Recent talk hereabouts of seaside resorts has put me in mind of amusement arcades, and the way they have changed for the worse over the years.
When I was a nipper I loved the pinball machines, the penny pushers, and above all, the coin-operated video games. I cut my teeth on such simple fare as Space Invaders and Pac Man before a few years later gorging the gore-hound in me on the bloody mayhem of such games as Operation Wolf.
Now the games are all carnage-free with nary a decapitated communist in sight, the pinballs have been stolen away to the basements of hipster wankers, and the penny pusher has been transported to television where it forms the basis of ‘Tipping Point’ – a show starring and watched by simpletons, scroungers and scum.
In their place have arrived dancefloor simulators where tosspot Travoltas thrash around like Joey Deacon with a cattle-prod shoved up his cat flap, and claw-grabbers with less grip than Stephen Hawking’s wanking hand. And the prizes on offer? Moth-eaten knock-off Spongebob Squarepants dolls where once you could have got your hands on one of those pens that if you turned it upside down, the girl’s bikini disappeared!
Okay, maybe arcades were never that good, but oh how the shitey have fallen!
Nominated by: Chimp Licker
These days ‘amusement arcades’ strike me as being nothing more than a way to part punters from their money as quickly as possible. They lower the tone of high streets and seaside promenades everywhere.
10
I used to spend a lot of time in arcades during the early and mid 80’s – the ‘golden years’ so to speak. It was a lot of fun and was the only place you could go to play ‘decent’ games. Now, they’re all scum infested shitholes which seem to be decked out with old women and nonces. Nostalgia is wonderful thing – may the past stay in the past.
6
A couple of these fucking things have turned up in my quite little Cornish town recently. Designed purely to empty the pockets of the feckless and down-at-heel, like bookies they seem to be frequented by the sorry and desperately addicted types. Raze both of the cunting things.
8
And the penny pushers are now 2p or 10p. I enjoy chucking a couple of quid in the 2p ones. Love pinballs but, as you say, they’re few and far between nowadays. Mostly designed to rob you of as much money as they can in the shortest possible time, it’s been a long time since ‘amusement’ could be used honestly in the name.
7
I was unbeatable on any pinball. It was eerie. I hustled so many people. Did you have a favourite, Mogs? Fish Tales? Demolition Man? Adams Family?
2
I was a beast at Adams Family. They had one at the pub my student girlfriend worked at. I could get credits almost every time I played, to the extent that I often walked off leaving half a dozen. Oddly can’t remember any others. Greeeeed.
2
Exactly. Play all night for a quid then sell your copious credits on. It had an annoying magnet but an easy jackpot. Thing multiball was rather funny when you made the little, hairy bugger squeal.
1
Expect woke amusement arcades any time soon.
There will be no money allowed because trying to win something sniffs of capitalism.
There will be no bingo either because that denotes winners and losers, and we can’t have losers now can we!
Whack’a’mole will be banned as being a metaphor for animal cruelty. Instead it will be Whack’a’Boris, or Whack’a’Brexiteer.
The old cardboard “fat lady” cutouts with a hole left for you to stick your head through, will also be banned on the charge of sexism.
Candy floss and popcorn, banned because it ain’t healthy.
Shoot-em up video games will be banned because it causes conflict, aggression and mental illness.
in fact if the wokes had their way all forms of gambling would be banned, no one would be able to amuse themselves in these places because they would be subsequently shutdown as being far too subversive for the common good!
10
Whack-a-gammon?
I’m sure the woke would come up with a few games, such as a version of Doom ‘milkshaking’ Katie Hopkins and Nigel Farage leads to a full on BLM riot where you chase Police officers in lemon yellow tabards after getting them to take a knee.
DragRace where you have to out ‘sass’ the other queens. A GTA style game where you and fellow vegans have to protest outside as many steak restaurants as you can without falling into a coma.
A game where you have to deplatform the correct people and remove the right books from the campus library.
There’s also the coconut game where you knock the heads off the ‘fake’ black people, such as Candace Owens and Thomas Sowell.
6
They used to have these in Londonistan years ago but they became a magnet for people like Handlebum (don’t mention His Lordship’s real name) to pick up teenage boys and bumfuck them. I’m surprised our esteemed Mayor hasn’t thought of reopening them……. or his fat lezza “night czar” hasn’t suggested it at least.
9
Fools’ Paradises.
Always have been.
Try to win your kid a fluffy toy on one of those weak-as-hell crane machines and you end up paying 10 times the value of the bloody thing. You can’t give up when the youngster is looking up at you with pleading eyes. Lethal.
OK for using up your collected small coins but don’t change any notes.
Like all forms of gambling the odds are stacked against you on the one arm bandits. Watching your cash disappear in an instant is a strange form of entertainment.
Las Vegas is the biggest and most stupid amusement arcade in the world. Designed to part mugs from their money.
10
Las Vegas sounds like my idea of Hell.
3
Pinball
Machine-
Horror theme;
Ghouls, demons,
Cresent moon,
Lightning flash!
Shrieking cats,
Whirling leaves,
Broken headstones,
Scattered bones,
Grinning skull,
Playing it.
4
Give amusement arcade vouchers out to the fuckwits. These places are ideal distribution centres for the the chyna flu!
4
Ah I remember Operation Wolf. Great game. Played it so much I could complete it with one credit. Classics for me were Nemesis, Out Run, R-Type, Salamander and 1943.
3
Recently bought myself a raspberry pi gamebox with 36,000 games.
All of those are on there. 😀
Bought my kid one too and he couldn’t get his head around Raid over Moscow and Beach head. They were way too hard for him to figure out after the easy life on the playstation.
Where I hail from in Kent now has more bookie shops that actual, useful shops in the high street and the slot machine section is doing brisk business with dead-eyed chav scum pumping the kid’s lunch money into the things.
Every pub that has a fruit machine always has it’s ‘moth boy’.
Drawn in by the flashing lights, they can’t leave it alone until they’re skint.
8
Electric Palace in Weymouth is good. They have a giant two player version of Space Invaders with vibrating chairs.
3
Download a free program called Mame and you can play all these old games using a simulator. Exactly the same as the coin ops you even have to press a key to put credits in.
The program is legal but downloading the Roms (games) is illegal. There are loads of sites offering the Roms for free but I wouldn’t know anything about it…
Spent lots of my mispent youth in arcades I’m afraid
6
The snes emulator is worth having. The neogeo one too just for the metal slug games.
4
Personally not been to an amisement Arcade since the release of the SNES but before that had fun on Star Wars (the one where you sit inside the cabinet), Outrun, Afterburner (with the slippery AIDS-covered joystick) and the later 2 player beat-em-ups like Street Fighter.
I can’t imagine there’s much custom nowadays, although I wouldnt mind sitting all 19 stone of my arse of one of those old token-powered bumper trikes, shrieking like some enomous gurgling ogre with Downs.
4
So that’ll be Harvey Price then?
2
I remember the local gyppo carnival that would come once a year. Simpsons Arcade, Street Fighter 2, Aliens. Those were the days.
Went to an arcade years ago in Japan where they had all these 80s/90s games for about 10p a go, amazing times. Fuck modern arcades they lack proper games.
5
Great Nom, ChimpLicker
“claw-grabbers with less grip than Stephen Hawking’s wanking hand” – Laugh ? I almost bought a round (only the pub’s still shut)
Try working all day in an arcade – 10 second burst of Cotton-Eye Joe on relentless repeat every 2 minutes….
7
I couldn’t give a fuck about the content of the nom, but, I spat coffee out reading it!!!
3
Evokes memories that are simultaneously great and horrible. Great because I often went on holiday to seaside resorts as a kid with my family and, being very sporty in my youth, I was naturally drawn to the sporty arcade games like tennis, motor-racing and combat (loved all the old classic games too, like pac man and space invaders). Quite liked a go on the slot machines, but my favourite gambling game was that one where you could bet on little plastic horses that were encased in glass. Horrible because, even as a kid, you could deduce that there was a seedy underbelly to the resort; a place saturated with criminals, the homeless, alcoholics, chain smokers, wife beaters, the chronically unemployed, sex cases and flashers. The acrid stench of candy and cheap hot dogs that permeated the place merely reinforced your opinion of the tawdriness and seediness of it all. As an adult, well, all of the above is multiplied tenfold: Amusement Arcades are a living nightmare.
7
Hadn’t been in an amusement arcade for decades when last year I found myself in Sarfend on Estree for a Sleaford Mods gig and had a bit of time to spare before it started.
Trundled into the Kursaal and had a little look round and a go on one or two machines.
Hardly anyone in there. A week later they closed it down.
I must be a jinx because a week after the last time I walked up and down the pier there (1976) there was a massive fire…
1