Arcade Mania by Brian Ashcraft and Jean Snow
Arcades are dead. And rightfully so: American arcades never bothered to change with the times (despite a brief dalliance with the public spectacle of games like Dance Dance Revolution).
Not so in Japan, where arcades continue to evolve in surprising ways, in the stereotypical "bigger, crazier" Japanese method, as well as the more pedestrian. Case in point: Yuka Nakajima, queen of "Crane Games", those funny claw machines that are commonly ignored in department store vestibules in the States but big business in Japan. Nakajima is so adept at "UFO Catchers" (the Japanese moniker for all claw machines) that she has an entire room filled with the stuffed bears she has won and is the star of video tutorials included in the games themselves.
I learned about Nakajima in the new book Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers by Brian "The Sweetest Man in Games Journalism" Ashcraft and Jean "Pretty Sweet Himself" Snow. Ash is a pal, so I was a bit worried when I first got my copy; how interesting could a book about arcades be? Turns out I had nothing to fret about. There's a whole new set of human experience happening inside Japan's game centers and it's just as varied and weird and surprising as you could hope it would be.
I too often have an expectation, a caricature, in mind about Japan and its culture that occludes my perception of the people living and playing there. That's natural, of course, and perhaps even welcome: it makes a reading a book that supplants many of my preconceptions so effectively even more exciting.
Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers [Amazon]
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The economics of the claw game are pretty simple ... if you put in the price to play, you've paid 2x to 10x what the maximum cost is of whatever you might "win" out of it.
You never "win" a claw game, and even then, many of them are unfairly set up.
Other than the life size models of Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Soryu the absolute defening volume, and the sheer size of the places, the tokyo game centers didn't seem that differant to me than the north american arcades I've been in...
Of course, I only hung around for about 10 minutes. Arcades are too damned expensive and I'm really only into RPGs and strategy gaming.
(note for the anime-deprived: the two characters listed are extraordinarily famous - I happened to be in tokyo during the 10th anniversary of the show they come from, neon genesis evangelion)
also..
#1 - Actually, in Japan they have some very expensive stuff in japanese claw machines. The thing is, the more expensive the goods, the more care the people running the place take to be certain that almost nobody can win even one. There were machines with DVDs, anime figures (some of which are worth $80 or more), etc.
There are people who are more-or-less professional claw game players (the article names one), and I did actually see a guy scoping out the machines that have the goods worth reselling, going from machine to machine carefully inspecting every angle to check the odds of being able to come away with a profit.
Well, of course! American arcades are dead. Don't you know they promote beatnikism? or whatever they call that!
Being at Ground Kontrol in Portland just this past weekend, and seeing the packed house they had, I would hardly say that they were "dead". It's like saying that bookstores are dead.
People who read go to bookstores. People who play games go to arcades. Right?
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Yes, arcades in America are dead. There are a few who haven't got the memo yet, but lets be honest. In the 80's even the smallest town had a thriving arcade. Now I'd be surprised if a city under 50,000 people had a single arcade at all. (And no, I'm not taking about that lone Timer Crisis machine next to the bathroom at the movie theater.)
It doesn't even begin to compare to Japan where there are more arcades than a human could visit. Huge multilevel buildings with floors dedicated to each kind of game. More square footage than a Wal-mart, and they're full of people of all ages at all hours. From young guys honing their UFO catcher skills to impress their girlfriends on the first floor to the salarymen smoking up a storm on the 7th floor betting on a virtual horse race on a 40 foot screen. The top floor has standard Vegas table games, poker, blackjack, with dealers, but there's also a floor of carnival games (batting cage, shoot baskets, etc.) a floor split between driving games and shooters. For the girls a whole floor of photo machines. If the games aren't new, they are old well loved favorites. That guy over there playing Typing of the Dead looks like he's been doing it for years.
As a kid who grew up tanned in the light of his local arcade in the 80's, Japan's arcades are truly a different world.
(Disclosure: I lived in the Midwest in the 80's and in Tokyo in the '00s.)
As for crane games: I've seen them offer everything from ice cream and candy to naughty nurse outfits and Nintendo Wiis. But they are beatable. I had a guy try to teach me once. I didn't grok the machine mechanics well enough to get it to work for me, but this guy would go after the same stuffed wadget I tried for and damned if he didn't get it 3/4 of the time.
Hate to think how much money he spent to get that good.
On a whim the other day I decided to pop into the local Sega game center for the first time in almost a decade. It was astounding to see just how much things have changed and evolved in these urban fun centers. Highlights not limited to cute costume rentals for taking purikura, a "Nostaliga games" corner, a sort of steam-punkish analog/digital hybrid horse racing track, and the usual assortment of UFO catchers and of course, games.
However, the really outstanding feature to me was the IC card feature linked into the game center's attractions. I sauntered up to the only thing that looked familiar - the new Street Fighter IV machine. (The last arcade game I recall from a US arcade being SFII) After beating down a few CPU challengers, I found myself up against "Secchan" as his name was written under his chosen fighters name. After being beaten to a pulp, Secchan's stats came up - over 500 wins with an 89% success rate. My friend pointed out to me later that be registering as a member all these additional features become available on a variety of games.
Games that help players track their stats and purikura machines that offer to send the photos directly to your keitai... all these extra services are evidence of the special and important evolution of Japan's game centers.
Just a note about the yen-sink that is the claw game... in most of the arcades, certainly the larger ones, you can ask the attendants to adjust the prize to make it easier/possible to get. They are particularly willing to do so after you have tried and failed horribly.
American Arcades could survive only as long as their graphics stayed more advanced than home video consoles (like Atari 2600); Eventually PC-based games rivaled that, and then consoles eventually caught up. As more and more American homes began to acquire these items, there was less and less reason for junior to go spend his roll of quarters at the Mall arcade...and I do remember spending rolls of quarters, even at the corner grocery store in Oran, Missouri playing PacMan in the 1980s, spending a few weeks with my grandmother in the summers between school years, then later at the dinky old mall in Sikeston, Missouri after she moved there. At home, there was Westwood Mall in Houston (now defunct) which had a decent arcade that I liked to visit with friends. If we'd had Xbox back then, we'd have never left each other's houses, except to play outside. But instead we had the Atari 2600, which was okay; eventually games got better on the Apple II+, and I learned to type playing Ultima III, since that game made use of every key on the keyboard. I do remember in college we had that pretty rad 3D racing game (the one with the loop, that would replay your crashes from a 3rd person perspective) in one of the dorms, I played that some; Also, the old Terminator FPS was kind of fun, in the Memorial Student Center at TAMU. Those games at my undergrad institution in the early 1990s were probably the last coin-op games I've ever played.
I'm always a generation behind on game consoles. I got a PSX only after the PS2 came out. I got a PS2 only when the PS3 was coming out, mainly because it doubles as a DVD player. I will probably move on to the PS3 once the PS4 comes out, whenever that will be.
Getting $5 in quarters to spend on my 5th birthday in the local arcade (Aladdin's Castle) was one of the coolest things ever. It's sad that arcades have all but disappeared.
Powerful consoles like the PS3 and high-definition televisions (and the faded cultural novelty) have left people with little reason to make the trek to an arcade. Their cultural relevance can't be overstated, though. Arcades created interactive, electronic storytelling with titles like Dragon Slayer that weren't possible with home consoles of the time.
But technology marches on: The PS3 and XBOX 360 and HD televisions have inherited the task and carry the genre forward.
Bullshit arcades in Japan are thriving.. more are closing every day http://kotaku.com/353630/namco-bandai-sega-closing-arcades-all-over-japan . The Japan Times also wrote about the trend continuing last month but I cannot find an online link at present.
Oops, I meant Dragon's Lair :)
American Arcade owners were idiots.
They thought kids would play games no matter how old they are. Arcades still could have showcased games before they appeared on consoles.
Or even hacked Street FIghter 2 (as I saw all over in Israel) to make it different.
My personal view on why arcades have failed in the US boils down to one simple (but unavoidable) thing:
The largest commonly circulated denomination of American coinage is the quarter dollar.
Now you may cite many other reasons, lack of quality of games, etc. But it cannot be denied that the 100 yen coin (equal to about a dollar) is just so much easier to slip into the machine than 4 quarters. When I lived in Japan I spent more 100 yen coins than I care to talk about in UFO catchers and arcade games simply because I always had the coins in my pocket. I rarely if ever thought about the fact that I was blowing a whole dollar on something utterly trivial. A gamer would be much more willing to part with a single coin, no matter how much they're paying, than several...and would probably choose both options over the headache of wrestling a dollar bill into a finicky receptacle.
At least that's my take on it.
But yeah, arcades are dead in America. Just because you know of one successful one in your neighborhood doesn't mean that they're still thriving everywhere in the US. You are lucky if that's the case, but literally thousands have closed their doors in the past 15 or so years. And the above poster who said the same thing is happening in Japan is also right. Almost all arcades in Japan that don't also contain pachinko or "medal" gambling floors are closing down at a rapid pace. That and purikura photo booths are the only real consistent money-makers in any Japanese arcade.
I'd just like to add from an ex-arcade owner's American perspective here:
Arcade owners weren't/aren't stupid. It's not the lack of newer games, or the lack of "hacked" (illegal) games that fails to draw in customers. It's the price difference between buying a new piece of hardware as opposed to one you already own.
Back in the 80's and early 90's, it was entirely possible to swap out the guts of the game (ie, the software/hardware) while keeping the same button and joystick layout. See: Capcom Gen 2, Neo-Geo, ect, games. With a simple card/board/rom swap, you could have an entirely different or new game showcased.
Somewhere along the line, manufacturers realized there was money to be made in selling arcade machines. It wasn't about the gamer, or the software, or the quality of game showcased. It was all about selling it to the owner. Keep in mind that quality machines of new games could cost upwards of $3000. That's a lot of quarters, plus overhead, maintenance, and the like. And then somewhere along the lines, programmers realized it was easier and often financially better to simply program for a console. Mortal Kombat went this route, for example.
Really though, I think cost combined with the availability of online play really led to the downfall here. The arcade was a social place, where you could compete against other gamers. Go for the high score left by someone you didn't know. But with online gaming, you see/hear/contact that person immediately. You get the gratification instantly of their reaction to being defeated.
Now you get "family" arcades - D&B and the like that don't really specialize in the genre, but just offer it. And overprice it. You'd be hard-pressed to find even the hint of a fighting game in D&B, and even their "classic" games like Mrs. Pac-man, Space Invaders, Galaga, are like $2.00/go. In retrospect, maybe they aren't overpriced - maybe that's what we should have been charging all along to meet manufacturer price increases.