'Old School' Arcade Still Popular In NYC 177
pickens writes "In 2005, there were 44 licensed video game arcades in New York, according to the Department of Consumer Affairs; today, 23 survive. With the expansion of interactive online gaming, video game action has largely shifted to the home. 'Arcades are an anachronism now,' says Danny Frank, a spokesman for the Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York. 'They exist only in shopping malls.' But Chinatown Fair has become a center for all the outcasts in the city to bond over their shared love for a good 20-punch combo and 'old school' games that more popular arcades don't stock anymore — the classic Street Fighter II from 1991 and King of Fighters 1996, for example, as well as Ms Pac-Man and Time Crisis. 'Now, you can play a million people from all around the world,' says one player. 'For me, it's not the same as playing face-to-face. The young'uns may not care, but I do.'"
Popular! (Score:4, Insightful)
Twenty in a city of twenty million, and half as many as five years ago. How is this "still popular"?
Even some PC games are better face to face. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bar Arcades (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can ever find a D&B with a properly working machine that's not a fakie-gambling device, my hat's off to you.
There's a reason nobody goes there any more. None of the shit is EVER repaired. The local one by me had a wall of 16 of the Star Wars Trilogy Arcade units and not a single one had anywhere close to a working joystick. They left the guns on their House of the Dead machine broken for more than a year - not "broken" as in "sights a bit off" mind you, broken as in not a single shot registered onscreen ever.
Re:"Old School" Pinball in SF Bay Area (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree with that. In that place I saw a functional Death Race 2000 game among with several penny operated mechanical arcades similar to those in Disneyland.
Old School? (Score:3, Insightful)
But Chinatown Fair has become a center for all the outcasts in the city to bond over their shared love for a good 20-punch combo and "old school" games that more popular arcades don't stock anymore — the classic Street Fighter II from 1991 and King of Fighters 1996,
Games from 1991-1996 are considered "old school" now? A person born in those years would be described as very young.
Re:We more places with pinball games and working o (Score:3, Insightful)
Admittedly one of them was a dank dark hole of a joint and I wasn't sad to see that one go
Those are the best arcades.
Re:hmm (Score:1, Insightful)
Back when I was in high school, we used to drink every weekend. Sometimes money was tight, we would get MD 20/20, grain alcohol and kool-aid, or just cheap beer. Rolling Rock and Mickeys big mouth were the cheapest named beers we could get that were tolerable, Strohs, Old Mil, and "black label", and yes even the white can "generic beer " were not tolerable. The Mickeys was better than the Rolling Rock but it always seemed that one out of five cases were just terrible. That was okay if you had five cases at once because you could drink the skunky one last and not notice. We only got the Rolling Rock if Mickeys was sold out. It sucked but we drank it anyway. Step ahead a few years. I moved out the western PA area (where Rolling Rock was made) and was in the military. I drank on occasion at bars with some Navy friends when we pulled into a port or a temp stop over. We were in Seattle at a bar, everyone is drinking Rolling Rock, it was being sold in a bucket with ice. I was confused, is this the same crappy beer from western PA? I picked one up, looked at the bottle, see it was made in Latrobe PA, wow, I opened one up and tried it, wow, the same nasty beer I used to drink in high school when funds were low. It was now a "cool" beer and everyone seemed to like it. Being trendy drives beer sales, not quality.