It’s times like this that I feel like I was born about a decade an a half too late. Everything awesome happened in the 1970s and 1980s, and I grew up in the bullshit 1990s and 2000s. The 1970s and 1980s got Lynyrd Skynyrd, Galaga, Ronald Reagan, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I got stuck with fucking Cold Play and Bill Clinton. Fuck off.

But anyway, arcade games are far superior to console games. Why, do you ask? It’s simple. When a developer or publisher makes a console game, their intention is to get you to buy it. That’s it. Maybe they want to milk a sequel, but usually they’re content with your sixty dollars. They don’t give a shit if you enjoy yourself when you’re playing the game because you’ve already bought it.

But in the arcades, the developer had to give you a reason to keep sticking quarters into that motherfucker. Everything about an arcade cabinet says, “Hey, check this shit out”. You’ve got a difficulty curve that increases at a reasonable rate, you’ve got gameplay that gets better as you go, and you don’t have to fuck around with any bullshit stories or tutorials. You put in your quarter and blast some fucking aliens. Arcade games didn’t have to make sense. Did you ever wonder why the little guy piloting the ship in Asteroids is in a fucking asteroid belt? Fuck no you didn’t, because you were too busy blasting fucking Asteroids.

The sound effects, the graphics, the gameplay, and the music were all designed to keep you playing. If a game failed to keep you interested, then it failed to make the arcade operator money and he then stopped ordering new cabinets of that game. It’s pretty simple.

There’s nothing more satisfying than multiplayer gaming in an arcade setting. You get to beat your friend head-to-head. You get to play his turn while he runs to the bathroom. You get to beat his high score, and point out your initials every time someone walks by the cabinet. See that, motherfucker? High score in Donkey Kong. Eat shit.

Speaking of which, Donkey Kong. Motherfucking Donkey Kong. Jump over a fireball, smash a barrel with a hammer, fuck up some rivets, drop Donkey Kong on his head and save your girlfriend. How did a monkey get a hold of your girlfriend, climb to the top of a construction site, and throw barrels down a conveniently shaped set of I-beams while fireballs aid him in killing you? Shut the fuck up, that’s how.

Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Galaga, Centipede, Berzerk, Robotron 2084, Dig Dug, and Joust. Legendary names in the realm of gaming. Remember the Frogger episode of Seinfeld? Fuck yeah, you do.

One great thing about the arcade was that the controls were all specifically designed for a single game, rather than games being designed for controllers like you’ll see with consoles. If the game you were playing called for a track-ball, that’s what you got. You didn’t have to try to make due with some bullshit Xbox 360 directional pad. If you were playing a light gun shooter, you walked up to the cabinet and started shooting shit.

And arcade greatness, while best in the 1980s, has lived on through the 1990s and 2000s. Many of the greatest games on modern and recent consoles got their starts in the arcade, and their arcade style is what makes them so great. Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, Radiant Silvergun, Time Crisis, Tekken, and Street Fighter. Think about it. You’re at Cici’s Pizza, you’ve just ingested some terrible combination of carbonated beverages that weren’t supposed to be mixed together, you sort of have to pee, and Time Crisis II beckons. It’s fucking go time.

It really sucks that arcades have died out for the most part in America. They’re still big in Japan, which is why we still see great arcade games making their way to modern consoles, but they’re mostly a thing of the past here. It’s sad, but we’ll always have our fond memories of juggling 44oz beverages with epic arcade games.

2 Comments »

1. You’re trying too hard man.
   Plus too much cussing you gotta space em out and slip em in at the perfect time. Like turkish the fuck royals.
   And the only good arcade game that ever existed is Big Buck Hunter. Duh

   Comment by Coke Von Cola — February 7, 2009 @ 2:45 pm

2. Thank God for the Quad Laser. Even so, it’s not the same unless there’s a lot of people over which happens not often enough sadly

   Comment by whoozwah — February 10, 2009 @ 11:49 pm

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