The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Ah the good old days of the 1980s, hanging out at our local arcade parlours with mates and our monster mullets!
Thanks heaps to We Are Diehards on Facebook for sharing this most awesome vid with us all – let the nostalgia ooze baby!
source: We Are Diehards via Facebook
During the boom times of the 80s and 90s, it would have been quite hard to imagine that one day the coin-operated (coin-op) pinball and arcade video games business would (almost) disappear.
With the current worldwide resurgence in pinball and old school arcade machines making a comeback in barcades, we thought we’d take a look at how prevalent pinball and arcade games were in the 80s and 90s in the biggest coin-op amusement market in the world, the good ole USA!
We delved deep into the available ‘Census of Service Industry‘ data from the US Department of Commerce, which kept record of “sources of receipts” for pinball and arcade machines in establishments across the US. What we found was quite eye-opening!
source: 1982 Census of Service Industries: Industry Series. Miscellaneous Subjects(SC82-I-5) – US Dept of Commerce
From the 1982 census data, there were 5,434 sites across the US where the general public could attend to get their fix of playing pinball and arcade games. The total US takings at these establishments was a whopping USD$1.175 billion (for that year), with arcade machines earning the lion’s share with USD$890.4 million and pinball with $284.3 million. Remember, this was just before the video games crash of 1983. Interestingly, Pennsylvania had the highest number of establishments (268), with the split of takings between pinball (USD$34.2M) and arcade (USD$36.0M) being almost 50/50. Everywhere else, it was arcade video game machines that took more coins out of pockets.
source: 1992 Census Of Service Industries: Subject Series. Sources of Receipts or Revenue (SC92-S-4) – US Dept of Commerce
By 1992 the coin-op amusement landscape changed quite a bit. As evident by the numbers, pinball declined substantially while arcade machines broke through the magical USD$1 billion earnings barrier for that year – that is some serious amount of coins! Pinball had unfortunately slid back, earning their operators a poultry (when compared to arcade video games) USD$165M in 1992. With hindsight, pinball was going to be saved by some big name licensed machines – hello The Addams Family!
source: The Arcade Flyer Archive
As already hinted, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for pinball. According to Vending Times (which tracks the use of coin-operated games), in the mid-1990s the silver ball game had rebounded with takings of USD$912M in 1994 (that was 38% of the total coin-op market at the time) and then almost doubling to a dizzying USD$1.7 billion by 1997/8. Pinball had gone from junk to the golden goose in three short years! Before pinball operators could make it rain more coins, it was the 32-bit gaming era that sounded the death knell for not only pinball, but arcade video games too. By the end of the 1990s, the number of venues where one could play pinball and/or arcade machines dwindled dramatically. Things got acutely dire for pinball when the once mighty Williams closed up its pinball division near the end of 1999.
The beauty of hindsight is that we can assess and track the ups and downs of the pinball and arcade coin-op industry. With the current global video games industry sporting 2.6 billion gamers and takings in excess of USD$116 billion per annum, the time of amusement centres on every street corner are long gone. If pinball could tap even 0.5% of this (that’s USD$580M), then the great silver ball game will be here to stay and be enjoyed for many generations to come!
Enjoying some arcade and pinball action at Melbourne’s Invaders Amusement Centre
– circa early 80s
Waka, waka, waka, wanna play Pac-Man like a champion? If you are sick of getting gobbled by Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde, then check out this ‘how to play’ vid, as it will get ya playing for hours instead of minutes!
This guide basically teaches you how to play two of Pac-Man’s maze patterns (there are three officially, but two are 99% the same as each other). So what are you waiting for, go and munch some dots like a champion.
source: stevepiers
By: Nintendork
It’s one of those things you never thought about when growing up – that these huge and heavy arcade machines would one day disappear and the amusement centres housing them would become extinct.
I always thought that arcade machines would be here to stay and that they would remain popular as ever with everyone. How wrong was I? Luckily for me, Hersheypark in Hershey, Pennsylvania is the big exception. Hersheypark could have gotten rid of their old arcade cabinets long ago but they decided to keep them and maintain them in working order. I love having my physical console games from when I was little and in this instance it is great to see these big arcade games remaining exactly the same as when I was a child, making them that extra bit special. To know that I put quarters in their Double Dragon machine when I was 12 and am playing the exact same game right now and doing the same thing beating up baddies means the world to me.
Hersheypark is the perfect destination for a hit of gaming nostalgia. Enjoy the pics!
One of the most iconic horizontal shoot’em ups from the 80s, Irem’s R-Type will have it’s infamous boss Dobkeratops immortalised in a poseable Figma model!
There is no release date or pricing about this unpainted bit of drool-worthiness. To say we will be keeping a close eye on this would be a gross understatement. Pew, pew, pew, we can’t wait!
image source: nlab.itmedia.com.jp
Who remembers Timezone?
Timzone was the place that first blew my mind with Mortal Kombat. It was a Sunday morning last century (crap I’m old!) when we walked into Timezone in the Capitol Centre (now called Dandenong Plaza) to see a group crowded around an arcade machine. That was the day I got instantly hooked on the digitised fighter that was the original Mortal Kombat.
As we watched the bloody challenge to completion, we were treated with a Sub-Zero Fatality! My mind was instantly blown. That led to a lot of coins fed into that machine until my fave fighter of all time arrived some time later: Mortal Kombat II – and the rest, as they say, is history.
Here I have two of the super rare Mortal Kombat II Collector Kards that I got from Timezone in Dandenong back in the day, along with a super-kool TZM (Timezone Magazine) issue No.8 (May 1994) that was kindly gifted to me by Aaron ‘blahjedi’ Clement at PAX Aus 2017.
Anyone else remember these?
– Serblander / Weird and Retro
source: Weird and Retro via Facebook
Talk about an awesomely impressive retro hardware hack!
What do you get when you grab a Tomy Turnin’ Turbo Dashboard, Sega’s awesome OutRun arcade game and a very very clever hardware hacking peep named Matt Brailsford? You get a hack to outdo all other hacks – the Tomy Turnin’ Turbo Dashboard OutRun Arcade!
Rather than regurgitating the meticulous steps Matt took to create this awesome piece, read his epic blog post right now! Wish we could make this!
source: Circuitbeard
image source: Circuitbeard.co.uk
In the beginning there was Dave Theurer’s tube shooter, Tempest. Then came Jeff Minter’s Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar, a psychedelic take on Dave’s masterpiece. This was then followed by Tempest 3000 on the defunct Nuon and finally the contemporary take on Tempest for the PS Vita, the awesome TxK. And now we have the imminent release of this iconic tube shooter, Tempest 4000, again coded by Llamasoft’s Yak (Jeff Minter), which means the franchise is still in great hands!
Strap into your Claw peeps, cause the adrenaline-pumping Tempest 4000 will be available on your PlayStation®4 and Xbox One systems on July 17, 2018 for $29.99!
The original Tempest was one of the first videogames to use 3D vector graphics, securing itself as one of Atari’s hallmark titles and one of the most popular arcade games of all time. It has been featured prominently across pop culture, including Ernest Cline’s dystopian Ready Player One novel.
Developed by legendary game designer Jeff Minter, Tempest 4000 remains faithful to the fast-paced gameplay of the arcade original, while adding brand new features and visually stunning graphics.
As in the original game, players are in control of the Claw, a powerful spacecraft equipped to destroy deadly creatures and other obstructions with rapid-fire shots on vibrant geometric prisms. With three game modes to choose from and 100 levels to conquer, players must eliminate all enemies as quickly as possible to survive, aiming for the coveted spot at the top of the leaderboards.
Additional Key Features Include:
We can’t wait to EAT ELECTRIC DEATH!
image source: Tempest 4000
By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.
I recently walked into a hipster bar that I had never been in before. I immediately felt slightly old. Everyone there was in their early twenties; some of them didn’t look old enough to order a beer. As I made my way past the bustling, long bar, I noticed something in the back corner of the place that I hadn’t seen in a longtime.
A large group of twentysomethings were gathered around an original Pac-Man arcade machine. I hadn’t seen a Pac-Man machine since I was a little kid. It was a smack of nostalgia in a place I didn’t expect it.
Like the Rubik’s Cube or the DeLorean DMC-12, Pac-Man is an 80s icon. Seeing a vintage machine with a group of Millennials playing it, made me curious. I sat at a small booth near the Pac-Man machine and watched the young group feed the machine quarters. They were having such a blast trying to see who could reach the highest score with one quarter.
source: ausretrogamer
After a few craft beers, I wanted to try my hand at Pac-Man; but they had taken over the machine. It was entertaining watching them shriek and groan when they got devoured by a ghost. It may’ve been the first time any of them had ever played the arcade version of Pac-Man, but I still wanted my turn.
Pac-Man brings people together. From the time the game was released in arcades in October 1980, Pac-Man has been a unifier that you could play with friends. Pac-Man is cross-generational. It seems simple at first, but as you keep playing, the difficulty of each stage keeps you addicted to clear the maze.
When Pac-Man was released in 1980, movie theatre owners and movie moguls were worried that the game would hurt the film industry. Pac-Man was taking money away from Paramount and 20th Century Fox. Pac-Man’s enormous popularity was short-lived, but at its height, movie studio executives had to be worried about how long they would be competing with the bright yellow machines.
I never got to play the Pac-Man machine in that bar that night, but I enjoyed watching the twentysomethings play a game that this October will turn 38-years-old. Will there ever be another Pac-Man? I doubt it.
source: ausretrogamer
We definitely need a holiday! Who doesn’t like holidays, right? Well, we may have just found the perfect place to stay for our next getaway via Airbnb! This proves that tiny can be awesome!
If the photos of this tiny house with the great arcade and pool don’t convince you why it’s a cool place to stay at, then perhaps the write up may sway you:
“Our goal is to offer guests a unique opportunity to experience life in a “Tiny House” and to re-live some of their childhood in our retro arcade (all 45 games on free-play!). The atmosphere we’ve tried to create is “fun & different”. We want AirBnB’ers from ages 6 – 106 to relax, have fun and feel at home here. We’d love to have you come back to visit again & maybe even tell your friends about us too!? We’ll do everything in our power to make sure your stay is awesome, just like you expect it to be.”
Rightio, we have dibs on this tiny place next summer 😉
image source: Airbnb