The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
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The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
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Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#2For my money it was the 90s explosion of fighting games or else the rhythm games of the turn of the century. But hey I'm biased by my actual experiences just like everyone else is.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#3For my money it was the 90s explosion of fighting games or else the rhythm games of the turn of the century. But hey I'm biased by my actual experiences just like everyone else is.
Double Dragon -> Final Fight -> Street Fighter 2.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#4This looks more like a personal favorite list and less of a retrospective on 1980s arcades.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#5For my money it was the 90s explosion of fighting games or else the rhythm games of the turn of the century. But hey I'm biased by my actual experiences just like everyone else is.
Same, but by that time malls - and therefore arcades - began to decline rapidly in popularity. Great games with nobody to play them.
That plus consoles and PCs began to have the same graphics capabilities as arcade games at a reasonable price. No sense in pumping endless quarters into a machine you have to beg your parents to take you to when they can just as easily buy the console version to play at home.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#6For my money it was the 90s explosion of fighting games or else the rhythm games of the turn of the century. But hey I'm biased by my actual experiences just like everyone else is.
I was very excited when the first black & white video games came out in the arcades. I felt they were more "fair" than pinball and other mechanical games.
Then the first color game I saw was Cosmic Alien. I dropped a lot of quarters down that hole.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#7This looks more like a personal favorite list and less of a retrospective on 1980s arcades.
Man writes blog post on personal website about his personal experience in the golden era of arcades. HN complains it is too personal.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#8For my money it was the 90s explosion of fighting games or else the rhythm games of the turn of the century. But hey I'm biased by my actual experiences just like everyone else is.
Same, but by that time malls - and therefore arcades - began to decline rapidly in popularity. Great games with nobody to play them. That plus consoles and PCs began to have the same graphics capabilities as arcade games at a reasonable price. No sense in pumping endless quarters into a machine you have to beg your parents to take you to when they can just as easily buy the console version to play at home.
At least around here, arcades still had a strong social aspect. You could certainly play excellent games at home with similar graphics to an arcade, but you were limited to playing against your friends, where at the arcade you had all sorts of new potential challengers. I personally made a lot of new friends in the mid 90s fighting game arcade scene.
Rhythm games like DDR, Para Para, or Bemani are something else entirely. There's still no great way to play those at home without a bunch of special hardware.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#9I was lucky enough to have grown up with computers, writing my first program in 1977, and then entertaining myself with the Arcades of the 80's as they released title after title .. while also having access to the internals of the cabinets, through friends of my Dad who owned an Arcade rental business .. without those halcyon days of burned fingers and EEPROM copiers I don't think I'd have gained the insight I then later used to get into systems software development... For me, it was a joy indeed to walk into the local Arcade ("Time Zone", in Australia) and see the new - almost monthly - releases from around the world, spend a few bucks on a game or two, then walk back into the employee-only area and inspect the games, chip for chip, on the workbench.
I think a lot of serious value came from that experience, and I really wish it were possible for youngsters to have a similar kind of environment, in this day and age .. alas, with the appstore/walled-gardens, its not so easy to get inside the boxes and have a look, although I do think that my kids are going to gain a great deal of experience from the independent gaming community, the Open Pandora/Pyra and emu-scene .. once they get enough of an interest in how things are working in order to stop playing the games of the zeitgeist.
I remember when Scramble came out, how revolutionary it was to have a side-scroller .. and then when R-type/Gradius hit the scene, WOW! It was an evolutionary progression that I don't think many see, these days, in the modern arena. Does the Nintendo Switch provide such inspirations? I guess I'll have to dig deeper to see if there is an indie scene on that platform .. for the sake of my kids.
Re: The Golden Age of the Video Game Arcade: 1981
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same, but by that time malls - and therefore arcades - began to decline rapidly in popularity. Great games with nobody to play them. That plus consoles and PCs began to have the same graphics capabilities as arcade games at a reasonable price. No sense in pumping endless quarters into a machine you have to beg your parents to take you to when they can just as easily buy the console version to play at home.
At least around here, arcades still had a strong social aspect. You could certainly play excellent games at home with similar graphics to an arcade, but you were limited to playing against your friends, where at the arcade you had all sorts of new potential challengers. I personally made a lot of new friends in the mid 90s fighting game arcade scene. Rhythm games like DDR, Para Para, or Bemani are something else enti…
Sigh...your comment reminded me of the broken hearts my girlfriend and I endured when she bought me a brand new Xbox One for us to play Halo 5 together, only to discover that split screen multiplayer has been effectively smothered to death by the games industry (sans Nintendo).
Although I'm not sure I agree 100% with your last comment. Many of my friends bought DDR home versions and Guitar Hero/Rock Band accessories aplenty when they were popular. A lot of folks were certainly willing to shell out for the extra hardware.