Wired Visits Modern Arcade

"I think I'm gonna throw up," I blurt. I'm standing in the middle of the Halfpipe, three adjacent 20-foot screens bursting with a dizzying 160-degree panorama of the first-person shooter Halo 2. As the soldier on the display crisscrosses the rugged terrain of an alien world, my legs begin to wobble and I have to sit down. "Sometimes when we do demos, I look at the person next to me and see their head down as they try not to vomit," laughs Torrey McPheters, my guide and the director of gaming technology for Holodek, an arcade in Hampton, New Hampshire.

-- Welcome to the Videodrome

Arcades have suffered, let's face it. For some time now, my visits to Dave & Busters have been for nothing more than playing pool. A lot of games these days are pure coin suckers which are really not all that much fun to play. Light gun, fighting and racing games which just cost way to much to excel at when a PlayStation 2 sits at home for free.

When I was young though ... arcades were the cutting edge. They had the games nobody could have at home. They had stuff like Dragon's Lair or cockpits or whatnot. These days, they seem so blah. They're going to need things like the Halfpipe, internet connectivity, better coop, etc., just to stay alive.




tagged: arcade, gaming