Today I went to the laundromat and I used up a lot of quarters. I've never used that many quarters before, not even at an arcade. Then I got to thinking, I haven't been to an arcade in ages. They are kind of scarce now days.
In my hometown, the local mall had a video arcade. I never really frequented there as much as I should have. Looking back on it, it was a decent arcade, though most of the people that would go there were just there for the DDR machine. There were a few fighting games set up, and I remember a Time Crisis 3 machine. Time Crisis is one of my favorite arcade games to play. I loved stomping on that pedal and quickly popping off those nine shots from the pistol. It was so.... visceral. Something that a home console couldn't give to you.
The arcade started to die out when the home console started to become a commonality. I think because around the time, the console of choice was the Atari 2600. The controller for the system was very similar to an arcade cabinet. All it needed was a joystick and a button. The Atari 2600 couldn't exactly replicate the graphics and power of an arcade, but it was close enough. It was about then that the arcades around the country started to fade. Kind of like a "video killed the radio star" situation.
I do love my consoles, but truth be told I miss the old arcade. They still exist, but mostly as a side to the main attraction of whatever building houses it. I haven't seen a true arcade for a long time. That old arcade of my hometown became a nail salon, then it became part of a restaurant. They just aren't quite as popular anymore, which is a shame. The thing that I always like about arcades are the extravagant apparatuses that some of the bigger machines use.
One of my favorites is Tokyo Cop, which uses a motion sensor to detect the players height, though I'm too tall for it so I have to crouch down a little, it's kind of exhausting. Or The ever rare, F-Zero AX. There's nothing real special about it, but I love F-Zero, and the wheel on the cabinet is some kind of cool futuristic jet-plane thing. It just gives it so much of a unique experience from other arcade racers. That, and the fact that if you remembered your Gamecube memory card with an F-Zero GX save file, you could unlock new racers and tracks if you were good enough. Even motorcycle racers are more fun at the arcade. This was of course pioneered by Yu Suzuki, the creative mind behind the Dreamcast hit Shenmue.
And of course there is my favorite arcade game of Time Crisis. I get so into that game that I duck down a little when the character is in cover. Sure it may just be a rail shooter, but it's the best of rail shooters! The enemy placement and weapon variety make it all the better. The bosses are absolutely insane, and are unlike anything else the game has prepared you for. But, my favorite part is the guns on those machines, at least when they work. The different clicking from weapon type to weapon type makes it all the cooler. Like the big CLICK, CLICK when you fire off a grenade launcher, and duck down to watch the explosion wash over your cover like a wave of fire. But that's not even the coolest bit, I've been lying to you this whole time. The coolest part about any Time Crisis arcade game is the Co-Op. I have met some cool people just by playing with them. It's always a blast to play with someone else on that game.
I think the community of an arcade is something that I would have like to be apart of in its heyday. I could have been like Kevin Flynn from TRON. Oh well, fads come and fads go. I just would have liked to have seem the arcade just a little longer.
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