Fans Saved the Arcade

I was standing around in the break lounge when Brian, the director of the North West Pinball and Arcade Show, started giving some numbers. He had just finished a tally of the arcade machines for our show, and wanted to talk numbers. The big news was that we had cleared all of the expenses for the show, and some left over for a few grants. That wasn’t what he wanted to talk about though.

“It’s getting harder to have our show,” said Brian, “when we started, there wasn’t a lot of stuff like us anywhere. Now there is 8 Bit, Dorky’s, Shorty’s, and a wave of others.”

He was right, there were a lot of machines from those very same arcades at our show. It would be less original to see Lunar Lander, if it had been at a bar you frequent. In fact, it would be the same machine, so you can check on your highscore.

Many of the games at the show were from arcades, or going to be in arcades soon. I sent a job request to one of them yesterday. They are starting to be in every major part of the Puget Sound area. So, the show is starting to not feel as original.

On the other hand, the show may have been the thing that started these arcades in the first place.

In Hawaii, and in Spokane, most arcades were done the traditional way. There was someone who owned a giant warehouse of games, and he moved them around to various arcades as he felt. The arcade owner just ran the show, he would rarely own all of the machines. The arcade games would be sold to other distributors, or arcade owners, and fans would be told very little about it.

As consoles got better and better, arcade games began to be forgotten. The PS2 and Xbox had arcade game collections released. Although I have written about it before, very few realize that there are still arcade game manufacturers. In fact, Sega, Namco, and Stern still release new games every year for an arcade.

In 2003 there was an arcade drop. It destroyed some amazing companies, and arcades started to dry up. Many of the family fun centers I have been too have said they were struggling. Arcades themselves were rare. The arcade I worked at in Hawaii had a lot of struggles, and pushed more for consoles than arcade games.

There were a few exceptions in Seattle. Game Works was started in Seattle, and is still going strong. There was a time when the restaurant was growing, and the game section was shrinking, but that seems to have been halted.

Shorty’s continued to be frequented. It started in ‘97, and seems to have done well. The entire area around the bar is specialist shops for edgy folks, and Shorty’s fits right in with it.

Game creators decided to go for broke with giant machines, that did over the top things. Much of Game Works the first time I went was covered in giant games, instead of the more traditional.

During this same time, many arcade games started to be sold to fans. There wasn’t a need for it, and the fan wasn’t intending to run an arcade. The Fans for arcade games in Seattle had the money, and time to work with them. They formed a group of fans that knew each other, and how to get what fixed. There were specialists, and leaders. Eventually someone came up with the idea of sharing the games with other fans.

I don’t know how the first show went, but things slowly got bigger. By the time I arrived, there was a group of 30 people working to get the show well organized and put together. There were hundreds of arcade machines, and the need to get extra space in case anything happened.

During this same time, the idea of the barcade started up. The first one I knew about was in Vegas, and is doing well enough. Shorty’s seemed to be doing well, so others began to think about starting up their own business. It would be like the old arcades everyone remembers, only for adults.

Two weeks ago, when I arrived to help out with the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo, Tuan took me to the 8Bit Barcade. It has the same feel of old, sort of edgy idea that Shorty’s promotes. There is also games everywhere.

I noticed some old EM machines, and posted pictures of them online. Someone pointed out the machines were owned by a fan. He was letting them be at the arcade. In fact, there is a possibility that the entire arcade is from fans. Dorky’s owns their games, as do many of the others slowly popping up.

This year at the giant arcade show we had 392 games. This is a huge number, and it was a bit overwhelming. The sound alone had a physical presence that you had to push through to get to your favorite game. The thing was, we were expecting more.

When I was at the Emerald City Comic Con -Eccleston for short- I told people there would be 400+ games. We expected there to be something over 400, and I honestly hoped for somewhere around 450+. Instead, we got nearly 400.

The reason why is that the show had sparked peoples desires to have a local arcade again. This created a need, and many people are now working to cover it. This means the arcade owners don’t have the incentive to bring all of their games to a show. Dorky’s was just a few blocks down from the Tacoma Convention Center where the NWPAAS took place.

Because of consoles, a lot of arcade games are sort of ignored. It doesn’t mean there isn’t arcade games, or the desire to play. Fans started having shows to bring back the memories of those old games. The desire, and collections, have grown so well that the arcade is making a comeback. This leaves the big shows in an awkward spot.

When we first began to roll in those arcade machines for the NWPAAS, I felt like a kid. There were so many games I wanted to play. In fact, there were more games than I had time to play. I feel the same joy when I walk into an arcade.

Fans saved the arcade, now to figure out what to do next.