Insight to the past and what it means for the future

Well I’m a horrible writer but I thought I would take a look at what prominent arcades are left in North America and what state they are in and what that means for fighting games. In this blog I will touch on the past and present of competitive gaming in arcades. Mostly fighting games because I’m bias that way.

For the most part the second arcade boom or the fighting game generation of the early 90’s was completely diminished by 2005.

In 2006 SRK removed their APEX player ranking system from their website preferring to go with a blog style layout. The APEX system did show the names of the top players in their respective fighting games across North America. It helped players identify arcade locations and would physically show that there was a large active community of players competing in each particular game. It gave players a census of what games where being played competitively and reassurance that all that time spent practicing combos would be worth it in the end because there was fame and money just waiting to be taken in tournaments.

Not only did the APEX system back up the hype of arcade fighting games but so did Magazines. GameFan, GamePro and Tips and Tricks gave gamers insight into the coin-op industry with such

sections as Hot in the Arcades and Arcade Strategy. In October 2003 Tips and Tricks Magazine did a tournament report on Evolution 2002. The magazine also covered its own player ranking system based on tournament results across North America for CvS2, SF3:3S and MvC2. Giving the community even more hype by having this information on magazine racks everywhere and not just a web site for what was sadly becoming a niche community.

If you take a look at what was happening locally in Winnipeg around this time Games on the Avenue was closed down in 2001 and what little player base that arcade had scattered to the UofM arcade or might have visited Magic Land. Even though RC Amusements and Phantom Amusements where still around the amount of competitive players visiting these locations where very limited and almost non-existent. In fact there were a lot of arcades left in the early 2000’s in Winnipeg but due to the lack of new games and horrible maintenance most of these businesses completely vanished in 2006.

Some of these businesses affected included:

D.B. AMUSEMENTS

16-1865 Sargent Ave.

Winnipeg, Manitoba R2G0M9 (Canada)

(204) 771-5558

Supplier of new and used arcade and billiard games, jukeboxes, etc.

FLIPPERS AMUSEMENTS

40 360 Main Street

Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C3Z8 (Canada)

(204) 942-7440

Ya holy smokes huh, I never knew these places existed either until I found their contact information on a old pinball parts web site a year ago. Not only that but there where countless other businesses that I forgot to archive that where still around Winnipeg in the early 2000’s.

This trend however didn’t just effect Winnipeg but all of North America had arcades closing down rapidly. Well SRK seemed to be growing as a community with titles from the late 90’s early 2000’s era such as CvS2, SF3:3S and MvC2 having this everlasting quality. The arcades that supported the player base was crashing and crumbling under their feet. Even today SRK and the fighting game community haven’t fully recovered from the complete collapse of the early 2000’s. The Daigo full parry in 2004 created hype and put the community on life support for a short while but now we look to the future of online gaming and the next generation of fighters waiting to hit store shelves in 2008 and 2009.

The dinosaurs such as the SSF2T, MvC2, CvS2 and SF3:3S should be put to rest. But will the quality of an in person head to head competition with a complete stranger ever return? Can online gaming fill the void of social interaction and competition? Probably not.

Home or social gatherings may still occur but the ability to travel to a public place to play a complete stranger can never be duplicated. It’s the unknown and sense of adventure you get while entering an arcade that you can’t replicate. And believe me the pressure to perform in a public setting in front of strangers can never be duplicated either, even when you’re sitting comfortably in your own home playing somebody on GGPO. If you think that GGPO is pressure then you suck da balls.

I’ll continue this on a later date.