I’ve stumbled upon something that absolutely breaks my heart in a way that’s hard to put into words.

I love arcades. Love them. I’ve spent so much time in them. Whenever I’d go on vacation as a kid, I was always more interested in the arcades than in, say, Dollywood or waterparks or whatever. It was always about the arcades for me. When I was in middle school, my best friend and I would go to this local pool run by the YMCA, and during the weird breaks where they’d make everyone get out for 10-15 minutes or whatever, we’d hit the NeoGeo cabinet and play the hell out of Metal Slug. And as lousy as our local mall here in Bristol has been, that was always one advantage that it had, the Tilt arcade, where I could go play House of the Dead, Time Crisis, and Metal Slug to my heart’s content.

It’s been…quite a few years since I’d been in Tilt, and once that little pool had gotten rid of the NeoGeo cabinet, replacing it with the ultra-crappy Tekken Tag Tournament, my friend and I just stopped going altogether. But if a bar or restaurant has Galaga or Ms. Pac Man or something like that, then you bet I’ll give it a go if I’ve got some quarters on me.

Anyways, after years of not bothering going into the arcades in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, and never having time for Tilt any time I found myself in the mall, I decided I really wanted to blow a load of quarters on some House of the Dead, or some other old game I would play as a kid. That’s how I came to notice this disturbing trend.

Last week, I went into Tilt for the first time in years, mostly on a whim and out of a strong desire to play some Metal Slug. Things had changed, though, and not in a pleasant way. For one, all the games were in their own sections it seemed. All the crane games stuffed with Annoying Oranges and Angry Birds were grouped together in the front, all the racing games down one wall, with the shooters and the fighters down the other wall. This organization bugged me to no end, shouldn’t arcades be mazes that are nigh impossible to navigate? Isn’t half the fun of an old arcade finding some game you’ve never heard of, tucked away in a corner between a basketball hoop and DDR? Gone was House of the Dead, gone was my beloved NeoGeo cabinet with Metal Slug and Samurai Showdown. What good is an arcade without Daytona USA? Time Crisis 2 was still there, but it just didn’t feel right. They had House of the Dead 4, but the guns are the uzi-looking things, fully automatic, and difficult to aim with. The thrill of scoring precise headshots was replaced with the dull task of just mowing down crowds of zombies, spraying bullets blindly. It just wasn’t fun.

The oldest game there was, I think, Marvel Vs Capcom. That doesn’t feel right either. No pinball, no Pac Man, only one or two Skeeballs? What the heck? All of the emphasis was now on those crane games, and those other weird games where you could win an iPod or PS3 or something, and those are no fun to me.

Over the weekend, I went on a trip to Pigeon Forge with my girlfriend. We wandered down to Gatlinburg in the morning to kill time and wait for the weather to clear up. There, we went into three or four different arcades, and it was all the same crap I saw in Tilt. That horrible House of the Dead 4 cropped up a lot, and I noticed a couple other new shooters: Project GHOST and Terminator Salvation, both of which are also played with big automatic rifles against hordes of enemies. Again, precision no longer seems to matter much anymore, and those guns are just too awkward to handle, especially for a lefty like me.

The arcades in Dollywood weren’t much better.

But, I kept telling myself, there is hope. The Arcade in Asheville is a two story arcade with a bar. On the bottom floor is where you find all the old 80’s classics like Donkey Kong, Burger Time, and motherfucking Tron. Joust and Centipede too! Upstairs is even sweeter, with a line of pinball games and skeeball, the Simpsons game (which my friends and I beat one night, spending WAY too many quarters), the Star Wars Arcade game, and my personal all-time favorite: Virtual On. I haven’t been there since January, though, and I just recently heard that they removed the pinball games and are in the process of converting the upstairs area into a club. Which probably means the removal of more games, including Virtual On. And that breaks my heart in so many ways.

I mean, I get it. People have been saying that arcades are dead now for years, so I was honestly shocked that House of the Dead 4 and a Terminator Salvation game even existed. Times are changing. Consoles, Steam, and smartphone games have flooded and conquered the market. The only way for an arcade to survive anymore is to offer ludicrous prizes for people to throw their money at. I think I saw a crane game in Dollywood where you could win a 32” TV. If you want to play shooting games, there’s Call of Duty, who gives a damn about Time Crisis? DDR is now a thing of the past too, a fad no one wants to bother with anymore.

I guess I’m just an old man now. I hate being nostalgic, but man, I miss being able to jump from Virtual On to House of the Dead 2 to Daytona USA to Ms. Pac Man in the space of 20 minutes before seeing a movie at the local theater. There’s no real way to replicate that kind of experience anymore, switching games on the PS3 just isn’t the same as navigating a dimly lit cavern full of cacophonous noises and flashing lights, digging in your pockets for more quarters.

Ah well, at least the theater has Crazy Taxi, at least. And a machine with both Ms. Pac Man AND Galaga. Now if only they would show some movies that would give me a good reason to go to the movies...

[Brett]