You know what I miss more than anything else?  Ash trays attached to arcade cabinets.  You never see that anymore.  Ebeneezer’s had several:  Pac Man, Galaga, Space Invaders;  they all had ash trays attached.  I was reminded of this when I went into a cabinet store in Manassas recently, where there was a stand-up Gradius cabinet for sale.  On the front were four screw-holes where an ash tray had once sat, proudly holding the butts of many-a-cigarette.  There were still ugly black stains where someone hadn’t finished putting out their smoke.

Nowadays, arcades are clean almost to a fault.  The carpets are pristine and vacuumed, the screens are wiped down several times a day, and there’s a ‘no food or drink sign’ visible at every turn.  For some reason, this frustrates me to no end.

Obviously, food, drink and cigarettes can damage the cabinets; it only makes sense to be cautious.  On top of that, not everyone smokes, so keeping the air clean is only polite, but in banning these things, something seems to have been lost, and I can’t quite place my finger on it.

We still have noise, flashing lights, fat dudes with sweaty pits (even more so since the advent of DDR), but we don’t have snack counters to chill at, the lights don’t reflect off the smoke, and that particular stink I find so comforting is missing.

Another thing that seems to be missing is special events.  All the nearby (ish) arcades seem spiritually dead.  There’s no staff on hand except for one bored-looking girl behind the counter reading a magazine, and certainly no one cares enough to set up a tournament, or a demo; and no one knows one another because there are few, if any, regulars.  Back at Ebeneezer’s, we held weekly tournaments to help keep the place in business, yearly charity speedrun/pledges, and things of that sort.  Dana, the owner, wasn’t the only one setting things up, all the regulars would pitch in, setting up seating, putting out fliers, etc.  If it could be done with a cabinet and a fistful of quarters, it would be done to help keep the place running.

Come to that, I miss every game costing one quarter.  None of this ‘2 coins = 1 credit’ flashing at the bottom of the screen.  I understand the logic behind charging more: since the community doesn’t put all the hard work to keep their hangout in the black, they have to charge more per play; but at the same time, I’ve often looked at House of the Dead 3 and thought, ‘If I didn’t have to spend 75 cents per play, I’d probably put ten bucks into this thing.’

On a lesser note, whatever happened to table cabinets?  You know, the ones you could set your drink and an ashtray on and play a round of Galaga while sitting down and enjoying a drag between stages.  I guess that it all comes full circle here:  without food, drinks and cigarettes in the room, there’s no need for cabinets whose sole purpose is to allow you to enjoy your food, drinks and cigarettes while playing them.

Arcades aren’t dead yet, not by a long shot.  However, they have changed and evolved in ways that I, personally, don’t like.  Obviously, the people who still frequent these places appreciate the way they are now.  Arcades are no longer for me, or the bikers, stoners and middle-class college-types who’ve always got a foul-smelling Camel Light clenched between their teeth.

All-in-all, it’s still a business, and a business has to change with the times.  There’s a whole new generation of kids at these new sterile arcades, and that is the demographic being targeted.  I can accept that modern arcades are not for me, I can;  I just can’t bring myself to like it.