
Shanghai's Lie Huo arcade - danso
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-12-inside-shanghais-hardcore-gaming-heartbeat
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stephengillie
I'm sorry, but I have trouble feeling nostalgic for arcades. My memories
involve dark and cavernous rooms where it was hard to see other people and
easy to offend them, large machines with worn-out TVs and controls, and unfair
gameplay that was almost always a waste of time.

What's the point of doing something if you can't do it long enough to enjoy
it? The constant "coin grab" was irritating to me as a young boy, and annoying
to have to constantly leave the arcade and find my parent where I could beg a
few more quarters. And I always noticed that stuffed animals cost thousands of
tokens, but barely tens of dollars at other stores.

For about the same price, I could rent a videogame for the home console, and I
wouldn't have a parent nagging me that they were afraid of someone kidnapping
me from the arcade.

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mrob
This essay clearly explains the appeal of arcades:
[http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/](http://insomnia.ac/commentary/arcade_culture/)

"Unfair" arcade games are very rare. I'm nowhere near as skilled as the
Chinese gamers in the article, but I have a few 1CCs and I've enjoyed
competing for local high scores. Arcade games strongly reward skill, and the
arcade setting has a competitive atmosphere you can't replicate at home. I'll
certainly miss arcades if they die out completely.

~~~
stephengillie
Having played the same games for console and arcade, they were definitely less
fair in arcades. Some games had 2-3 _times_ as many pitfalls and other failure
conditions to avoid as their console version. Unfairness was a business model.

This kind of rose-colored article underscores this concept - it was said about
people who were trying to remake Starsiege:Tribes in the late 2000s: "They
don't want Tribes back; they want 1999 back." For some inexplicable reason,
everyone wants to return to their childhood.

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ilaksh
Why should it be the end though? You can do almost everything in your own home
now, thanks to the internet and technology.

Most office jobs can be converted to telecommute. Groceries and food can be
delivered to your door. You can safely get wasted in your own home while video
chatting with women you are whooing. You can watch a movie online. You can
even get exercise with systems like Kinect or Wii etc.

If arcades are obsolete, so are most of the other public businesses.

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mariusmg
The(unescapable) end of a era.

