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Visualized: Growing up in arcades
If you're anything like us -- and you are -- you can get quite nostalgic (and often downright teary-eyed) when contemplating your geek past. That's why we know you'll just love our latest favorite Flickr pool, Growing Up In Arcades: 1979-1989. We'd like to stay and chat, but there are well over a hundred pictures featuring stonewashed denim, cheesy mustaches, and coin-op console games that we are dying to check out. Feel like joining us? Hit the source link. [Photo credit: Daves Portfolio]
Operation Pure Wind demolishes over 600 arcade machines... on video!
For a soul-crushing show of government power, one need look no further than this video of six hundred arcade game consoles being destroyed in a public ceremony by the Jinan Municipal Public Security Bureau in the People's Republic of China. The soothingly named "Operation Pure Wind" took place earlier this month, focusing on illegal and unlicensed criminal activity, including pornography and electronic gambling, and resulted in some 165 arrests. Sure, they're only Baccarat games, but who knows? Maybe if they hadn't been brought up in such a terrible environment they'd have grown up to become Galaga or Mappy consoles. Either way, it's quite sad. Video after the break.
Pixel art poster celebrates arcade games, helps kids
Artist Army of trolls (Gary Lucken) has created a beautiful poster featuring embellished pixel art versions of classic arcade cabinets, including some unlikely choices like Bomb Jack and Giga Wing, available for purchase through the Poster Cause website. Not only is the $25 poster arguably an act of charity toward your wall, purchasing it also contributes to a for-real charity! All of the profits from sales of the poster will be given to SpecialEffect, a UK-based charity that helps make computer games more accessible to kids with disabilities. As if you really needed another reason to want to buy one of these.
This is what a coin-operated NES looks like
While it's not unusual to be loved by anyone for hotels to include video game services, Japan used to do it arcade-style with coin-operated consoles (like the one shown above). 100 JPY (approximately $1 USD) would net you 10-15 minutes with a Famicom (NES), which means you'd have to lay down about $2 or $3 to for a satisfactory amount of this blogger's hotel staple, Punch-Out!!. The Super Famicom (SNES), though, was a bit more coin-hungry, and the $1 equivalent would only last five minutes -- yikes. Still, we're sure that if we visited Japan during the magical time that these boxes were hooked-up to hotel TVs, we would have let go of a few coins for some quick bouts of Mario and such.[Via Kotaku]
The 2400 square-foot private arcade
Sometimes, there's no way to appreciate something someone else has without thoughts of pure envy. Such is the case when viewing Peter Hirschberg's elaborate, sprawling recreation of the greatest arcade that never was, dubbed Luna City. Imagine 2400 square-feet filled with nearly every classic coin-op game you can imagine -- including stunners like Star Wars, Tempest, Tron, Zaxxon, Missile Command, and Galaga -- available for your use, free of charge, 24 hours a day. The massive collection also holds gems like the original Pong arcade machine and the Space Wars copycat Space War (based on one of the earliest known computer games), making the assemblage of coin-ops not just incredibly fun, but also a substantial act of historic preservation. Check out a walkthrough video after the break, and hit the read link for tons of photos and info. Needless to say: want.[Via Retro Thing]
Taito introduces Surface-like arcade game
Well, it didn't take long for Microsoft's Surface to trickle down into the fast-paced world of card gaming (ala Magic). Feast your eyes on the next device your children will be shoveling money into like it's going out of style, a new Square Enix (makers of Final Fantasy) and Taito collaboration called The Wheel of Eternity. The card-based RPG appears to function much in the same way that Bill Gates described Surface's object recognition properties as working, "sensing" cards which are placed on the game area, and reacting to their status, movement and arrangement. There's no word on when or if this game is coming to the states, but with kids' unnatural obsession with card games (particularly those of a Japanese ilk), it seems likely this will be popping up on these shores before long.
America's Army set to storm arcades
If you were thrilled by the patriotism of America's Army (the game, not the overworked fighting force) in your home, but felt like it was lacking the stale Chick-fil-A scented, teen mobbed vibe of your local mall arcade, Global VR and the U.S. Army are going to sort you out with a fresh new coin-op edition. For just $.50 a go, you (and a buddy) can take control of an American soldier, experiencing the honest-to-goodness hands on combat training they receive, all in the safety of an Unreal-engine-based simulation. You'll learn valuable military skills like rules of engagement, marksmanship, and target identification -- and you'll definitely blow up and shoot a lot of stuff. Expect to see the box hitting malls sometime later this year.[Via The Raw Feed]
Gaming legend Bill Cravens passes away
You always hear about the guys who create the games, or the ones who rack up the high scores, but you rarely hear about the people who toil behind the scenes to bring you the gaming experience. The unsung heroes of the video game realm.Bill Cravens, who for years worked as a distributor of coin-op games and was responsible for helping to haul the industry back to its feet after the arcade crash of the 80s, and during the slump of the 90s, was one of those heroes. He sold some of the first Pong games, and distributed games like Mr. Do, Super Punch Out, Final Fight, Street Fighter and Golden Tee 3D (to which bar owners around the world owe him a giant debt of gratitude for).In a fitting tribute while he was still with us, Bill's name and picture were painted on one of the backgrounds in the original Street Fighter game. If you ever saw this and wondered who Bill Cravens was, now you know. Bill passed away recently during his sleep, and he will be missed.
Sept. 11's effect on the coin-op industry
Following up on yesterday's post on the decline of the American arcade, we stumbled across this little bit of soul-searching from Brad Brown, president of coin-op repair and sales shop Worldwide Video. Brown looks back at a rather gloomy 2002 Christmas letter in which he details how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have impacted the coin-op market. According to Brown, the attacks made "a tremendous amount of people want to stay home and entertain themselves," going out only to places that "do not require traveling long distances." Coin-op users in 2002 tended to leave the house only for "very specific events or events that usually include a multitude of activities along with 'we just happen to be there' coin-op game entertainment," Brown said. Years without an attack on American soil may have mitigated these effects, but these days Brown reflects that the "relative down cycle / blip upon our industry that has proven to last far longer and deeper than I would have anticipated." We don't doubt his first-hand experience, but we've also started noticing that those darn, impossible-to-beat Stacker machines are popping up all over the place, so maybe things are turning around. We'll put the question to you -- does the threat of terrorism make you less likely to seek out video game outside the comforts of your own home? [Via Insert Credit]
