I have a lot of found memories of Sega World in Picadilly Circus. Later as I lived in Japan, I really loved the Sega arcades. Truly the end of an Era.
Sega is a company that I always liked and always feel regret for, I loved my dreamcast and wished they had remained in the console business, I loved their arcades and wish they would still be there. It's one of the companies that most marked my childhood and early twenties.
Sega World was always one of my highlights of going to London. Would always stop in there.
I remember one time I'd just sold 800 Beanie Babies for $250,000 in cash (dude flew in from Chicago with it) and was feeling flush. Went in Sega World and they had a new Jurassic Park hydraulic deluxe game. IIRC it was three quid PER CREDIT, and it was a two-player game. So it was six quid just to start. There was an employee stationed outside who would put your money in for you.
So, me and my buddy go and get literally hundreds of quid coins and go back to the game and pour these coins into the guy's shirt and tell him KEEP FEEDING THE BEAST. DO NOT STOP. So we played that fucker all the way through to the end. I think we only spent about 90 quid in total to finish it. The employee was over the moon. He said he'd been working there for weeks but no-one ever wanted to play after the first credit and he'd really wanted to see the end sequence.
I've been a rabid Sega fan for 35 years, and I did not know this. I knew Sega stood for Service Games, but always assumed it was just the fairly standard practice of Japanese companies using Western names.
GameWorks, the American-based joint venture started by Sega and Dreamworks, closed all of its remaining locations last month. RIP the downtown Seattle arcade.
On the upside, Round 1 is steadily expanding throughout the US.
For those who don't know, Round 1 is a Japanese arcade company that also has US locations, and they import many only-intended-for-Japan arcade cabinets to said locations, including some that are only in Japanese. Their rhythm game sections in particular are basically unsurpassed by American standards, it's like stepping into a slice of Tokyo.
I thought the Koreans took over the rhythm game arcade business for the most part? All the surviving arcades I’ve been to in the states in recent years have only had Korean rhythm games on hand. I hope Konami hasn’t given up on the genre, or maybe the future is just beat saber (now owned by Meta).
Round 1 is way more than an arcade though. Most have bowling lanes, billard tables, ping pong tables, darts, food, box style karaoke rooms, and tumble rooms for small kids. Much more that just an arcade.
Wow, I was about to ask if anyone knew what this meant for GameWorks.
Even if I was too young for the golden age of American arcades, I’m glad I got to experience their twilight. The vertically-integrated, destination-class concept was clearly the end-state for the industry, but it was still a blast to go.
We still have barcades, which are fun, though they tend to be exclusively retro-gaming, appealing first and foremost to Gen X nostalgia. Looks like I'll need to go to Tokyo to get behind the wheel of an Initial D arcade machine again.
GameWorks opened in downtown Seattle around the same time that wizards of the coast opened up an arcade/card playing space on the ave (near the big university in the city). It was a weird resurgence in the late 90s, but neither stood the test of time.
What’s crazy is that the closure came as a surprise to many - I and most of my friends didn’t see any notice of it at all. I would’ve gone to the Seattle location one last time to get in some Third Strike.
I've been to the Japanese arcades many times, and I'd noticed changes cross the era of machine. A lot of the newer machines are either trying to be some kind of new arcade moba or card-based experience (half or more of which seemed to flop, with entire empty floors). More single player oriented experiences feature a game loop where a small, core element consisting of about 5 minutes costs a 100 yen coin regardless of outcome. For example, the Initial D game where every single race costs 100 yen or the Pokemon game where you pay 100 yen to get into a battle and another coin if you want to actually catch the wild pokemon you beat. It's a move away from the classic model where you would usually pay on losing all your lives which could cost more but was more dependent on player skill. It was a more interactive, more participatory, model. A meritocratic one where being able to beat an entire 30 minute game session of a scrolling shooter on as few coins as possible would be an impressive source of bragging rights. The change absolutely feels like the mobile micro-transaction model extended to coin-op. To me, it narrows the gap between an arcade and a pachinko parlor, so I simply don't feel as compelled to go to arcades.
The perennial fighting games and giant robot battles still pull crowds from their appreciators, as something of the core of the arcade business. That, and the two floors of UFO crane games still seem to hold fairly strong sway from what I've seen. The pandemic situation made things worse for arcades, but like many things that you've heard of many times before it only accelerated an inevitable decline. I think the move here would be first to downsize, then maybe specialize.
The first episode of Netflix's High Score covers the 1970s and early 1980s video games, including arcades. The guy who made Ms. Pac Man started by making arcade mods that increased the difficulty of games. It was a killer business model because arcades were getting lower revenue over time because the playerbase would get good at a game within months. It isn't correct to say micro-transactions moved into arcades. It's more accurate to say arcade MTX have moved into the home.
Arcade value prop is at an all-time low. It's too bad, because rhythm games are a lot of fun and impractical for homes.
It's more accurate to say arcade MTX have moved into the home.
I don't follow your thinking. "Making the game more difficult" and "microtransactions" are both ways to squeeze more money from players but man, they are very different.
You do have a point. I have little trouble recognizing that micro-transactions and coin-op difficulty creep are both profit driven modifications made to games, and also that I'd be better served by the life of a hermit than a time machine to the 1980s if I wanted to escape the effects of human greed, particularly on much more important things than video games.
I think it's important too to distinguish between a micro-transaction for something like a skin or a hat that has a cosmetic effect, versus "pay to win/pay to not grind", versus "pay every 5 minutes regardless of whether you win or lose" etc. My remarks on micro-transactions and difficulty creep is less about how profitable they are, but rather how the changes feel to me.
In writing my first post, I had a thought to compromise between the old school approach and the current paradigm: what if every game loop cost 1 credit if you win, 2 credits if you lose, and 100 yen buys 2 credits? If the challenge fits into my flow state so that it's at the upper limit of my competence, I would have an explicit 50 yen incentive to win in an engaging challenge. The game devs and proprieter would still make some guaranteed income on my play time. If no one has ever posited this idea before (and I'd bet someone has, and probably tested it, and maybe it doesn't work well for them), I feel like calling it "win to save".
It could even be an interesting study - players of games often won't keep playing if they feel they can't win, so the designer would have to be careful not to nickle and dime the player by setting them up for expensive failures. On the other hand, an engaging way to keep players paying could be to set them up for challenging victories that are very quick and efficient, to get them into the next loop faster... There's a lot of dimensions to this, more than I'm willing let alone able to put into one comment.
I agree arcades are a fantastic place for rhythm and dancing games. I hope you have a great day.
Spent three weeks in Tokyo for my honeymoon a few years ago. I know of no experience that for me can rival the type of joy of spending late nights in an arcade (not saying it’s the pinnacle, just a unique experience). Even my wife who is a non-gamer found it a thrill. Perhaps with the shut downs it will consolidate to a few profitable centers that can remain. Individuals can’t afford Dancerush Stardum or those gundam games.
I don’t know if consolidation is going to be a good thing. Game developers need a player base to be profitable, and that usually means games available to the public.
It is very sad. I've moved to Japan recently and a lot of the arcades either have shut down or now have way more 'commercial' games that are essentially gambling and those gundam like games. I'm sure they are fun but they aren't "real" arcade games to me :(
I grew up, and spent most of money, at the arcades. Luckily, a friend introduced me to MAME 22 years ago. I still play Golden Axe, Alien Storm, Altered Beast almost every day after work.
I actually prefer MAME to the real thing. Wireless controllers, pause, auto fire settings and whatnot.
Victim of COVID for sure, but I wonder if they were also a victim of the indoor smoking ban enacted in 2020. Japanese arcades were full of smokers when I was there. The smoking ban might well end up being the most significant legacy of the cursed Olympics.
The fact that there's no (legal) way to get some of those games out of Japan and into the hands of people who want to play them is a good indicator of a lack of wanting to do the work on the seller side. There's an article from Wired [1] a bit ago about the harrowing efforts of getting dancing game cabinets and the like out, and the DRM that goes into keeping them region-locked such that it's hard for gamers in the US to get to them.
I went to GameWorks in Seattle at one point for a party and roughly 1/3 of the cabinets were cobranded with companies like King or PopCap, played like slot machines, and were more at home in a Vegas casino than a kids arcade. The others were a mixture of Japan imports from Sega and such that had been semi-localized (or, for a few, not even localized at all, just laid there for the Ultra Weeb gaijin and homesick Japanese exchange students) and "classics" like super hang-on and mortal kombat.
Fact of the matter is that most modern arcade cabinets are just glorified consoles running a single game with a shitload of DRM on them, or windows/sometimes-linux machines running a single executable, stripped down to the bare minimum, then let sit in an arcade. If Konami can put the work into selling a game on a console, unless there's a really compelling reason to make the gameplay loop fit an arcade feel and not sell it as an "Arcade Console" game, they're not gonna put in the overhead of putting it into an arcade cabinet. Unless you've got some serious gimmick like a funny ridable controller [2] or a DJ style button set [3] then you're basically just selling a console game.
Arcades hold a large portion of my childhood memories. It was the place where I made friends from outside my social circle of school and neighborhood. I suppose in some ways it was an afternoon night club for kids.
I have no idea where if anywhere kids today can find the same connections outside of parent subsidized sports and art programs. (Which really do not have the autonomy and real world social interactions arcades provided me.)
I could hardly wait for my paper route money to come in so that I could meet up with my friends spend it at the arcade!
Possible shopping centers have provide a similar experience but I feel the writing is on the wall and it does not bode well for these either.
I worry that pseudo friendships such as those found online or soon in the Metaverse being the only option for our youth, will have long lasting negative consequences on our society which appears to be in decline already.
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If that is the case I am fine. I was rather worry about the end of Arcade. Especially with Racing Games.
For Sega, the money was in owning the complete operation.
Sega is a company that I always liked and always feel regret for, I loved my dreamcast and wished they had remained in the console business, I loved their arcades and wish they would still be there. It's one of the companies that most marked my childhood and early twenties.
I remember one time I'd just sold 800 Beanie Babies for $250,000 in cash (dude flew in from Chicago with it) and was feeling flush. Went in Sega World and they had a new Jurassic Park hydraulic deluxe game. IIRC it was three quid PER CREDIT, and it was a two-player game. So it was six quid just to start. There was an employee stationed outside who would put your money in for you.
So, me and my buddy go and get literally hundreds of quid coins and go back to the game and pour these coins into the guy's shirt and tell him KEEP FEEDING THE BEAST. DO NOT STOP. So we played that fucker all the way through to the end. I think we only spent about 90 quid in total to finish it. The employee was over the moon. He said he'd been working there for weeks but no-one ever wanted to play after the first credit and he'd really wanted to see the end sequence.
I love you Sega. You'll always be my first crush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega
Founders * Martin Bromley * Richard Stewart
For those who don't know, Round 1 is a Japanese arcade company that also has US locations, and they import many only-intended-for-Japan arcade cabinets to said locations, including some that are only in Japanese. Their rhythm game sections in particular are basically unsurpassed by American standards, it's like stepping into a slice of Tokyo.
Even if I was too young for the golden age of American arcades, I’m glad I got to experience their twilight. The vertically-integrated, destination-class concept was clearly the end-state for the industry, but it was still a blast to go.
We still have barcades, which are fun, though they tend to be exclusively retro-gaming, appealing first and foremost to Gen X nostalgia. Looks like I'll need to go to Tokyo to get behind the wheel of an Initial D arcade machine again.
The perennial fighting games and giant robot battles still pull crowds from their appreciators, as something of the core of the arcade business. That, and the two floors of UFO crane games still seem to hold fairly strong sway from what I've seen. The pandemic situation made things worse for arcades, but like many things that you've heard of many times before it only accelerated an inevitable decline. I think the move here would be first to downsize, then maybe specialize.
Arcade value prop is at an all-time low. It's too bad, because rhythm games are a lot of fun and impractical for homes.
I think it's important too to distinguish between a micro-transaction for something like a skin or a hat that has a cosmetic effect, versus "pay to win/pay to not grind", versus "pay every 5 minutes regardless of whether you win or lose" etc. My remarks on micro-transactions and difficulty creep is less about how profitable they are, but rather how the changes feel to me.
In writing my first post, I had a thought to compromise between the old school approach and the current paradigm: what if every game loop cost 1 credit if you win, 2 credits if you lose, and 100 yen buys 2 credits? If the challenge fits into my flow state so that it's at the upper limit of my competence, I would have an explicit 50 yen incentive to win in an engaging challenge. The game devs and proprieter would still make some guaranteed income on my play time. If no one has ever posited this idea before (and I'd bet someone has, and probably tested it, and maybe it doesn't work well for them), I feel like calling it "win to save".
It could even be an interesting study - players of games often won't keep playing if they feel they can't win, so the designer would have to be careful not to nickle and dime the player by setting them up for expensive failures. On the other hand, an engaging way to keep players paying could be to set them up for challenging victories that are very quick and efficient, to get them into the next loop faster... There's a lot of dimensions to this, more than I'm willing let alone able to put into one comment.
I agree arcades are a fantastic place for rhythm and dancing games. I hope you have a great day.
Dead Comment
Spent three weeks in Tokyo for my honeymoon a few years ago. I know of no experience that for me can rival the type of joy of spending late nights in an arcade (not saying it’s the pinnacle, just a unique experience). Even my wife who is a non-gamer found it a thrill. Perhaps with the shut downs it will consolidate to a few profitable centers that can remain. Individuals can’t afford Dancerush Stardum or those gundam games.
I actually prefer MAME to the real thing. Wireless controllers, pause, auto fire settings and whatnot.
I wish Gens was as alive as MAME.
The fact that there's no (legal) way to get some of those games out of Japan and into the hands of people who want to play them is a good indicator of a lack of wanting to do the work on the seller side. There's an article from Wired [1] a bit ago about the harrowing efforts of getting dancing game cabinets and the like out, and the DRM that goes into keeping them region-locked such that it's hard for gamers in the US to get to them.
I went to GameWorks in Seattle at one point for a party and roughly 1/3 of the cabinets were cobranded with companies like King or PopCap, played like slot machines, and were more at home in a Vegas casino than a kids arcade. The others were a mixture of Japan imports from Sega and such that had been semi-localized (or, for a few, not even localized at all, just laid there for the Ultra Weeb gaijin and homesick Japanese exchange students) and "classics" like super hang-on and mortal kombat.
Fact of the matter is that most modern arcade cabinets are just glorified consoles running a single game with a shitload of DRM on them, or windows/sometimes-linux machines running a single executable, stripped down to the bare minimum, then let sit in an arcade. If Konami can put the work into selling a game on a console, unless there's a really compelling reason to make the gameplay loop fit an arcade feel and not sell it as an "Arcade Console" game, they're not gonna put in the overhead of putting it into an arcade cabinet. Unless you've got some serious gimmick like a funny ridable controller [2] or a DJ style button set [3] then you're basically just selling a console game.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/gritty-underground-network-bring...
[2] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/c0/91/0cc0912f1b8248be89fc...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjvyHzzLZXs
I have no idea where if anywhere kids today can find the same connections outside of parent subsidized sports and art programs. (Which really do not have the autonomy and real world social interactions arcades provided me.)
I could hardly wait for my paper route money to come in so that I could meet up with my friends spend it at the arcade!
Possible shopping centers have provide a similar experience but I feel the writing is on the wall and it does not bode well for these either.
I worry that pseudo friendships such as those found online or soon in the Metaverse being the only option for our youth, will have long lasting negative consequences on our society which appears to be in decline already.