What 80's Arcades Really Looked Like by Ok so...
(www.youtube.com)
from hitstun@fedia.io to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 21:38
https://fedia.io/m/retrogaming@lemmy.world/t/1716245
from hitstun@fedia.io to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 26 Jan 21:38
https://fedia.io/m/retrogaming@lemmy.world/t/1716245
Do you think 80’s arcades were dark rooms with colorful carpets and neon lights? That was hardly the truth. This video does a fantastic job covering the diverse aesthetics of several chains of amusement centers as they tried to distance themselves from the seedy establishments where teenagers would skip school.
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Piped has never worked for me, I don’t know why.
Did your instance do something weird here? My thread is a YouTube link.
Ah! It’s a setting in the app I’m using that I forgot about. I’m using a flight test app on iOS called “arctic”, and there’s an option to auto convert YouTube videos to piped.
There’s actually a long list of piped servers I could switch between, so I should just experiment and see if I find one first.
Thanks for the reply.
Most of the arcades I remember from my childhood in the 80s were just dark rooms period lol like just dark enough that you couldn’t see how disgusting the carpet was! The only neon lights were on the arcade machines themselves
I mean… The arcades I’ve been to in the late 80’s and all throughout the 90’s were definitely the stereotype. Blacklit rooms with bright neon colored floors and walls that would glow under the lighting.
Shit, even Chuck E. Cheese’s were pretty fucking dimly lit back in the day. The brightest spots in the entire place were the stage so you could see the animatronics and the ball pit so parents wouldn’t lose their kids.
The most well-lit arcade I remember was the one in Tomorrow Land at Disney Land. Because it had huge floor to ceiling windows and half the games were unplayable during certain times of the day just due to the glare from the windows on the screens.
What they smelled like, meanwhile, was stale cigarette smoke
Old cigarettes and pizza smell, very true.
I remember arcades being dimly lit. Otherwise the glare would mess with you when playing a game. Also the noise! Admittedly i skipped through this video but some of what I saw was definitely from the 70’s. Pinball was pretty much dead during the 80’s but made a resurgence late in the decade into early 90’s when they got a little more high tech.
Yea, you can’t play arcade games with bright lighting.
I absolutely hate what are considered arcades today. We visit them when going to the beach on vacation with the kids and even chucky cheese these days. There are no actual games anymore, and all they encourage is the first steps to gambling. They want tickets, and the games are mostly just things made around getting tickets. The claw machines are bigger than ever as well taking up way more area than I remember. The only thing left that I enjoy is skeeball…
I hope arcades make a comeback, but I have my doubts if this is what makes more money.
We call that type of arcade "redemption hell". Good arcades still exist, though! See if any of your local arcades specialize in retro games or Japanese games. They'll have the good stuff, even if the atmosphere isn't what it used to be.
Yes! We do have several within a 20 min drive from us. They are normally pay by the hour, which is nice. I really wish for newer games as well, but I’m not sure if they just don’t exist or they are too expensive that these places don’t buy or rent them.
If you're in the US, Round 1 is a Japanese chain that expanded into the States a while back, and they brought a lot of imported stuff with them. Still a lot of gambling too, but keep walking until you find the section where they keep the good stuff.
You can also check Zenius-i-vanisher, a community-maintained database of what games are at what arcades. If you're looking for a specific game, they may know a place. Just note that info on there may not always be up to date, double check when an arcade's entry was last updated.
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Our mall arcade had no windows, thankfully. The original location was about the width of a British-style pub, with about 12-15 video games down one wall: Pac-Man, Tempest, and even Boot Hill (yes I am not kidding, that old thing) and about 12-15 pinball machines down the other wall (Xenon, Haunted House, they even had one from the '60’s that spent more time out of order than in service). The arcade did so well they moved to a larger space, still with no windows. It had dim lighting, a black light or 2, and patterned carpeting. There was a juke box with 45rpm singles. Kids played Erotic City by Prince until one of the straightedge kids narced and their parents had the managers pull the record from the machine. I played Time Pilot for ages. I played Time Pilot '84 for about as long. Joust, and Crystal Castles, and Gauntlet. The arcade did so well that they expanded into an adjacent space which used to be a tiny hair salon. I remember when Super Pac Man showed up, and Reactor (with the awesome music in the attract screen), and when we first got Karate Champ and Kung-Fu Master, and Star Wars, and that BIG sit-in Star Trek cabinet. Above all, I was obsessed with Dragon’s Lair, and I finally beat it in that very arcade, with only one person watching, well over a year later. I think that arcade lasted into the 1990’s, pretty sure there was a Neo-Geo machine in there the last time I checked it out. I sure remember standing outside the doors after it went out of business.
Those were the days.
“the width of a British-style pub”
the length of a piece of string. the height of a tree. the size of an animal. the colour of a door.
I don’t know man, I was in a lot of arcades in the 80’s and most of them were either the cliche dark rooms with neon or kid first places like Chuck e Cheese or the (more fun) arcade plus go kart-style places. Can’t watch much of the video because Youtube has been intentionally crippling my viewing on Firefox.