hmm..so game center in US are different than Japan...
in which way? as I'm not American nor Japanese.

Arcades are pretty much gone forever in America. It is so sad... (Dunno what's up in Japan though.)

Kogasauthor feels a lot of peoples' agony. I miss hitting the arcades.

Timeless_Idiocy said:
Arcades are pretty much gone forever in America. It is so sad... (Dunno what's up in Japan though.)

Arcades are still alive in Japan. But are diffenetly dying in America.

arcades are pretty much gone, but DDR machines are still reasonably common. What "arcades" still remain usually consist of a hunting game some driving games, and a DDR machine

Arcades never recovered after the big crash in the 80s.
There are a few left, but they are quite rare.

Man, I remember playing Double Mode. Fun times.

Doesn't Metreon have a large arcade?
One of the few left, anyway.
They are in San Francisco...

All our arcades are kind of hidden in S.F. you have to try pretty hard to actually find one and ya, Metreon has one of the last surviving ones. Also the college has one which is pretty awesome

Metropolis up in Vancouver also still has an arcade. Constantly busy, so I don't think it's going anywhere.

Sad times though...

Need to go to an amusement park that would also have other stuff there, like rollercoasters; last DDR machine that I can remember was at the Mall of America in Minnesota.

They've yet to go into a porn store. I sense that will be one of the upcoming comics.

You still see small arcades shoved into the corners of malls here and there, but really that's about it.

Never seem a DDR machine... sad isn't it?
Even when I was in the local Arcade... TT.TT

Brisk said:
Doesn't Metreon have a large arcade?
One of the few left, anyway.
They are in San Francisco...

Yeah, though I'm not sure if it's still around, I know last time I was there a bunch of stores there had closed due to the economy. Too bad, they used to have this Sony Game store and this anime store that showed episodes of G Gundam outside.

RiderFan said:
They've yet to go into a porn store. I sense that will be one of the upcoming comics.

Uncensored Vaginas!

BrotherJohn said:
hmm..so game center in US are different than Japan...
in which way? as I'm not American nor Japanese.

There are a few in the US but they are nowhere nearly as big or numerous as Japan. Wish the US would step it up like Japan did. :(

I know that in my town they literally created a coin operated machine fee law just to close down a particular arcade, and this was about a decade and a half ago.

RiderFan said:
They've yet to go into a porn store. I sense that will be one of the upcoming comics.

I'm pretty sure if they did go to a porn store, "Sanae" would beat the artist down hard if he tried to draw a strip about it.

this reminds me of an interesting documentary called "100 Yen: The Japanese Arcade Experience" and they bring up an interesting point by saying that part of the reason arcades are doing reasonably well in Japan is because the average person walks or takes the train (basically the average person'll have a better chance of stopping by for random games and such)

also some websites say that unlike in America, being a gamer isn't that much of a stigma in Japan

freecom said:
also some websites say that unlike in America, being a gamer isn't that much of a stigma in Japan

It's a stigma? Almost everyone I know has a console or PC in their house. And yes they're social outgoing on not the stereotypical "stay home all day playing games" kind of people. And they consider themselves gamers.

We've got a few different arcades down here, though it seems they're all probably held up by different things. One's pretty huge with fairly new stuff, but it's connected to a restaurant/bar. One got loads of pool tables. The other has some legal gambling thing going on. Guess I'm kinda lucky

In my city in Japan I'm within a 5-10 minute drive of 4 different arcades and I live far away from the huge cities. The only thing that outnumbers arcades here are pachinko/slot parlors.

Though I haven't seen many DDR machines in the past few years... Only in Tokyo, I think.

Oh, I didn't know that arcades are no longer common in America. I didn't notice since its still quite popular here

Tetrominon said:
I'm pretty sure if they did go to a porn store, "Sanae" would beat the artist down hard if he tried to draw a strip about it.

Unless she found porn that she happened to like. "Miracles" can happen.

Tetrominon said:
I'm pretty sure if they did go to a porn store, "Sanae" would beat the artist down hard if he tried to draw a strip about it.

He could draw some adult-type drawings and his wife didn't do anything much, so maybe he'll get off easy

There are DDR and DDR-clone machines all over the place in America, but yeah, arcades are different now. Just about the only arcade chains left are Chuck E. Cheese and Dave & Buster's.

Arcades are dying in America, I have to take a 1 hour drive to the nearest In The Groove 2 machine and the arcades near my house have nothing other than ticket games and super out-dated rail shooters!

sgcdonmai said:
There are DDR and DDR-clone machines all over the place in America, but yeah, arcades are different now. Just about the only arcade chains left are Chuck E. Cheese and Dave & Buster's.

there are Dave & buster's ripoffs but they are rare

Kamaki said:
Metropolis up in Vancouver also still has an arcade. Constantly busy, so I don't think it's going anywhere.

Sad times though...

Well, they have some Gundam Battle arcade systems, and quite a few beat games or fighting games, so it's not too boring, but I really wish they had some Virtual-On...

An arcade surviving on its own is unlikely, but they are now in many malls or play stores.

Arcades basically died in the US for these reasons:

-Home console ports that are as good if not better than the arcade versions.
-Online gaming, which appeals more to many westerners.
-Escalation of prices (for both playing a game and the machine)
-change of trends from fighters/shmups to FPS.

If you wanna play doubles, Pump it Up is really the only way to go. Silly Kogasa. I wonder if they even have Pump in Japan.

Strider Tuna said:
-change of trends from fighters/shmups to FPS.

And I can't really see the appeal of FPSes...well, besides the on-rails Operation: Wolf style (and *those*, I generally call marksman games). But shmups are still my favorite genre--more specifically the Toaplan/Seibu-style ones. Battle Bakraid, Raiden, Air Gallet, Strikers 1945, Sky Shark, Tatsujin-Ou, etc. I just don't care for the danmaku/Cave style. (Now if we could just get a Touhou game that operated more on Seibu lines than Cave...Or one patterned in part on Makyou Senshi/Gondomania...)

I remember them having:
- lots of crane catching machine (with awesome prize like Onepiece, Naruto, Bleach, etc collectables) not no cheap-ass dolls you find in the american ones.
- Gatchapons <333 childhood favorites, missed out on collecting the full Darkstalker figures (kept getting female Victor...)
- Soo many Japan exclusive arcade games. Remember playing a "dog walk game" where you used a leash as the controller and controlled your dog on the monitor. There are just soo many interesting original games there, I wish I can go back and try the Gundam one :[

Arcades are gone in many places... Home gaming killed most of them.
The only that remain is the kind of DDR and such things that you need big machines to play. Most of them on big malls since attracts people more easily and its a way to lure kids into them with their family.

At least over here is that way... It's sad.

I used to make occasional trips into civilization to play DDR and hang out at a bookstore... The arcade jacked up the prices on all their games (for DDR, from $0.50 for 5 songs to $1 for 4), and the bookstore closed.

Yeah, most of the arcades around here are gone. But since JesusK mentioned big malls, there ARE a decent amount of machines in the Mall of America which is just up the street. But then, that place gets a lot of Japanese Tourists as well, so perhaps there's some sort of connection? (likely not)

It's not essentially home gaming, it's Emulation. Thanks to emulators, not only can you play all of your favorite games, there's possibilities of playing online against or with other people and get together and rain down Infernal strikes on childhood games. While it's not perfectly accurate and there's many games out there to be unencrypted, and set to work through the PCB Chipsets of arcade games. Arcades are fading in America, but Emulators are on the rise, and they spare and preserve all of your childhood games. Sure Japan will have them for a long time, but eventually they'll die out as well. I remember watching a segment of some covering about gaming arcades being closed down. I'd say about 70% of them were closed down and retired. Besides, if you individuals had a little optimism about it, you'd know that these games will last much longer on emulators than in Arcades ehen the machines actually die out. My recent memory was a San Francisco Rush 2049 arcade game that I used to play on, had suddenly dissapeared.
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After looking up the 1983 crash, I can say it's quite a feat.

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I'm sure people out here would be willing to trade in Nostalgia for playability and many enhancements for your old games you enjoyed. Emulators Preserved for me: Raiden Series, raiden Fighters Series, Thunder Force, and many more.

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In other words, the games you know and love still exist out there, just sniff on the internet. Prices probably were affected by the Economy setback...Maybe. In the end, technology can help preserve those old games. Ladies and Gentlemen, go hunting, and have fun.
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Honestly though...half of these comments remind me of the first 10 seconds of the song: "Rise of The Reptilian Regime" by the band "Scar Symmetry". It sounds solemn and sad somewhat.

There was once a decent arcade at my local mall. Lot of good memories there. Sadly, it got radically downsized in favor of another store. Only a claw machine, NBA Hangtime, Crusin' World (or was it Exotica?) and The Simpsons, some shitty hunting game, and one or two other racing games remain. The fighters and shmups are all gone.

Sad life. :(

as long as we are talking about the decay of dying arcades, my mall use to have one but then that died when i was around five or some time in elementary school and thus chuck e cheese was the only place with arcades but again all the good games dried up there and that was it for arcades or so i thought i was lucky enough to discover game universe now game underground during middle school it may not have many arcade games but the quality of the games are second to none with a current pop'n music machine and beatmaina and the store is gamer paradise

StriderTuna said:

Arcades basically died in the US for these reasons:

-Home console ports that are as good if not better than the arcade versions.
-Online gaming, which appeals more to many westerners.
-Escalation of prices (for both playing a game and the machine)
-change of trends from fighters/shmups to FPS.

First one much more so than the rest (though all are valid points).

When Capcom and Midway left the arcade biz, its death was all but assured.

These days you might find an Arcade mixed in with a Bowling Alley. Some are in Malls. Round One (a Japanese company) as been spreading around. But they were relatively new in the US when this 4koma happened.