Sticky Floors and Empty Wallets

Do you guys remember arcades? Man I'm feeling nostalgic about those tonight.
I was watching Wreck It Ralph with my kids (awesome movie, go watch it), and I just had a flashback  of a Gauntlet marathon a friend and I had back in high school. Being homeschooled, it wasn't a big deal to finish up our work early and go do something while everyone else was in school. I remember one day we decided to go to Loco Joes, the local nickel arcade, and just blew a ton of money trying to beat the different games.

We spent hours at that place. The arcade was on its last legs at the time, so several games were out of commission, including the classic X-men game that every arcade-goer has played. Instead we settled on Gauntlet, a classic hack-and-slash game . We'd initially made change for $20, certain that we'd have plenty left over.

Well I'm pretty terrible at staying alive ("The wizard needs food!"), and as a result his survival rate dropped any time I was bending down to throw a quarter in to the slot (spending quarters at a nickel arcade, how barbaric!). During one boss fight, I remember running out of change and making a mad dash to the change machine while he played tag with death.

And after a day at the arcade, we beat the game. The credits rolled and we received a code for a T-shirt that had expired several years ago. We threw some more money in some other machines, won a load of tickets that we dumped on some random kid who was there with his dad, and finally let our eyes see sunlight again. It was mindless fun, but it's one of those things we talk about to this day.

I spent a lot of my childhood summers at the arcade. Sometimes I'd go with my cousins, sometimes I'd take my allowance and lose myself in the cacophony of kids yelling and 30 games trying to make their own sound effects heard. I love the arcade, and I was a bit heartbroken when the small, local arcades started shutting their doors.

However, some held on even as I was in college. I still remember getting out of class Tuesdays and Thursdays and rewarding myself with $5 worth of Dance Dance Revolution or Tekken. I tried going to a few of my old hangouts, but everything was closed and the tiny arcade at the mall was my last refuge. But I still went there when I could afford it, and there are times when I wish someone would open

Don't get me wrong, they are frightfully overpriced and have a tendency to bring out the worst in people. It's probably a terrible investment for a business owner. But there's an atmosphere to those small, dimly-lit arcades that you just can't replicate. We still have a major arcade in town - it's more of an entertainment venue with rock-climbing, a restaurant, and  a nice-sized arcade upstairs. But it takes more than a bunch of arcade cabinets to make an arcade.

Although I've been there a few times with my family, it just doesn't feel right. The entrance is huge, doorless, and inviting. The room is well-lit, and there's so much space in the aisles that you can comfortably move about no matter how many people are in the room. In 2013 that's good business, but it always makes me long for the "good old days."

I'm not going to rail against how Xbox ruined the arcade, or pretend that I'm going to open my own arcade so that my kids can enjoy it. The arcade of yesteryear is no longer relevant, and it's the first time I've really realized that something from my past has been phased out. It's a bummer to take a moment and realize that you can't relive a childhood experience, even for the sake of nostalgia.

What about you guys? I'd love to hear some arcade memories of your own. Or maybe you still have that smelly, dimly-lit dungeon of awesome in your town and I'm just unlucky. Let me know!

See you tomorrow!