Sad day, NJ largest arcade closes it's doors.

There's a small arcade in an ailing mall around where I live. Like Shadowlayer said, pretty much everything there is 32bit/Dreamcast era. I'm almost positive the only reason it hasn't gone under is the DDR machine and whatever other Bemani stuff they have. It's kinda sad...

The laser tag places around here usually have a few arcade machines, but they've all gravitated towards Bemani games as well because that's all that'll bring in cash any more. It's near impossible to find a NeoGeo unit or a pinball machine any more.

I grew up with a NeoGeo, standup Outrun, and an Addams Family pinball machine at the pizza joint my family frequented. The skate rink (yes, I said skate rink) had so many arcade machines back in the heyday of 16bit machines. As far as I know, all of those are gone now.

It's a sad state of affairs around here these days, but if the mall arcade it'll be downright bleak.

 

Does any one any places with a Mega Tech unit?

 

Nah but I got a Mega-Tech PCB on sale if you want
It's been gathering dust for 2 years now...

 

I still remember when I ate some chips/fries at a burger joint in Valby there they had a Neogeo machine with at least 3 games on it. And well the burger joint is still there, but the arcade machine is no more. And one of my mates, he would love to have the big pinball machines back. So yeah , not having any kind of real arcade near you, sucks in the long run.

 

In a mall that's near where i live, there is a small arcade which has few games and most are from dreamcast era (similar to the one Terrin described). Few but great games the have there, like Star Wars Arcade (my favorite) , HotD 3, Virtua Tennis, Time Crisis 3, and the Simpsons arcade game (a classic)

 

Damn, wish I hadn't left NJ at the beginning of the month, now!

Where abouts was this arcade, Kev? I would've liked to check it out. Shame the auction is today, or I would've got a friend to go....

 

Its a pity that quite a few seem to be more worried about harvesting the remains of the arcade rather than mourning its loss, which from the sounds of it will be really felt.

Pity I've never been to a decent arcade in my life - I'd love to know where they are in the UK.

 

Very sad to hear. I am bum that I never have been able to play a vf2 or vf3 arcade in my life.

Funny story about vf2 arcade, there was a taco shop that had a dedicated offical cab in mint with top decal!!!

Sadly after 2 months they got rid of it. Anyway back to the topic, I honestly belive dreamcast was the start of the decline of arcades.

Cause for a lot of people when stuff like marvel vs capcom 2 or capcom vs snk came out there was no point in going to the arcade when you could play the same exact version at home and the fact that the arcade version came out at the same time as the home version.

Honestly the reason for the decline in the west was that as stated before the tech in the arcades just became obsolete after dreamcast/ps2 era.

Still place like tilt are going strong and slowly reviving some parts of it. Anyone know if sega is releasing initial d ver. 4 here?

 

True..Just a sign of the times. Heck..I remember the arcade was also a social network as well.

 

Suck! I really miss arcades. There was a good one in Montana and once in awhile you find goodies in restaurants, but around VA there isn't fuck. We did find a little arcade in WV once though where everything was a quarter, that was cool. I really miss playing TMNT with 4 people and the cool controls on some games. =(

 

We went to a Celebration Station the other week. Totally diabolical. Everything was either broken or 20 years old. It seems mostly Cinemas and Bowling Alleys are the last bastion of coin-op goodness. Unless you go to the coast.

Wildwood has a massive number of arcades Assembler, if you ever drive there.

 

There are several so called arcades in the local area to me, but they are not really very well stocked on anything other than slot machines, penny-drop units, the odd ancient piece of crap and even fewer gems. It's fine during the summer when there are travelling fairs (called simply ''the shows'') as they tend to transport some of the best arcade titles available in the UK.

The largest arcade supplier in this area was bought over several months ago and they simply shut it's doors and removed everything to god knows where.

So, Kev I feel for you mate and know just how frustrating it can be!

It also seems churlish to suggest it, but it might be worth going to the auction to grab a piece of the history.

 

Ah man! the only arcade auction I went to was for this crappy ass arcade and they wanted like $1000 for a busted up Daytona twin unit:fresh:

Seriously, tell me you bought that soul calibur cabinet, and which naomi games they had?

Got any pictures of the auction?

 

arcades

yeah please tell us you was able to get some pictures I have always had a love for them. I have 5 machines nothing special but just some of my favs like Altered Beast

 

Maybe it was SEGA pushing arcade-to-console ports so hard in the Saturn and Dreamcast days.

The one thing you miss out on the most when you only play at home is being able to show off your skills, having your high score up there for everyone to admire. There are very few arcades here, usually just a couple of gimmicky machines and DDR in restaurants and bowling alleys. And Chuck-E-Cheese (Kid's play place in the US)... We used to have big arcades (at least one, sometimes) in all of the malls. All the stores here only sell what's the most popular. Even worse, now that almost *every* US game store has been bought out by GameStop, you can't find anything other than the newest money-making cheese.

Even LAN parties seem to be dying off a little. I remember when kids would hook up their PCs and play Quake 2... now every once in a while you see a Halo tournament somewhere. Halo? You can do so much better than that.

Gaming is getting even more mainstream and tied into pop culture, but ironically it's becoming just as diluted and manipulated as the music industry.

 

I actually still have an arcade in my local mall of all places. They are just getting KoF XI machines in. They have alot of fun cabs and such there. Mostly older games too like House of the Dead and Daytona USA and even Virtual On Cyber Troopers. I go in there and spend about $5ish every time I go to the mall. If that ever closed down I dont know what I would do for arcade gaming. But the thrill of the arcade still remains arround here. It is sad to hear of all the arcades closing down especially as I grew up with them everywhere. Even if all arcades close down we can keep the experiance alive by owning atleast 1 arcade cab. Nothing beats gaming on a cab.

 

Arcades died b/c the gamers evolved in to pussies that would rather collect all types of bullshit in Final Fantasy 18 rather than the challenge of versus fighting a stranger, or insanely hard shooters.

 

Conventional wisdom at the time was that dance and sports games would save arcades. Since you couldn't really perform for spectators in your house, it was the only thing that arcades provided that you couldn't get on a home console. Of course, online play made hash of that niche pretty quickly. Also, causcasian gamers can't dance.

The arcade operators I know tell me (pretty reliably) that Daytona is what killed the arcade. It's the true killer application for gaming; eight-person multiplayer, smooth graphics, plentiful repair and replacement parts, everybody already knows how to drive, and people put money in it all day. Nothing in an arcade gets more attention than Daytona, and that makes it harder for any other coin operated arcade title to make money. For casual gamers and other boring adults, nothing exceeds Daytona and nothing else stands up to Daytona.