Fun fact about gaming in Brazil: Despite consoles supposed to be an affordable alternative to arcades, consoles here were (and still is) super expensive. Because of that we had Game Houses that worked very much like an Arcade, but with consoles instead, with you paying per hour of gameplay, and were the only way most kids could play video-games. And this survived for many years until probably early-mid 2010's, when Smartphones started becoming affordable.
That's also the case in the arab world, between the late 1990s to the early 2010s gaming cafés where everywhere and most teens and young adults would go hangout in there, they where one of the most popular places to hang out with your friends, I remember our local gaming places where full of people playing a weird modded version of CS1.6 and raging gamer style all the time, good times
Those existed for quite a long while in Eastern Europe as well. We used to call them NetCafe's/ Internet Cafe's. Both for Console as well as PC gaming. They mostly died out, but some are still kicking.
My favorite little story about the beginning of arcade games is that they had a hard time convincing businesses to set up Pong arcade machines and when one bar owner finally took the "risk" he reported the machine broken after like 2 days or so. When they came to check what was wrong with it they found out that the coin compartment simply was full to the brim and that's why no one could play anymore. Don't know how much the developers exaggerated that story, but it came up in a documentary about the history of video gaming in general I saw a few years ago.
I worked as a service tech on pinball machines and cabinet video games and this was rare, but did happen. Ms. Pacman became our most played machines, and we would have to empty the coin boxes every few days.
I was afraid he was gonna talk about him right before he mentioned him, like a dread came over me lol. I'm getting so sick of that idiot trying to keep relevant.
To give context to the New York Mayor banning pinball at the beginning (around the 1:30 mark), the reason it was so controversial was because old pinball machines had no flippers. It was just a game of Plinko. Which is a lot more reasonable to consider that gambling. If he clarifies this later, oops, my dumbass would forget by the end so I'm leaving this comment now.
23:05 There was this place called Maximum Gamer my friends and I went to in the mid 00s that was exactly like those cafes. Even had $30 lock-ins/ LAN tournaments on weekends where you could play from sun down to sun up. $1.50 for a slice of pizza and a Bawls energy drink. Played so much Counter Strike 1.6 and Halo CE over LAN with all the other people there. Insanely cool place.
some are still around but they are rarer that arcades, I've got several arcade bars in my city but only the one gaming cafe, its very cool and there is nobody in it lol
I just love how well researched and caring your essays feel. There's countless other essayists on here, but not many make it this pleasant, like it just feels comfy you know.
At the very end of May this year, SEGA officially brought their rhythm arcade series Maimai DX over to Round1 Puente Hills Mall in Los Angeles to see if there was an audience. Multiple communities online were cheering about this and talking about driving over, maybe even flying over to play the game. I personally went twice to play it and met people coming over a thousand miles down from Canada just to -attend a pump it up tournament and also- play maimai. I got to meet and talk to people, learn about the game and how everything works, and better connect with a new community. It was beautiful. I'm so happy I could experience it and I hope that arcades never disappear so others can too.
I miss arcades for an affordable price, but the good thing about arcade cabinets is you can buy them. Also, since they are in often family owned pizza restaurants or bowling alleys, I like to use that to my advantage and play them.
I love how Lextorias is actually interested in his videos' topics. And if not directly interested in them, then interested in the reason why people care so much about said topic.
If you live anywhere near Brookfield, Illinois, there’s a huge arcade called Galloping Ghost Arcade. Gainesville, Florida also has a huge arcade called Bragging Rights. You pay one price, and you can play all the games as long as you want, all day long. It is worth experiencing an arcade at least once.
For people who are of drinking age and in major metros, you can usually find "barcades" or "gamer pubs" in your area which can provide some of that sensation to this day. If you want a blessed reminder of the heyday, look into whatever your area might have for arcade/pin ball expositions. For example, the Bay Area of California has a major one in late July called California Extreme where collectors bring in their arcade and pinball machines and put them all on free play. They include classics, rarities, and some prototypes that never made it to the floors. Go in on the Friday or Saturday night and it feels like a trip back into that heyday, jam packed with folks playing, competing, watching, and cheering each other on. I likley won't be making this year for my own reasons, but I highly recommend it to somebody who wants to either relive those times or get a taste of the beautiful third space that was the video arcade.
In Florida, there's a growing chain of arcades called Arcade Monsters, which was about an hour from where I went to college. It basically merges bar/night life with arcades. You pay a flat entry fee, all arcade machines are free (no quarters) and there's a bar that serves drinks. One recently opened up in Orlando on International Drive and it has a pretty nice setup. I definitely recommend checking it out one day for anyone local or taking a vacation to Florida.
RHYTHM GAMES ON TOP. FROM IIDX, DDR, POP'N, SDVX TO MAIMAI CHUNITHM, MUSIC DIVER, WACCA, AND GROOVE COASTER. IM SO GLAD YOU ALL EXIST AND HELP KEEP THE SCENE ALIVE
Man, I remember doing DDR tournaments at my arcade back in the late 90s/early 00s. I felt like I made it when I could finally do Max 300 on heavy without hugging the bar. I still have a lot of games and an old dance pad on PS2. Man, now I only play for about 20 minutes on medium and I'm aching and feel like I need a nap.
@@warpdrivefueledbyinsomnia8165 Faaacts. The biggest pain of a rhythm gamer is when you no longer have the time to keep playing and you lose the ability to keep going. Downside: You'll never full combo that song again Upside: You didn't play ling enough to get an injury while playing, cause your body can't keep it up forever anyway.
Despite your having never been to an arcade, I think you did a great job covering the subject! As a child of the '90s, I very much miss that in-person, community aspect of video gaming. It really was this fun place where your parents could dump you for an hour or two, and you and your buddies could just go wild on as many games as your allowance would take you. This was also where my adoration of fighting games came into full bloom: I'm one of the people that has multiple arcade sticks not only because it's a nice dopamine hit when I use it, but also because it's how I learned to play fighting games. Thirty years of muscle memory isn't easy to unlearn, let me tell you. As for the "future" of arcades, I've seen a number of throwback arcades ("barcades" if they serve food/alcohol) that charge you a flat fee (let's say $10 for the day), and all the machines are on free play. I've taken my kids on more than one occasion, and it's a great experience: you should definitely give 'em a shot if you have one in your area. Lastly, as a guy who lived in Seoul in the late '90s, I loved hearing that PC bungs (that's how we always pronounced it, but my buddies and I could've just been plebs) are still going strong. I had a ton of fun playing Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Diablo and the like there back in the day.
There are still a lot of arcades out there if you look hard enough. Even most of the gimmicky ones which are dominated by claw games and watered down mobile games usually have some classic games, and barcades are becoming more and more popular these days. It's definitely a really fun experience to actually go somewhere and play an arcade game on a CRT with the original sights and sounds and with high scores being displayed on each cabinet.
Thanks for the well-researched video. I'm lucky to live in a city where we have a couple of local barcades where I us uncool old folk can grab a beer, some mixed drinks and play classic arcade machines. It's usually my birthday go-to with friends. I recommend if any gamers have the opportunity to go to a local barcade (Not chain places like Dave and Busters it's not the same vibe) check it out.
As a dude in my early 40s, yea arcades hold a dear place for me. Even more so in the later years now that I have money. I don't see much of a reason to play something I have at home in the arcade, but rhythm games in Japan arcades are something else. Maimai, Chunithm, and other relatively large control schemes are not something to replicate at home. P.S. I have a Hitbox arcade like yours, but recently bought a Haute42 S16. It's under $45 and fully configurable. We're eating good :) Thanks for the video!
Random fun fact: We have a small little gaming cafe in our small village These things are huge here since people still care a lot about their community and I find that it does reflect, especially when you compare it to how america is...
This is a fantastic essay. The disappearance of 3rd places is honestly something that needs to be talked about more, and I love that you tied it into the history of arcades
I'm sad that arcades went away, because you're right on the money with the "je ne sais quois" they have. All you ever get nowadays are those bootleg-o-matics with 700 ROMs installed, or the gambling-style machines you mentioned (either ticket or claw). I can hardly blame the venues, especially on the former; cabinets are expensive to maintain, especially in an age where parts for 20+ year old machines are scarce, but they just don't have any magic about them. I thought VR would be the big reviver of in-person gaming because of the high cost of entry, but there's not really been any "killer games" for that besides Beat Saber, and that has a triple factor: a) everyone who wanted to try it has probably tried it by now, b) they got wise and you need a specific licence to run it in a commercial context, and c) the "high score" doesn't really have that much cultural weight nowadays, or at least it seems that way to me. Add that to VR having a trend of making people kind of sick the first time they try it and I think that idea is dead in the water. Mostly, though, I'm just grumpy because I love pinball and there's (generally) nowhere to play it! Let me enjoy my outdated entertainment from the 90s, dangit!
as someone who's only gotten really into fighting games and rhythm games in the last decade, i didn't even realize how big a deal the social aspect is when it comes to the arcades. not only did i miss a good chunk of cool rhythm games when i was younger (was too shy to play on a "stage" essentially), but also all the potential friendships and moments i could've had :')
Fun fact: if you live in a city with bigger libraries, there's a decent chance the library accommodates gaming PCs and has tons of games you can borrow for free
I remember when I was a child get robbed by gang members in the arcade, but that were funny and dark places where if You get good in games, you were king.
That part where you mentioned the PC gaming cafes kinda hit home for me. I think Korea is one of the first to really make them popular and a viable business model, which eventually made it's way to India where I was a college student from 2017 to 2021. There was a high quality PC gaming cafe(we called them parlours at the time) in the town where the campus was and another one in the local mall in my hometown. I remember all my friends/cousins wanting to spend all their spare time there and heck, some of them practically LIVED there. PC gaming wasn't easily accessible for most of them, so they always found it cheaper than buying and owning a PC plus the games they wanted to play, so they let the parlours do it for them.
we still have arcades here in the philippines, mostly in the malls. At least in my city, we got one in pretty much every mall, some malls have 2 lmao, though the people that go there are usually families or just looking to have some quick fun, so it's less of a community than those 90s arcades. There are still a few regulars that come by and become friends, they usually hang out by the DDR
It was the early '70s when I discovered pinball arcades. It was at an pop-up pinball arcade tent at the Ohio State Fair where I played the first video game, Computer Space (we called it Rockets & Saucers) and we were upset that it cost TWO quarters a game rather than the single quarter per game we were used to with the pinball machines. But we payed our quarters and played the game because this was certainly something completely new. I still saw Whack-a-Mole and other such physical games in some video game arcades into the '80s.
Accepting the fall of arcades took me a long time to accept but I sm happy to have been a late Gen-X kid to have lived through out that whole era in 80s and 90s
I'm glad you mentioned Internet cafes at the end. I helped operate a local one between 2010-2015 and we had a great community of regulars. $3/hr got you access to a huge library of games on decent hardware connected to fast reliable internet. We didn't have hot food but we did sell frozen stuff and had a public microwave (and a McDonald's across the parking lot in the same strip mall). We also used to have "lock-ins" anyone could pay to be "locked in" overnight and we'd order a bunch of pizza and play games until the sun came up. Basically being a $20 babysitter for 20-30 kids for a whole night. It was fun because everyone would naturally band together and play a 5v5 League game in-house or get the whole room on a single CS:S server. Those days are long gone though because it's far easier to just buy a console and stay home or pay games that don't demand top-tier hardware.
The free play arcades, where you pay for so much time at the door, are still there, and they are a collection of many of these games. There's a certain charm in playing the old games because they're just different from what we see now.
Me at 22:30 "he's doing the outro - can't believe he didn't talk about Korean video game cafes! They launched Starcraft to such significance that competitions got televised!" Me at 23:00 "oh. Well, at least they got a shoutout lol"
You've never truly experienced video gaming at it's best until you've experienced having your head slammed into the edge of a double dragon machine from the other player because you hid from Abobo! 🤕
Arcades were a third place, but they were rarely their own distinct third place. Instead they were a weird subculture of random places like laundermats, smoke stained convenience stores, bowling alleys and to a lesser degree malls. At least in my experience. But the third place-ness of them was no less prevalent because of this. They functionally gave those random locations their own life and flavor. Like, meet me at the Laundromat, new sf2 just dropped. It was a different time.
It was actually pretty disheartening going to Japan only to find their arcane scene alive and kicking, but nowhere near as social. Multiplayer linked fighting games and casino-eske pachinko really took the wind out of my sails.
By me (okay like an hours drive) is a mix of a high class bar and an the Korean thing. They do trivia nights, had speed running on the TVs, PC's and board games you could rent, and some really fun themed food. Like I had some non alcoholic drinks in like potion bottles and all the food had nerd puns. I've only managed to make it out once, but it was a great time and I keep trying to go again. The downside is, as a half bar half restaurant, it is much more adult orientated vs teen or family orientated. But it was popular enough that reservations were STRONGLY encouraged. That may be another way where things could settle. I'd hope not exclusively - it was a bit too pricey to go regularly - but it was a lot of fun
I run a space in the Burlington VT area where we host weekly fighting game locals, but I also run an afterschool program where I teach kids life skills and self-improvement through learning how to play fighting games in a collaborative “third place” sort of environment. This video was wonderful to see.
Every year, week of Labor Day, a nearby town hosts a large county fair. When I was a kid, they had a big arcade set up. I remember watching older kids play the latest Mortal Kombat and all the fatalities. Some of my favorite fair memories.
The importance of the arcade for the FGC cannot be overstated: Aside from trying to keep the spirit alive in Discord servers, various forums, and even the devs putting digital arcades in the newer games, there was even a huge push towards offline tournaments to come back after people felt the fully online COVID era to be rather empty and this is despite the travel costs being a constant pain in the ass for everyone.
Late 80s to early 90s arcade culture was a freaking great ride. I miss it so much. Some malls had 2 arcades, bowling alleys skating rinks etc always had fighting games... so fun
I miss going to my local arcade, Nickle city. it always had alot of fun and weird games and always was cheep. they even had a section of old games from the 80's set to free play in the back.
Where I live arcades were a big thing during the early to mid 90's when I was little but then shrunk a lot to the point that they were a rare sight by the early 00's with cyber cafés very quickly taking their place as the place where everyone went to play video games, but those barely lasted a bit over a decade becoming themselves a rare thing just a couple of years into the 2010's, quite ironically a few arcades still survive to this day while cyber cafés are basically extint. I both miss those 90's arcades filled with games that simply couldn't be replicated by home consoles at the time, and some that still can't be replicated unless you buy a lot of specialized hardware, and those cyber cafés of the 00's with 30+ PC's where LAN parties were a daily event, I can still remember Need for Speed races where every car was controlled by another player somewhere in that room. But the truth is that those days are never coming back, the economics that allowed those types of businesses are no longer there, scale was the only thing that kept them viable and that's gone forever in almost every country.
saddest thing as a fighting game player is going to my local round 1 which had a dedicated area of dozens of fighting game arcades and then not going for a month and having 90% of them removed
Was living in an era when home-consoles introduced me to gaming but arcade was still around. It's exciting to go into malls knowing there's a space where my favorite past-time is actually the main attractions. But I was so anxious about playing games in public spaces to the point where I don't play them but let my dad did it. Good times.
I went to the galloping ghosts arcade in Chicago,. definitely a living museum. These experiences will eventually be lost in time but you can still get them.
I'm really surprised you didn't mention how Japanese arcades are doing a lot to breathe new life into the industry for a while now, primarily with rhythm games. The arcade rhythm game stuff is practically a whole industry in itself, it's really cool actually. And there's still new games coming out, updates to old games, etc. There's even an entire homebrew scene for custom servers and such for a lot of these rhythm games. A lot of Japanese arcades host these games, and even some arcades in the US have imports or even dedicated localized versions in them. You could honestly make an entire 2nd video just on this topic alone, and I think this video feels really incomplete without mentioning it.
@@Lextorias Maybe I missed the mention then, cause I know you did mention that it wasn't declining as much in Japan, but I didn't catch a specific mention to the rhythm game industry. Still a great video regardless though, this was cool. Always enjoy your stuff man.
We have something like "PC bangs" here in Halifax. There's one called "Hpper Level Gaming" on Hollis St. on the peninsula, and many of the libraries in the Halifax Public Library system have gaming consoles.
There's a great arcade in Brighton, Michigan that my friends and I often visit when we meet up. It charges $25 at the door and has a wide variety of games that are all on free play. They have my favorite game, Chunithm.
My local craft brewery/bar recently started filling up their back space with arcade cabinets and pinball. Mostly pinball really, but hey they've got Street Fighter 2, Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, and some racers, what more do you need?
The Penny Arcade reference... aged me right in the feels. Now I feel so nostalgic, haha! I grew up at the tail end of the mall arcade era with DDR being the last big thing that kept us coming back. Even though I've always been shy, socially anxious and awkward, I ended up making a lot of friends that looked forward to attending the weekend/holiday/summer DDR events the arcade would host as much as I did!! It was the first place I ever felt like I didn't have to put up a barrier or pretend to not like video games, anime and other dweeby things I was into because most of the people that showed up were also into those things. Playing Dino Crises, Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken and especially the racing games in between rounds of DDR and dancing competitions made me feel confident; I was so into playing the the games and watching my friends play, I didn't have to think about being awkward or shy! The thrill of having random people spectating and cheering for the underdog, the confidence of stepping up to challenge the winner, the demand for a rematch to reclaim the high score; those are things younger generations of gamers will probably never get a chance to experience.
So in New Jersey we have a place called "Yestercades." Their first location opened over a decade ago, and the 4th a few months ago this year. You pay an hourly rate to just hang out in an arcade for a few hours. They even have a sit down couch area to play old console games. I brought my daughter once and it was $20 for the 2 of us for an hour.
I remember researching the history of Pac-Man and other Namco games. The trip through arcade history was very pleasant. I remember seeing those motorcycle games in a Wal-Mart arcade when I was a kid in the early 2000s. Never got to play them. Modern arcades that you load a card and swipe doesn't feel the same as when me and my cousins crowded an Asteroids-like cabinet at a wedding hall, plunking quarters in until the night was over.
I have an 8bitdo and mayflash arcade stick. They are really good at just any arcade/mame game. I was using them for arcade racing games and i was drifting with the best of them in initial d
I never had the chance to go to arcades regularly during their waning years. there were some that were kindof around at malls when I was little, but my parents were a little too task-oriented to just leave us somewhere like that too many times. What I DO remember was the hit Christian thriller novel This Present Darkness, which had a scene where someone's grandson had to be drug out of an arcade that literally had demons teeeeeeeming in rafters. Boy had six demons in him that had to be prayed out. SIX. The antipathy to arcades during their height was deep and wide.
I worked parttime in an arcade in high school during the early 80s. (I was class of '84.) Our small town had a dozen of them. Half of the point of the arcade was the games. The other half was friends.
Very much appreciate shining light on the FGC keeping arcade culture and in person gaming meetups alive 🙏 as someone who has grown very jaded about the gaming industry at large, the FGC to me is a small refuge that reminds me of why I love games in general.
Our local retro game store here in BG OH has an arcade room put together by the owner. he spent months learning how to repair the machines and now has over twenty original machines including one 90s Mario Pinball in a dedicated room. Just in case, Rockem Sockem Retro is the name and it's awesome.
There was a place I went to a few times when I lived in Wisconsin called The Fraggin' Dragon that worked a bit like a PC Cafe but with consoles. Pay some for a certain amount of time, pick a console and game and go. The consoles that supported it were LAN-ed together too. They even had food and stuff you could buy. I dunno if they're still around (if I remember right it was somewhere in either Madison or Monona) but they picked up a lotta business from a nearby pizza "arcade" that only had ticket games. It was pretty [insert whatever the current slang word for "great" is here].
If you're in the area, Houston Texas has a great place called the Cidercade. It is an arcade with a bar that you can get drunk and play arcade games with other people. It's awesome!
In the late 90s/ early 2000s, at least in Spain, we had Cybercafes, where you could rent a PC in half-hour slices to play anything (CS was big, but also unreal tournament and quake arena, as well as Diabvlo and Starcraft). It felt sooo much like a new version of arcade spaces, everyone gaming, doing drugs and even some occasional flirting! Ah, the good old days... I used to go to one that even rented a Dreamcast with a lot of pirate games; the first time I played my copy of shenmue (wich I got the evening of the day before it was scheduled to launch) I did it there, in front of a small crowd of amazed kids. Cute.
Lebanon too also had PC cafes from what I saw during my travels, but I didn't know that they weren't part of a trend in the US. On the other hand, they also operated as internet cafes.
You still have some cabinets and gamerooms in the usual places; pizza parlors, bowling alleys, movie theaters, some bars. But most of your separate arcades are somebody's nostalgia fix for OG gaming. Most can't keep the lights on for too long which is disappointing. Love modern tech and gaming in close proximity to the fridge and a bathroom, but arcades were cool.
Obligatory comment to boost engagement and algorithmically recommend this to other folks because WOW a lot of effort must go into the research and presentation of these elaborate video essays. Long time fan of the channel but wow I should consider just joining the patreon already
Here in Toronto there are several arcade bars and a handful of gaming lounges where you can rent PC or console time. I kinda figured that was commonplace in most big cities at this point?
A large part still keeping arcades alive today is the small rhythm game community. The same way that DDR did in 1998, new rhythm games that cannot be replicated easily at home have continued to be released, mainly by Konami, and often with many later editions similar to how Street Fighter II did (DDR itself still receives updates). If you're lucky to have a Round1 nearby, you'll find a section for a bunch of rhythm games that most people have never heard of. beatmania IIDX, pop'n music, GITADORA, jubeat, SOUND VOLTEX, REFLEC BEAT, MÚSECA, CHUNITHM, Mai-Mai, Wacca, Chrono Circle, DDR, DANCERUSH, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Groove Coaster are some that I have seen at mine. Many of these games have no way to be played at home without buying a huge arcade cabinet, and the ones where it is possible still often require a lot of money, such as with SOUND VOLTEX where players will buy/make $200-$300 controllers in order to play on unofficial PC clones of the game.
I was around back when arcades were still popular over here. So many memories of them. I remember seeing one guy do the MvC2 cable tiger knee air hyper viper beam, wondering how he did that, and simply tapping on his shoulder and asking him how after the match ended, and he just showed me how on the spot. Another was someone using wolfgang krauser in real bout fatal fury 2 and asking him how he did the deadly rave super that ended in a cyclone. It wasn't just fighting games, a lot of co-op side scrolling beat em ups (final fight clones essentially) were hugely popular. Arcades over here gradually got replaced by PCs as counter strike and rts (later mobas) got more and more popular - not to mention setting up a string of PCs was cheaper than arcade cabinets for the arcade ownders - and they essentially became PC cafes over time, but even those eventually died out as home PCs and internet got cheaper. Also..... speaking of evo moment 37, justin got parried by daigo - again - ending with the same super n SF6 a few months ago in an online match.
I worked at Playdium in BC Canada when they changed the insurance law from the whole setup to individual machines. That killed playdium in 2008? Somewhere near there. Now they have a few machines at a few movie theaters
Awesome video! Gotta say, you definitely have a flair for combining presentation and actual information/history that I haven't seen all that often. I saw your comment on a YT vid for a series retrospective for Mr. Robot. I think you and I can agree they it was a truly one-of-a-kind show that has no real equivalent to this day. Care to do a video essay on that?
Internet cafes or w/e they're called, were a thing back when I was a teenager, You would pay by the hour, the PCs would have a timer sofware, and the consoles I think they just had a dude "time" your session. We used to hang out and play LAN PC games (Counter Strike, Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc), split-screen PS2 and other consoles, some of the fancy ones even had a few arcade games. Wasn't that a thing in the US?
Not in any significant quantity, no. PC ownership and then home internet took off WAAAAAY faster in America than the rest of the world seeing how both things were essentially invented here. There was never really any need for net cafes when everyone either had or knew someone with a home internet connection. Or at worst you just went to the local library to use the internet for free there. 🤷 Aka there just wasn't a market for them.
fantastic video, and im so glad you dropped in a mention of pc bangs at the end! not entirely sure if america is ready for pc bangs to be mainstream, but theyre definitely moving in! i used to live in a really small pass-through city that was always behind on the times, neglected development wise, and was getting emptier (store wise) every year, but in 2019 a smaller version of a pc bang opened up around downtown and i was genuinely shocked to see it. it didnt last very long, probably due to unfortunate timing with the pandemic, but just the fact someone was willing to open something like a pc cafe in a city as unimportant as mine means that there are definitely more people catching onto the growing importance of third spaces and the mainstream popularity of video games and general technology (since pcs cafes arent JUST for gaming! many people in south korea go to pc cafes to watch tv shows and movies or just use the internet if they dont have their own computer (which in america sounds crazy because having a computer ((other than the little one in everyones hand)) feels pretty much commonplace, but in south korea its not really uncommon at all to not have your own computer. if owning a computer is about 3/4 or higher in america, in south korea its probably closer to 1/2). i still think the united states may be a bit too consumed by capitalism for pc cafes to work (theyre a huge financial investment and would require expensive upkeep, but prices would need to be very low for people to use it often, and in the united states i just think youd be hard pressed to find people willing to put up that much capital without letting them price it at like $10/hr plus a subscription fee to enter plus additional fees to borrow mice, headsets, keyboards, etc...) but i wouldnt say theyre never going to happen.... currently in a gaming crash and things dont seem to be getting any better anytime soon, so now might actually be the chance to get ahead of the curve in the us! welcome back, btw!
Great video as always. I will say, anyone who's heard a lot about the "third place" should watch Radical Planning's "Third Place vs. Right to the City." The idea of a third place is easy to digest and communicate, and it is a useful concept, but the author behind it developed the theory with a very... outdated view of the world.
First interaction with arcade type was store next to my school that had tekken 3, soul edge, terminator shooter game few more.Also Same time we had locations where you could pay some money to play on pc ( end of 90ies) i played homm3 with a mate on it. Majority of times you saw those arcades in carnival areas or ships that had normal games next to poker machines
PC cafes exist in NA already. They're just a little hard to find without someone who knows about it since they don't advertise themselves all that well. It's how I got into warcraft 3 custom maps, counterstrike and all that. If you can't afford a gaming rig and an assortment of games and accessories as well as a competitive internet connection speed, they're the place to go for extremely cheap. The community isn't quite like an arcade since it's more like isolated cliques. It's still at least easier to weasle your way into their group lan games if you just ask politely. Show some decent gaming skills and you might just join their core of rotating players.
fun fact: Hitbox by default controls Asteroids with more authentic controls than a normal arcade stick. Asteroids predates even two way levers and was controlled entirely by buttons.
Fun fact about gaming in Brazil: Despite consoles supposed to be an affordable alternative to arcades, consoles here were (and still is) super expensive. Because of that we had Game Houses that worked very much like an Arcade, but with consoles instead, with you paying per hour of gameplay, and were the only way most kids could play video-games. And this survived for many years until probably early-mid 2010's, when Smartphones started becoming affordable.
From what I've heard Pakistan's fighting game scene is centered entirely around something similar.
I need my locadoras back
That's also the case in the arab world, between the late 1990s to the early 2010s gaming cafés where everywhere and most teens and young adults would go hangout in there, they where one of the most popular places to hang out with your friends, I remember our local gaming places where full of people playing a weird modded version of CS1.6 and raging gamer style all the time, good times
i remember back in the 90s in São Paulo
Those existed for quite a long while in Eastern Europe as well. We used to call them NetCafe's/ Internet Cafe's. Both for Console as well as PC gaming. They mostly died out, but some are still kicking.
My favorite little story about the beginning of arcade games is that they had a hard time convincing businesses to set up Pong arcade machines and when one bar owner finally took the "risk" he reported the machine broken after like 2 days or so. When they came to check what was wrong with it they found out that the coin compartment simply was full to the brim and that's why no one could play anymore.
Don't know how much the developers exaggerated that story, but it came up in a documentary about the history of video gaming in general I saw a few years ago.
I worked as a service tech on pinball machines and cabinet video games and this was rare, but did happen. Ms. Pacman became our most played machines, and we would have to empty the coin boxes every few days.
Nice comment on Billy Mitchel. He can`t sue you on that.
I was afraid he was gonna talk about him right before he mentioned him, like a dread came over me lol.
I'm getting so sick of that idiot trying to keep relevant.
@@Skaatje oha lawsuit incoming for defamation.
@@Skaatje The More people who make fun of Billy the better. He can't sue everybody.
@@BeersAndBeatsPDX He probably can, and I'll bring the popcorn.
@@SkaatjeYeah I see what you mean!
To give context to the New York Mayor banning pinball at the beginning (around the 1:30 mark), the reason it was so controversial was because old pinball machines had no flippers. It was just a game of Plinko. Which is a lot more reasonable to consider that gambling.
If he clarifies this later, oops, my dumbass would forget by the end so I'm leaving this comment now.
I've heard it was the bingo machines that drove that ban and pinball got caught up in it.
23:05 There was this place called Maximum Gamer my friends and I went to in the mid 00s that was exactly like those cafes. Even had $30 lock-ins/ LAN tournaments on weekends where you could play from sun down to sun up. $1.50 for a slice of pizza and a Bawls energy drink. Played so much Counter Strike 1.6 and Halo CE over LAN with all the other people there. Insanely cool place.
some are still around but they are rarer that arcades, I've got several arcade bars in my city but only the one gaming cafe, its very cool and there is nobody in it lol
Had nearly the same experience, though ours was called "Digital Arena" 🙌
The difficulty in finding local multiplayer in modern video games led me to board games and I'm really glad it did.
Honestly same. I still do a ton of online matchmaking with video games, but board games scratch a similar but different itch. Just so casual and fun.
I was thinking the exact same. Boardgaming is massive nowadays and it has some of that community aspect still staying alive, even thriving.
Modern arcade would be: virtual reality goggles + omni-directional treadmill.
I've seen some
I just love how well researched and caring your essays feel. There's countless other essayists on here, but not many make it this pleasant, like it just feels comfy you know.
At the very end of May this year, SEGA officially brought their rhythm arcade series Maimai DX over to Round1 Puente Hills Mall in Los Angeles to see if there was an audience. Multiple communities online were cheering about this and talking about driving over, maybe even flying over to play the game.
I personally went twice to play it and met people coming over a thousand miles down from Canada just to -attend a pump it up tournament and also- play maimai.
I got to meet and talk to people, learn about the game and how everything works, and better connect with a new community. It was beautiful. I'm so happy I could experience it and I hope that arcades never disappear so others can too.
Love that place. Do they still have stuffed shells or ravioli?
I miss arcades for an affordable price, but the good thing about arcade cabinets is you can buy them. Also, since they are in often family owned pizza restaurants or bowling alleys, I like to use that to my advantage and play them.
I love how Lextorias is actually interested in his videos' topics. And if not directly interested in them, then interested in the reason why people care so much about said topic.
If you live anywhere near Brookfield, Illinois, there’s a huge arcade called Galloping Ghost Arcade. Gainesville, Florida also has a huge arcade called Bragging Rights. You pay one price, and you can play all the games as long as you want, all day long. It is worth experiencing an arcade at least once.
I loved playing two player games of "House of the Dead" with me as both players. It felt awsome.
The small yet important era of gaming history, the Penny Arcade, then later the Arcade
For people who are of drinking age and in major metros, you can usually find "barcades" or "gamer pubs" in your area which can provide some of that sensation to this day. If you want a blessed reminder of the heyday, look into whatever your area might have for arcade/pin ball expositions. For example, the Bay Area of California has a major one in late July called California Extreme where collectors bring in their arcade and pinball machines and put them all on free play. They include classics, rarities, and some prototypes that never made it to the floors. Go in on the Friday or Saturday night and it feels like a trip back into that heyday, jam packed with folks playing, competing, watching, and cheering each other on. I likley won't be making this year for my own reasons, but I highly recommend it to somebody who wants to either relive those times or get a taste of the beautiful third space that was the video arcade.
Dave n busters!!!!
In Florida, there's a growing chain of arcades called Arcade Monsters, which was about an hour from where I went to college. It basically merges bar/night life with arcades. You pay a flat entry fee, all arcade machines are free (no quarters) and there's a bar that serves drinks. One recently opened up in Orlando on International Drive and it has a pretty nice setup. I definitely recommend checking it out one day for anyone local or taking a vacation to Florida.
Shoutouts to rhythm games being one of the genres necessitating arcade's existance.
Let's move those feet baby!
Maimai is why I go to arcades, and I really _really_ love Maimai.
I just wish I could find it in more places...
RHYTHM GAMES ON TOP. FROM IIDX, DDR, POP'N, SDVX TO MAIMAI CHUNITHM, MUSIC DIVER, WACCA, AND GROOVE COASTER. IM SO GLAD YOU ALL EXIST AND HELP KEEP THE SCENE ALIVE
@@syrebi rip WACCA :(
Man, I remember doing DDR tournaments at my arcade back in the late 90s/early 00s. I felt like I made it when I could finally do Max 300 on heavy without hugging the bar.
I still have a lot of games and an old dance pad on PS2. Man, now I only play for about 20 minutes on medium and I'm aching and feel like I need a nap.
@@warpdrivefueledbyinsomnia8165 Faaacts. The biggest pain of a rhythm gamer is when you no longer have the time to keep playing and you lose the ability to keep going.
Downside: You'll never full combo that song again
Upside: You didn't play ling enough to get an injury while playing, cause your body can't keep it up forever anyway.
Despite your having never been to an arcade, I think you did a great job covering the subject!
As a child of the '90s, I very much miss that in-person, community aspect of video gaming. It really was this fun place where your parents could dump you for an hour or two, and you and your buddies could just go wild on as many games as your allowance would take you. This was also where my adoration of fighting games came into full bloom: I'm one of the people that has multiple arcade sticks not only because it's a nice dopamine hit when I use it, but also because it's how I learned to play fighting games. Thirty years of muscle memory isn't easy to unlearn, let me tell you.
As for the "future" of arcades, I've seen a number of throwback arcades ("barcades" if they serve food/alcohol) that charge you a flat fee (let's say $10 for the day), and all the machines are on free play. I've taken my kids on more than one occasion, and it's a great experience: you should definitely give 'em a shot if you have one in your area.
Lastly, as a guy who lived in Seoul in the late '90s, I loved hearing that PC bungs (that's how we always pronounced it, but my buddies and I could've just been plebs) are still going strong. I had a ton of fun playing Rainbow Six, Half-Life, Diablo and the like there back in the day.
There are still a lot of arcades out there if you look hard enough. Even most of the gimmicky ones which are dominated by claw games and watered down mobile games usually have some classic games, and barcades are becoming more and more popular these days. It's definitely a really fun experience to actually go somewhere and play an arcade game on a CRT with the original sights and sounds and with high scores being displayed on each cabinet.
Thanks for the well-researched video. I'm lucky to live in a city where we have a couple of local barcades where I us uncool old folk can grab a beer, some mixed drinks and play classic arcade machines. It's usually my birthday go-to with friends. I recommend if any gamers have the opportunity to go to a local barcade (Not chain places like Dave and Busters it's not the same vibe) check it out.
As a dude in my early 40s, yea arcades hold a dear place for me. Even more so in the later years now that I have money.
I don't see much of a reason to play something I have at home in the arcade, but rhythm games in Japan arcades are something else. Maimai, Chunithm, and other relatively large control schemes are not something to replicate at home.
P.S. I have a Hitbox arcade like yours, but recently bought a Haute42 S16. It's under $45 and fully configurable. We're eating good :)
Thanks for the video!
Return of the king!!!
I love arcades with my whole heart, excited for the vid!
Great video, in person speedrunning events are essential for my sanity lmao. Hope they continue to stick around
Wake up babe, New Lextorias video just dropped
Random fun fact: We have a small little gaming cafe in our small village
These things are huge here since people still care a lot about their community and I find that it does reflect, especially when you compare it to how america is...
Good job, man. I know you said you hadn't been to an arcade before, but you really captured what I feel about it.
This is a fantastic essay. The disappearance of 3rd places is honestly something that needs to be talked about more, and I love that you tied it into the history of arcades
I'm sad that arcades went away, because you're right on the money with the "je ne sais quois" they have. All you ever get nowadays are those bootleg-o-matics with 700 ROMs installed, or the gambling-style machines you mentioned (either ticket or claw). I can hardly blame the venues, especially on the former; cabinets are expensive to maintain, especially in an age where parts for 20+ year old machines are scarce, but they just don't have any magic about them.
I thought VR would be the big reviver of in-person gaming because of the high cost of entry, but there's not really been any "killer games" for that besides Beat Saber, and that has a triple factor: a) everyone who wanted to try it has probably tried it by now, b) they got wise and you need a specific licence to run it in a commercial context, and c) the "high score" doesn't really have that much cultural weight nowadays, or at least it seems that way to me. Add that to VR having a trend of making people kind of sick the first time they try it and I think that idea is dead in the water.
Mostly, though, I'm just grumpy because I love pinball and there's (generally) nowhere to play it! Let me enjoy my outdated entertainment from the 90s, dangit!
as someone who's only gotten really into fighting games and rhythm games in the last decade, i didn't even realize how big a deal the social aspect is when it comes to the arcades. not only did i miss a good chunk of cool rhythm games when i was younger (was too shy to play on a "stage" essentially), but also all the potential friendships and moments i could've had :')
Fun fact: if you live in a city with bigger libraries, there's a decent chance the library accommodates gaming PCs and has tons of games you can borrow for free
Strange, I didn't get recommended this video. Big fan of your content. Had to hunt it out myself.
I remember when I was a child get robbed by gang members in the arcade, but that were funny and dark places where if You get good in games, you were king.
Gotta love the Yakuza Backdrops you use. They look so naturally real
That part where you mentioned the PC gaming cafes kinda hit home for me. I think Korea is one of the first to really make them popular and a viable business model, which eventually made it's way to India where I was a college student from 2017 to 2021. There was a high quality PC gaming cafe(we called them parlours at the time) in the town where the campus was and another one in the local mall in my hometown. I remember all my friends/cousins wanting to spend all their spare time there and heck, some of them practically LIVED there. PC gaming wasn't easily accessible for most of them, so they always found it cheaper than buying and owning a PC plus the games they wanted to play, so they let the parlours do it for them.
we still have arcades here in the philippines, mostly in the malls. At least in my city, we got one in pretty much every mall, some malls have 2 lmao, though the people that go there are usually families or just looking to have some quick fun, so it's less of a community than those 90s arcades. There are still a few regulars that come by and become friends, they usually hang out by the DDR
Thank god for places like Galloping Ghost! Place is awesome, highly recommend.
It was the early '70s when I discovered pinball arcades.
It was at an pop-up pinball arcade tent at the Ohio State Fair where I played the first video game, Computer Space (we called it Rockets & Saucers) and we were upset that it cost TWO quarters a game rather than the single quarter per game we were used to with the pinball machines. But we payed our quarters and played the game because this was certainly something completely new.
I still saw Whack-a-Mole and other such physical games in some video game arcades into the '80s.
whackamoles are still plentiful in 2024, what do you mean "in some into the 80s".
I mean that I haven't been in any video arcades since the mid-'80s.
Accepting the fall of arcades took me a long time to accept but I sm happy to have been a late Gen-X kid to have lived through out that whole era in 80s and 90s
Best time to grow up
Yooo new lextorias video we ballin boys
I'm glad you mentioned Internet cafes at the end. I helped operate a local one between 2010-2015 and we had a great community of regulars. $3/hr got you access to a huge library of games on decent hardware connected to fast reliable internet. We didn't have hot food but we did sell frozen stuff and had a public microwave (and a McDonald's across the parking lot in the same strip mall). We also used to have "lock-ins" anyone could pay to be "locked in" overnight and we'd order a bunch of pizza and play games until the sun came up. Basically being a $20 babysitter for 20-30 kids for a whole night. It was fun because everyone would naturally band together and play a 5v5 League game in-house or get the whole room on a single CS:S server. Those days are long gone though because it's far easier to just buy a console and stay home or pay games that don't demand top-tier hardware.
Great video. I was really hoping to hear you mention Latin America's obsession with NEO GEO arcade cabinets.
Those raised me better than my dad ever could lol
It's because they were cheap. That's literally your entire video lol. It's really nothing more complicated than that. 🤷
The free play arcades, where you pay for so much time at the door, are still there, and they are a collection of many of these games. There's a certain charm in playing the old games because they're just different from what we see now.
Me at 22:30 "he's doing the outro - can't believe he didn't talk about Korean video game cafes! They launched Starcraft to such significance that competitions got televised!"
Me at 23:00 "oh. Well, at least they got a shoutout lol"
You've never truly experienced video gaming at it's best until you've experienced having your head slammed into the edge of a double dragon machine from the other player because you hid from Abobo! 🤕
Arcades were a third place, but they were rarely their own distinct third place. Instead they were a weird subculture of random places like laundermats, smoke stained convenience stores, bowling alleys and to a lesser degree malls. At least in my experience. But the third place-ness of them was no less prevalent because of this. They functionally gave those random locations their own life and flavor.
Like, meet me at the Laundromat, new sf2 just dropped. It was a different time.
It was actually pretty disheartening going to Japan only to find their arcane scene alive and kicking, but nowhere near as social. Multiplayer linked fighting games and casino-eske pachinko really took the wind out of my sails.
LETSGO MY NICHE WAS MENTIONED IN A LEXTORIAS VIDEO RAAHHHH!!!! VIVA FIGHTING GAMES!!!!!
By me (okay like an hours drive) is a mix of a high class bar and an the Korean thing. They do trivia nights, had speed running on the TVs, PC's and board games you could rent, and some really fun themed food. Like I had some non alcoholic drinks in like potion bottles and all the food had nerd puns. I've only managed to make it out once, but it was a great time and I keep trying to go again. The downside is, as a half bar half restaurant, it is much more adult orientated vs teen or family orientated. But it was popular enough that reservations were STRONGLY encouraged. That may be another way where things could settle. I'd hope not exclusively - it was a bit too pricey to go regularly - but it was a lot of fun
I run a space in the Burlington VT area where we host weekly fighting game locals, but I also run an afterschool program where I teach kids life skills and self-improvement through learning how to play fighting games in a collaborative “third place” sort of environment. This video was wonderful to see.
Thanks for covering arcades ~ kind of my favorite thing ever 😂
Every year, week of Labor Day, a nearby town hosts a large county fair. When I was a kid, they had a big arcade set up. I remember watching older kids play the latest Mortal Kombat and all the fatalities. Some of my favorite fair memories.
The importance of the arcade for the FGC cannot be overstated: Aside from trying to keep the spirit alive in Discord servers, various forums, and even the devs putting digital arcades in the newer games, there was even a huge push towards offline tournaments to come back after people felt the fully online COVID era to be rather empty and this is despite the travel costs being a constant pain in the ass for everyone.
Late 80s to early 90s arcade culture was a freaking great ride. I miss it so much. Some malls had 2 arcades, bowling alleys skating rinks etc always had fighting games... so fun
Great video king keep it up!
im always excited to see a new video from you, keep up the great work
I swear it’s been at 18k views since day one. How has this not gotten more views?
Loved the video
As someone who currently works at an Arcade this is pretty cool!
I miss going to my local arcade, Nickle city. it always had alot of fun and weird games and always was cheep. they even had a section of old games from the 80's set to free play in the back.
Nickle city became dollar town... 😢
Where I live arcades were a big thing during the early to mid 90's when I was little but then shrunk a lot to the point that they were a rare sight by the early 00's with cyber cafés very quickly taking their place as the place where everyone went to play video games, but those barely lasted a bit over a decade becoming themselves a rare thing just a couple of years into the 2010's, quite ironically a few arcades still survive to this day while cyber cafés are basically extint. I both miss those 90's arcades filled with games that simply couldn't be replicated by home consoles at the time, and some that still can't be replicated unless you buy a lot of specialized hardware, and those cyber cafés of the 00's with 30+ PC's where LAN parties were a daily event, I can still remember Need for Speed races where every car was controlled by another player somewhere in that room.
But the truth is that those days are never coming back, the economics that allowed those types of businesses are no longer there, scale was the only thing that kept them viable and that's gone forever in almost every country.
saddest thing as a fighting game player is going to my local round 1 which had a dedicated area of dozens of fighting game arcades and then not going for a month and having 90% of them removed
Was living in an era when home-consoles introduced me to gaming but arcade was still around. It's exciting to go into malls knowing there's a space where my favorite past-time is actually the main attractions. But I was so anxious about playing games in public spaces to the point where I don't play them but let my dad did it.
Good times.
I went to the galloping ghosts arcade in Chicago,. definitely a living museum. These experiences will eventually be lost in time but you can still get them.
I'm really surprised you didn't mention how Japanese arcades are doing a lot to breathe new life into the industry for a while now, primarily with rhythm games. The arcade rhythm game stuff is practically a whole industry in itself, it's really cool actually. And there's still new games coming out, updates to old games, etc. There's even an entire homebrew scene for custom servers and such for a lot of these rhythm games. A lot of Japanese arcades host these games, and even some arcades in the US have imports or even dedicated localized versions in them. You could honestly make an entire 2nd video just on this topic alone, and I think this video feels really incomplete without mentioning it.
I did mention it. And also how it didn’t really stop the decline of arcades in Japan
@@Lextorias Maybe I missed the mention then, cause I know you did mention that it wasn't declining as much in Japan, but I didn't catch a specific mention to the rhythm game industry. Still a great video regardless though, this was cool. Always enjoy your stuff man.
Your channel is Awesoma! Best discovery in this year for me!
We have something like "PC bangs" here in Halifax. There's one called "Hpper Level Gaming" on Hollis St. on the peninsula, and many of the libraries in the Halifax Public Library system have gaming consoles.
We have one of those PC places here in Iceland
There's a great arcade in Brighton, Michigan that my friends and I often visit when we meet up. It charges $25 at the door and has a wide variety of games that are all on free play. They have my favorite game, Chunithm.
My local craft brewery/bar recently started filling up their back space with arcade cabinets and pinball. Mostly pinball really, but hey they've got Street Fighter 2, Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, and some racers, what more do you need?
6:41 I still have fond memories of going to the arcade in my local mall and blowing my allowance on Galaga.
Great video homie 👍🏾
The Penny Arcade reference... aged me right in the feels. Now I feel so nostalgic, haha!
I grew up at the tail end of the mall arcade era with DDR being the last big thing that kept us coming back. Even though I've always been shy, socially anxious and awkward, I ended up making a lot of friends that looked forward to attending the weekend/holiday/summer DDR events the arcade would host as much as I did!! It was the first place I ever felt like I didn't have to put up a barrier or pretend to not like video games, anime and other dweeby things I was into because most of the people that showed up were also into those things.
Playing Dino Crises, Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken and especially the racing games in between rounds of DDR and dancing competitions made me feel confident; I was so into playing the the games and watching my friends play, I didn't have to think about being awkward or shy! The thrill of having random people spectating and cheering for the underdog, the confidence of stepping up to challenge the winner, the demand for a rematch to reclaim the high score; those are things younger generations of gamers will probably never get a chance to experience.
So in New Jersey we have a place called "Yestercades." Their first location opened over a decade ago, and the 4th a few months ago this year. You pay an hourly rate to just hang out in an arcade for a few hours. They even have a sit down couch area to play old console games. I brought my daughter once and it was $20 for the 2 of us for an hour.
I remember researching the history of Pac-Man and other Namco games. The trip through arcade history was very pleasant. I remember seeing those motorcycle games in a Wal-Mart arcade when I was a kid in the early 2000s. Never got to play them. Modern arcades that you load a card and swipe doesn't feel the same as when me and my cousins crowded an Asteroids-like cabinet at a wedding hall, plunking quarters in until the night was over.
I have an 8bitdo and mayflash arcade stick. They are really good at just any arcade/mame game. I was using them for arcade racing games and i was drifting with the best of them in initial d
I never had the chance to go to arcades regularly during their waning years. there were some that were kindof around at malls when I was little, but my parents were a little too task-oriented to just leave us somewhere like that too many times.
What I DO remember was the hit Christian thriller novel This Present Darkness, which had a scene where someone's grandson had to be drug out of an arcade that literally had demons teeeeeeeming in rafters. Boy had six demons in him that had to be prayed out. SIX. The antipathy to arcades during their height was deep and wide.
I worked parttime in an arcade in high school during the early 80s. (I was class of '84.) Our small town had a dozen of them. Half of the point of the arcade was the games. The other half was friends.
Very much appreciate shining light on the FGC keeping arcade culture and in person gaming meetups alive 🙏 as someone who has grown very jaded about the gaming industry at large, the FGC to me is a small refuge that reminds me of why I love games in general.
Our local retro game store here in BG OH has an arcade room put together by the owner. he spent months learning how to repair the machines and now has over twenty original machines including one 90s Mario Pinball in a dedicated room. Just in case, Rockem Sockem Retro is the name and it's awesome.
There was a place I went to a few times when I lived in Wisconsin called The Fraggin' Dragon that worked a bit like a PC Cafe but with consoles. Pay some for a certain amount of time, pick a console and game and go. The consoles that supported it were LAN-ed together too. They even had food and stuff you could buy. I dunno if they're still around (if I remember right it was somewhere in either Madison or Monona) but they picked up a lotta business from a nearby pizza "arcade" that only had ticket games. It was pretty [insert whatever the current slang word for "great" is here].
I've never really played with a friend in person outside of one time. I still think about how much I've missed every day and it makes me sad :(
Im in japan right now, and having arcades everywhere is epic!!
If you're in the area, Houston Texas has a great place called the Cidercade. It is an arcade with a bar that you can get drunk and play arcade games with other people. It's awesome!
In the late 90s/ early 2000s, at least in Spain, we had Cybercafes, where you could rent a PC in half-hour slices to play anything (CS was big, but also unreal tournament and quake arena, as well as Diabvlo and Starcraft). It felt sooo much like a new version of arcade spaces, everyone gaming, doing drugs and even some occasional flirting! Ah, the good old days...
I used to go to one that even rented a Dreamcast with a lot of pirate games; the first time I played my copy of shenmue (wich I got the evening of the day before it was scheduled to launch) I did it there, in front of a small crowd of amazed kids. Cute.
Lebanon too also had PC cafes from what I saw during my travels, but I didn't know that they weren't part of a trend in the US. On the other hand, they also operated as internet cafes.
You still have some cabinets and gamerooms in the usual places; pizza parlors, bowling alleys, movie theaters, some bars. But most of your separate arcades are somebody's nostalgia fix for OG gaming. Most can't keep the lights on for too long which is disappointing. Love modern tech and gaming in close proximity to the fridge and a bathroom, but arcades were cool.
Obligatory comment to boost engagement and algorithmically recommend this to other folks because WOW a lot of effort must go into the research and presentation of these elaborate video essays. Long time fan of the channel but wow I should consider just joining the patreon already
he's back.
19:24 YES,FINALLY!
Here in Toronto there are several arcade bars and a handful of gaming lounges where you can rent PC or console time.
I kinda figured that was commonplace in most big cities at this point?
A large part still keeping arcades alive today is the small rhythm game community. The same way that DDR did in 1998, new rhythm games that cannot be replicated easily at home have continued to be released, mainly by Konami, and often with many later editions similar to how Street Fighter II did (DDR itself still receives updates). If you're lucky to have a Round1 nearby, you'll find a section for a bunch of rhythm games that most people have never heard of. beatmania IIDX, pop'n music, GITADORA, jubeat, SOUND VOLTEX, REFLEC BEAT, MÚSECA, CHUNITHM, Mai-Mai, Wacca, Chrono Circle, DDR, DANCERUSH, Taiko no Tatsujin, and Groove Coaster are some that I have seen at mine. Many of these games have no way to be played at home without buying a huge arcade cabinet, and the ones where it is possible still often require a lot of money, such as with SOUND VOLTEX where players will buy/make $200-$300 controllers in order to play on unofficial PC clones of the game.
I was around back when arcades were still popular over here. So many memories of them. I remember seeing one guy do the MvC2 cable tiger knee air hyper viper beam, wondering how he did that, and simply tapping on his shoulder and asking him how after the match ended, and he just showed me how on the spot. Another was someone using wolfgang krauser in real bout fatal fury 2 and asking him how he did the deadly rave super that ended in a cyclone. It wasn't just fighting games, a lot of co-op side scrolling beat em ups (final fight clones essentially) were hugely popular. Arcades over here gradually got replaced by PCs as counter strike and rts (later mobas) got more and more popular - not to mention setting up a string of PCs was cheaper than arcade cabinets for the arcade ownders - and they essentially became PC cafes over time, but even those eventually died out as home PCs and internet got cheaper.
Also..... speaking of evo moment 37, justin got parried by daigo - again - ending with the same super n SF6 a few months ago in an online match.
I worked at Playdium in BC Canada when they changed the insurance law from the whole setup to individual machines. That killed playdium in 2008? Somewhere near there. Now they have a few machines at a few movie theaters
Awesome video! Gotta say, you definitely have a flair for combining presentation and actual information/history that I haven't seen all that often.
I saw your comment on a YT vid for a series retrospective for Mr. Robot. I think you and I can agree they it was a truly one-of-a-kind show that has no real equivalent to this day. Care to do a video essay on that?
Internet cafes or w/e they're called, were a thing back when I was a teenager, You would pay by the hour, the PCs would have a timer sofware, and the consoles I think they just had a dude "time" your session. We used to hang out and play LAN PC games (Counter Strike, Age of Empires, Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc), split-screen PS2 and other consoles, some of the fancy ones even had a few arcade games. Wasn't that a thing in the US?
Not in any significant quantity, no. PC ownership and then home internet took off WAAAAAY faster in America than the rest of the world seeing how both things were essentially invented here. There was never really any need for net cafes when everyone either had or knew someone with a home internet connection. Or at worst you just went to the local library to use the internet for free there. 🤷 Aka there just wasn't a market for them.
fantastic video, and im so glad you dropped in a mention of pc bangs at the end! not entirely sure if america is ready for pc bangs to be mainstream, but theyre definitely moving in! i used to live in a really small pass-through city that was always behind on the times, neglected development wise, and was getting emptier (store wise) every year, but in 2019 a smaller version of a pc bang opened up around downtown and i was genuinely shocked to see it. it didnt last very long, probably due to unfortunate timing with the pandemic, but just the fact someone was willing to open something like a pc cafe in a city as unimportant as mine means that there are definitely more people catching onto the growing importance of third spaces and the mainstream popularity of video games and general technology (since pcs cafes arent JUST for gaming! many people in south korea go to pc cafes to watch tv shows and movies or just use the internet if they dont have their own computer (which in america sounds crazy because having a computer ((other than the little one in everyones hand)) feels pretty much commonplace, but in south korea its not really uncommon at all to not have your own computer. if owning a computer is about 3/4 or higher in america, in south korea its probably closer to 1/2). i still think the united states may be a bit too consumed by capitalism for pc cafes to work (theyre a huge financial investment and would require expensive upkeep, but prices would need to be very low for people to use it often, and in the united states i just think youd be hard pressed to find people willing to put up that much capital without letting them price it at like $10/hr plus a subscription fee to enter plus additional fees to borrow mice, headsets, keyboards, etc...) but i wouldnt say theyre never going to happen.... currently in a gaming crash and things dont seem to be getting any better anytime soon, so now might actually be the chance to get ahead of the curve in the us!
welcome back, btw!
Great video as always. I will say, anyone who's heard a lot about the "third place" should watch Radical Planning's "Third Place vs. Right to the City." The idea of a third place is easy to digest and communicate, and it is a useful concept, but the author behind it developed the theory with a very... outdated view of the world.
First interaction with arcade type was store next to my school that had tekken 3, soul edge, terminator shooter game few more.Also Same time we had locations where you could pay some money to play on pc ( end of 90ies) i played homm3 with a mate on it. Majority of times you saw those arcades in carnival areas or ships that had normal games next to poker machines
PC cafes exist in NA already. They're just a little hard to find without someone who knows about it since they don't advertise themselves all that well.
It's how I got into warcraft 3 custom maps, counterstrike and all that. If you can't afford a gaming rig and an assortment of games and accessories as well as a competitive internet connection speed, they're the place to go for extremely cheap. The community isn't quite like an arcade since it's more like isolated cliques. It's still at least easier to weasle your way into their group lan games if you just ask politely. Show some decent gaming skills and you might just join their core of rotating players.
Old enough that I actually remember going to arcades, and hope I live long enough to go to one again someday.
There are some around still, there's one where I live right next to a vintage novelty candy store, and old ice cream parlor
fun fact:
Hitbox by default controls Asteroids with more authentic controls than a normal arcade stick.
Asteroids predates even two way levers and was controlled entirely by buttons.