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'Old School' Arcade Still Popular In NYC
pickens writes "In 2005, there were 44 licensed video game arcades in New York, according to the Department of Consumer Affairs; today, 23 survive. With the expansion of interactive online gaming, video game action has largely shifted to the home. 'Arcades are an anachronism now,' says Danny Frank, a spokesman for the Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York. 'They exist only in shopping malls.' But Chinatown Fair has become a center for all the outcasts in the city to bond over their shared love for a good 20-punch combo and 'old school' games that more popular arcades don't stock anymore — the classic Street Fighter II from 1991 and King of Fighters 1996, for example, as well as Ms Pac-Man and Time Crisis. 'Now, you can play a million people from all around the world,' says one player. 'For me, it's not the same as playing face-to-face. The young'uns may not care, but I do.'"
Also Barcade in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn has an astounding number of working, old-school arcade games (Joust, Gauntlet, Dig Dug, that generation), so it's worth visiting if you're into that stuff and can put up with the PBR-drinking, ironic-t-shirt and black-rimmed-glasses crowd.
What about Dave & Buster's/Gameworks? Although straight-up arcades are rare, these places are somewhat common.
The photo at the top was obviously staged. No girl would kiss any guy who hangs out in an arcade all day.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Twenty in a city of twenty million, and half as many as five years ago. How is this "still popular"?
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Joystix in Houston is pretty damn popular as well. Every first and last Friday of the month, the bar next door sells $15 wristbands that get you in to the showroom, where everything working is on free play aaaaallllll niiiiight (well, until last call...). They've got an arcade machine that pre-dates pong (they don't turn that one on...) all the way to up games that are almost kinect-like (seriously, they had a rail-shooter that, instead of stepping on a pedal, it watched which way you dodged out of the way and did that). It's freakin' awesome. And because it's a repair/resell shop, the stock is constantly rotating, so there's always something new. It's an arcade gamer's paradise. Except when some stupid singles group sets up an outing.
Sorry if that sounds like an advertisement... I'm there every chance I get, and I think I've dragged every one of my friends along at some point. I needed somewhere new to proselytize.
I've lived in New York City for years, a few years back, and I determinedly Googled trying to find arcades. I found about two. Now I've moved back, and would really like to find these 23 arcades, wherever they are.
How do you find the arcades? Do Slashdotters know of any other good NYC arcades?
I can't stand playing Counterstrike on the Internet, but on a LAN it's a different story.
If you want really "old school", check out the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, CA (near Oakland) - http://pacificpinball.org/. They have pinball machines from the 1930's to 2000's, with a big collection of "woodrail" and "wedgehead" games. No video games. Only pinball (and an odd electromechanical rifle game here and there).
The Only place for Pinball. Over three hundred games on site, over a thousand in the worlds largest collection. The proprietor has been in the biz for almost 40 years and can tell you anything you want to know about any game you can name. http://www.pinballmuseum.org/ And for you youngsters he has twenty or so classic videos.
. . . in NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN.
It was a Junior high school field trip to Chinatown. Other than seeing a bum sleeping on the street, and picking up a copy of ANALOG with a Joe Haldeman story, I don't remember anything else BUT this arcade.
A tough kid offered to sell us switchblades.
We played the "chicken" games.
If there were video games, I don't remember them specifically. But they'd certainly be old school stuff that make the "classics" mentioned above seem science fictional.
A museum of video games would try and buy up every game ever made. Then people could pay admission to visit for the day and play every video game the museum collected. The goal of the museum is to own every video game ever made.
God spoke to me.
I grew up in arcades and absolutely loved them. They were a huge, huge part of my life and the next biggest social hub outside of school to meet people -- well, other geeky boys like yourself, other than the legendary Arcade Gamer Girl who existed but was rarely seen.
Sadly arcades are dead. Why? The technology. Arcades had games based on the absolute forefront of technology and every vendor was trying to beat each other with better sound, flashier graphics, and more interesting gameplay. Once games went to 3D the technology abruptly plateaued and nobody could do 'better' anymore, just 'the same'. Plus this technology brought arcade quality games home around the time of the PSX/Saturn, both of which had a huge number of arcade ports (and the PSX hardware went on to power many an arcade game).
Will the ever come back? No. There's no money to be made. Today's 3D games cost such an insane amount of money to develop that nobody wants to take risks. That's why they go with safe bets like Tiger Woods Golf or some dancing game and truly unique, original titles like Bayonetta are few and far in between.
OK, so what does an arcade fan do in light of this? Collect games! Arcade games are absolutely dirt cheap, most of them are easily interchangeable in one cabinet (1 cab, many PCBs), and there's nothing like owning your favorite games.
Occasionally you'd get lucky and they'd have a new machine in that you'd never seen before. All arcades seemed to have that new-electronics smell. Occasionally you'd find a broken control, but a lot of the guys who worked in those places could actually fix the machines, and they always seemed to have spare parts on hand.
They were on their decline with the 90s. I remember being horrified upon discovering an upscale mall in Florida that didn't have an arcade. Eventually this became the norm. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. I'm glad to have been growing up in that time.
If I ever get back to New York, I'll have to go looking for one of these places, if only for the chance of hearing those bugs falling one more time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The Silverball Museum opened on the boardwalk in Asbury Park earlier this year. There are over 200 classic pinball machines and a smattering of early video games and other early games such as pitch & bats, shuffle alleys, and such. http://silverballmuseum.com/
But Chinatown Fair has become a center for all the outcasts in the city to bond over their shared love for a good 20-punch combo and "old school" games that more popular arcades don't stock anymore — the classic Street Fighter II from 1991 and King of Fighters 1996,
Games from 1991-1996 are considered "old school" now? A person born in those years would be described as very young.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Yeah, Chinatown Fair is a great place. I remember that they were probably the first arcade in NYC to get Street Fighter IV a couple of years ago. Keep in mind that the game wasn't even officially available to U.S. arcade operators. And they shelled out for four Japanese style sit down cabinets (you needed two cabinets to play two-player versus games), which no doubt cost them thousands of dollars. They still had some of the older games though, including Capcom vs. SNK 2 and Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Chinatown Fair does cater to one-on-one fighting fans - I don't know any other arcade around that has Blazblue and Arcana Heart cabinets.
It's too bad they're so out of the way though, they're almost hidden in a corner of Chinatown and blocks away from the subway station. So unless you're in Southern Manhattan or Western Brooklyn, it's a tough place to get to.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
The arcade industry here in Japan is still thriving - I myself go to one in the middle of Shinjuku most days after school to play Border Break or goof off on other games. It's one thing I'm really going to miss once I head back to the States in a week and a half(among other things). Living in a suburb in central Jersey doesn't help in that regard too much after having lived in Tokyo.
I suppose it's easier for arcades to survive in cities, where people commuting to and from work/school can stop by there and play a few rounds of Street Fighter or something, but the difference in gamers' tastes and preferences between America and Japan is like night and day. A lot of gamers my age and older(mid-to-upper 20s) seem to prefer older games almost as a result of the rise of stay-at-home Internet-connected game systems, whereas here in Japan people of all ages are always psyched about the next Gundam vs Gundam or Street Fighter or whatever the new big deal is. Maybe if we had up-to-date brand-new arcade games in the US, people would be more into it, but the difficulties in localizing arcade games from a country halfway around the world seem rather obvious.
I'm just rambling, so don't mind this anonymous coward who can't remember if he has a /. account or not.
Well a business license would be. And I suspect you'd have to put the type or purpose of business on there.
Is there a crack force of arcade investigators? No.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
I arrived in '75 for my freshman year at NYU, and I was one of a group of students who hung around the pinball machines at the dorm. Steve was a fellow student, known as a wheeler-dealer and an elite scalper who could get you front row at Madison Square Garden for anything, the Who, the Stones, sections A and R, front orchestra. We would serve as his ticket-buying crew, often lining up all night behind the metal barricades of the MSG box office. Anyway, Steve somehow wrested the dorm pinball concession away from the existing operator. I got the job of pinball repairman. The pinball machines of '75 were strictly electromechanical Gottliebs and Willamses which, of course, used lots of relays, solenoids and stepping motors. In '76 the first solid state (TTL) machine came out, Spirit of '76. No more relays and stepping motors, only the solenoids and contact sensors (e.g. rollovers and bumpers) remained. What an interesting challenge to go from troubleshooting electromechanical logic to TTL! We had a Pong, but the first real arcade vidgame was Atari Starship One followed by some submarine-hunt game with a periscope. Next came Breakout, Clean Sweep, and Lunar Lander, followed closely by Asteroids, Pac-Man and Galaxians. These last were huge moneymakers; Steve decided to expand. He set himself up as vidgame and pin purveyor to various candy stores and bodegas. One of these was out in Flushing, Queens, it was called Space Age Amusements. One day I get a service call that all of the machines have gone haywire. I observe that it is a hot summer day. I remember the National Semiconductor TTL Handbook and that the operating temperature range for commercial grade TTL ICs is 0-100 degrees F. I tell Steve I have to go and get some boxer fans from one of the (former) electronics surplus stores on Canal Street. He thinks I'm nuts, but after I put the fans in the back of the machines they suddenly started working again (and the game OEMs started building fans into their products). Now Steve thinks I'm a genius. He calls me "the fan man." The mob owned the machine distributors, probably still do, and occasionally we would go out to Jersey or Pennsylvania to buy the equipment. One time I'm driving this van Steve borrowed from this mob guy. I stop for some cannoli on 11th street and park the van on the street. Unfortunately the wiseguy never paid his NYC parking tickets and the van got towed. Steve and I had to go and explain to the mob guy what happened to his van. That was an experience I won't soon forget.
We've got places like this back west in good ol' Portland, Oregon. There's a Barcade downtown that's all ages by day that rocks it just like this, and a pizza place nearby with some classics including an original Pac-Mac cabinet. The Wunderland is pretty solid too, especially since everything there costs 25 cents or less, but it's mostly ticket games these days.
I'm still holding out hope for an arcade 'revival' of sorts. The idea of video games as a communal pastime has a lot of merit, all it'll take is a bright spark of an idea, the lure of something you can't do with a home console to incite the gamers from their living rooms, dungeons, and desktops and back into the epileptic glow of the arcade.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Back home they always tried to shutdown the dedicated arcades for 'Attracting an undesirable element'. ie more than 5 kids in one place at a time. Admittedly one of them was a dank dark hole of a joint and I wasn't sad to see that one go, but the other was a lovely bright affair with great games and not a single bad element in site, well not counting the kids, and there was never any trouble there.
The only place we could rely on was the bowling alley and its rather good selection of games both arcade and pinball. Good luck trying to shut that place down, it was far too popular.
It seems like all throughout the 20th century, whatever the young people found popular and entertaining at any given point was campaigned against by the older generations, especially in the US.
It happened with pool/snooker/billiard halls. It happened with pinball. It happened with Comic Books. It happened with amusement arcades. It happened and continues to happen with all kinds of music including Rock & Roll, Punk, Metal, Rap, Hip-Hop etc. And its happening today with Internet Cafes. Many local and state authorities are trying to shut down or control Internet Cafes (especially Internet Cafes that offer gaming) with restrictions on opening hours, requirements for security guards and requirements to log everyone who comes into the cafe to use it.
Admittedly one of them was a dank dark hole of a joint and I wasn't sad to see that one go
Those are the best arcades.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When I hear arcade, my mind scrolls waaaay back to my youth, and the arcade down the street from my grandma's house. It had pinball, trampolines, a shooting gallery, mini-bowling, and bumper cars, for a start. I remember when they brought in the brand new video game! (Space Invaders, of course.) My older brother spent endless hours at it, but I was still content with my relatively new Triple Action pinball game.
That arcade is now a parking lot for oversized trailers. Sigh.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
We always take the PATH over from Hoboken, NJ, then hit the D up to Chinatown. Really not that bad at all. Seems like everyone on here makes it sound like its really far out of the way in Chinatown. Not too hard to walk a few blocks to play some MVC2!
It was always my understanding (worked in the industry more than 10 years), that the players just enjoyed playing Ms. Pac Man more than the original Pac Man. Simply a more popular game, and many of the units have the speed bumped up for a faster-paced experience. I'm unsure about production numbers, but something tells me they did produce more Ms. Pac machines.