I remember back in the day (NES days), the Arcade games ALWAYS looked so much better than consoles. I remember when the NES had a conversion of the Ninja Turtle arcade game. It was good for the NES, but nothing close to it. Now consoles are MUCH more powerful and I noticed that the graphics are up to par with current arcade machines. Why is this? I can't even remember the last time I went to Diversions to play some games. I'd rather stay home, chill on the futon, and play some Gamecube.
Most new arcade games nowadays are built on technology that's similar to current consoles. For example, the Chihiro is a modified Xbox-based hardware. Same goes for the Naomi (DC) and the various System 256/etc (Sony) setups. We started seeing really accurate coin-op to home translations when the Saturn and PS first hit in the mid 90's...the conversions of Street Fighter Alpha really drove that point home for me. Before that, everything was a compromise like the SNES version of Street Fighter 2 and Final Fight for example---close but still missing stuff. These days, I don't follow the arcade scene mainly for the graphics, but rather, the unique cabinets and gameplay experiences. Playing Maximum Tune 2 with 4 other linked players in those high end cabinets with 6 gear shifters is really something...no online service could ever duplicate that feeling IMO. Same goes for playing a 2D fighter in an arcade with an opponent you can actually interact with. That's what it's all about.
I'm with you one that one ! Don't forget having the music blasting away as well ! I love having a game of Maximum Tune 2 in the arcades. The whole feel of it is something you'll NEVER get at home unless you seriously want to piss off the neighbours. Yakumo
I always loved arcades, since i had the chance to play Pole Position for the first time. I'm not that old (gonna be 25 this year), but i consider myself lucky for seeing the evolution of consoles and arcades. I still remember the first time i saw Virtua Racing on the arcades. I know there were stuff like Winning Run and Hard Drivin avaiable, but Virtua Racing was a complete shock. 6 cabinets connected to each other, plus a monitor in top of them showing the broadcast of the race. Then Ridge Racer and Daytona USA appeared. Those were the days. I know the difference between Arcades and Consoles is almost non-existent, but i simply can't stop playing on arcades.
Arcades are all about the community for me. Even if you have never spoken to someone before, you still recognise each other and know how they play. It is something I really miss about gaming in Japan. When I first came to Japan as a student the first people I got to know outside uni were from the game center. Anyhoo, arcade sound generally rocks, even if it is not from the game you are playing! The fighter area in my local was near the Beatmania machines so there was always a nice soundtrack. Controls in the arcade are the buisness, even if you mod your own Sanwa stick it is just not the same as a massive heavy arcade set up. For my money you can't beat face to face competition. Especially in tourney play when you have a chat with everyone else after the match. That is generally good fun and an experience you can't have anywhere else really. So while I love my at home gaming, game centers always have a special place for me, particularly in the fighters. I don't think I will ever fail to be excited when the words "Here comes a new Challenger!" etc flash on the screen. That has to be in the top ten of my gaming moments.
I am one of the last, that still remember neogeo classics in the burger grill near me. So I love arcade games, but sadly there are so fucking few arcade halls left, that even Tivoli has made a fucking huge, and boring salt water aquarium instead of having the coolest retro arcade hall there.
Arcades today are about having experiences that you can't have at home. In the eighties and nineties, this experience was great graphics and sound. Today, we have the processing power to reproduce it at home. Thus, the need for specialised cabinets.
I'm actually comtemplating setting up an arcade type place here locally, but I'm having problems justifying trying to get the capital to start it up. My main problems are really the big reasons I stopped going to the arcades in the first place. What kind of community am I going to draw and how expensive is it going to be to play, much less operate? Noone really understands the kinds of social community a good arcade has down here. They've turned into a standard place for the parents to drop their kids off and not have to deal with them for hours. They run around like hooligans with no money breaking every machine because they want to play on the machines instead of play the games. I'd like for it to be a mostly adult crowd (beer too if I can), but I'm afraid I'll just draw in the local rednecks and hooligans rather than the customers that I want. As an example, a friend of mine setup a comic shop here in town. After taking out loans upon loans to get started, he made enough money in the first month to pay off 70% of his loans and be profitable and stayed like that for another 2 months. Then word started getting around that there was a comic shop in town and parents went crazy just dropping their kids at the door with no money or anything and leaving them there for 4 hours. I've seen kids there for almost 10 hours too. Within 3 more months, it had gotten so bad that he had to close up shop because of the liability of the retard parents. And we'll not even get into my experiences as a manager of a game store and with demo units and a separate comic shop next to a Chuck E. Cheese. Sorry bout the rant, but should I even continue and rant about the prices for good arcade games?
Well, you need to ask yourself: Do you want to make money, or do you want to make the arcade exactly the way you want it? You have to ask because rarely will you ever be able to have both. If you make it an open arcade (all ages), then you will have the hooligans that come in and break the machines regularly as well as the kids that are dropped off with no money for free day care. If you make an adult environment, then you run the risk of getting drunk and rowdy customers, though I would argue that you can make more money this way with a half bar, half arcade (don't forget a couple of pool tables) setup. If you are *truly* serious about setting something like this up, you should contact a local arcade machine operator; the guys who put one or two machines on location for other businesses. Contract one or more of them to supply and maintain the arcade hardware for the first couple of months while you feel out the business. When you setup the contract, include an option to buy and take over the machines in case the business does well. If the business tanks, then you can just have the operator(s) pick up the machines and close up shop without losing the capital that would normally be required to buy 10-20 machines. Do NOT cheap out and only buy older games. Arcade players are fickle and always want the latest and greatest machines. Also make sure to have the full spectrum (at least initially) of machines: racing, fighting, lightgun, Golden Tee, DDR. You can adjust the number and type after watching to see what people play. If you go for the kid route, I would initially favor DDR, fighting and racing. If you go with the adult route, I would favor GT, Deer Hunter and other lightgun games. Once again, local tastes will vary. One more thing that you have to consider is redemption games. Kids love to collect the tickets/tokens while trying to win a prize. However, adults tend to shy away (since they know that they are getting screwed value wise). Also, it can be really expensive to keep a diverse stock of prizes and have someone work the prize counter. I have contemplated opening an arcade, but could not justify the time and money. I would have made it an open arcade with one minor rule: no kids under 16 without an adult. You could still have teenagers who linger around without any money, but this prevents the parent dropoffs for free day care.
They're not. SOME games are built on technology that is basically the same in consoles. Sega has been a company that has always been (and still is) ahead of the console world. I think the only time they weren't putting out stuff mainly on console-based hardware was Chichiro. When the Naomi->DC conversions were afoot, they made Hikaru and Naomi 2 games. During Chihiro's hayday, they were working on Lindberg. It's debatable whether 100% perfect Lindberg ports will be possible w/ the 360 & PS3. Time will tell. Other arcade game makers, for the most part, are just flat out awful or either tantamount bailed out of the arcade market like Taito. Namco's arcade games have always lacked in the last 5 years, other than maybe Tekken and Soul Calibur, both which have had to live in the shadow of Virtua Fighter. This is also in spite of both companies owning very large arcades in Japan. Then again, the style of arcade games you get is the main reason people go. There's only a handful of straight-to-console shooting games, but there's still plenty coming out in Japanese arcades, and people do line up to play them. For fighting games, it's the social aspect, not necessarily the graphics, which capture customers. EDIT: Another couple of points. Whether the games "look better" or not is best debated in a flame war, but I respect the time put into anything on Cave's SH3 boards way more than a million jagged chracters in the latest Final Fantasy. Cave is definitely a company that doesn't want to grow up, and I love them for it. All of their arcade shooters, even ones released last year and one coming up this month, are in 15-khz low res mode, with ESPGaluda being the only one that's in the 95% range of being a perfect port to home console (Dodonpachi DOJ is proably in the 90%). The guys that ported ESPGaluda said that it took ALL of the PS2's RAM and CPU to properly port it. He also said Ketsui (which runs on the same hardware) would not be possible on the PS2. So, remember that graphics aren't always black and white (pun intended)
