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And why you should care: http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2011/08/03/no-fun-land/ |
Funland at the Trocadero closed
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Rev.StuartCampbell 367 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 17 years ago -
Spanky 15,037 posts
Seen 16 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoNo Fun Land
If anyone ever doubted the uselessness of the modern videogames media, consider this – when you're working in the specialist press, and your only job is to bring people news related to videogames, how shit must you be if you get scooped at reporting videogame news by the Metro?
But that's only passingly what I want to talk about today.
Last month, Funland at the Trocadero closed down, leaving the whole of London – a city of eight million people – with just two substantial videogame arcades (the large Namco Station at Westminster, and Casino Leisure on Tottenham Court Road, which is small but extremely up-to-date).
Everywhere else in London you used to be able to play videogames has either closed down entirely (the old Namco Wonderpark off Piccadilly Circus, the long-lost Sega World – also at the Trocadero – the couple of large arcades on the south side of Oxford Street) or gone over to fruit machines. And the disturbing thing is that I only found out about it when someone directed me to this story that they'd read on their way to work.
Urban-centre games arcades have, of course, been steadily disappearing for years, not just in the UK. At one point well within living memory even a pretty small place like Bath supported three, but now has none, and I no longer know of any in Bristol either. You can still find them in some out-of-town retail parks like Cribbs Causeway, and at the seaside (though even there they're in steep decline), but in towns and cities the arcade is now all but dead.
The final blow was struck by Nintendo. Home consoles have been equal or superior to arcade games on the technical level since the Dreamcast, but even then the amusement parlours still had a USP for the keen gamer. While the audience for traditional stand-up cabinets withered down to the fighting-game hardcore, people still wanted to play several kinds of games that you had to go to arcades for – multiplayer linkups (primarily racing games), light-gun shooters (which enjoyed a bit of a renaissance when modern plasma and LCD TVs appeared that didn't support the likes of the G-Con) and physical games where you had to exercise more than your wrists.
As home gaming caught up with its graphical power, the arcade diversified and specialised. It filled up with inventive games like Namco's beautiful Prop Cycle, Konami's duck-and-dive motion-sensing cop-sim Police 24/7, and of course an endless parade of dancing and rhythm-action games utilising every imaginable kind of instrument.
(Many of these titles were translated to home systems, but with limited success – Dance Dance Revolution on a tatty, creased plastic mat sliding across your living-room carpet just doesn't cut it, and the price of the dedicated controllers made most of them niche products at best, bar a short-lived guitar-game boom built on gamers' embarrassing and indefensible fondness for dire 80s cheese-metal.)
Then the Wii arrived.
The online gaming of Xbox Live and to a lesser extent PSN had already robbed arcades of much of their social function. But it was the Wii that really sounded the death-knell, bringing all kinds of physical-motion gaming into the home in a big way – and crucially, this time all with the single basic controller.
Suddenly people who only gamed in arcades (scared off by the enormous complexity of the Xbox and PS3's controllers) could join in too, and the hassle of gathering a bunch of friends together, organising transport to some huge out-of-town megaplex and spending 50 quid at a time for a couple of hours of fun (games at £1 or £2 a credit for three minutes play, extortionate food and drink, plus the cost of petrol/fares) became massively less attractive. Why go to all that effort when you could just invite people round to your house instead, to play games even your gran could get to grips with?
Motion gaming at home exploded. The Wii crushed all-comers in the console market, proving that there was a far bigger market out there for playing games than the increasingly nerdy, ultra-conservative and tiresome "hardcore". It was such a success that Microsoft and Sony jumped on the bandwagon, and Kinect sold millions in its opening weeks despite a hefty price tag and dubious software support.
You know all this, of course. But the irony is that while the videogames media has dismissed and ignored arcade gaming as an irrelevant historical relic for years (the last publication to devote any coverage to it was the aptly-named Arcade, way back in the mid-1990s), current-generation videogaming as we know it was born in those neon-lit amusement centres on city streets.
And I'm not talking about the burgeoning neo-retro market that's been revitalised by digital distribution and brought us things like Pac-Man Championship DX, though that's notable in itself. The pioneering physical-motion games that led to the Wii, and from there to Kinect and Move (and arguably even the DS and iPhone) were a direct result of arcades innovating to compete with and distinguish themselves from the home console experience. Without them, where will the next paradigm shift come from?
And that, viewers, is why it's so shameful and dismal that the passing of Funland has gone unremarked in the videogame media. If you let the oak tree die because it's old, and don't even tell anyone about it, don't act surprised when you start to run out of acorns. -
disusedgenius 10,677 posts
Seen 15 hours ago
Registered 14 years agoI'd argue against that (the idea that the Wii killed the arcades, I mean), but it makes so little sense that I don't even know where to start. -
varsas 2,493 posts
Seen 12 hours ago
Registered 17 years agoI think their Facebook page indicated the closure was temporary a while ago. It's sad to see this go. I remember spending hours in their playing SF2 and the special tournament set-up where one moved along a line of cabinets if the match was won or lost against an opponent.
EDIT: I think the expense of playing there was what did it; I know the operating costs were probably high but compared to the cost in East and South East Asia. -
Psychotext 70,652 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 15 years agoI couldn't seem to find why I should care...
Arcades haven't been worth visiting since the 80s. -
nickthegun 87,711 posts
Seen 7 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoWhere will I play my virtual ping-pong and 6 different versions of House of the Dead now? -
smoothpete 37,743 posts
Seen 4 days ago
Registered 17 years agoYou're a shamelessly self-promoting bellend but for once I actually agree with you. It's a goddamn shame that these arcades keep closing. And the Namco one at Westminster is shit too. Full of quid-a-go lightgun games and DDR cabs. I do seriously get all rose-tinted specs about going to arcades as a kid. It was just so awesome. The ones that are still left these days are always very badly maintained, full of fruit machines, and rows of the same expensive bollocks games.
Farewell decent arcades. You will be missed. -
ram 3,598 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 16 years ago4 or 8 link Daytona had to be some of the best gaming fun ever. RIP. -
I can't help but feel a bit saddened by the death of arcades, as someone who spent his formative years filling the SFII and Final Fight machines in Brighton with all my pocket money. Despite that, I'm not sure they're really necessary nowadays.
Edit: It's a bit harsh to call someone who earns a living from writing "shamelessly self-promoting" for linking to, er, his writing, and to post his work here verbatim. Er, I mean, "it's Stuart! Boooooo!" (that seems to be the acceptable response to anything he posts). -
Kay 21,321 posts
Seen 10 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoSpanky wrote:
No Fun Land
If anyone ever doubted the uselessness of the modern videogames media, consider this – when you're working in the specialist press, and your only job is to bring people news related to videogames, how shit must you be if you get scooped at reporting videogame news by the Metro?
The gaming section of Metro is technically specialist press though, since it's Gamecentral in all but name and run by an ex-editor of Edge magazine. -
varsas 2,493 posts
Seen 12 hours ago
Registered 17 years agolucky_jim wrote:
I think they still have a place a social hubs for gamers and that's certainly what they are like in Asia. Online gaming is great but being physically in the same location and chatting like with the fighting game community is a lot of fun. In person people are also less likely to act like spoilt teenagers like some online.
I can't help but feel a bit saddened by the death of arcades, as someone who spent his formative years filling the SFII and Final Fight machines in Brighton with all my pocket money. Despite that, I'm not sure they're really necessary nowadays. -
Psychotext wrote:
This. With knobs on.
Arcades haven't been worth visiting since the 80s. -
smoothpete 37,743 posts
Seen 4 days ago
Registered 17 years agoFucking LAN? Hardly an alternative to a decent arcade. Give me Final Fight, a Neo Geo collection, and X-Men vs Streetfighter any day. -
smoothpete wrote:
You're a shamelessly self-promoting bellend...
Yeah, fucking posting what you think in a public forum is digusting. -
smoothpete 37,743 posts
Seen 4 days ago
Registered 17 years agoBlerk wrote:
The 90s were good. I did most of my arcade gaming from '89 to '96 I think
Psychotext wrote:
This. With knobs on.
Arcades haven't been worth visiting since the 80s. -
smoothpete 37,743 posts
Seen 4 days ago
Registered 17 years agoStompy wrote:
All he ever does is link to his own blog
smoothpete wrote:
You're a shamelessly self-promoting bellend...
Yeah, fucking posting what you think in a public forum is digusting. -
Alastair 24,828 posts
Seen 3 days ago
Registered 20 years agosmoothpete wrote:
Stompy wrote:
All he ever does is link to his own blog
Yeah, fucking posting what you think in a public forum is digusting.
And have a go at anyone who disagrees with him. -
AcidSnake 8,461 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 15 years agoI see it that instead of spending a few quid at the arcade you can now spend a few quid on a few apps instead...
So the iPhone killed the arcade...There....gif)
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henro_ben 2,393 posts
Seen 18 hours ago
Registered 15 years agoMeh. I used to go to arcades purely to play the, at the time, better quality games you got there, not because I liked arcades.
The moment consoles & PC's were able to deliver something even vaguely approaching what you got in the arcades I happily stopped going. -
roz123 7,104 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 13 years agoYou get quite a few big arcades in bowling alleys in London although I don't know any in the centre. Its a bit of the shame but they always made me feel ripped off -
cowell 2,254 posts
Seen 12 hours ago
Registered 12 years agoI'm going to shamelessly plug the work of somebody I work with (as opposed to my own blog 
)
http://www.coin-opcommunity.co.uk/blog/2784-arcades-changed-my-life-rip-london-funland/
Great, personal reflection on the closure of Funland -
Spanky 15,037 posts
Seen 16 hours ago
Registered 18 years agoDon't bother with his link, i wrote a big post(the second one) myself regarding the debacle. If you found it amusing follow my blog World of Cunt. -
Rev.StuartCampbell 367 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 17 years agoSpanky wrote:
No Fun Land
If anyone ever doubted the uselessness...
LOL. Nice try. Turns out the hits keep coming at the same rate as always, possibly because people might not like someone posting links to their own work, but what they like even less is some petty, pathetic, whiny little internet prick trying to ensure nobody ever writes any worthwhile and informed videogame journalism for free, by trying to stop them even getting readers on their own (totally non-commercial, ad-free) website for it. You might want to have a think about your life. -
nickthegun 87,711 posts
Seen 7 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoSummarising a link is quite common practice on the internets. Get with the times grandpa. -
Rev.StuartCampbell wrote:
Thanks dad
You might want to have a think about your life.
Rev.StuartCampbell wrote:
loll3rskat3s
worthwhile and informed videogame journalism
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