The Great American Arcade

I really like cabinets and arcades. It’s practically a dead form of entertainment all it’s own that’s been replaced by online gaming. Video games are stronger than ever and only becoming more popular with each passing day; which I am very grateful for, but there is a special place in my heart for the old American Arcade. It was a social hub for teenagers when I was growing up. A place to get together with some friends while drinking sugary soda, munching down on candy and just dishing out quarters to anyone who’s willing to play a game with you.

While there are still a few arcades around most places don’t have the population or the popularity to keep them open for long. I know my home town’s combination arcade and billiard hall closed when I was about 16 years old and this was before the days of xbox live and the PSN. Sure, there was still online PC gaming but in my tiny, economically disadvantaged town not too many people had a broadband internet connection. These were places for us to be exposed to new games, make new friends and honestly, to just be left alone by adults for a few hours while we hollered, gamed and competed with one another for top score and bragging rights for the night.

The arcade was a social hot spot for a lot of us, the local arcade was our Cheers, the place to we go where everyone knew our names. The owners of the place saw us in there all the time, they would ask us what types of games we wanted or what sort of things we would want in the vending machines tucked away in a little room next to the Foosball tables. The soda machine was always stocked with $0.50 cans of Surge for us to rot our teeth on and keep us at peak gaming performance and they’d always give us our quarters back when a cabinet got greedy and snatched our money without giving us a round to play in trade.

My friends and I would spend hours and 10’s of dollars playing the old wireframe Star Wars game released back in 1983, or Strikers II 1945. To this day I travel from bar to laundrymat through my town and even a few others looking for Strikers, but to no avail. I know I can get it as a PSone game but it’s just not the same unless you’re dropping a quarter in a slot and playing on a old wooden cabinet; the way the game is meant to be played. Playing it on a console is almost a disservice to the game and the men and women who built those cabinets.

My best friend from childhood does the same thing and he isn’t even a gamer! Strikers comes up in conversation roughly once a month as we’ve both spent time looking for it but each time we come up empty handed. Sure we could find another top-down 2D shooter like Strikers II but that’s not the point. That game was a big part of our teenage years and a lot of other friends of ours too. The day that the arcade in Potsdam New York shut down we all went to pay our respects in a manner of speaking; it was the end of an era for us. We all showed up to have one last hurrah because the doors would be closing forever and the those beautiful, old, wooden cabinets would go dark for the last time in front of us.

That day, I probably spent 25 dollars alone simply playing Strikers II. I played a few other games, like the original Time Crisis and once in awhile I’d race a friend in Cruisin’ USA, hell we even had crazy taxi. I had shown up with my pockets loaded with as many quarters as I could fit in each one, giving anyone a quarter who was willing to play some Strikers with me, and boy were there a lot. A few of us hung around until about midnight that day, staying awake as long as we could knowing that when next evening rolled around those doors wouldn’t be unlocked like every night before.

With the hobby slowly shifting into what it’s become today things had to change, and unfortunately one of the things that got left behind was the Great American Arcade. There are a few that are still hanging in there around New York State, small businesses have popped up giving some measure of new life back to these old cabinets. But walking through an arcade these days it’s painfully obvious to see that most people simply don’t have an interest in these old bits of functioning history. strolling down the isle’s of the these dimly lit establishments, hearing the the old midi and 8-bit audio tracks playing on a loop just waiting for someone to play them is almost heartbreaking for those of us who remember what a busy arcade was like. There was nothing like waiting in line for you chance to smoke the person’s score who is in front of you or taking up the challenge to see who can get the furthest on one quarter. For the most part, those days are long gone, stuck in the past with the malt shops, record and book stores. The greatest shame is that these types of machines are tanks and can be repaired again and again, yet no one seems to want them. I’ve seen dead cabinets sitting in the corner of bars, dark and lifeless with a “Out of Order” sign hastily written and taped to it. I know in my mind that they are fixable, but the reality is that someone is just going to take it to the dump, or hack it apart and sell it for scrap.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking back on those old days and while they weren’t perfect like nothing ever truly is, they were fantastic times with even more fantastic games spent with some of the greatest friends I’d ever had. The highlight of my summers was sneaking a flask of cheap rum into my arcade and taking stealthy nips off it while sharing with friends who’ve been kind enough to pay for a game or two for you. While everything moves forward and make progress there are always bits that get left behind and some of those things won’t even come back. You can’t capture the atmosphere of an arcade in your living room, no matter how dim you make the lights or how much stale cigarette smoke floats around you there is just no replacing the Great American Arcade.