Desert island arcade machines
I don’t know how many people remember the glory days of arcades, but those hours spent in a dark building with nothing but the sounds of the arcade machines, Journey on the tinny sound system, and the glow of the CRTs was definitely one of the best times of gaming history.
As arcades gave way to home consoles, they started to close up shop, but the nostalgia of playing those games lived on in emulators for the PC, Mac, Playstation, and Dreamcast. Today, you can find most popular arcade games on the Playstation 3 or Xbox Live. However, nothing compares to the feel of the original controls in your hand. Oh, sure, you can play Tron on your PC using MAME, but having the stick and the knob can’t be matched by a keyboard and mouse no matter how hard you try.
A few years back, I decided to get an arcade machine for the house. It took a long time to determine which one I wanted because the premise of an arcade machine had one major flaw: you could never really beat the game no matter what you bought. It would be purely for entertainment and nostalgia. Picking the right game took time for me to think about what games I was good at, and which I’d enjoy over time.
There were games that were my favorite but I sucked horribly at. Sinistar was one of them. I loved that game to pieces (no pun intended), but I never got past wave two. Tempest was good but I wasn’t very good at that either. Gyruss was one of my favorite games, and I think the best I did was get to Mars, but I found that game to be too repetitious. Once you knew the patterns, it was easy. Marble Madness was an awesome game, but way too short. I think it was six levels, and then you’re done. I beat the game before so I didn’t think I’d get much fun out of a game I could win. The list went on and on: Centipede, Star Wars (my #1 choice, but very expensive), Donkey Kong, Star Trek, Space War, Dig Dug, Mr. Do!, Space Invaders, the list goes on and on.
I eventually decided on Tron because of its unique gameplay, design, and cabinet. I found a guy in Keansburg who was selling one for $400 and I jumped on getting a friend with a truck to go down there and get it. We agreed on a price, and set a date to pick it up. After getting there, the guy jacked the price up to $700, claiming that other people were interested in it. The machine wasn’t even in that good of shape. The speaker was shot, the screen had burn-in, and the stickers on the cabinet were peeling. The game itself played fine, but this wasn’t a $700 machine.
So I went home instead, putting the money back in the bank and thought that having an arcade machine may not be the best idea. They need maintenance, and some work on it may be beyond the scope of something I could handle such as replacing the screen.
Today, you can build a cabinet or buy one premade, and run the MAME emulator on a low-end PC. I may do that myself since maintenance on it is trivial, and the screen today can simply be an LCD monitor.
So what would be your desert island arcade machine?
A Tron arcade machine
Category: Technology
Nice article. Tron is great pick, since it’s really multiple games in one cabinet.
Although I played all of those early arcade games, it was the next generation that really captured my attention and quarters. I think I’d want either Bionic Commandos (good co-op, varied levels, solid replayability)or Blockout (I just had the spatial awareness to be good at it, even though I never cared for Tetris).
I’ve never had the living space to commit to having one where I lived though. If I ever own a house again and can have a game room, I’d think about getting an arcade game for it.