A fine day out last weekend, visiting all manner of online friends who mostly only exist as names on blogs and characters in computer games. Always nice to put faces and voices to folks who might otherwise exist only as text to me; a kind of validation or grounding in reality perhaps, in a hobby that I do worry may become a little more ephemeral than is healthy sometimes.

Much of the day was spent at the big Namco arcade on the south bank of the Thames, near the Millennium Eye, a suitably appropriate sort of venue for our little gathering, but the more I wandered about the place, the more disillusioned I found myself becoming. Our recent day trip to the seaside at Swanage evoked a similar kind of experience. Being a seaside tourist spot, the town had a couple of the obligatory amusement arcades which I also had a quick drift through. Aside from anything else, I’ve never quite seen the association between blue-green surf, golden sands and blowing dune grass, and dark rooms full of bright lights, brash noises and computer games. It doesn’t make sense, but every seaside town has them.

In both the examples above, the sense of tawdry reality and faded nostalgia descended on me like leaden clouds, and the modern amusement arcade is very much a different place than the ones I remembered from my formative teenaged years. This is partly because I’ve changed, but only partly, and much of my disappointment seems to be objective and justified.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, the amusement arcade was such a wondrous place that I’d often be nearly sick with excitement at the thought that the funfair was coming to town. I’d cycle there with a bulging pocket of 10ps and spend a whole Saturday, at once enthralled and amazed at what technology could achieve in the service of fun. Family holidays at Butlins would see me more than happy to give the parents as much peace and quiet as they wanted, as long as the coins held out, and I’d only reappear at mealtimes, distracted and fidgeting, only to vanish again immediately.

Exotic machines sporting fantastic titles; Shinobi, Alien Syndrome, Operation Wolf, Altered Beast, Outrun, Star Wars (Where you got to fly an X Wing!), Battle Zone and more. Golden Axe was a personal favourite, one of the few arcade machines I ever completed, ironically enough as half of a two-man PUG in a busy arcade. “Mind if I join in?” “Go for it!” There was even a small crowd around us as we got near the end. I don’t remember the chap’s name now, but a kind of achievement all the same. Probably cost me less than £2 to do as well!

An integral part of the experience was the initial floor-walk, scoping out the place, seeing what was new and the arcade was always a place of advanced technological innovation. Looking at the modern arcade I find that previous sentence tragically laughable, and I couldn’t see any video game at Namco, or Swanage, that my PC couldn’t massively outperform. Hell, the cast-off Xbox I inherited was a closer par to the few remaining games machines on display and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if I were to lever the back off one to see a lone Playstation 2 cowering in the centre of the cavernous vastness of the coin-op casing.

The home games console has pretty much killed the amusement arcade I knew, and although there was a period in the late nineties where elaborate peripherals might have turned the tide; the Dance Dance Revolutions, the skateboard and snowboard games, even these extras and add-ons have made it to the living room, with dance mats and balance boards. With the demonstration of Project Natal, Microsoft’s motion capture gizmo, I’d say home gaming has well and truly pulled ahead of the arcade game, leaving the relic-filled darkened seaside halls I’d seen this summer, filled with coin-drop machines, grabby-crane games and the real mainstays of the amusement arcade, the fruit machines. The amusement arcade is no longer ours, and belongs to a different kind of customer now.

As something of an epitaph, the most elaborate video game I saw at Namco, was Guitar Hero ‘Arcade’, which appeared to be functionally identical to the home console version, only costing a pound a go. (Zoso got 2nd place on a ZZ Top number!) Perhaps there remain outposts of progress and beacons of innovation, but for me, the amusement arcade is well and truly dead, killed by the convenience of the living room console.

Regardless, I enjoyed myself overall; great people, decent food, and a grand day out. Looking forward to the next!