The Sasquatch Journal

It's difficult to write a eulogy for the arcade - that once ubiquitous quarter-eating staple of malls, bowling alleys and college campuses everywhere. Like Saturday morning cartoons or the NHL, it still exists, but has been slowly fading from the American consciousness
since its 1980s heyday.

Still, I felt compelled to write a lament of sorts after learning this week that the plug is literally being pulled at Gunther's Games, a small mom and pop downtown arcade in Columbia, Missouri where I spent many of my formative years (and quarters).


But it's hard not to wax poetic about one of the last of the old neighborhood arcades – the
kind of place Norman Rockwell would have painted had he been a Gen-X'er who felt romantic notions about Double Dragon.

For many teens in the late '70s and '80s (before the advent of Xboxes, cellphones and MySpace) arcades were actually a prime destination. It wasn't just that my generation was dying to guide a yellow anthropomorphic hockey puck through a maze or to help a mustachioed
plumber rescue his girlfriend from a barrel tossing ape, but because arcades were one of the few shared spaces we could hang out that felt decidedly adult unfriendly. For some of us, going to the arcade was a small act of anti-authoritarian rebellion.

The arcades I grew up in were dark, sweaty, dungeon-like rooms filled with loud obnoxious lights and sounds with even louder and more obnoxious people. I remember the plethora of mohawked misfits, metalheads in Megadeth shirts and ripped jeans, D&D-obsessed geeky
types and various other mallrats. Even the typical arcade employee embodied the aesthetic – the longhaired burnout or the twenty-something underachiever celebrated in virtually every Kevin Smith movie.

When arcades appeared in '80s movies, it was usually to show the natural habitat of some sort of slacker or punky teen, such as Sean Penn's iconic Spicoli character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. There was even an absurd 1983 teen B-flick called Joysticks about wacky

In real life, drug deals and rowdy behavior were often the exception rather than the norm, but the reputation of shady things occurring in arcades led many middle class parents, including my own, to frown upon their kids frequenting these places. It's also worth noting that the skating rink and the bowling alley garnered similar reputations- and both tended to have arcade games.

Ironically, though arcades were viewed by the older generation as seedy dens of teen corruption, the games themselves were often simplistic and childish affairs, especially compared with today's popular over-complex and over-stimulating consoles games. Back then
video games didn't revolve around fighting virtual lifelike recreations of World War II battles or murdering gang members, we were innocently helping a pixilated frog across a street or saving a princess from a dragon.

And despite all the unblinking eyes staring at video screens, arcades also often bred a sense of community – we'd chat with strangers about how to get past the Nth wave of aliens in Galaga, look on in awe for the guy who got past Act V in Ms. Pac-Man without losing a life or
bicker over who got the turkey leg in Gauntlet.
Because of 'Gauntlet', an entire generation of twenty and thirtysomethings are moved by the words "Elf needs food badly!"

Over time you grew to know the regular characters at the arcade – sort of like a teen version of Cheers. One of my old arcade archrivals was known as Red (creatively named for his reddish hair and face). Red used to casually dispose of almost everyone he faced in a two-player
game and would remain stoic the entire time but for an occasional cackle after beating someone in an exceptionally interesting way.

I also recall a pudgy kid with Coke bottle glasses we called "Bill Gates". Mr. Gates would arrive to the arcade with a huge red-felt pouch filled with tokens and would use most of them within an hour. He was the single worst player I'd ever seen, but that didn't stop him from sinking token after token into the machines.

But by the late '80s and early '90s, fewer people were dropping dollars into arcades. The first big blow of competition arrived with the home systems – Atari and the Nintendo – when technology began to allow kids to play arcade games in the safe space of home (as Mom and
Dad sighed in relief). Game makers tried to adapt somewhat by focusing on games with steering wheels, jet fighter sticks, dual screens, trackballs and other gadgets not possible at home but the market erosion continued.

Talk of the problems with the arcade business date back to the late '80s, though, with such companies as Nintendo exiting in 1992. Some arcades closed while others redesigned with the intention to market themselves as more family friendly. My favorite mall-based arcade as a
kid, Aladdin's Castle, was remodeled in the early '90s in bright neon colors. The games were still there, but the atmosphere wasn't. Suddenly some of us were feeling alienated from our own haven that had felt sealed off from the adult world.

Arcades might have actually fallen into obscurity earlier if it wasn't for the fighting game boom in 1991, led by Street Fighter II, and the Dance Dance Revolution craze about 10 years later, each creating its own subculture that briefly boosted a flagging industry.

Today the arcade industry is suffering what a recent Associated Press article called a "death spiral". According to statistics from Vending Times, the number of arcade game units nationwide dropped from 860,000 in 1994 to 333,000 in 2004. Revenue from the games sank from $2.3 billion to $866 million in that same timeframe.

With all of the countless distractions kids and teens have nowadays (including ultra-powered home systems), going out to the arcade to play video games seems like an act of nostalgia – something movie theatres are beginning to experience to a lesser extent. The small
arcades that survive tend to feed off the spare change of tourists and theme parker goers.

Most of the ones that thrive aren't the Gunther's of the world, but multipurpose "entertainment centers" like Chuck E. Cheese for kids and Dave & Busters for adults, with both continually adding new locations.

For those of us who miss the old days, home consoles offer "arcade favorites" compilations and collections, but they never feel satisfying because the sum of the unique arcade experience was more than simply standing up in a room while playing Elevator Action or Burgertime.

It was about a community of like-minded misfits. It was about sticking it to the Man, especially if that man was the last boss in a game. Or it was meaningful lessons like the one Spicoli philosphozied about:
"The thing with Pac-Man, is that you've got to decimate, before you're decimated. It's just like life."

It's a lesson the arcade industry is learning all too well.

On Friday night, I organized a Guitar Hero party/rock-out. I could write thousands of words about this experience, but perhaps this time I should let the (ridiculous) pictures do the talking.