Time up for arcades?

[Oracle]

Read this article today:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/13/seaside-arcades-face-1000-energy-bill-hike

 

Pretty grim reading, my hometown (Southend) has a whole range of arcades, the seafront would be a different place if they closed down. I also noticed Astro City in the highstreet is up for sale. 
 

Will energy prices be the final nail in the coffin for arcades?

 

[Vimster]

Stating the obvious here but these sorts of arcades are just so damn boring. There's only so much enjoyment you can get out of dropping some 2p's into a machine, or watching a claw limply scrape over a cuddly toy. If you need to make the money to cover costs then this lack of sustainable enjoyment really won't cut it.

 

Last time I went to a seaside arcade was in 2018 with my then girlfriend, afternoon in Scarborough. I tried really hard not to moan about the good old days etc and just enjoy spending some time together, doing a bit of people-watching whilst feeding a 2p pusher, exaggeratedly pretending to be some rich guy gifting her 50p to go on a grabber, anything to get some fun out of it. But we were bored rigid after about half an hour. Every other place was exactly the same, so rather than having a go on different machines in each place we'd walk in and go yeah, nah. Back in the day you could literally spend all damn day in those places and never get bored.

 

Obviously on here we're going to be all bring back proper arcades. They're never coming back into general use. But unless these arcades start offering something genuinely compelling at a reasonable price (not paying £1 a go for some crappy on rails shooter) then, and I hate to say it, they deserve to close.

 

Yes the seaside wouldn't be the same without them. The sights and sounds of an arcade wafting over the seafront whilst you have a 99. But then I guess everything has to come to an end eventually.

[Oracle]

Agreed. On the flip side, other arcades don’t really get reliable repeat custom. 
 

Southends arcade choice is a shadow of its former glory. It’s only Astro City that has a decent selection, esp now that Neón Knights closed down. 

[Vespa Alex]

Seaside arcades with coin pushers, token machines and a handful of large dedicated cabs have been circling the drain for ages. It’s easy to see how they could go under with a combination of electricity costs and casual customers with less disposable income. 

Pay to enter retro arcades seem to be doing much better. 

 

[Ketchup]

Yet barcades like NQ64 are going from strength to strength. Traditional arcades just don’t work anymore but add a bar and some snacks and all of a sudden you have a place people want to spend time and money in.

[fat flatulent git]

I was thoroughly annoyed and depressed when the cheap fruit machines (2p a play) in Torquay and Paignton gave out tickets, of which hundreds can be exchanged for a soft toy or other shitty prize, instead of money.  Stopped playing or even going on the pier after that.  The arcades have always been shit since the 90s.

[Plissken]

Went in one of the arcades on the pier at Blackpool a couple of months ago.  What a thoroughly depressing place.

 

As a teenager I would catch the train to play on the latest games at Coral Island et al.  They had a full R-360 cab playing G-Loc, plus all the then new, now classic stuff.  Could watch the attract modes for hours.

 

Obvious consoles killed them off but for them to end up full of 2p coin pushers...  maybe the olden days really were better. 

[Unofficial Who]

As much as I loved aspects of the arcades back in the day (and hated a lot about them) the death knell for me was pretty much when the home versions of Namco arcade games were pretty much the same or better on the Playstation. (The graphics may have been slightly worse but this was completely offset by the extra features added for the home versions.)

 

Arcades near me seem to have gone back to the pre pinball days now of skill and ticket redemption machines with the odd weird ultra casual games with massive screens. For me pining about the old days of video game arcades reminds me a lot of the last chapter from a book I read about pinball where the old timers talk about how video games are just a fad and that pinball would return triumphant.

 

Everything has an age and the golden days of arcades aren't coming back. 

[Oracle]

The ticket machines are to get kids in the door tbh. They are very effective. 

[Unofficial Who]

48 minutes ago, Ketchup said:

Yet barcades like NQ64 are going from strength to strength. Traditional arcades just don’t work anymore but add a bar and some snacks and all of a sudden you have a place people want to spend time and money in.

 

This actually! We've got a couple of barcades and they're so much better than old arcades in terms of how friendly they are, cleanliness and value for money. I think the difference is that a lot of these places are owned by our peers who love the games of that era where the original arcades where mostly owned by business men who swapped out arcades as soon as the ROI didn't make sense.

[fat flatulent git]

40 minutes ago, Oracle said:

The ticket machines are to get kids in the door tbh. They are very effective. 

I get that.  I was explaining why I don’t bother with arcades any more, not saying it was a bad business decision.

 

The height of the disappointment was winning the donkey derby, which used to be an automatic soft toy prize but is now a small number of tickets.

[MagicalDrop]

My daughter and son in law recently came back from the local arcade raving about adult-size 4-player sit on Hungry Hippos. That's what we've come to. 

The video did look hilarious though. 

[JamesC]

They do have some ticket machines based on old coin-ops which are quite cool. I particularly like this Galaga one:

 

 

I think the ticket machines are here to stay. What I'd really like to see are ticket machines based on multiple retro games - something like NES Remix but for the arcade. Imagine a Capcom one - defeat Blanka in 60 seconds, complete level 1 of Strider without taking a hit, score X points in the time limit on Forgotten Worlds.

 

I'm a Great Yarmouth native and still live close by. The arcades still seem pretty busy in the summer (I think British seaside towns have actually benefitted from the pandemic and the cost of living crisis with many people holidaying in the UK or just taking day trips) but the energy crisis is definitely going to take its toll. I think it'll be a shame if the arcades close. Even though they're a shadow of their former selves, there's still something great about seeing the seafront all lit up and vibrant.

[Vespa Alex]

2 hours ago, MagicalDrop said:

My daughter and son in law recently came back from the local arcade raving about adult-size 4-player sit on Hungry Hippos. That's what we've come to. 

The video did look hilarious though. 

Now that sounds like fun. 

[FishyFish]

I always felt that the arcades / videogames companies made a mistake when they got into the brinksmanship game with home consoles. The arcade went from a place where a couple of quid would get you ten or twenty credits, to giving you just a couple. The new games might have had flashy cabinets and great graphics, but the £1-a-go games were still arcade games and would eat your money just as fast as the 10/20p games did. The whole experience was effectively hit by massive inflation. And while you could play arcade perfect titles on home consoles, the arcade has that social aspect and atmosphere in the same way that going to a pub, or eating at a restaurant does. You can drink and eat at home, but sometimes it's fun to go out.

 

I think that there would still be a healthy market for simpler, cheaper to produce games that were priced accordingly for the players. There's a lot more appeal in knowing that a fiver wil get you a couple of dozen plays on a whole bunch of machines if you like than knowing there's a good chance that you'll be spent up in a few minutes.

 

 

[Parappa]

Doesn't help when in some arcades you need to put your bank card in a machine to get a plastic top up card to then use to pay for the games!.

 

Llandudno pier have converted all their machines (including Sega Rally!) to only accept these massive waste of plastic cards! 

 🤬

 

In the end I could not be bothered so just walked out whereas if they took cash I would have spent a few quid. 

[Vimster]

1 hour ago, Parappa said:

Doesn't help when in some arcades you need to put your bank card in a machine to get a plastic top up card to then use to pay for the games!.

 

Llandudno pier have converted all their machines (including Sega Rally!) to only accept these massive waste of plastic cards! 

 🤬

 

In the end I could not be bothered so just walked out whereas if they took cash I would have spent a few quid. 

Bet that card has a minimum value too. 

[new666uk]

I think this is why modern arcades like NQ64 or Arcade Club are thriving. I was in Arcade Club Bury last weekend and it was packed. 

[Parappa]

1 hour ago, Vimster said:

Bet that card has a minimum value too. 

Yeah the do - and strangley it was cheaper to just keep buying new cards then topping the exisiting one up! 

[Oracle]

Im going to pop along to Astro city tomorrow, not been there for a year or so. 

[Pob]

1 hour ago, new666uk said:

I think this is why modern arcades like NQ64 or Arcade Club are thriving. I was in Arcade Club Bury last weekend and it was packed. 

 

I love retro arcades and clearly the business model works but arcade games are designed around pay-as-you-go, and I miss that aspect. Trying to get as far as possible on one credit was such a key part of why I loved arcades in their heyday, and its an element that always set coin-ops apart from console games.

 

It's true that once games went up to £1 or £2 per go, they lost their appeal. The worst time for arcades was when they were full of crappy, expensive 3D games that were two generations behind what you were playing at home. I'd rather pay £1 for a game of ticket-spewing Pacman to be honest.

 

I wonder how modern retro arcades that still have pay-per-play are doing? I went to one in London a couple of years ago.

[new666uk]

I did what I think was my first 1 credit completion at Arcade Club on Saturday playing Soul Caliber. I hit a lucky streak of getting the opponent out the ring instead of beating them directly but hey-ho a win is a win.

[Keyboard Koala]

Edge^tm #379 featured a great article on the twilight of the Japanese arcades. A good read.

 

E.g. I never knew that one of the reasons why most of Japan's arcades are gone is the increasingly punitive business model that arcade manufacturers were enforcing. In the end arcade owners were only entitled to 20% of all the money that came in, compared to 100% in the 80s and 90s.

[Oracle]

Yeesh. That’s a pretty poor business model. 

[phillv85]

Yeah the NesicaX Live and All.net services are brutal. Although the op’s no longer have to pay for the hardware, so there is less risk on a big title actually being shit.

 

One of EXA Arcadia’s main selling points is that the operator gets to keep all the money.

[Oh Danny Boy]

On 20/01/2023 at 08:25, JamesC said:

They do have some ticket machines based on old coin-ops which are quite cool. I particularly like this Galaga one:

 

 

I think the ticket machines are here to stay. What I'd really like to see are ticket machines based on multiple retro games - something like NES Remix but for the arcade. Imagine a Capcom one - defeat Blanka in 60 seconds, complete level 1 of Strider without taking a hit, score X points in the time limit on Forgotten Worlds.

 

I'm a Great Yarmouth native and still live close by. The arcades still seem pretty busy in the summer (I think British seaside towns have actually benefitted from the pandemic and the cost of living crisis with many people holidaying in the UK or just taking day trips) but the energy crisis is definitely going to take its toll. I think it'll be a shame if the arcades close. Even though they're a shadow of their former selves, there's still something great about seeing the seafront all lit up and vibrant.

I always put a quid into the space invaders one when I see it. A good blast if a bit too short. 

[yakumo]

it's sad but inevitable. I remember arcade scene dying when I started seeing more gimmicky arcade machines that simulate an experience than the typical machines I grew up with. It was around the time when Silent Scope, etc when arcade machines were seeing a decline, thanks to home consoles bridging the gap in graphics. I did find one arcade which closed down in Southampton, which had a mame machine. Think Sega World, or the Arcade that replaced it there had a mame machine before that went when I went back last year. 

[yakumo]

Talking about barcade, maybe not a bad idea opening one where I live. 

[dumpster]

It's like when Blackpool Pleasure beach started to charge to get in. You used to be able to walk around, play the machines, go on the rides...  But at weekends they used to get really drunk people all causing trouble, pouring washing up liquid in the river caves, it just became the only sensible option to charge £30 to get in and make the rides free.  

 

Places like Arcade Club have a curated selection of games and the people who go there understand these are 40 years old and need treating with respect.  Meanwhile the seaside arcades are dirty and unpleasant, and that Daytona machine you fancy has a steering wheel that doesn't spring back on one side, the seat won't adjust, it has game over burned Into the monitor and probably won't take your pound coin anyway.  Blackpool arcades today can be awful because they attract the stag night parties who place being pissed above everything else.

 

[Vimster]

1 hour ago, yakumo said:

it's sad but inevitable. I remember arcade scene dying when I started seeing more gimmicky arcade machines that simulate an experience than the typical machines I grew up with. It was around the time when Silent Scope, etc when arcade machines were seeing a decline, thanks to home consoles bridging the gap in graphics. I did find one arcade which closed down in Southampton, which had a mame machine. Think Sega World, or the Arcade that replaced it there had a mame machine before that went when I went back last year. 

Barring things like Beatmania, there were some terrible novelty arcade "experiences" in the late-90s/2000s. And at a quid a go you couldn't fully adjust to them without spending a load. Well remember some bloody awful skateboard one that was just unplayable.