 super nintendo games (usually the launch titles like Super Mario Bros. and NCAA Basketball). Only a few were created but at nintendo we managed to find one that still worked :)

    " Well, you know *shrug* " - Mr. Generic Guy
  • I've played Time Crisis and I really liked it with the foot pedal thing. It's nothing like Quake or any computer FPS. There's instant and constant action that works because it's so simple and easy to pick up.

    I've played Police 911, I think. You're fighting the Japanese mafia or something. Yeah, just did a Google search and that is it. Anyway, it was really annoying to play because you had to really exaggerate your movements if you wanted the sensors to pick them up. I found it to be quite distracting so I just left and played Time Crisis again.

    --
  • Now, why would I go to an arcade again?

    Because the only DDR mat worth using for the home version is madly expensive. Most people get tired after 5 songs and want to take a rest anyway.

    Once again, DDR and related games = teh gold mine. Arcades that realize this will kill the ones that don't.

    --
  • DDR is quite sad and funny. The funniest part is of course when the announcer says stupid things like "you're such a cool guy!" or "the crowd loves you!", when neither of those are anything close to the truth.

    I don't play DDR myself, but I know a lot of people who do. For them it really has nothing to do with dancing at all. It's just the button mashing combos of fighting games and the simple action of puzzle games extended and abstracted a few levels. Play the home version sometime without the music and with a normal controller. It's just like Tetris or any other puzzle game. Watch the screen, time your movements, and keep up with the action.

    DDR will pass, of course, like any other video game. But what I think DDR has shown the industry is a path to success for arcades. You can buy the home game and a mat, but the experience isn't the same and can't be duplicated easily. So people have to come back to get their fix. This idea can be adapted easily to other games, and apparently it's already started in Japan.

    --
  • I remember the golden days of mortal kombat in the arcades. Up and to about MK II. That game was a lot of fun. Every arcade had one guy that could just kick almost anyones ass. You could keep playing. You knew your quarters were a lost cause against this guy. But it was just so much fun having the competitive environment. But you know fighting games havent significantly changed since then. It *does* get old after you can play stuff that is more fun at home. Hey if that environment were still there and new and cool games were going in that didnt cost a buck to play id still drop by an arcade to do more than play air-hockey, which btw is still a great game that you have to play at an arcade unless you wanna drop 5K for a nice table.

    That particular market was killed by the people charging more and more for what essentially remains something you cant put a price on (Time). Seriously 99% of the time im willing to drop a quarter in a game to try it out. But 50-100 cents? Forget it. Too expensive.

    Jeremy

  • wouldn't it be refreshing if Midway took a clear stance on OK'ing the use of its ROM images for MAME and other emulators?

    It would eat into Midway's ability to sell classic games and future games starring the characters. For example, if you can play Mortal Kombat 3 on a common emulator (MK3's board was essentially a PSX, and pixel-perfect Ultimate MK3 was released for N64 as MK Trilogy), why buy Mortal Kombat 6? It's the same reason console makers don't free their software [nintendo.com].

  • Dance Dance Revolution looks like it could have been done well way back when NES was popular. And it has; it doesn't appear to be that much more than an updated Nintendo Dance Aerobics [nintendocc.com], or Parappa on a Power Pad.

    If you see a ROM "East Germany (PD).nes" appear in the pirate scene, blame me. It'll be a clone of DDR (get it? DDR? Deutsche Democratic Republic?) for NES, using Controller or Power Pad.

  • Fighting and driving games both offer muliplayer potential and the ability to show of your skills in public.

    Translation: DSL multiplayer gaming killed them.

    Shooters have hardware that's generally not in living rooms. They give the player something unavailable at home.

    Simply get a light gun that emulates a mouse, hook it up to Quake 3 with an arcade-style joystick bound to ESDF, and you nearly have the arcade experience. (Too bad the VGA dropped the EGA's light pen interface, or we'd have more light guns.)

  • As video game systems and computers became more advanced they could run every game that was in arcades and more.

    What was wrong with arcade first-person shooters (from Duck Hunt to Virtua Cop and Area 51) was that you never (or very seldom) got to choose the direction you moved. Being able to step off the mine cart, hide behind obstacles, and surprise your foes would have added a ton of depth.

    But wait, I just described Doom, Goldeneye, and Hlf-Life.

    See the point? Players realized that computer and console gameplay was much deeper than anything available in the arcades, as the emphasis is on immersion and not pressure in the game (such as cheap hits) to move the cattle through the queue.

  • Hyperrealism is all good and well, but why don't the arcade manufacturers work on making cheap-but-fun multiplayer games. Nothing on the new machines can beat the thrill of playing Gauntlet with 3 friends. "Blue Wizard is about to DIE"

  • I found programming to be more enjoyable than playing games anyway

    Programming is the ultimate text-based adventure.

    You are in a twisty little maze of compiler warnings, all alike.

  • Right on! I can't believe I had to read this far down to see it.

    Some of my best memories of playing as a 10-18 year old in the late 70s /early 80s were of either meeting with (or confronting) people at the arcades. They were *the* hangout spots. I once rode my bike miles to get to the mall because they had such a good arcade.

    Anybody else out there who remembers the Spaceway Raceway in Springfield Mall (Virginia) knows what I'm talking about. They didn't just have games either--they had air hockey and bumper cars towards the back. My dad always used to take me there on Saturdays. We'd play air hockey and bumper cars while my sister and my mother shopped.

    Usually I would just go to the 7-11, County rec-center or some other place nearby. I must have known every machine within a reasonable bike ride.

    For me, the end of the arcade came a long time ago. First, the games started getting "cartoony" and getting much harder to play. That wasn't so bad, but what really killed it was they turned the lights on in the arcade. The dark, noisy atmosphere was part of the whole appeal. I imagine some people might have gotten pick-pocketed, but they should have just gotten more security. Instead, they ruined the atmosphere.

    Finally, I went to college and that was the straw that broke the camels back. I guess I was burned out on games by then, and if I really wanted my fix I could play them on my C-64. Defender on the C-64 was almost as good as the arcade, and when I think about all the quarters I pumped in that game, the cart must have payed for itself in two weeks.

    As for the social scene, I had a college dorm. 'nuff said. Then, by the time you graduate you can drink. You've got bars. 'nuff said.

    This makes me wonder though, where do the suburban brats that used to visit the machines hang out these days? Of course they can play games at their houses, but is there anyplace where kids are *forced* to contend with eachother in a social setting, whether they like eachother or not? I think you learn a lot that way.

  • Arcades outdated (Score:4)

    by Scrag ( 137843 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @02:04PM (#130777)
    When people used to go to arcades they got to play the newest and most advanced games. There was no way that any home system could compete with them. As video game systems and computers became more advanced they could run every game that was in arcades and more. Combine this with the price of arcades constantly going up, and no one wants to play anymore.

    I don't really care about the loss of arcade developers because there will always be video games, just in a different form. If you really like the arcade feel, you can build your own and play your games on that. Search the net for plans and with about $400 you'll never be without an arcade again.
  • I hadn't played in the arcade since defeating that big ape back in '85. With the highest score on the block, I retired from gaming.

    I found programming to be more enjoyable than playing games anyway.

  • Williams is out of the pinball business. They only produced two Pinball 2000 games then called it quits. They even scrapped a Pat Lawlor (pinball design God) Pin2k game.

    Stern is the only manufacturer left. They do have Lawlor on board, so we'll see how it goes. They're stuck with awful SEGA/DataEast playfields that look like they were drawn on with a crayon and their games have weak flippers. Another downside is that god-awful BSMT-2000 (or whatever) sound system. Hopefully, Stern does well and there's a pinball renaissance. Even the bigwigs of computer pinball (Cunning Developments) are out of the business, so it's not looking good for the silver ball.

  • I would have to say that being chased by Sinistar ranks among the all-time scariest moments in video game history that I've ever experienced. There were a few monents in Doom that came close, but nothing else as remotely scary comes to mind....

    God, I miss Sinistar. And, thanks to its 49-direction custom joystick, it's something that will never really be duplicated in the home, MAME or no MAME.....

    http://www.bootyproject.org [bootyproject.org]
  • Williams, Bally and Midway merged to become
    "WMS Industries". Midway did video games, bally
    did pinballs, and later Williams made pinballs
    too (and video games).
    Recently WMS decided to drop pinball machines, which is a shame, since they made the best in the world. Now we're stuck with Stern and Sega (formerly Data East), but I heard Sega has or will stop pinball production. Being a pinball tech, I was really sad to hear WMS dropped pinballs.
    I guess Williams will now focus on slot machines,
    Midway will make home based games, and Bally will just plain die (?)

    /x
  • It's always been my opinion that many people go to arcades for much the same reason that people go to movie theatres.

    In many cases, it's not the movie (or game) that they are going to play; it's the atmosphere! Some people go to the bars or nightclubs, some go to the arcades, some go to the movies, some go to...

    There is a certain "magic" to an arcade or a theatre that you just can't re-create at home with your PlayStation or VCR.
  • i think it's games like these that will keep some arcades going. providing an experience that can't be gotten at home ---> SOME arcades. Maybe. But no mom-and-pop-on-the-corner arcades. Megabucks will be required to set up an arcade that will "draw", and that means only one or two in the largest cities. No small-town arcades. Too bad...
  • I remember back in the late 70's and 80's when there was this one place that housed a HUGE collection of pinball machines and cool arcade games. It was in the Park City mall in Lancaster PA before they renovated it to the cheesy 50 cent game house they have there now. The old arcade had like atleast 2 or 3 rows of 20 pinball machines. There were also some cool arcade games like Zaxxon and Pac Man and stuff. But there was one game that was a Fireman type game and it had an actual water gun in the machine. You shot the fire in the background house that was this plastic or metal painted popup and got points for that. Dunno if that had anything to do with Midway but arcades are definatly not what they used to be. Fun, simple, and cheap. :)
  • Despite the advances in console graphics/playability, arcade games are *still* the leaders in graphics/sound. A $10,000 machine dedicated to a single game knocks the socks off a PS2/XBox any day.

    I don't know... My DC version of Soul Caliber is WAAAAAAY better looking than any arcade version I have played. The sound seems about the same, but definitely not the graphics.

    Josh S.
  • Simply get a light gun that emulates a mouse, hook it up to Quake 3 with an arcade-style joystick bound to ESDF, and you nearly have the arcade experience.

    Well, not really. A true gun game is a very different experience than that of a FPS.

    Quake was designed for a mouse; why play it any other way?

    Josh Sisk

  • I've seen it coming (Score:3)

    by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @02:09PM (#130787) Journal
    A lot of arcades have been shutting down where I live, and when I visited Vegas this year, the huge arcades were turned into restaurants, and the arcades relocated to little corners of the buildings.

    Arcades have been stereotyped, as well: a place for male losers to hang out and burn through money.

    But let's face it, the market has shifted -- or is shifting, anyway. Before, you had your SNES at home, and you'd go to the arcade to play the latest and greatest. Sort of like, you have your PC/Mac at home, but you could check out some SGI workstation at a university.

    Today, "arcade power" fits quite nicely in a black rectangle that also plays DVDs for you (PS2...).

    Certainly, arcades could always out-do home systems, but if the difference isn't great enough, people don't care to make a trip. I love realism (sometimes), but I don't need PERFECT realism.

    Meanwhile, am I willing to play more than $0.75 or $1 per game? No, sorry. Even as the games got more costly to produce, arcade income didn't rise accordingly, I don't think.

    So Midway's decision makes sense.

    Another problem, I suppose, is that there's no Mortal Kombat on the scenes right now. There's no incredible game only for arcades (meaning, when MK came out, you had to go to the arcades to play it).

    I think this trend could continue.
  • There is some cheap places in Kichijoji, when I was in school near there, you could find a bunch of 50yen places.
  • The fighting games were sort of the last hurrah for arcade gaming. They did so well for a while, that they practically obliterated all other forms of games (except driving). Now the arcades are stuck with em even though it seems like their day has come and gone.

    Ironically, the arcade I go to now and then seems to survive on their old beat up classic game collection -- Centipede, Rampage, and Mr Do seem to suck quarters there, while the fancy fighting games stand empty. Unfortunately, about half the classic games have had broken controls, and no effort is being made to restore them. I think they really make their money from the pool tables and -ahhem-, but it will be interesting to see how much longer they last.
  • A $10,000 machine dedicated to a single game knocks the socks off a PS2/XBox any day.

    Except that 6-8months later the console/computer will meet or beat the quality of that $10K machine for a 10th of the cost.
  • Sinistar is one of the few games that could inspire fear in what you couldn't see on the screen. Just the anticipation of what was coming was great! *starts scanning rec.games.arcade.marketplace* :)

    Lac
    --
    Vidi Vici Veni
  • The problem with the coin-op gaming industry is that it's currently showing no creativity in coming up with fresh ideas. A lot of games in the historical past are still more entertaining than today's offerings, despite the fancier graphics that we get with the latter.

    Yeah, that's why the kids are lining up to play Ms. Pac Man [fredericknewspost.com], while Dance Dance Revolution stands idle in the corner, and everyone ignores Silent Scope 2 because they can play Battlezone instead.

  • Aside from that, hardly any pinball machines make money in todays world. Think about where the majority of p'ball machines end up, honky tonk pubs, and shit. Definitely not a money maker.

    Well, maybe. Personally, I would rather play a game of pinball than the latest cookie-cutter 3D shooter/fighting game/racing game. No cheaters, no strategy guides, no power ups, just you against the laws of physics. :)

  • Up at State College, PA (the home of Penn State University), there exists a quaint little arcade filled with all of the classics.

    You mean Playland?

    You got your Pac-Man, your Street Fighter II (the original), the Speed Racer racing game, you name it.

    Do they still have that Asteroids machine back in the corner? When I saw that my jaw fell open; hadn't seen one of those machines in, oh, 10 years? 15 years? Great game, Asteroids. Mmmm, monochrome vector graphics. :)

  • I used to go to arcades, but then all the fun games were replaced by SF2 clones and driving games that last for 90 seconds.

    In the UK it is RIDICULOUSLY expensive - 1ukp for a quick blast on the latest daytona rubbish? How about being thrashed by a Tekken machine set on top difficulty to maximise the amount of money pumped in? Sorry, I really don't think so - give me a knackered old Robocop machine set at 10p a go anytime.


    --
  • "Blue Wizard is about to DIE"

    Not to mention, "Wizard needs food badly" and (sarcastically)"THAT was a heroic effort".

    The thing that I loved about Gauntlet was that it had the first game cheat that I actually knew of; past level 8, if you waited about three minutes or so, all the walls turned into exits. Of course, anything with a ranged attack (like the fire demons) could shoot across the exit walls, but so could you, and escape was always handy. Of course, it also stretched the game out considerably, but in my unemployed days, making a quarter last 4+ hours was a pretty good idea.

  • Arcades are like movie theaters. They are a public meeting place. They can be a place to meet new people, strike up conversations, compete for high score, and so on. In other words, they provide a healthy, social setting. Sitting at home in front of a TV, cradling some 2 oz. cheap plastic controller in your lap is not the same. Arcades are a way to go out and enjoy something in the real world while home console games are a way to hide away from the world.

    I don't know about that. Last time I went to an arcade with my hacker friend John Connor, some cop came around looking for him and John split. Last I heard, John took off on the back of a motorcycle driven by some big dude with shades, with the cop running after them, and someone had killed his foster parents. Screw that commotion! From now on, I'm staying inside to do schoolwork; maybe I'll get good enough grades to work for an outfit like Cyberdyne and make the world safe for ordinary people.

  • I know others have already said this, but this is really sad. Yea home consoles are fun..but no where near like the joy of standing for an hour in a dirty arcade. There is just something special about real stand up/only plays one game video games. Not long ago this happend to the pinball table, now its happening to the upright. When our kids are in their twenties (mind you I don't even have any yet) will they be able to drink a beer around an old pinball table in the corner of a local dive? Play video games when the pool tables are taken? God I hope so.
  • I am not a game-playing type guy and have virtually zip for knowledge with any home game consoles, but I can't imagine anyone getting close to the physical experience of this game outside of an arcade.

    If I still had even half of the money from my endless hours in front of this game, I could tell Student Loans to get bent.

    ---

  • This has been a long time coming, Capcom giving up on making arcade hardware a while ago was a pretty strong sign arcades were on the way out this just makes it official.

    I spent a great deal of time in arcades back in their prime, playing games like SF2, MK2, and all those classic Capcom side-scrollers. During summers often times I would go to a local nickel arcade two or three times a week and spend all day there when I could.

    Back in the heyday of Street Fighter lots of people went to arcades, some of them went for the competition or the feel but most went because the games there (with their combined 20mhz processors) blew away anything you could get elsewhere by a wide margin. But it's different now, if you look at consoles (the Dreamcast for example) and compare a game to it's equivalent in the arcade (several Street Fighters for example) nothing has been downsampled and it runs at full speed easily.

    So arcades started searching for something new they could provide that you couldn't get at home, and the only real thing that has come out of it is the gimmick games, the ones that have special hardware, stand on skis, sit on a motorcycle, dance on a platform, look through a scope. And from their desperation for a profit combined with the more elaborate hardware the price to play has increased greatly which has just made things worse.

    It's sad to see them go but it's been pretty clear this was happening, over the last 5 years most of the arcades here have shut down, all that's left are the tiny ones crammed in the corner of malls or movie theaters or mini golf places, and even those have few people, and if you want to play an old pinball machine you probably have to go to a bar.

    I'm really going to miss the arcade atmosphere, it's one thing to rail someone in Quake who is on the other side of the world but it's a different thing to toast the guy standing right next to you. And to you guys who say 'no big loss, i have my playstation', you are probably not the people who were really into arcades. Holding some little piece of hollow plastic in your hands is not the same as having a full sized joystick and real (clicking) arcade buttons that won't move an inch no matter how hard you slam on them. Or when you and another player barely clear a level in a game like "Lucky & Wild", gun in one hand steering wheel in the other and foot on the pedal, trying to stretch your quarter as far as it will go.

    It's just a different feeling, I think other people who grew up eating dots and throwing fireballs know what I mean.

  • Not declining (as much) in Japan (Score:3)

    by achurch ( 201270 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @05:18PM (#130801) Homepage
    Maybe it's just that Japanese companies are better at coming up with clever games, or Japanese arcade operators know that not everybody likes fighting games, but arcades in Japan are, if not exactly flourishing, certainly not dead. Most arcades here have a pretty wide selection of games, from fighting to shooters to sports to puzzle games; where you'd be lucky to even find a Ms. Pac-Man in the US these days (heaven knows how many quarters I dropped into that game), pretty much any arcade here will have a decent number of puzzlers, probably 20% or so on average. One place in Akihabara I tend to stop in whenever I'm in the area has Columns and a couple other puzzle games despite having little floor space. Some arcades even have machines with several games available, which presumably saves a lot on hardware/maintenance.

    The fact that games here are, and AFAIK have always been, all 100 yen (~= US$0.83) could also be a factor in the health of arcades...

    --
    BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL

  • Ever played Dance Dance Revolution?

    The innovation is still there, it's just weird and scary.... at least to old time arcade gurus.

    Seriously though, there really is quite a bit of innovation in a number of arcade games even these days.... the bar is just higher, as with everything else these days. Of course, a lot of the truly innovative games are just bad.... pure and simple.... because innovation and fresh ideas aren't always a good thing.

    Oh, and media desensatization of the youth, yada yada yada. 10 years ago a few drops of blood in a game would be deemed innovative and daring, and 5 years ago a car game with "realistic" feedback was a revolution. I guess it's true that the arcade industry has been a bit dry lately if you're not looking for the more innovative forms of innovation... well.... you know what I mean (think DDR).

    Ok, I'll shut up now.... I promise.

  • Not to make light of things... (Score:3)

    by Maveryk ( 201991 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @02:46PM (#130803)

    I hate to make light of this sad sad day.... but I'm sorry.... I can't resist....

    HOORAY FOR NO MORE ARCADE MORTAL KOMBAT GAMES!

    .... Ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system.... let us now mourn the swarm of Midway games that shall soon hit the console world....

    Seriously though, Midway made some really great games in "the day," and while I dislike their clinging to certain franchises, it's their fight to keep innovative pinball games in production that kept the "genre" alive until the very end. For all their continued life in console gaming, no console game will ever compare to the true arcade experience, and there'll never be an emulator that can simulate the joy of real pinball.

    Oh, and apologies to anyone who may have been offended by my making light of the situation. I just REALLY hate Mortal Kombat.

  • "Tilt all data lost."
  • I have played DDR a few times, and it's the most fun I've had in the arcade in over a decade. While I don't expect to see any of the 30-40 something crowd using it, I'm 25 and my friends (male and female) think it's great.

    I was skeptical myself when I saw it for the first time, until I realized what was happening: teenagers gathering somewhere primarily to hang out, and secondarily to be entertained by the arcade machines. They may dress differently than you or I did (Iverson and Bryant basketball jersies and sideways baseball caps), but they are doing the EXACT SAME THING we did in the 80s. The death of the arcade is a load of horsehsit. To all the cynics, here's an example of true innovation being successful! Not another FPS or 4 player racing game. It isn't even about hand-eye coordination. Girls invariably do better than us guys too, which I think is great.
  • For one thing, most of them are 50 cents or more. For another, you generally don't last too long in any of them, assuming they're not on a timer.

    I was taking a vacation in Reno a couple of months ago, and I learned the value of dropping 50 cents for 5 minutes (maybe 10 if your good) of challenging game play versus 5 seconds of a slot machine where I got nothing back except the desire to drop another 50 cents to try to recoup my losses (repeat vicious cycle).

  • Back in the mid 1980s Nintendo entered the arcade game insustry by packaging their (original) console product with a library of games and installing it inside the base of a standard looking arcade game. It seemed to me that was a pretty good idea. A method to bridge the Console Gaming and Arcade Gaming indistries. I never saw a second generation of that technology. Did they pursue this any further?

    What comes to mind is, it might have angered game manufacturers who were developing for the Nintendo Console as a second platform, in addition to releasing their games in arcade chasis, with their own hardware, although I presume there are standard arcade video game platforms at this point, produced by third parties, thus allowing the gaming companies to concentrate their efforts of the software content of the game. Can anyone comment on how this aspect of the arcade video game industry works?

    --CTH

    ---
  • Wasn't the SNES coin-op you speak of called the Neo Geo?

    That seems to ring a bell...

  • Arcades can't really compete with your standard joystick / button / TV screen games any more. They need to offer more.

    And they are starting to... I'm seeing a lot of games with massive, beautifully detailed screens and wacky input methods. Therein lies the future of arcade machines.

    As for the "hanging out at the arcade" aspect, that makes a difference too. There's always a bunch of kids hanging around the DDR and other dancing machines checking out moves and socializing. :)

  • Well you see the problem is how long it takes a business to recoup expenses on a machine that costs 10 grand. On top of that, if it costs a buck to play, then a lot of people won't play it too much.
  • "Another nail in the coffin of the arcade."

    Arcades are far from being dead. Maybe in small town malls they are fading away, but just look at places like GameWorks [gameworks.com]. Here in Dallas the one we have is always packed. For those of you who have never seen one, just imagine an old-two-story-warehouse-looking-building with tons of games and VR rides. Way cool, and far from dead.

    Anyway, it is really sad to see another company who helped to define a market now abandon it.

    What is this a sign of? First Sega drops out of the console market [slashdot.org]. Then the S word is spoken 162 times on television [ew.com]. Now Midway is droping out of the coin op business [slashdot.org]. What is this world comming to ;-)

    bad humor is still humor.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The arcade was never about deep, in depth gaming or a "feel" to the controls...it was about quick turn arounds of quarters from people who sucked at the games and long playtimes for people who were skilled at them. "Easy to learn, hard to master"...the watchwords of Chess and Centipede alike. If the arcade has one major feature, it's that the games were actually challenging -- try and get past level five of Space Invaders if you've never played before. The little tricks of pixels and timing loops are what made the arcade so much fun...somebody with the skill to notice EXACTLY where Tiger Heli can move without becoming imploded would have a clean run, and it was your job as a patzer to feed that machine with 2-bit pieces until you could approach his level of skill. Challenge in those games meant you *COULD* win it all for 25 cents, but you would have to try very very hard to do so...and maybe have a little luck on your side.

    But of course, today, challenge and simplicity are no longer the hallmarks of great gaming. Games are sold for their graphics and style like comic books, control is a word used to define whether or not the objects on the screen even do what you tell them to do, and challenge is nowhere to be seen. There are, of course, exceptions -- but none of them in the Arcade. Many arcade games are One Play, No Matter What...games ending after five or ten minutes whether you do well or not. Daytona 2, for all its graphical insanity, misses the fun of an all-day Pole Position run, or getting through Radmobile on one play.

    And most guilty of all of this is Midway. With Gauntlet Legends, they took a great game and turned into a graphical mess, with ugly coloured lights and washed out textures everywhere. The old block based movement of Gauntlet (resulting in perfect positioning being the key to vanquishing an enemy swarm) was replaced by a multi tiered mess, where some traps were just unavoidable. And of course, let's not forget the mess of Mortal Kombats that blackened the step of many an Aladdin's Castle in recent years...bloody messes with gameplay that included "Uppercut, punch punch punch, Freeze the guy, sweep him, then kill him in some horrible fashion," and very little else. Oh the wasted time and wasted change trying to make those games seem like they were actually fun, the whole time praying that the gaudy motion captured characters would turn into the ninjas from Samurai Shodown.

    Midway lost the arcade feel...they don't understand what made people stuff a machine with quarters -- the arcade madness, they lost. Their pinball machines will be missed...but the rest will be sold cheap for their Jamma connectors and monitors.
  • I don't think arcades are dying out, just morphing due to economies of scale. Here's an analogy: when video rentals first started, there were a lot of mom-and-pop video rental places out there. Now, they've all been replaced by Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and the like.

    In the same way, the corner arcades are gone, but monsters like Jillian's in Boston and Playdium [playdium.com] near Toronto have take there place.

    There are some amazing games in the arcades (Star Wars Trilogy, the VR simulators, multiplayer racing simulators) that will never make it onto the home platforms, because they won't fit!

    "What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

  • Why the market isn't declining in Japan (Score:5)

    by baumanj ( 459939 ) on Sunday June 24, 2001 @06:52PM (#130827) Homepage

    I know there are already at least two other posts in this discussion that mention Japan, so I'll try to not be redundant. BTW, I'm living in Japan for the summer, so that's why I refer to it at "here".

    Go to a coin-op arcade, if you can find one. It's a lot harder these days. What do you see? Half a dozen fighting games all of which look like Tekken or Street Fighter, a few racing games and a few FPS games where you've got a gun.

    The reason that arcades (or "game centers" as they're more logically referred to here) do better business is twofold.

    1. The games are simply more innovative
    2. Since the games cater to a wider audience, here is less of a social stigma associated with spending time in an game centers

    The first point is un-debatable I think. In an arcade in the US, there are basically 4 type of games: Standard (Gauntlet, Tekken, etc.), Driving, Shooting, and Pinball (though it's becoming rarer). I'll ignore games like skee-ball and other redemption-ticket games since those are rarely played by anyone over 8. In a Japanese game center, there are all sorts of different games, with a wide array of user interfaces. Dancing games like DDR are just making it to the States, but there are a lot of other music-based games which are very popular here (Guitar Freaks to name one). On a recent trip, I saw a boxing game, where you actually threw punches with your fists. You just can't get that kind of experience from a console, so there's actually a reason to go to the arcade. Some of these games are so popular that you actually can buy these bizarre input devices for the home versions (DDR has a PS floor pad controller), but I think the success of things like that has more to do with the gadget-obsession of the Japanese. All that aside, I'm sure even Americans would go to an arcade if the gaming experience was significantly different from what one could do at home

    The second point is probably just as important if not more so. At game centers there are plenty of straight-up video games, but there's also a lot more. I know arcades in the US often have a little booth where you can take a picture of yourself. Usually it's a PC hooked up to a camera and a printer in a plywood box. At the game centers here there are invariably dozens of these machines, all with their own special features. Many of them allow you several trys to get the best picture, and then after you select, you have the option to decorate it with little clip art, and write messages on it before it gets printed out. I'll admit, this caters to the teenage girl set, but how many teenage girls go to arcades in the US? Another thing most game centers have are betting games. They're called genkin geemu in Japanese, if memory serves me correctly. Anyway, they are a lot of different kinds, some based on detailed simulations of horse racing and whatnot. It's not the kind of thing that interests me, but it does interest a lot of adults. The point is, the game centers' offerings cater to many different kinds of people, where as most US arcades cater to the 12-18 year old male.

    This issue has just as much to do with the shortsighted management of arcades as it does with the dreary offerings of coin-op companies. If the arcade industry is to survive in the US, I think they both need to take a cue from their Japanese counterparts.

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Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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