Friday, March 12, 2010

The magic of the recreational lounges

OutRun

I remember that when I was small, sometimes it me was going for a walk for the recreational ones of my quarter after playing with my Spectrum at home. To enter this place was like getting into a machine of the time, and to contemplate a shop window of what, with luck, it could have in my hearth in a future. And the fact is that to see juegazos like “Cadillac and Dinosaurs” or “R-Type“, or spectacular furniture like that of “OutRun“ or that of “After Burner“ - SEGA has always been a specialist in this aspect - it was slightly almost magic.

With the step of the years, and as more powerful systems were going out, this border was becoming narrower and narrower. For example, some games that went out in Gentle Drive as “Rolling Thunder 2” or “Chiki Chiki Boys” were practically traced to his namesakes arcade, and the same can be said about the conversions that went out in more powerful consoles as Saturn or Dreamcast, since in fact, some recreational badges were based on these domestic systems.

Perhaps, this was the beginning of the end of the arcades: the moment in which we could enjoy at qualifications of a similar quality. At first, the companies were betting for the most top hardware to attract the players, but as costs were getting cheaper, the only resource that was staying was to use peripheral complexes, but even this - guns, carpets of dance, musical instruments, … - have ended up by going out also on the domestic market.

Since to invest in more and more elaborated furniture was quite risky, little by little we have seen the slope of this business, up to such a point of which the last recreational ones base on components of a conventional PC. After seeing the recent news of which there was hackeado the badge Taito Type X2 - that gives life to games as “The King of Fighters XII“, or "Blaz Blue" - I felt how there had got lost few magic that the arcades had left. Do we will see one re-arising again from these machines, or only they have left Japan like last refuge?

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