Why do arcade machines still exist?
Full arcades are hard to find, but in movie theatres and family-oriented restaurants, you still often see old arcade machines. Didn't these become obsolete years ago? Virtually any old arcade game can be downloaded for free; why would anyone pay to play a dated game in an inconvenient format once?
posted by Chris Althouse Cohen at 2:15 PM
4 Comments:
You are perhaps too young to appreciate nostalgia.
Wait 20 years and ask the question again.
Son, you cannot appreciate the simple joys that 25 cents can buy you, on your feet, firing away on a Centipede. Body English not to be replicated on a home machine. Free lives, enter your initials in public. That's the only game I loved, and it is a true joy to find one in the back of a pizza parlor still calling that tune. No, really.
Matthew: I'm not being tongue-in-cheek at all.
Immediately after I did this post (there was an arcade game nearby) a man put in a quarter and played the game next to me. Twenty seconds later, he had "died" and the machine asked him for another quarter. He walked away. That did not seem worth it to me.
The thing is that the arcade screen is no larger than a TV or computer screen, so the experience of playing the game is not substantially improved. I realize that nostalgia can be the only possible explaination, of course. Seems like a waste of precious quarters.
What was the specific game the guy played?
If you are good, you can keep playing for under a dollar until your food arrives. Really good, you'll still be on that original quarter.
"I realize that nostalgia can be the only possible explaination, of course." No, another explanation might be "the feel of the game is different" than at home, which ties into the nostalgia feeling, but is not the same (or the only).
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