Kotaku
I'm back. Yes, I was gone.
I spent the past two weeks in what should have been the glorious sunshine of the Bahamas, but crap weather seemed to follow our cruise ship around.
On the bright side we learned that a motorboat riding 8-foot waves makes my son vomit... repeatedly.
I brought both the Playstation Portable and DS Lite with me on the trip along with a ton of games, for all of that down time when my son is napping. But I ended up spending most of my time playing New Super Mario Bros. and replaying it. I still haven't gotten to a couple of worlds. Dammit.
I also spent a little time playing arcade games. How depressing is that.
While there were some bright spots (I loved Mario Kart), most of the games were crap racers, cloned light gun games and... actually that was it.
Worse still, I noticed this disturbing trend of completely removing the skill from games and just making you pay to keep playing. Every game I played in an arcade this trip made me drop in coins to continue, even if I beat the level or won the race. What the crap is that about?
After getting burnt-out on the new games I decided to play a little Galaga. The machine was hidden in a corner of the arcade next to the pinball machines. After playing through 10 levels without losing a ship or using any skill, I decided I no longer loved the game.
Man, I guess arcades really are dead.
I was talking to Todd Tuckey, the owner of arcade machine reseller TNT Amusement Inc, the other day about the death of pinball and he pointed out that pinballs weren't the only thing dying.
"The industry is dead," he said.
Tuckey said he started in the business back in the in the late 70s when nearly all of his business was selling or renting machines to arcades. Now nearly all of his business is selling to the public.
Tuckey says that Namco, once the largest single owner of arcades in the world was down to 175 arcades last year and this year they will be closing 75 more of their arcades. Instead of wasting the money on rental space, Namco has decided to concentrate on putting their machines in movie theaters and share the profit with the owners.
I suppose with the advent of high-end consoles, this was bound to happen.
For awhile arcades were managing to stay just afloat with games that used unique controllers, but now even that's made its way to the home with high-end DDR dance pads and specialized controllers like what you see with Guitar Hero.
Let's face it, the arcades of this generation are called Cyber Cafes and are all about computer gaming. We just to convince them to slap a few pinballs in the corner and all will be right in the world.
