Present Situation of Video Arcade Games: Part 2

On the other hand, there are also some arcades games that do not need to fight for survival. This is because some genres of video games are still very popular in arcades. Among these are dancing and rhythm types of games. Some famous video arcade games of this genre would include "Dance, Dance Revolution," and part of the "Bemani," series.

When the modern video arcade games cannot find a place under the sun, the early video games find new life.

Thanks to the simple, and purely exciting game play of many of the early video games, many of these games have found a lot of new fans amongst the modern generation. The modern generation however, play these arcade games on mobile phones, or with the help of special emulators such as MAME.

In addition, nowadays some of the classic video arcade games are reappearing in commercial settings. Such as the way the "Ms. Pac-Man 20 Year Reunion." was released, as well as "Galaga Class of 1981," (two-in-one game.) Other classic arcades are integrated directly into controller hardware (joysticks) with replaceable flash drives storing game ROMs.

Present Situation of Video Arcade Games: Part 1

Video arcade games have a great history, in the 1980s they were very popular. They even created popular video game cultures, so to speak, and cultural icons. What is the present situation of video arcade games? Did the arcades become extinct? No, of course they didn’t. It is true that the time of arcades has passed, but the video arcade game industry does still exist today. Just on a significantly reduced level.

In order to facilitate porting a video arcade game to a home system, the modern video arcade game hardware is often based on home game consoles. Some home consoles have the video arcade versions:

PlayStation 2 – System 246

Microsoft Xbox – Chihiro

Dreamcast – NAOMI, Atomiswave

Nintendo GameCube – Triforce

The survival of some video arcade games is caused by their expanding into ticket-based prize redemption. Others have survived by expanding into more physical games which haven’t equivalents among home game consoles. Some examples of the latter would be skee-ball and whack-a-mole.

Classic Video Arcade Games Are Still in Demand

Nowadays, we can notice a good many people who collect the classic video arcade games. Classic arcades were the games of their childhood – they were created in the late 1970s – 1980s. Of course, people will not collect these games if they don’t have warm, nostalgic feelings toward the games.  It is easy to understand how even now there is still a desire to play these old but wonderful games

During the 70's & 80's,  a lot of wonderful video arcade games started to be created, and arcades became very popular.  Because of the huge popularity of some of the games, Pac-Man, for example, even entered the popular culture. For decades there wasn’t anything else that could be matched to the early video games, or enjoyed in quite the same way.

Due to the fact that today, only few of these games have any commercial value, the cost of their acquisition can range from 200 to 750 dollars.  However, when we talk about arcade games that have been fully restored, there value can be significantly higher than this.

End of Golden Age of Video Arcade Games: Video Game Consoles: Part 2

It was due to the glut of poor-quality home video game systems, that the video game crash took place in the 1983; that was really big problem. The situation began to get better from the second half of the 1980s.

In the 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System was released. Thanks to this system, a reasonably good video arcade experience was able to be provided at home. Thus, the Nintendo Entertainment System began to level the playing field.

The role of the Nintendo Entertainment System was later taken by two other home video game systems. They were, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Mega Drive. The Mega Drive was known in North America as The Genesis. During the first half of 1990s these home video game consoles greatly improved home play. Some of the technology was even integrated into a few video arcade machines.

With the release of the PlayStation in the 1995 and the Nintendo 64 in the 1996 many video arcade games had gone out of business.

End of Golden Age of Video Arcade Games: Video Game Consoles: Part 1

It is well known that in the 1980s video arcade games were very popular. That time period is a part of an era known as The Golden Age of video arcade games. However, by the second half of the 1980's they were almost completely eradicated from the market; such sad results for arcades. This harsh yet unavoidable ending was caused by the always present progress in the field of technology. In the 1990's new generations of home video game consoles and home computers resulted in the significant reduction of the interest to arcade games.

Early consoles, such as the Mattel's Intellivision and the Atari 2600, were very general-purpose, they were built in order to give users the ability to play a variety of games. They often, however, could not measure up to video arcade game hardware, which was single-purpose and was built in order to run only a single game and to run it exceptionally well.

In fact, good home video game systems are the things which have always been lacking for the arcade game industry. In the 1980s the arcade market was filled with a lot of poor-quality home video game systems. This problem played an important role in the video game crash in the 1983.

End of Golden Age of Video Arcade Games: Copies of Popular Games

During the late 1970's technology made it possible to create video games with much better quality graphics and sound in comparison to previous years. It was still  a very far cry from what future technologies would have to offer, with realistic images and full motion video. This is why arcade game developers had to compensate for the lack of quality, by making the game play even more fun or entertaining. Many consider the late 1970's the golden age of the video arcade games. A lot of wonderful video arcade games were created then.

Unfortunately, this wonderful time didn’t last to terribly long, arcade games continued to be popular till the beginning of 1990's, but then there time had passed.  So, what happened, there are several reasons for it, and one of them is that the arcade market started to be filled with the numerous copies of these popular arcade games. These copies killed the interest to video arcade games, the development of something new became a rarity. Even though there were still new genres being explored by arcade game developers, the overwhelming majority of created games were maze type games, shooting games, and other such variations of these well-known themes.