WCC3 week 6 : QUANTUM

Week Challenge Championship board

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LN2
MARPaholic
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Posts: 1669
Joined: Wed Jul 24, 2002 4:46 pm

Post by LN2 »

Pacmania was/is very cool...but certainly no where near as popular or as played or present in arcades as the previous pacman games from 1981-1983.

I never saw Cameltry in any arcades around here...although by 1989 I was no longer driving to other towns to play in arcades anymore. I played at a couple arcades that were both very good arcades within 5 miles of where I lived. Neither had Cameltry. I'm sure based on how cool it is to play in MAME that it was very popular in other countries where arcades were still thriving at least to some degree.

By golden era I'm not even necessarily referring to the quantity and quality of games released, but how popular were they and what percentage of remaining arcades would you find them in.

It seems more and more clear that the "golden era" lasted longer in other countries...especially Japan where even today compared to arcades in the USA even by 1987-1988 you would say Japan is still in the golden era.

By 1987-1988 the majority of arcades that you would find in the USA in 1982-1985 were GONE. Instead of 3-4 arcades in 1 town you would have 1 or maybe a 2nd small one. Instead of finding arcades with 100+ games you would find arcades with only 25-50 games.

Also in the USA, at least in our area we had token wars...where arcades would outbid each other to try and get the customers to their arcade. Before the token wars you would get 4 tokens for $1 and 25 for $5. At the height of the token wars you could get 14 for $1. The fact arcades were able to still operate and make a profit at 14 tokens for $1 just shows how popular and crowded arcades were back then in the USA.

2 years later all token wars were gone cuz in most towns you only had 1 or 2 arcades and 1 of those would be in the local big shopping mall. the golden era was essentially over IMHO at that time...which was around 1986. When 50+% of all arcades you had in 1985 were gone by 1986-1987, I think that spells the end of the golden era.

I am only talking about how it was in the USA...and more specifically the mid-Atlantic states region of the USA. It maybe was quite different out on the West Coast.
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