Not a review, but immortalizing the arcade in Portland, Maine from my dad’s reminiscence:
He likes Food Fight (a bit earlier), and LIFE FORCE!
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I had some time to kill while waiting for friends to show up to an Izakaya, so I walked one floor up to Royal Game Center, deep in the bowels of the Osaka-Umeda Eki station complexes and underground warren. (Ekimae Building 3 I think)
The AC was pretty weak, but somehow this place has like 3x the amount of ecchi Mahjong games than it did in 2019. I guess that's what kept them alive during covid? They were all avidly attended, the only other people in there were Tetris the Grand Master players, and all the STG machines were empty. Worth a try if you can find your way there. I would be tempted to say "nothing special" but Game Centers are in real big trouble since the pandemic, and all the fault lines that were already there (mobage, home consoles, purikura falling out of favour, crane games not being profitable vs something like toreba..) are now gaping holes. Without patronage (like patreon style, basically sponsorship), I think most if not all of these will disappear in the next 5 to 10 years as all the ops age out and parts and service become impossible to pay for.
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[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/nKrej7o.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
北区１−１−3 大阪駅前第３ビルＢ１Ｆ , Osaka, Japan
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ps. I will have to do a separate post about this sometime, but all the youtuber retro game enthusiasts miss one critical thing about retro game centers : the best ones are the “game corners” at older onsens and resort towns (like Atami) that have not been updated since late 90s.
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@Neko This reminds me, many people would remember that legendary arcade in top floor of Yaohan Plaza Little Tokyo LA in the 90s but there was a small dark smokey arcade in Weller Court that only had those mahjong machines with ashtray on each machines. I walked in there on a whim and got scared loololol but I sure felt that golden bubble era of Japan in retrospect.
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Think about this place all the time, I really miss it.
Finally got to check out the new-ish Free Play in Dallas proper, and it‘s consistent with the surprising lineups in Denton and Richardson, always a joy. They’re also cavernous spaces, so even with this one being in a more popular/populous area, it has felt pretty chill on weeknights and even on a Friday. My single complaint remains that the house music is waaaaay too loud (how you gonna have a dual-CRT Darius cabinet and I can‘t hear shit? where’s my Zuntata? at least crank it down on weeknights, I‘m begging), but otherwise some personal highlights of this location (among really solid more approachable stuff like Tempest, Daytona USA Championship, Windjammers, etc.) I’ve come across in two impromptu/short visits include:
I don’t have a review for this one because I’m not a child who needs/can afford American dentistry, but I passed by this place on my way to a shoot in Fort Worth at 5:30AM this morning: the Dental Arcade of East Dallas, TX
Not my pics, but it looks like it’s exactly what it’s advertising:
I do need to schedule a teeth cleaning sometime soon, though. Maybe I can find a Groupon
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this is such a texas vibe
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to be fair the first time I played gradius was my dentist’s waiting room. I thought dentist arcades were a whole thing. guy had a ball pit next to the outrun machine
aside: I feel like arcade developer Raw Thrills is worth a deep dive one of these days. apparently the CEO is the guy responsible for Defender and I need closure
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my dentist only had a shitty cardboard treasure chest that held a plastic toy we got to pick out after a check-up.
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why is the dentist acting like a dungeon
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if i wanted to make a really disproportionate effort : funny joke, i would list the ways a dentist is like an mmo dungeon, starting with the queue to get in
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the nurse complains about your rotation
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@haunts_u I think there’s some history there – I remember some Pong-era arcade cabinet trade ads archived on the Atari 50 Collection targeting spaces like dentists, doctors and other waiting rooms. And you’re thinking of Eugene Jarvis! Also of Smash TV, NARC and the Cruis’n series, etc. He’s the founder of Raw Thrills, anyway. His games, especially stuff like Cruis’n and Target Terror (always at the Walmart Arcade Nook, another strange arcade space) were staples for me coming up and I kind of took them for granted. I think it was @TracyDMcGrath on the forum who, in different words, encouraged me to put some respect on his name – I went back and looked at his output as a grown adult and it’s so wild and fun and idiosyncratic. You can get Raw Thrills’ Cruis’n Blast on Switch and it’s joyful
@MoH oh SHIT I remember the treasure chest, too. Peeking into the dental entertainment trends rabbit hole, here
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I am in shock that people across the world got to play video games while waiting for the dentist! All I’ve ever had is the sound of people in pain and bad magazines. No toys, nothing fun to do except wait. Maybe that’s why our teeth are so bad…
Got in before someone else makes a crack about English oral hygiene
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My first time playing Genesis / sonic & knuckles was at the orthodontist for the first and only time I’d ever go.
Aside from that, one dentist I hit had an f-zero X n64 kiosk.
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Not even a smatterin’ of the Zed Ex Specky?
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Not even a soupçon!
The time it took a game to load on that thing, you’d go in, have some work done, come back out and MAYBE it didn’t crash!
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My childhood dentist had a Terra Cresta cabinet. I was too short to see the screen and my dad wouldn’t lift me to play.