It’s difficult to write a eulogy for the arcade, that once
ubiquitous quarter-eating staple of malls, bowling alleys
and college campuses everywhere. Like Saturday morning
cartoons and the NHL, it still exists, but has been slowly
fading from the American consciousness since its 1980s
heyday.
Still, I felt compelled to write a lament of sorts after
learning recently that the plug is literally being pulled at
Gunther’s Games, a small mom-and-pop downtown arcade in
Columbia, Missouri where I spent many of my formative years
(and quarters).
Not that the closing of Gunther’s is a surprise. In
recent years, the dusty confines felt more like an old
Presbyterian church with pinball machines than a living and
breathing hangout. But it’s hard not to wax poetic about one
of the last of the old neighborhood arcades –- the kind of
place Norman Rockwell would have painted had he been a
Gen-X-er who felt romantic notions about Double Dragon.
For many teens in the late ‘70s and ‘80s (before the
advent of XBoxes, cellphones and MySpace) arcades were
actually prime destinations. It wasn’t just that my
generation was dying to guide a yellow anthropomorphic
hockey puck through a maze or to help a mustachioed plumber
rescue his girlfriend from a barrel-tossing ape, but because
arcades were one of the few shared spaces we could hang out
that felt decidedly adult-unfriendly. For some of us, going
to the arcade was a small act of anti-authoritarian
rebellion.
The arcades I grew up in were dark, sweaty, dungeon-like
rooms filled with loud obnoxious lights and sounds with even
louder and more obnoxious people. I remember the plethora of
mohawked misfits, metalheads in Megadeth shirts and ripped
jeans, D&D-obsessed geeky types and various other mallrats.
Even the typical arcade employee embodied the aesthetic -–
the longhaired burnout or the twenty-something underachiever
celebrated in virtually every Kevin Smith movie.
When arcades appeared in ‘80s movies, it was usually to
show the natural habitat of some sort of slacker or punky
teen, such as Sean Penn’s iconic Spicoli in Fast Times at
Ridgemont High. There was even an absurd 1983 teen
B-flick called Joysticks about wacky teens trying to
keep their video arcade from being shut down by a
curmudgeonly businessman who claimed the arcade was a threat
to the mental health of the youth.
In real life, drug deals and rowdy behavior were usually
the exception rather than the norm, but the reputation of
shady things occurring in arcades led many middle class
parents, including my own, to frown upon their kids
frequenting these places. It’s also worth noting that the
skating rink and the bowling alley garnered similar
reputations—and both tended to have arcade games.
Ironically, though arcades were viewed by the older
generation as seedy dens of teen corruption, the games
themselves were often simplistic and childish affairs,
especially compared with today’s popular over-complex and
over-stimulating consoles games. Back then, video games
didn’t revolve around fighting virtual lifelike recreations
of World War II battles or murdering gang members; rather,
we were innocently helping a pixelated frog across a street
or saving a princess from a dragon.
And despite all the unblinking eyes staring at video
screens, arcades also often bred a sense of community -–
we’d chat with strangers about how to get past the Nth wave
of aliens in Galaga, look on in awe for the guy who
got past Act V in Ms. Pac-Man without losing a life,
or bicker over who got the turkey leg in Gauntlet.
Over time you grew to know the regular characters at the
arcade –- sort of like a teen version of Cheers. One
of my old arcade archrivals was known as Red (creatively
named for his reddish hair and face). Red used to casually
dispose of almost everyone he faced in a two-player game and
would remain stoic the entire time but for an occasional
cackle after beating someone in an exceptionally interesting
way. There was also a pudgy kid with Coke bottle glasses we
called “Bill Gates”. Mr. Gates would arrive to the arcade
with a huge red-felt pouch filled with tokens and would use
most of them within an hour. He was the single worst player
I’d ever seen, but that didn’t stop him from sinking token
after token into the machines.
But by the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, fewer people were
dropping dollars into arcades. The first big blow of
competition arrived with the home systems -– first the Atari
2600 and then the Nintendo Entertainment System -– when
technology began to allow kids to play arcade games in the
safe space of home (as Mom and Dad sighed in relief). Game
makers tried to adapt somewhat by focusing on games with
steering wheels, jet fighter sticks, dual screens,
trackballs and other gadgets not possible at home, but the
market erosion continued.
Around the same time, rumblings of problems with the
arcade business began within the industry itself as well,
with such companies as Nintendo exiting in 1992. Some
arcades closed while others redesigned with the intention to
market themselves as more family friendly. My favorite
mall-based arcade as a kid, Aladdin’s Castle, was remodeled
in the early ‘90s in bright neon colors. The games were
still there, but the atmosphere wasn’t. Suddenly, some of us
were feeling alienated from our own haven that had to that
point felt sealed off from the adult world.
Arcades might actually have fallen into obscurity earlier
if it wasn’t for the fighting game boom in 1991, led by
Street Fighter II, and the Dance Dance Revolution
craze about 10 years later, each creating its own subculture
that briefly boosted a flagging industry.
Today, the arcade industry is trapped in what a recent
Associated Press article called a “death spiral”. According
to statistics from Vending Times, the number of arcade game
units nationwide dropped from 860,000 in 1994 to 333,000 in
2004. Revenue from the games sank from $2.3 billion to $866
million in that same timeframe.
With all of the countless distractions kids and teens
have nowadays (including ultra-powered home systems), going
out to the arcade to play video games seems like an act of
nostalgia -– something movie theatres are also beginning to
experience to a lesser extent. The small arcades that
survive tend to feed off the spare change of tourists and
theme park goers. Most of the ones that thrive aren’t the
Gunther’s of the world, but multipurpose “entertainment
centers” like Chuck E. Cheese for kids and Dave & Busters
for adults, with both continually adding new locations.
For those of us who miss the old days, home consoles
offer “arcade favorites” compilations and collections, but
they never feel satisfying because the sum of the unique
arcade experience was more than simply standing up in a room
while playing Elevator Action or Burgertime.
It was about a community of like-minded misfits. It was
about sticking it to the Man, especially if that man was the
final boss in a hard-fought game. Or it was meaningful
lessons like the one Spicoli philosphozied about:
“The thing with Pac-Man, is that you’ve got to
decimate, before you’re decimated. It’s just like life.”
It’s a lesson the arcade has learned all too well.
