Jump to content
IGNORED

Must read: "For Amusement Only:the life and death of the American Arcade"


128bytes

Recommended Posts

The story is the story.. not too many ways to tell it :)

 

Let's face it, the evolution of the home systems killed the traditional arcade. Once there wasn't that technological barrier at home there was no reason to drop 50 cents a game down at the arcade. Add in online play to the mix and it's pretty much a done deal.

 

While I love my XBOX 360 as much as the next gamer, it is sad as we have lost something. It would be like losing the movie theater and only having netflix. The films would still be good but you lose that experience of going out on a friday night and playing a bunch of games with your friends.. or turning the corner in your arcade to find some awesome new game you had never heard of. Being able to play Halo 4 with my friends at their respective houses is nice.. but its not quite the same experience.

 

Oh well, life moves on and things change. I've done my part in terms of preserving the past and there is a bit of a retro resurgence. I lent a half dozen games to a local bar last year and it was popular enough that i'm leaving a few games there ongoing now (and making a few dollars on this hobby for once, lol). But as the article stated the bar is making money off the beer.. the games are just there to get people in the door. They are all set to free play because while people are on them all night for free its doubtful they'd linger if they had to pay per play.

 

I still hold out hope that these barcades and other retrowave stuff will take hold. I think it would be possible to rebuild the arcade industry.. at least on a small scale.. but companies would have to invest in new arcade-specific games and leave them there.. at least for awhile (ie no concurrent xbox ports). Since all of the money is on the consoles that's unlikely though.. unless somebody really wants to make an investment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's face it, the evolution of the home systems killed the traditional arcade. Once there wasn't that technological barrier at home there was no reason to drop 50 cents a game down at the arcade.

 

Exactly.

 

It was a good read, but what really killed off the arcade wasn't over-protective parents or crusading politicians, or even the overproduction of crap games. They may have been the first chinks in the armor, but home systems struck the killing blow.

 

I don't think it's coincidental that the crash happened in '83, and Colecovision, the first system to really rival the graphics of the arcade machines, had come out the year prior. Yes, the crash took out home systems and arcades alike, but the NES hit the scene before the arcades had a chance to recover. The machines still found on location these days don't compete graphically, but are generally huge showcase units that offer some sort of experience that can't be found in home systems. Ironically, that now includes pins, as well.

Edited by racerx
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I didn't quite get the emphasis on "arcades are dens of crime!" portion of the story. I frequented arcades from when I was very young (like 5 circa 1980 on up) and my parents were pretty protective so not like they would let me go into a place that was shady. Sure, there were a bunch of teenagers but not like the arcade at the Mall was ever a hot spot for crime.. at least not the malls we went to during the 80s. I'm sure there were some shady arcades around but most were pretty family friendly.

 

I don't think the arcade side was a crash more or less a market correction. When the video craze hit in the early 80s it swelled to crazy fad levels. Video Games were stuffed everywhere.. I remember seeing arcades shoved in store rooms in the back of convenience stores, games parked literally all over the malls (not just in the arcade proper).. for a period of time it seemed like if you had 4 square feet of space you had a video game. Obviously this level wasn't sustainable and after a few years the wave swelled back some. This happened around the same time as the console crash but mostly for the same reason.. the console market was going through the same problems.. too much content too quickly with poor quality. So things had to slow down a bit and build back at a reasonable level.

 

So while the arcades declined in the mid-80s they didn't crash that badly. You still had arcades it just became more sensible both in location and in numbers. There was still an arcade at every Mall, most of our larger arcades stayed alive. We lost the showbiz pizza but the Chuck-e-cheese i played at when I was 6 years old never closed (in fact its still open today). I still went to the arcade regularly from '84 onwards.. games like Kung Fu Master, Double Dragon, etc were huge. You may not have had 6 of them at the arcade like you saw with pac-man in '80 or '81 but it was still profitable.

 

The real decline didn't being until the late-90s when the game systems really picked up speed. I remember the watershed moment being when I saw Soul Edge after getting the Dreamcast Soul Calibur and being amazed at how absolute crap Soul Edge looked in comparison being a still somewhat recent game. I knew then it was over for the arcade industry and that pretty much was the start of the real decline. Since I have collected arcade games since the mid-90s i've got a lot of operator friends and it was really amazing to talk to them and see first hand how quickly things just fell apart. Now only a handful still have routes and its on a totally different scale than before.

 

Once again.. sad.. but that's progress.

 

The Pins did get caught up in the death of the videos which is ironic given how the videos unseated pins from the arcades in the first place. At least Pins are also making somewhat of a comeback theses days. Of course a lot of that is relying on sales to home buyers with deep pockets.

Edited by number six
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

An OK article but there wasn't much new in there and there were a number of inaccuracies

 

"…It is also undeniable, however, that the video game arcade would not have happened without him"

I suppose this one is a matter of opinion but I don't think it's at all "undeniable" that the video game arcade wouldn't have happened without Bushnell. My feeling is that if he and Dabney didn't create the arcade video game, someone else would have..

 

"By definition, an "amusement arcade" is a place that houses coin-operated machines, and for the first half of the 20th century, that meant pinball"

Not exactly. I don't think pinball really came to the fore until the depression, and that was over half way through "the first half of the 20th century"

Before that I think gun games, fortune tellers, jukeboxes/coin-op phonographs, Mutoscope/kinetoscope/peep shows, strength testers etc. predominated. If you'd gone into a penny arcade in the first two decades of the century, I think you'd have been hard pressed to find a lot of pinball/bagatelle machines.

 

"The first successful coin-operated game was called Baffle Ball"

Again, not exactly. It may not have even been the first popular pinball machine. I think Whiffle came out a bit before Baffle Ball. And there were a number of other successful coin-op games before Baffle Ball (such as ABT's pistol games) going back to the 1880s.

Of course, "successful" is a pretty ambiguous term.

 

"Bally and others originally made much of their money manufactuing slot machines"

Arguably, depending on what you mean by "originally". Bally actually started out making pinball games (not counting their years as Lion Manufacturing) and didn't enter the slot field until 1936, about five years after Ballyhoo (the first game under the Bally banner).

 

"The coin-operated amusements industry had…its roots in gambling"

Again, it depends on what you mean by "roots". While slots began appearing in the 1890s, coin-op amusements in the US appeared at least a decade before and during the first decade "athletic testers" and other machines predominated. Gambling games did appear early on, however.

 

"Computer Space was the first commercial arcade game released by Palo Alto-based Nutting Associates in 1971"

Computer Space was not Nutting's first arcade game. They were also located in Mountain View, not Palo Alto at the time.

 

"The release of Taito’s 1975 Gun Fight in Japan became significant when its licensed American version Western Gun…"

Western Gun was the Taito version. Gun Fight was the American version.

 

"The success of Pong signaled the decline of pinball as companies rushed to produce video games. Arcade operators and games distributors quickly realized that video games had…"

Not exactly wrong, since video games arguably "signaled" the EVENTUAL decline of pinball but the article (and others) give the impression that Pong led to the immediate decline of pinball.

In fact, in terms of machine earnings, pinball was slightly ahead of video games in the late 1970s, especially after solid state pins began to appear. It wasn't until Space Invaders that video games clearly pulled ahead.

 

[Death Race] "…was widely banned."

A lot of sources have repeated this claim but the never seem to provide examples of locations that banned Death Race in particular (rather than all video games) or that banned video games specifically because of Death Race. I've found plenty of stories from 1976-77 talking about the controversy the game engendered (though I don't think there ever would have been a controversy had it not been for one Seattle reporter) but none that report that the game was "widely" banned.

Some stories even reported that entire countries banned the game but I've found no incidence of this happening and Exidy's marketing director at the time said he'd never heard of a country banning the game.

On another note, both the game's designer and Exidy's founder told me that the game was not based on Deathrace 2000 (I suppose this could have been to avoid legal ramifications - even though I talked to them 25 years after the game came out)

 

"By 1985, Steve Epstein’s Times Square institution, the Broadway Arcade…was forced to close"

The Broadway Arcade didn't close until 1997. It was forced to move in 1985 but it moved to a location next door to the old one and the old location closed when the Novotel hotel opened on top of it.

 

"Millions of E.T. cartridges were produced, sold, and then returned, ultimately ending up in a landfill in New Mexico."

Not really but I'll let you read Curt and Marty's book if you want the straight skinny.

 

Keith Smith

http://allincolorfor...r.blogspot.com/

Edited by astrp3
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

So while the arcades declined in the mid-80s they didn't crash that badly. You still had arcades it just became more sensible both in location and in numbers. There was still an arcade at every Mall, most of our larger arcades stayed alive. We lost the showbiz pizza but the Chuck-e-cheese i played at when I was 6 years old never closed (in fact its still open today). I still went to the arcade regularly from '84 onwards.. games like Kung Fu Master, Double Dragon, etc were huge. You may not have had 6 of them at the arcade like you saw with pac-man in '80 or '81 but it was still profitable.

 

That was pretty much my experience as well. I was a bit too young to experience the initial "golden age boom" firsthand, but I spent a lot of time playing arcade games from '86ish to '91ish. In my area, I had multiple bona fide arcades to choose from, not to mention a few other places (ice cream shops, corner stores, gas stations, etc.) that would always have 2-3 games tucked away in the corner. The great thing about the small non-arcade joints was, not only were they a mere 10 minute bike ride away, but they'd always be cycling in new titles, so every time you went you'd wonder if the games would be different from last time.

 

I'm sure it was nothing like the Pac-Man days, but I always remember there being a fair level of enthusiasm for arcade games among my peers and I remember the arcades always having lots of patrons milling about.

 

Compare that to today. I still live in the same area, and if somebody came to visit me this weekend from out of town and said "take me out to play some arcade games", I'd not be able to think of a single place to go, aside from a hipster bar downtown that has a beat-up old cocktail multi-cade next to the pool tables, and the local family fun center that has nothing but a bunch of ass dancing and gun games and a Class of '81 Ms. Pac/Galaga. That's it.

 

.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's been a weird ride the last 15 years in the amusement industry. You won't make much money off anything traditional since people can play that at home. A friend told me about how he put a Madden arcade game in a college and couldn't get anyone to play it even for 25 cents for a full game.. obviously everyone had madden at home.

 

So things have shifted to games you can't get at home so easily.. drivers, shooters, etc. There's also been the bar games.. early-mid 00s you could make money off a Golden Tee but the bottom fell out of that. Then there were the bowling games.. that didn't last as long. It's rough.

 

Oddly enough a Ms Pac, Galaga or Reunion will still do OK at the right location. Can't beat the best of the classics I guess.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's been a weird ride the last 15 years in the amusement industry. You won't make much money off anything traditional since people can play that at home. A friend told me about how he put a Madden arcade game in a college and couldn't get anyone to play it even for 25 cents for a full game.. obviously everyone had madden at home.

 

So things have shifted to games you can't get at home so easily.. drivers, shooters, etc. There's also been the bar games.. early-mid 00s you could make money off a Golden Tee but the bottom fell out of that. Then there were the bowling games.. that didn't last as long. It's rough.

 

Oddly enough a Ms Pac, Galaga or Reunion will still do OK at the right location. Can't beat the best of the classics I guess.

 

For me arcade games have always been a necessity for gaming for 2 reasons, 1) most of my favorite games are vector and they look like crap on a raster monitor and 2) many of my favorite games have dedicated controls that in no way can be satisfactorily replaced by a game pad. But I think most people just accept playing games with game pad-type controllers.

 

What I think killed arcade video games was home consoles getting better graphics capabilities. Once they matched and then beat arcade games it was over for most people who didn't want to spend quarters or wait in lines to play something that was pretty damn close on their home PCs. Add to that games that were episodic or took days to complete vs. an Asteroids or Donkey Kong - if I'm paying $60 for a game it damn well better last more than 6 minutes - and you have a growing market for playing games on PCs. Home consoles now are becoming simply PCs with custom cases and OSs to just play games. Finally, being able to play other people online is a huge draw for people I know who play those 1st person shooter games or World of Warcraft designed universe games. I have no interest in those but I'm in the minority there.

 

Most people seem to be drawn to having home versions of things that are done out in public - home theaters, home arcades (video game consoles), home grilling, home auto repair - it's like they want a complete facility to do whatever, whenever, and never have to leave the house. I can understand the appeal but there's something to be said for seeing a movie in a theater or eating a great meal in a restaurant instead of doing it all yourself. I wish there were a few decent arcades near me so that I can go and play for a couple hours. Man, when I walked into the main hall at California Extreme and just soaked in the hurricane of arcade game sounds/music, I almost forgot to start walking around to find a game to play which made buying the Arcade Ambiance CDs a no-brainer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am an arcade operator that runs a strict arcade - zero ticket redemption games, mostly video games with a mixture of new and old, a few pins, an air hockey and one instant prize merchandiser machine. I have been open for almost five years now, last quarter was my best ever and I do not agree with the articles conclusion. They ask a few people around the NYC area the state of arcades and because they are depressed about it, that must mean no need to research further. Sorry but that is a load of crap. There are brand new arcade machines being produced right now, people still play them and they can still make money. There are various factors that affect that however and lets be honest, the land of NYC isn't really the most arcade business friendly environment you can find yourself in (for example, if you have more than 8 machines, get ready to pay up in taxes. The article doesn't even hint at those difficulties).

 

I wrote up a further "rebuttal" of sorts to the article. I live arcades every day and I do not agree with their premise, excepting Nolan Bushnell at the end where I am happy to see his take on it.

 

http://arcadeheroes.com/2013/01/16/editorial-no-everyone-doesnt-agree-on-the-death-of-the-arcade/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am an arcade operator that runs a strict arcade - zero ticket redemption games, mostly video games with a mixture of new and old, a few pins, an air hockey and one instant prize merchandiser machine. I have been open for almost five years now, last quarter was my best ever and I do not agree with the articles conclusion. They ask a few people around the NYC area the state of arcades and because they are depressed about it, that must mean no need to research further. Sorry but that is a load of crap. There are brand new arcade machines being produced right now, people still play them and they can still make money. There are various factors that affect that however and lets be honest, the land of NYC isn't really the most arcade business friendly environment you can find yourself in (for example, if you have more than 8 machines, get ready to pay up in taxes. The article doesn't even hint at those difficulties).

 

I wrote up a further "rebuttal" of sorts to the article. I live arcades every day and I do not agree with their premise, excepting Nolan Bushnell at the end where I am happy to see his take on it.

 

http://arcadeheroes....-of-the-arcade/

 

Great post, and great rebuttal, Shaggy.

 

Just what I was thinking -- Home, phone, and tablet gaming isn't guaranteed to kill the arcade, just like how DVD's, Netfflix, and HDTV didn't kill the movies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A decent read overall, taking into account the inaccuracies noted above. I am disappointed that the author felt compelled to repeat the tired argument that, "It’s important to note, of course, that E.T. was a terrible game". It wasn't a terrible game; it was a unique, randomized puzzle-solving game in an era of mindless "twitch" games that was confusing to the thousands of people who pushed the cartridge into the console slot without ever looking at the manual.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I didn't quite get the emphasis on "arcades are dens of crime!" portion of the story. I frequented arcades from when I was very young (like 5 circa 1980 on up) and my parents were pretty protective so not like they would let me go into a place that was shady. Sure, there were a bunch of teenagers but not like the arcade at the Mall was ever a hot spot for crime.. at least not the malls we went to during the 80s. I'm sure there were some shady arcades around but most were pretty family friendly.

 

That was more of a stigmatism from the 70s on back that she was probably regurgitating without realising the context. Arcades and most coins (pinball) were banned in various cities across the U.S. because of the connection to gambling and organized crime. Los Angeles, for instance, banned them until 1974. There was also the stigma that "hoodlums," etc. (and by the 70s druggies and party minded teens) tended to hang out in arcades.

 

The story is the story.. not too many ways to tell it :)

 

Let's face it, the evolution of the home systems killed the traditional arcade. Once there wasn't that technological barrier at home there was no reason to drop 50 cents a game down at the arcade. Add in online play to the mix and it's pretty much a done deal.

 

I wouldn't totally agree with that. Most people tend to look at this from a player perspective vs. an actual coin industry perspective. What happened in the 90s in the coin industry is you had more of a shift to redemption games and that format, which was experiencing a similar kind of renaissance that video arcade games enjoyed in the very early 80s; namely placement in non-traditional locations. Many resteraunts, gas stations, malls, etc. started placing redemption machines (usually crane machines) as they became the big money maker. Likewise, the video arcade manufacturers in the late 90s and early 2000s combated the in home experience with coins designed for what the industry terms as "out of home" experience. Setups and environments that could not be duplicated at home at the time, such as the large multi-screen sit down racers. The "huge machines" that racerx described in the rest of his post that I didn't quote below.

 

 

 

I don't think it's coincidental that the crash happened in '83, and Colecovision, the first system to really rival the graphics of the arcade machines, had come out the year prior. Yes, the crash took out home systems and arcades alike, but the NES hit the scene before the arcades had a chance to recover.

 

That's completely inaccurate. First, the crash started in '82 and came to a crescendo in July of '84 with the splitting of Atari Inc. Second, the coin and consumer industries and markets are two completely different things. The crash was specific to the home industry (called the Consumer industry), and had nothing to do with the coin industry. They are not related industries and never have been, there's no such thing as single "video game industry" to point a finger at. That's a mythical unicorn. The needs of the Coin industry vs. the Consumer industry are completely different. The Coin industry (and coin-op manufacturers) markets and sells to what are termed operators and distributors. (Operators being the people at end locations who set the machine up and make money from it, distributors being coin vendors who rent out to operators.) The Consumer industry markets and sells directly to the purchaser - the player. That's the direct customer. Thirdly, because of all this, coin has always had it's own long established cycles and pracitces completely separate from any imagined ties to the Consumer industry. The Coin industry was around long before the invention of arcade video games of course. In the case of the 80s, the Coin industry had experienced intense growth from '79 through '82, selling to operators at many non-traditional locations. (Traditional being arcades, bars, etc.) Locations like doctors offices, gas stations, department stores, etc. The bottom fell out of that expansion in '82 as the many of these operators discovered the length of earnings were limited, and they couldn't afford to swap out for newer games like more traditional locations could.You had a Coin industry shakeout with many coin companies exiting or consolidating across '82-'83, which then lead to an upswing cycle. As Gary Stern (Stern Electronics) described it to me, as Consumer was entering it's crash Coin was entering its growth phase again. (There's a reason why the Warner kept the Coin division.) By the time the NES was test marketed in late '85, the Coin industry was already well into its upward cycle. There's no question that traditional arcades were affected by Coin's shakeout across '82-'8, and you had a change in those locations; that could be what resulted in your perception. But by '85 you had a different flavor of arcade emerging more reflective of the change of the industry and its shift to JAMMA.

 

For me, that's when I lost the desire to go to arcades, their atmosphere had changed as had the uniqueness of the game play experience as JAMMA cabinets became more ubiquitous over the custom cabinets and controls of the golden age. That's one point I agree on with the article byline - that unless you grew up in that golden age era you don't understand the difference between an "arcade" and something like Dave and Busters or the like. The "real arcades" of the golden age on back were more of a social hub, a place to hang out regardless of whether you were playing the games or not. Sort of like the younger person's version of the corner neighborhood bar. And the design of the locations and their atmosphere reflected that. To me the experience and atmosphere of a real arcade had left by the mid and late 80s and the arcades of those era and later were a different experience. What I'm left with are photographs that give an inkling of what it was like back then to go to a real arcade:

 

http://timeouttunnel...age_timeout.htm

http://timeouttunnel...rt_training.htm

http://www.tepg.se/joysticks-1983/

post-160-0-55662500-1358671504_thumb.jpg

post-160-0-56104900-1358671278_thumb.jpg

post-160-0-47827600-1358671280_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't totally agree with that. Most people tend to look at this from a player perspective vs. an actual coin industry perspective. What happened in the 90s in the coin industry is you had more of a shift to redemption games and that format, which was experiencing a similar kind of renaissance that video arcade games enjoyed in the very early 80s; namely placement in non-traditional locations. Many resteraunts, gas stations, malls, etc. started placing redemption machines (usually crane machines) as they became the big money maker. Likewise, the video arcade manufacturers in the late 90s and early 2000s combated the in home experience with coins designed for what the industry terms as "out of home" experience. Setups and environments that could not be duplicated at home at the time, such as the large multi-screen sit down racers. The "huge machines" that racerx described in the rest of his post that I didn't quote below.

 

Redemption games became more prevalent as more traditional games started to decline. You can't make money with a Tekken game in most locations anymore, but you can still make money with a crane game thus you see more crane games. Doesn't mean the crane killed Tekken.. just people stopped playing Tekken because they had it at home (probably a newer version to boot).

 

And yes, the adoption of the sit-down/showcase/large format games was another way to combat the home games, as you said providing an experience you couldn't get a home. Nobody is disagreeing with that. Problem was though, the big format games were extremely expensive which caused it to become even more difficult for operators to turn a profit hence adding to the decline of the industry even more.

 

At the end of the day, it was the technological advancement in consoles that killed the traditional arcade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Redemption games became more prevalent as more traditional games started to decline. You can't make money with a Tekken game in most locations anymore, but you can still make money with a crane game thus you see more crane games. Doesn't mean the crane killed Tekken.. just people stopped playing Tekken because they had it at home (probably a newer version to boot).

 

Whether or not someone can make money anymore with Tekken is irrelevant, I was not referring to now. Likewise again, I'm talking from an industry perspective, not the player perspective. There was a concerted effort to move the coin industry in that direction (for those that weren't abandoning it for slots) starting in the early 90s that started reaching it's crescendo in the mid and late 90s. In relation to your example, that's pre-Tekken.

 

At the end of the day, it was the technological advancement in consoles that killed the traditional arcade.

 

That's a common player's perspective. Coin industry veterans would not agree, and I've interviewed plenty over the years (one even wrote a fascinating article on the industry's perspective back in 2001 - Arcade Fanstic by Kevin Williams). From their perspective the decline in video coin started more around the '84-'85, and more in relation to JAMMA. The shift to JAMMA was great for operators but killed the uniqueness of the custom arcade experience that was prevalent before. Items such as the forced uniformity on the game controls and cabinet designs in favor of that constant re-use for new games meant there wasn't anything different to offer, i.e. that out of home experience. When they eventually expanded JAMMA to account for more than the ubiquitous slapstick/50 buttons controller layout and produced more custom cabinets - specifically going for that out of home experience again in the late 90s as mentioned, it was too little too late. Generations of gamers had already grown up with the viewpoint you mentioned - that now that consoles (and home computers) had caught up hardware wise (i.e. internally) with video coins that there wasn't a reason to be pumping coins in the coin version of a game anymore; there just wasn't much of a difference in play. So to sum up, for the industry viewpoint, consoles being able to catch up was more of a result of that dropped ball of uniqueness that JAMMA initially forced, producing a gap that allowe consoles to take over, and what you're describing as the reason for failure was more of a byproduct of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whether or not someone can make money anymore with Tekken is irrelevant, I was not referring to now. Likewise again, I'm talking from an industry perspective, not the player perspective. There was a concerted effort to move the coin industry in that direction (for those that weren't abandoning it for slots) starting in the early 90s that started reaching it's crescendo in the mid and late 90s. In relation to your example, that's pre-Tekken.

 

Actually I'm not talking for purely a 'players standpoint'. I've been in and around the coin-op industry since the 90s. While certainly everyone can have their own opinion what I'm saying about the rise of technology within consoles being linked to the decline of the arcade is based on more than just my own observations. I have many friends that are route operators and it basically went down as said.. as the home systems got more advanced the traditional arcade games became less and less attractive as people could get the same experience at home. It's pretty much the same situation as say Blockbuster.. once netflix and VOD came around few people wanted to drive to a store and wait in line just to pay extra hence most of the blockbusters are now gone. So anyway I witnessed this all first hand from 1994 onwards so I do somewhat know what I'm talking about.

 

You seem to have it out for JAMMA for some reason, not really sure how that fits in. Jamma is simply a wiring standard. It was created to unify the arcade pinouts in a period of time where conversions were a nightmare because every company had their own pinouts. Hell, even some companies didn't maintain a unified pinout so those might even be different from game to game. It's not like conversions didn't happen before this time.. they did.. which is why a standard was needed.

 

While Jamma may have only supported 2 joysticks and 8 buttons it didn't exactly kill innovation. You could still create a game with more buttons or a different control scheme, you simply needed to add an additional wiring harness for the additional controls. Not a big deal and plenty of games made use of that. Most games still used the Jamma harness as a core but once again just to make things easier. So saying Jamma killed the industry is like saying s-video cables killed the VCR.

 

Now what did change around the Jamma era was a shift in game design. As the games got more advanced there was a shift away from simple score-based games (like Pac-Man) to "pay to complete" style game where you got the player to dump more quarters in to continue the experience. That had nothing to do with Jamma they both just happened around the same time. You can argue that games from this era suffer from this more.. which I'd agree with to some degree. There are plenty of 'classic' era games that you can eventually master through skill and practice but i don't care how good you are at Robocop you are going to die a lot on the later levels.

 

Still arcades thrived for many years after the introduction of Jamma and especially in the early 90s when the fighting games blew up (most of which utilized controls outside of the Jamma standard btw).

 

So It was during the late 90s that things really started crashing but that's when the more advanced consoles started appearing.. the Dreamcast, etc. because why would I pay 50 cents to play a game at some arcade when I could play the exact same thing at home endlessly? The answer is you wouldn't.. that's why instead of an arcade game and a crane game in front of Wal-Mart you now have 2 crane games.. because nobody really cared about playing Tekken (or whatever) anymore because they had it on their Playstation 2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually I'm not talking for purely a 'players standpoint'. I've been in and around the coin-op industry since the 90s

 

What coin manufacturer were you working at and hanging around then since the 90s then? The industry people I was reffering to earlier are all from manufacturers like Midway, Williams, Stern, Atari Games, etc. from the 70s through the 2000s. The people making the games, and all people I've interviewed specifically about this topic over my years as a writer and programmer in the electronic entertainment industry (coin and home).

 

While certainly everyone can have their own opinion what I'm saying about the rise of technology within consoles being linked to the decline of the arcade is based on more than just my own observations.

 

I don't recall stating that what I was relating was my opinion either. It was clearly stated as the insight from these industry vets (people involved in the design and manufacturing of said games). What makes what you're saying and basing it off of more fact then theirs?

 

You seem to have it out for JAMMA for some reason,

 

No, if there's a negative portrayal on the impact of JAMMA it's via the people mentioned above.

 

Jamma is simply a wiring standard. It was created to unify the arcade pinouts in a period of time where conversions were a nightmare because every company had their own pinouts. Hell, even some companies didn't maintain a unified pinout so those might even be different from game to game. It's not like conversions didn't happen before this time.. they did.. which is why a standard was needed.

 

Which is again only half the story. The need need to unify the arcade pinouts to make conversions less of a nightmare is *because* operators were wanting more and more to be able to convert cabinets rather than be stuck with unique cabinets and control setups that could not be converted to newer games and instead had to be dumped somewhere when they were no longer earners. JAMMA as a wiring standard was created to allow the re-use of cabinets and adoptions of more standard control layouts as I mentioned, to make conversions *the norm.* Which is also what lead to cheaper methods of initial manufacturing to plan for the eventual swapping of games. I.E. Glass to plexi to translite, and painted side art to decals. That's simply all a matter of history, nothing new or unique to understand there.

 

While Jamma may have only supported 2 joysticks and 8 buttons it didn't exactly kill innovation. You could still create a game with more buttons or a different control scheme, you simply needed to add an additional wiring harness for the additional controls.

 

No, not when operators were looking to simply reuse the cabinet/control panels they already have. In fact your own statement concurs with the stated limiting factor to a tee - at the time it supported 2 joysticks and 8 buttons. That's what game designers started designing for. You have only to look at the JAMMA games released in the late 80s and early 90s to see the propensity of slapstick/multibutton games, let alone see the bulk were winding up in arcades as JAMMA conversions to already used cabinets.

 

Honesly there's not much more to go in circles about, you're entitled to your own opionions but not facts. Either way, thanks for the interesting discussion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't recall stating that what I was relating was my opinion either. It was clearly stated as the insight from these industry vets (people involved in the design and manufacturing of said games). What makes what you're saying and basing it off of more fact then theirs?

 

I don't see the point of continuing down this 'my source is better than yours path'. We're talking about the decline of the arcades, I talked to the people who ran arcades during the decline. They said exactly what was evident.. kids stopped playing the games after the home versions got to parallel or better. I've never seen anything to counter that, but if you have a different take we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

Which is again only half the story. The need need to unify the arcade pinouts to make conversions less of a nightmare is *because* operators were wanting more and more to be able to convert cabinets rather than be stuck with unique cabinets and control setups that could not be converted to newer games and instead had to be dumped somewhere when they were no longer earners. JAMMA as a wiring standard was created to allow the re-use of cabinets and adoptions of more standard control layouts as I mentioned, to make conversions *the norm.* Which is also what lead to cheaper methods of initial manufacturing to plan for the eventual swapping of games. I.E. Glass to plexi to translite, and painted side art to decals. That's simply all a matter of history, nothing new or unique to understand there.

 

Jamma didn't kill the arcades. Jamma didn't cause conversions, there were plenty of conversions before Jamma was adopted. There were conversion kit games well before Jamma existed. The arcade industry didn't decline until about 15 years after Jamma was introduced. The correlation of the decline to the release of the Playstation and Dreamcast makes a lot more sense than a wiring standard.

 

Once again I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here.

 

No, not when operators were looking to simply reuse the cabinet/control panels they already have. In fact your own statement concurs with the stated limiting factor to a tee - at the time it supported 2 joysticks and 8 buttons. That's what game designers started designing for. You have only to look at the JAMMA games released in the late 80s and early 90s to see the propensity of slapstick/multibutton games, let alone see the bulk were winding up in arcades as JAMMA conversions to already used cabinets.

 

What as opposed to the early 80s when every game used a crazy non-standard layout? Games didn't change that much control-wise after Jamma. Most games relied on a Joystick and a few buttons.. just like they did before. They came up with that setup because it covered the widest number of games.

 

Sure, plenty of games before Jamma used non-standard controls but absolutely after Jamma was introduced plenty of games also used non standard controls. They simply added an additional harness. In fact tons and tons of games in the 90s used more than just '2 joysticks and 8 buttons' including virtually every fighting game, every multiplayer game, every gun game, every driving game, etc. etc. etc. all of which required more than Jamma. Certainly Jamma didn't stifle anyones creativity it just gave everyone a base to work from.

 

Plus it's not like every game was a kit game after Jamma either, most of your major releases shipped in dedicated cabinets as well as kits.. which happened before Jamma as well.

 

Honesly there's not much more to go in circles about, you're entitled to your own opionions but not facts. Either way, thanks for the interesting discussion.

 

Aye. Everyone is entitled to a different opinion, no worries.

 

Definitely thanks for a good conversation

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...