6 ms·

The surprising, stealth rebirth of the American arcade

59 points by iProject 14y ago

rocky1138 14y ago
Arcades are cool, but they're too damn expensive. Make each game 5c and I'll play all the time.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  I suspect that one of the major reasons why arcades are still viable in Japan but not the US is because each play costs 100 yen, well over a dollar. At 25 cents a play, I suspect that most of these places make the majority of their profits from beer & food. If you're too cheap to pay 25 cents for a game, I suspect that you're too cheap to buy your food & drink at the arcade. If so, the arcades are probably glad they don't have your business.
  - evoxed 14y ago
    Maybe I'm just going at all the wrong times, but any Taito Station pretty much hovers between 1-10% capacity (maybe 20% on weekends). I think they could certainly benefit from cheaper games, if only to give the kids on the way back from school a quick thrill with any spare coins they've got. Even making them 50円 would go a long way, since a 100 would get two games. I don't know about others, but I would never start a game if I only had one shot. Two tries, especially if a friend could go as well, would be good enough to draw me in to even the lamest pinball machine. Note: I'm in Yokohama. I don't frequent arcades much so don't know about Tokyo, though I'll be in Diver City tomorrow to check out the ROUND1 (I heard it has a set rate for the facility).
    - larsberg 14y ago
      I was just in Tokyo. Even during the daytime, the Taito Stations (at least in Akiba and Shinjuku) were over 20% capacity. And on weekenights and weekend evenings, particularly in Sinjuku, it was well over 50% of the machines in use. It felt more full than that, though, because there are lots of observers for whatever that 8-on-8 online mech game was and the new Hatsune Miku/vocaloid rhythm game. Even the crane games are pretty heavily packed. My only major complaint, as an American, is that they reeked pretty heavily of cigarettes (though not as badly as pachinko parlors). It was like being taken back in time 5-10 years, back before major cities started mandating non-smoking environments.
- DavidAdams 14y ago
  I spend a lot of time here with my kids: http://nickelmaniagames.com/ http://nickelmaniagames.com/ My 10 and 12 year old boys like playing the old games just as much as I did when I was their age 30 years ago.
jetti 14y ago
This reminds me of a place near me Galloping Ghost (http://gallopingghostarcade.com/ http://gallopingghostarcade.com/). If you're ever in the Chicagoland area, check it out. They charge an entry fee of $15 but all their games are on free play. Better yet, they let you come and go as you please for the entire day with that one purchase (so 11 hours of potential play time). They find and restore beat up arcade games as well as have a few PS3 in an arcade box with newer games (Mortal Kombat as well as Street Fighter). There is nothing like playing Mortal Kombat II for hours on end with a friend and then going to play NFL Blitz 99, NBA Jam and then back again. The best (and also worst) part is that there is no risk to play new games since they are all free (it is bad because you'll occasionally walk up to a game and have to either wait for the time to expire in game or just kill the character because somebody walked away mid game).
helipad 14y ago
I'd like to think Caine's Arcade has picked up steam.
gaius 14y ago
Article doesn't mention it, but I think a lot of people were reminded of Flynn's by Tron 2, and thought to themselves, hmm, what a good idea...
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Watching Tron:Legacy certainly made me want to open an arcade! I just don't have the capital lying around to do it. But, yeah, it sure seems that with the right touch, the arcade could be revived as a business model. I sure hope so anyway, I miss arcades. I actually found myself wondering if Disney would be willing to license the "Flynn's" name to somebody... how cool would it be to walk into an actual Flynn's arcade sometime? :-)
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I think Disney uses "Flynn's" at one of their parks, so I doubt they would license it.
talmand 14y ago
I disagree, those are not arcades, they are bars and nightclubs that happen to have retro games spread throughout. I'm not taking my kids to a nightclub to play arcade games but one or two they mention would be worthy. Although it is nice to see interest in having arcade machines in some form so maybe it'll kick off interest in proper arcades. From my experience, being someone that spent a great deal of time in arcades as a kid, that the arcade industry practically killed itself. True, consoles were a big competitor but there was nothing like getting in that line to put your token on the machine. Consoles is just friends having fun, arcades were friends and strangers competing. Totally different experience. But the arcades started dying when somebody had the silly idea that people wanted to play cockpit games or big interactive games for more than double the price. The next thing you knew those were the only choices you had. I stopped going at that point. This interest in the retro games that are classic standup machines seems to suggest people just wanted what they had in the first place.
- deveac 14y ago
  >I disagree, those are not arcades, they are bars and nightclubs that happen to have retro games spread throughout. Agree. They are arcade-themed bars. They admit in the article that the revenue stream from their arcade games can't pay for the game and let them even come close to staying in business. They sell beer, food, music, and dancing using arcade inspired nostalgia as a hook. >True, consoles were a big competitor but there was nothing like getting in that line to put your token on the machine. Disagree here. There was something like putting your token on your machine, except better. Having the machine in your living room, with arcade quality graphics. I don't believe that arcades could have simply kept their prices lower and still remained competitive. The cost of their new machines increases over time, as does rent and all of their other bills. I am certain that the increase in price they charged was purely a function of their costs, especially as it happened across the industry as a whole. Edit: Incidentally, the misconception in the second line of yours that I quoted is the purest and most distilled expression of your first point. Nostalgia is a powerful force eh? ;)
  - talmand 14y ago
    For the second quote you go off on a tangent about costs. I'm just saying that sitting on the couch at home with your friends is not the same experience as putting your money on the machine to compete against someone you may not know. If you prefer the home environment with your friends then that's cool. I for one preferred the competition to be had at the local arcade. I agree to a point with your thought on the costs. But to me a good bit of that is the fact they kept using more and more expensive machines that required an increase in pricing. There's no way someone can tell me that a classic stand up machine with a PC in the cabinet costs as much to buy/maintain as those huge behemoth cockpit games. These new machines may have been an attempt to counter consoles since most people will not put a race car cockpit game in their home, but for the most part were boring. Who wants to rock a fake horse forwards and backwards in a crappy rendition of a horse race? If the industry, in the US for me, had stayed away from that nonsense then I would have gladly gone to the arcade despite having a nice console at home. Right now I would love to be able to take my kids to an arcade like I remember having fun in despite having a nice console at home. But those arcades hardly exist any more. Even in local bowling alleys they have those stupid cockpit games.
will_work4tears 14y ago
Hah, we have a place near where I live called Dorky's Bar Arcade. It's no Dave and Busters, but it is fun.
acgourley 14y ago
Gaming is huge and growing. There are ways to make arcades work, it's just not a straight rehash of the 80s arcades. Take gamecenterarcade.com in san mateo. You might not know it's there but it's full most days for various game specific meetup/tournaments. Turns out their niche is giving the community a space to exist. They mostly charge on entry instead of play, and it seems like most gameplay is done on consoles not coin-op.
- dyselon 14y ago
  I agree. Personally, the locations that I find really fascinating about the arcade revival are the ones like GC, Southtown, and Super Arcade that are primarily focused on being community centers.
mherdeg 14y ago
A bit sad that a reporter talked to the Insert Coin(s) guy, who's sort of a newcomer to the space but very successful, and didn't get a chance to chat with someone who's an expert in a similar space in the same city: visitors seemed to be coming in at a nice pace on our recent weekend trip to the Pinball Hall of Fame (http://www.pinballmuseum.org/ http://www.pinballmuseum.org/). I don't see how they make any money, but they've got a great set of hardware and they obviously love their craft. It would be awesome to see places like that and, say, Funspot Arcade grow financially so they could expand their offerings. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to hang out at the venue from "Hackers" (1995), but in real life? With a giant Wipeout game and stuff?!
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Can you imagine how much fun it would be to hang out at the venue from "Hackers" (1995), but in real life? With a giant Wipeout game and stuff?! Yep, I've spent a lot of time fantasizing about opening a place like that. I wish I had the money to do it. :-( I've also been dreaming about opening a "hacker friendly" bar of some sort. A proper pub, with good food and beer, but designed to cater to hackers, cypherpunks, techno-anarchists, gamers, cyberpunks, crypto-anarchists, and geek/hacker types of all sorts.
- alanfalcon 14y ago
  The Pinball Hall of Fame is a non-profit. I agree that it's a fantastic experience (I had my bachelor party partly there). Also, I would definitely love to visit that Hackers arcade.
- asmithmd1 14y ago
  I just visited Funspot in Laconia, NH a couple of weeks ago: http://www.funspotnh.com/ http://www.funspotnh.com/ It was great. All of the old games are lovingly maintained with a sign above them telling when they were introduced and how many copies were sold. I was able to show my 6 and 8 year old daughters the original Pong game that I played when I was about their age as well as my later obsessions: Battle Zone, Asteroids, and Tempest. I guess I had a thing for vector graphics
tankbot 14y ago
I worked in an arcade as a young man and must admit that this exact thing is a back-burner dream of mine. As mentioned in some other HN posts, certain scenes from the Tron movies only fuel the fire. Coincidentally, if you ever find yourself in Portland, OR stop by Ground Kontrol. 4 player Ms. Pacman, good beer, live DJ and the whole upstairs is wall to wall pinball machines. When I die, this is my idea of heaven.
Kuiper 14y ago
One phenomena I've observed in some modern video arcades is the advent of homebrew or "faux" cabinets. An official Street Fighter 4 cabinet costs around $10,000. However, because the most recent home console version of SF4 is identical to the arcade version, it's possible to simply buy an Xbox 360, a display, and a pair of fightsticks (input devices with parts identical to what you would find in an arcade cabinet) and build a wooden shell to house them. Total cost? Less than $1000 for parts, plus labor for assembly. Most people can't tell the difference, and even those who can tell the difference won't care, because the software and input hardware are identical. This makes it far more economical for establishments to offer these options--at $1000, you might not even worry about turning a profit from usage fees, and could offer the game mainly as a service to patrons. The other benefit of the homebrew cabinet is that it allows you to run any console game you please. Marvel vs Cacpom 3, one of the two most popular fighting games in North America, is actually home console only--there's no official cabinet, so homebrew is the only way to go if you want an arcade setup.
- Impossible 14y ago
  In the case of SF4, the official Arcade version of the game is just a PC running Windows XP embedded (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X2#Taito_Type_X.C2.B2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X2#Taito_Type_X.C2.B...)
brador 14y ago
Is this all an American thing or is Europe seeing a similar revival?
- lmm 14y ago
  Funland, in the Trocadero off Picadilly Circus (very much the geekiest place in London), closed fairly recently. I find it hard to believe there'd be a better place for an arcade in the UK, possibly anywhere in Europe, so it seems like a pretty bad sign. The one big success story here is the namco center, which I think works on a pay-for-the-day basis; I've only known corporate days out there rather than people going on their own.
newobj 14y ago
Don't know how they managed to miss talking about Baby Castles in NY : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/nyregion/13joint.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/nyregion/13joint.html?_r=1 http://kotaku.com/5670738/visit-a-place-where-it-is-ok-to-hug-arcade-machines http://kotaku.com/5670738/visit-a-place-where-it-is-ok-to-hu...

59 points by iProject 14y ago

rocky1138 14y ago

Arcades are cool, but they're too damn expensive. Make each game 5c and I'll play all the time.

bryanlarsen 14y ago
I suspect that one of the major reasons why arcades are still viable in Japan but not the US is because each play costs 100 yen, well over a dollar. At 25 cents a play, I suspect that most of these places make the majority of their profits from beer & food. If you're too cheap to pay 25 cents for a game, I suspect that you're too cheap to buy your food & drink at the arcade. If so, the arcades are probably glad they don't have your business.
- evoxed 14y ago
  Maybe I'm just going at all the wrong times, but any Taito Station pretty much hovers between 1-10% capacity (maybe 20% on weekends). I think they could certainly benefit from cheaper games, if only to give the kids on the way back from school a quick thrill with any spare coins they've got. Even making them 50円 would go a long way, since a 100 would get two games. I don't know about others, but I would never start a game if I only had one shot. Two tries, especially if a friend could go as well, would be good enough to draw me in to even the lamest pinball machine. Note: I'm in Yokohama. I don't frequent arcades much so don't know about Tokyo, though I'll be in Diver City tomorrow to check out the ROUND1 (I heard it has a set rate for the facility).
  - larsberg 14y ago
    I was just in Tokyo. Even during the daytime, the Taito Stations (at least in Akiba and Shinjuku) were over 20% capacity. And on weekenights and weekend evenings, particularly in Sinjuku, it was well over 50% of the machines in use. It felt more full than that, though, because there are lots of observers for whatever that 8-on-8 online mech game was and the new Hatsune Miku/vocaloid rhythm game. Even the crane games are pretty heavily packed. My only major complaint, as an American, is that they reeked pretty heavily of cigarettes (though not as badly as pachinko parlors). It was like being taken back in time 5-10 years, back before major cities started mandating non-smoking environments.
DavidAdams 14y ago
I spend a lot of time here with my kids: http://nickelmaniagames.com/ http://nickelmaniagames.com/ My 10 and 12 year old boys like playing the old games just as much as I did when I was their age 30 years ago.

jetti 14y ago

This reminds me of a place near me Galloping Ghost (http://gallopingghostarcade.com/ http://gallopingghostarcade.com/). If you're ever in the Chicagoland area, check it out. They charge an entry fee of $15 but all their games are on free play. Better yet, they let you come and go as you please for the entire day with that one purchase (so 11 hours of potential play time). They find and restore beat up arcade games as well as have a few PS3 in an arcade box with newer games (Mortal Kombat as well as Street Fighter). There is nothing like playing Mortal Kombat II for hours on end with a friend and then going to play NFL Blitz 99, NBA Jam and then back again. The best (and also worst) part is that there is no risk to play new games since they are all free (it is bad because you'll occasionally walk up to a game and have to either wait for the time to expire in game or just kill the character because somebody walked away mid game).

helipad 14y ago

I'd like to think Caine's Arcade has picked up steam.

gaius 14y ago

Article doesn't mention it, but I think a lot of people were reminded of Flynn's by Tron 2, and thought to themselves, hmm, what a good idea...

mindcrime 14y ago
Watching Tron:Legacy certainly made me want to open an arcade! I just don't have the capital lying around to do it. But, yeah, it sure seems that with the right touch, the arcade could be revived as a business model. I sure hope so anyway, I miss arcades. I actually found myself wondering if Disney would be willing to license the "Flynn's" name to somebody... how cool would it be to walk into an actual Flynn's arcade sometime? :-)
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I think Disney uses "Flynn's" at one of their parks, so I doubt they would license it.

talmand 14y ago

I disagree, those are not arcades, they are bars and nightclubs that happen to have retro games spread throughout. I'm not taking my kids to a nightclub to play arcade games but one or two they mention would be worthy. Although it is nice to see interest in having arcade machines in some form so maybe it'll kick off interest in proper arcades. From my experience, being someone that spent a great deal of time in arcades as a kid, that the arcade industry practically killed itself. True, consoles were a big competitor but there was nothing like getting in that line to put your token on the machine. Consoles is just friends having fun, arcades were friends and strangers competing. Totally different experience. But the arcades started dying when somebody had the silly idea that people wanted to play cockpit games or big interactive games for more than double the price. The next thing you knew those were the only choices you had. I stopped going at that point. This interest in the retro games that are classic standup machines seems to suggest people just wanted what they had in the first place.

deveac 14y ago
>I disagree, those are not arcades, they are bars and nightclubs that happen to have retro games spread throughout. Agree. They are arcade-themed bars. They admit in the article that the revenue stream from their arcade games can't pay for the game and let them even come close to staying in business. They sell beer, food, music, and dancing using arcade inspired nostalgia as a hook. >True, consoles were a big competitor but there was nothing like getting in that line to put your token on the machine. Disagree here. There was something like putting your token on your machine, except better. Having the machine in your living room, with arcade quality graphics. I don't believe that arcades could have simply kept their prices lower and still remained competitive. The cost of their new machines increases over time, as does rent and all of their other bills. I am certain that the increase in price they charged was purely a function of their costs, especially as it happened across the industry as a whole. Edit: Incidentally, the misconception in the second line of yours that I quoted is the purest and most distilled expression of your first point. Nostalgia is a powerful force eh? ;)
- talmand 14y ago
  For the second quote you go off on a tangent about costs. I'm just saying that sitting on the couch at home with your friends is not the same experience as putting your money on the machine to compete against someone you may not know. If you prefer the home environment with your friends then that's cool. I for one preferred the competition to be had at the local arcade. I agree to a point with your thought on the costs. But to me a good bit of that is the fact they kept using more and more expensive machines that required an increase in pricing. There's no way someone can tell me that a classic stand up machine with a PC in the cabinet costs as much to buy/maintain as those huge behemoth cockpit games. These new machines may have been an attempt to counter consoles since most people will not put a race car cockpit game in their home, but for the most part were boring. Who wants to rock a fake horse forwards and backwards in a crappy rendition of a horse race? If the industry, in the US for me, had stayed away from that nonsense then I would have gladly gone to the arcade despite having a nice console at home. Right now I would love to be able to take my kids to an arcade like I remember having fun in despite having a nice console at home. But those arcades hardly exist any more. Even in local bowling alleys they have those stupid cockpit games.

will_work4tears 14y ago

Hah, we have a place near where I live called Dorky's Bar Arcade. It's no Dave and Busters, but it is fun.

acgourley 14y ago

Gaming is huge and growing. There are ways to make arcades work, it's just not a straight rehash of the 80s arcades. Take gamecenterarcade.com in san mateo. You might not know it's there but it's full most days for various game specific meetup/tournaments. Turns out their niche is giving the community a space to exist. They mostly charge on entry instead of play, and it seems like most gameplay is done on consoles not coin-op.

dyselon 14y ago
I agree. Personally, the locations that I find really fascinating about the arcade revival are the ones like GC, Southtown, and Super Arcade that are primarily focused on being community centers.

mherdeg 14y ago

A bit sad that a reporter talked to the Insert Coin(s) guy, who's sort of a newcomer to the space but very successful, and didn't get a chance to chat with someone who's an expert in a similar space in the same city: visitors seemed to be coming in at a nice pace on our recent weekend trip to the Pinball Hall of Fame (http://www.pinballmuseum.org/ http://www.pinballmuseum.org/). I don't see how they make any money, but they've got a great set of hardware and they obviously love their craft. It would be awesome to see places like that and, say, Funspot Arcade grow financially so they could expand their offerings. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to hang out at the venue from "Hackers" (1995), but in real life? With a giant Wipeout game and stuff?!

mindcrime 14y ago
Can you imagine how much fun it would be to hang out at the venue from "Hackers" (1995), but in real life? With a giant Wipeout game and stuff?! Yep, I've spent a lot of time fantasizing about opening a place like that. I wish I had the money to do it. :-( I've also been dreaming about opening a "hacker friendly" bar of some sort. A proper pub, with good food and beer, but designed to cater to hackers, cypherpunks, techno-anarchists, gamers, cyberpunks, crypto-anarchists, and geek/hacker types of all sorts.
alanfalcon 14y ago
The Pinball Hall of Fame is a non-profit. I agree that it's a fantastic experience (I had my bachelor party partly there). Also, I would definitely love to visit that Hackers arcade.
asmithmd1 14y ago
I just visited Funspot in Laconia, NH a couple of weeks ago: http://www.funspotnh.com/ http://www.funspotnh.com/ It was great. All of the old games are lovingly maintained with a sign above them telling when they were introduced and how many copies were sold. I was able to show my 6 and 8 year old daughters the original Pong game that I played when I was about their age as well as my later obsessions: Battle Zone, Asteroids, and Tempest. I guess I had a thing for vector graphics

tankbot 14y ago

I worked in an arcade as a young man and must admit that this exact thing is a back-burner dream of mine. As mentioned in some other HN posts, certain scenes from the Tron movies only fuel the fire. Coincidentally, if you ever find yourself in Portland, OR stop by Ground Kontrol. 4 player Ms. Pacman, good beer, live DJ and the whole upstairs is wall to wall pinball machines. When I die, this is my idea of heaven.

Kuiper 14y ago

One phenomena I've observed in some modern video arcades is the advent of homebrew or "faux" cabinets. An official Street Fighter 4 cabinet costs around $10,000. However, because the most recent home console version of SF4 is identical to the arcade version, it's possible to simply buy an Xbox 360, a display, and a pair of fightsticks (input devices with parts identical to what you would find in an arcade cabinet) and build a wooden shell to house them. Total cost? Less than $1000 for parts, plus labor for assembly. Most people can't tell the difference, and even those who can tell the difference won't care, because the software and input hardware are identical. This makes it far more economical for establishments to offer these options--at $1000, you might not even worry about turning a profit from usage fees, and could offer the game mainly as a service to patrons. The other benefit of the homebrew cabinet is that it allows you to run any console game you please. Marvel vs Cacpom 3, one of the two most popular fighting games in North America, is actually home console only--there's no official cabinet, so homebrew is the only way to go if you want an arcade setup.

Impossible 14y ago
In the case of SF4, the official Arcade version of the game is just a PC running Windows XP embedded (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X2#Taito_Type_X.C2.B2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X2#Taito_Type_X.C2.B...)

brador 14y ago

Is this all an American thing or is Europe seeing a similar revival?

lmm 14y ago
Funland, in the Trocadero off Picadilly Circus (very much the geekiest place in London), closed fairly recently. I find it hard to believe there'd be a better place for an arcade in the UK, possibly anywhere in Europe, so it seems like a pretty bad sign. The one big success story here is the namco center, which I think works on a pay-for-the-day basis; I've only known corporate days out there rather than people going on their own.

newobj 14y ago

Don't know how they managed to miss talking about Baby Castles in NY : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/nyregion/13joint.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/nyregion/13joint.html?_r=1 http://kotaku.com/5670738/visit-a-place-where-it-is-ok-to-hug-arcade-machines http://kotaku.com/5670738/visit-a-place-where-it-is-ok-to-hu...