11/6/2023 0 Comments Pac man toys target![]() What to playĪctivision streaming rights have been purchased by Ubisoft. This would have been unimaginable to nine-year-old me, my pockets filled with 10p pieces, the sounds of laser guns, revving engines and robotic voices calling to me from across the promenade. I was glad to read that.īut I left Paignton without putting a single coin in a single slot. The arcade staff sat her down and bought her free cups of tea while her kids ran riot, thrilled by the flashing lights. ![]() I read a Google Maps review of one of the arcades I visited – it was left by a woman who was eight months pregnant and had brought her children in for an afternoon. They’re still places to head to in bad weather, or during the early evening when the beach has cooled but it’s too early to get fish and chips. Seaside arcades still have the same role they always had, I guess. I felt like a ghost too, skulking through the aisles hoping to hear the unmistakable sound of the Kung-Fu Master theme tune or the hissing voice sample from Space Harrier yelling “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone, get ready”. I saw a Pac-Man-themed coin pusher, and a lot of claw machines crammed with Mario and Sonic plushies. Weirdly, the heroes of the old arcades still haunt these places. But in one corner was a two-player Sega Rally machine, switched off. One place in Torquay had Dance Dance Revolution and Ferrari F355 Challenge cabinets – they’re still doing what they always did, drawing a small crowd of interested spectators. I did see a few actual arcade games on my travels. Teenagers don’t come to play Galaxian anymore. But the seaside centres can rarely compete on those terms – they attract a mainstream audience, families passing by, kids entranced by the sight of multiple knock-off Pokémon toys in a glass case with a big claw to grab at them. There are lots of dedicated retro arcades opening around the country and that’s lovely. These days, classic arcade machines are expensive to maintain and require specialist technical knowledge the parts aren’t being made any more. But, eventually, the economics became less attractive, and the arcades started closing or changing direction. The arcades fought back for a while with big novelty installation games such as Dance Dance Revolution, Daytona USA and the wonderful Final Furlong, which provided a visual spectacle as well as a physical experience that was hard to replicate at home. The arcade video game business started to decline in the mid-1990s when home consoles such as the PlayStation and Saturn began to accurately reproduce the coin-op experience at home. In most places, the only video games are big screen versions of mobile titles such as Doodle Jump and Crossy Road, designed to spit out tickets that can be saved, then spent on plastic toys at the arcade’s redemption counter. ![]() Dozens of slot machines, blinking away with enticing jackpots. Rows of coin pushers (or ‘“penny falls” as they were once known) and claw machines, all stacked with tacky prizes. The arcades I found in Paignton and further up the coast in Torquay are representative of most modern amusement centres. Its gloriously large cabinet was a reproduction of a Ferrari so it was worth every penny. At 30p a go, Out Run, the legendary driving game also from Sega, was a once a week treat. In that more expensive bracket, Sega’s brilliant Space Harrier with its hydraulic seat that sent you flying about in parity with your onscreen hero, was a daily must, but I’d also have at least a couple of goes on the Star Wars game with its sit-in cabinet, amazing speech samples from the film, and its atmospheric vector graphics. Most games were 10p a go, but a few of the newer machines were 20p, so those were rationed. I usually had a pound a day pocket money on holidays so I had to spend it wisely. But of course, I was here for the flashing, pinging, reverberating games that they disliked because the noise drowned out the bingo caller. In the corner, there was always a bingo area, where pensioners in their best outfits sat in front of banks of glowing numbers, drinking 10p cups of tea, eyes down all day. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, HyperSports – all lined up in the semi-darkness beside 1970s light gun ranges, pinball machines and one-arm bandits. These vast cathedrals of leisure, their exterior walls covered in flashing multicoloured light bulbs, were crammed with the video games of the era. As a child living in Cheshire in the 1980s, I spent many happy summer days in the arcades along the Golden Mile in Blackpool.
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