I’ve spent a bit of today in one (for a job), and it’s… Honestly just kind of sad.
Everything is “branded” and based on some commercial IP. All the “independent”/quirky things I grew up with are gone, it’s fully cashless, much more expensive, and just generally… Super underwhelming. I’ve seen one pinball machine in the entire place. 😔
And still, the place is nearly empty. So if they’re trying to “appeal to different demographics” by pivoting to branded shittiness (fidget spinners! plants vs zombies! Fucking rabbids), it clearly ain’t working, lol…
Ah, I miss the 2010s, even compared to this shit…
Ooh, Time Crisis! Yes, this is what I meant! Classics like that. I remember I finished one of the old Time Crisis games on a free day at my local arcade…
So the one I went to today didn’t have anything really even resembling that. Sadly.
Like I said, it was pretty much all “branded”.
There was one cool zombie shooting water cannon game, which was fun until the novelty wore off, and I guess the beer pong game was kind of amusing (solo beer pong is just wrong somehow, though, lol), but other than that… Yeah, it was a bit shit, tbh.
But where I grew up and was around this stuff (and indeed the city I first went to Uni in, which was equally “not as commercial”) - I guess there wasn’t as much money floating around, so you didn’t have these big commercial “players” as much…
Which meant the arcades were still classic.
It’s just not like that, where I live now. But I imagine it’s probably not even like that at home, anymore, sadly…
Tbf though, the place I was in today was just… Super commercial anyway, so I guess it was always going to be a bit shit.
But still, the world has changed a lot since the days of coins, when I was doing it (and the price has tripled. Yay for “cashless prepayment /s) - I’m not sure “for the better”, either…