It's been a while since we at GameCyte felt the need to wax nostalgic and share our memories in a retrospective article. However, as another year draws to a close, and the gaming world takes a look back at some of the more memorable titles of 2008, there are those of us who take a moment to reflect a little further -- to ponder the state of the industry, our identity as gamers, and how gaming became such a significant portion of our lives. It's also an opportunity to remember a vital piece of gaming heritage -- a pillar of gamers' shared culture, celebrated and cherished in its day, yet nearly dead and buried in today's world.
I speak, of course, of the video arcade, the historic gathering spot of dedicated, hardcore players, and curious newbies alike. The arcade's many enticing titles and shared, unspoken social standards made gaming more than a hobby for many players -- it provided them with a concrete, reliable destination for their gaming passions. In an age when video games had not yet become the billion-dollar mainstream industry we enjoy today, the arcade was, for many, the sole monument to the medium. Furthermore, to visit the arcade was to commit oneself to gaming for a significant portion of the day, requiring players to plan and dedicate themselves to the activity, just as one might look up movie listings and seek out nearby restaurants for the evening's entertainment. When someone declared, "I'm going to the arcade," there was no question of what he or she meant: "I am going to a place where the newest, most impressive games are kept, and for as long as my quarters can hold out, I am going to stay there and play those games in the company of my friends and like-minded fellow geeks."
One can easily argue that gaming, as a hobby, has never been stronger; each year, our consoles and PCs grow more powerful, our available catalogs grow larger, and the ignorance-borne outrage over gaming fades a little further into obsolescence. Tragically, however, in gaming's growth and evolution, the American arcade has become a casualty of the grueling journey. The reasons are too numerous to list: home systems are now powerful enough that we don't need dedicated arcade cabinets for our more impressive games; modern gamers are looking for longer and deeper titles which don't fit the pay-per-play model; social gaming no longer needs a dedicated physical hub thanks to the internet.
All of these innovations have done wonders to refine and improve the state of interactive entertainment, but in their wake, they have slowly driven the American arcade to near-extinction. Mind you, I wouldn't trade the modern cornucopia of gaming splendor for the past, by any means; it's a source of tremendous pride and pleasure to see how far my favorite pastime has grown during my short lifetime. Still, there is a definite value in knowing where we have been, as we try to predict where we are going in the future. Also, in a fit of premature get-off-my-lawn rambling about the "good old days," it gets my curmudgeonly dander up that there's a new generation of "hardcore" gamers to whom the arcade is an alien concept -- relegated to inferior modern interpretations like internet cafes or Dave & Buster's.
For those reasons, I invite you to join me this week for an extended retrospective feature on the American arcade, as I share with you some of the most important arcade memories of my youth. In each entry, I will walk you through a different location which would prove instrumental in the development of my gaming career, and regale you with olden tales of the games we played there, the ways we played them, and the eventual fate of these glorious gaming meccas. I advise you to bring plenty of quarters, and to leave your food & drink at the door -- the big guy behind the counter will kick you out if you get soda on the machines.
The Arcade: 7-Eleven, Corner of Peralta and Solano, Albany, CA
What defines an arcade? It's an easy call to make when a place of business contains only games and a change machine; that's an arcade. What happens if it contains more? If the arcade also has a snack bar, is it still an arcade? What if they sell toys, or what if you can win toys via ticket-redemption games? What if there is a location that has just as many games as a dedicated, standalone arcade, but it happens to be attached to a restaurant? Is it still an arcade if you just go there to play Tekken? Reach deep into the zen of gaming, children, and ask: When is an arcade not an arcade?
In my opinion, the qualifier to carry "arcade" status lies in the intent of the gamer. If your goal is to walk in and start exchanging quarters for gameplay, then the establishment in question is an arcade for as long as this activity persists, and their primary business model is irrelevant. If your gaming destination happens to serve the best pizza in town, or contains 20 bowling lanes, or is showing Quantum of Solace on six screens, that's great too, but if that isn't why you've come, then it hardly matters -- if you came to game, that place is, for you, an arcade.
When interpreted via this method, the 7-Eleven on Solano is the earliest arcade I patronized. Located only a mile from my childhood home, the iconic convenience store was, and is, located on one of the main commercial thoroughfares in my neighborhood -- a colorful, historic street that runs from the hillside residences of North Berkeley nearly all the way to Golden Gate Fields and the San Francisco Bay. Sitting right in the middle of it all, in between a small veterinary clinic and a cheese shoppe, was the 7-Eleven, a mere 20 minutes away on foot -- and barely 10 minutes on a bicycle. I spent countless weekends and summer afternoons in this store, and it wasn't because of the Slurpees and the filthy floors: I was there for the games.
The 7-Eleven wasn't my first gaming spot -- by the time I was old enough to kill a weekend without parental supervision, I had been inside quite a few arcades; miscellaneous cabinet collections which existed inside of theme parks and family restaurants. It was, however, the first arcade I was able to attend independently, to visit for the sole purpose of blowing my allowance on video games -- without requring a special occasion such as a friend's birthday or a family outing to get there. In the company of my older brother or a friend, I could simply pipe up, "Hey, let's go play some [classic arcade title]," and that was all it took -- I had a hobby of my very own, and the neighborhood convenience store was my first personal place to indulge in it. The 7-Eleven was an outlet I could attend regularly, to get out of the house and revel in the violent, colorful excesses of my chosen medium. It was not my first arcade, but it was, without question, my first regular arcade.
The store's games were kept in the corner, standing to one's immediate left upon entrance. They occupied their own little nook -- a section of protruding wall that separated them from the soda and Slurpee machines, invisible to the store's front window. Most 7-Eleven stores operated arcade games in the 1980s and 1990s, in my experience, but they were not advertised or publicized in any way, thus adding to the feeling of a social "in-crowd" among gamers who knew where to find them; coming to the 7-Eleven to play the games almost always meant that a fellow gamer had taught you of their existence.
Early on, a trip to the 7-Eleven meant keeping up with my brother, and taking on the role of a spectator rather than a player -- a role I was only too happy to fill. At the time, my elder sibling was the one whose gaming knowledge and skills reigned supreme, and whose age allowed him to determine the course of our visit, as I was under strict parental orders to stick close by and do as he said. Also, he was the one with the money, so I would watch eagerly as he played on, teaching me via demonstration how to play titles like Operation Wolf, Arch Rivals, Pigskin 621 AD, and WWF Superstars.
My local 7-Eleven had an unusually excellent game selection, compared to other arcade establishments at the time. While the Albany Bowl was still getting use out of its old Zaxxon and Marble Madness cabinets, 7-Eleven was cycling in new games every few months or so, treating us to new innovations and impressive new titles on a regular basis. It was an exciting time to be a young, impressionable gamer, and every time a new cabinet appeared in the store, I knew I'd be spending more than usual, learning its juicy secrets. It was there, surrounded by microwavable treats and humming drink coolers, that I first discovered in-game vehicles with a second-player gunner slot, that I learned to call dibs on Donatello, and where I first saw a pirate fight a ninja.
By the time I was in junior high school, my parents' misplaced trust allowed me to visit the 7-Eleven without my older brother present, and by the summer of 1991, my routine had become an exact science. Accompanied by a loyal friend on his own bicycle, I knew the fastest route by heart, what flavor of Slurpee I'd be having, and just how long my money was going to hold out -- unless, of course, there was a new game that day, in which case the entire session would have to be played by ear. Needless to say, it was right around that time that arcade gaming received a major, game-changing, shot in the arm.
The Unforgettable Discovery: Street Fighter II
Having selected the 7-Eleven as my gaming outlet of choice, I was used to the typical routines. When a new game made the rounds, the store might get a little more crowded, but ultimately, the population would thin out, and the games would once again be occupied only by the local diehards -- such as me. Part of the charm, in fact, was the notion that this was "my" 7-Eleven, where I knew I could play the hottest titles in relative peace and comfort; two machines, no waiting. So, when I locked up my bike and strode into the store to find over a dozen gamers clustered in the tiny arcade nook, I knew something was up.
The game was Street Fighter II, a title which would reinvent the fighting genre, spawn dozens of sequels and imitators, and become one of gaming's most cherished franchises. At the time, though, none of us could foresee those accolades, nor fully appreciate what Capcom had brought to the table. There, in the bright fluorescent glow of our local convenience store, we only knew one thing to be true: This game was awesome.
Street Fighter II, more than being a solid and enjoyable game, defined a wealth of gamer heritage for me, and for my peers. A game whose characters had more than superficial differences had never been seen before, and as soon as a game allowed players to make choices, there were suddenly good and bad choices. Chun Li could totally kick Zangief's ass. Blanka's secret moves were much easier to perform. Guile's kick move was cheap. That's right, it was just his "kick move" back then; nobody had heard the term "Flash Kick" before. Street Fighter II was the first game I ever got into an argument about -- and in those sweet, innocent days before internet forums, we had to have those arguments face-to-face. Where else, therefore, could we conduct our impassioned discussions, but at the arcade?
The local arcade, once upon a time, was more than just a spot to play the latest titles. Social gaming as we know it today -- and a great deal of our shared gamer culture -- would not have existed without a social hub where devotees of the fledgling hobby could convene, converse, and compete. Before then, if you beat someone in a video game, it was simply because you were better; Street Fighter II changed the face of game boasts forever when it debuted with 8 distinct combatants, allowing for a new brand of smack talk and excuses: "Pff, you just won because you got to pick Dhalsim." "Ha! I beat you with Zangief!"
For the first time, my friends and I had a game we could really talk about, and the arcade gave us a place to do it. It was the physical precursor to GameFAQs, where secret moves and character strategies were passed on from master to student. If you saw somebody performing a move you'd never seen, they were clearly an expert, and their techniques were your new strategy guide. It was the mild-mannered ancestor to the raging forum flamewar, where accusations of cheap tricks and declarations of superiority were typically relegated to people you knew -- and therefore stayed moderately civil. Any debates over superior skills could be immediately settled for fifty cents, and Godwin's Law was never invoked. That isn't to say, of course, that the arcade didn't also have its trolls.
The Persisent Memory: The anti-gaming clerk
Street Fighter II, along with its myriad gameplay revolutions, also brought about a handful of advances in gaming culture. It was the first game popular enough that we had to establish a system for who "got next," and a number of unspoken rules came into effect for polite play. For example, if the machine was occupied by a single player when you arrived, you were well within your rights to challenge him, but there was a proper time to do so: immediately before he was going to lose. The single-player game, after all, would last until the AI player had defeated you, and starting up a new two-player game would cost a quarter from each player. If you joined a game in progress, however, the first player wouldn't need to insert another coin. Therefore, the proper thing to do was to wait for the first player to be right on the ropes before hitting the 2P start, thus both allowing him to get the full value of his original game, and not requiring him to pay an additional cost for your new challenge.
In addition, special status was conferred to a player's "wingman" during intense game sessions: If a single player happened to reach Balrog in Street Fighter II, they became immune to challenges -- in the early days, reaching the mythical endgame was a rare sight, and many a gamer had heard only rumors of the ending cinematics. Much like a pitcher who is on course for a no-hitter, a gamer who made it to the bosses was cause for reverent onlookers to gather, to share in the impending triumph while waiting in quiet reverence. Needless to say, when these occasions happened, you wanted to get a good spot to watch from, where you could see the screen clearly, and in the 7-Eleven's cramped gaming space, the good seats filled up fast. The gamer's wingman, however -- the friend or sibling he had arrived with -- was an exception. After all, if the gamer happened to run out of quarters, it was the wingman's job to dash up to the clerk for more change, and get back in time before the "continue" counter ran out. As such, they needed to be allowed unfettered access to the machine, regardless of who had been there first.
During these bouts of near-revelry, on Street Fighter II or otherwise, all gamers present immediately set aside their differences and joined the spectators. We united as a single team, cheering on the current champion in the hopes of experiencing a rare moment together; gone were the trash talk and arguments as we crossed our fingers and held our breath. Triumph would be met with cheers and applause, and failures were celebrated rather than jeered, amid discussions of just how close the fallen warrior had been. In a group with such cameraderie, it's easy to dismiss and ignore anybody who doesn't share your enthusiasm -- unless, of course, that individual happens to be the proprietor of the store.
Our 7-Eleven, despite all of its magnificent gaming advantages, was managed by a nasty, spiteful, child-hating man who shared none of our joy -- in fact, he seemed to loathe it. To this clerk, there was no reasonable difference between gaming and loitering, and regardless of the fact that we were pumping a hundred Big Gulps' worth of quarters into the store's coffers every weekend, the sight of half a dozen gathered teenagers seemed to infuriate him.
It started out slowly enough, and within common sense: It didn't matter whether you were on the last level of TMNT and the continue timer was ticking; you couldn't jump the register line to get change. Fair enough, of course, but the requests started to stretch the boundaries of reason -- spectating was frowned upon, as were store visitors who weren't about to buy any Slurpees, even if it was because all their money was being reserved for the games. Of course, we'd have been prepared to dismiss his nasty attitude if not for the actual exercises of spite that came along with it.
The 7-Eleven manager never went so far as to actually eject gamers from his store -- perhaps it was to avoid a messy confrontation, or perhaps it was simply his particular brand of passive-aggressive bastardry. Instead, he had a much worse weapon at his disposal: game interference. This clerk, you see, had access to the store's circuit breakers from behind the counter, and if he surmised that the local gamers were having just a little too much fun, he would actually shut off the games, right in the middle of a playthrough. No refunds, no explanations, no apologies -- just a quick off-and-on flick, to make it look like the machines had malfunctioned and stopped the game in progress.
We were not an unruly group, mind you -- not once did we destroy merchandise or drive away other customers, and we were pretty good about buying drinks and snacks. Nonetheless, this clerk felt a need to exert his control over the kids who were emptying their wallets into his machines. On occasion, it was clearly an authoritarian act: I recall having a day off from school, due to an administrative holiday, and entering the 7-Eleven with the intention of playing some uninterrupted Dr. Mario on the PlayChoice-10. Instead, the clerk deactivated the machines as I fished out my first quarter, and growled something about school hours.
On other occasions, it simply seemed to happen for his own perverse pleasure. I was at the counter waiting to purchase a large Slurpee when I watched him glance back at the crowd which had gathered around Operation Wolf, and reach under the counter -- and if you've ever played Operation Wolf, you can imagine the sounds of crushed disappointment when the current player's game abruptly stopped on the fifth level. The real irony of the situation, of course, is that if we had really been a pack of hooligans, such an act would likely have resulted in the store getting trashed. Instead, we just dispersed in disgust, and tried our luck again the next day, in hopes of getting one of the nicer/more apathetic clerks.
Epilogue
I stopped frequenting the 7-Eleven on a regular basis some time in the mid-1990s, due to a number of factors -- my high school was in a different portion of the Bay Area, with new arcades to conquer and different businesses to haunt, and I had also come to own a few home consoles, as well -- the arcade's natural enemy. My friends and I never stopped gaming, but as we grew up and dispersed, we simply took our business elsewhere. Some time during that era, while I wasn't paying attention, 7-Eleven stopped carrying arcade games, phasing them out of their stores around the country. One day, much later, I stopped by the arcade of my youth, and the games simply weren't there anymore.
The 7-Eleven on Solano and Peralta is still there, and still appears to be doing well for itself. It's still a little on the sketchy side; the floors are grimy, the payphone out front is still tagged from top to bottom, and the hot dogs don't look like they've been changed since I was playing Mercs with my brother. But, the change has been made -- the little arcade nook has been walled off, and where I once stood in awe, watching a completely awesome stranger get the "dancing Gorbachev" ending on SF2, this now stands:
Sun Chips. They're not even the good flavor of Sun Chips.
In an oddly circular twist, 7-Eleven has come back to games again from a different angle, embracing the massive home-gaming industry in an effort to raise profits. Walking into the Solano 7-Eleven today, one can see copies of Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 behind the counter. Nexon game cards are on sale next to the phone cards, and purchase of a 22oz Slurpee comes with a disc containing 4 of Nexon's F2P clients. Once again, the 7-Eleven caters to the game-hungry youth -- but with the added feature of chasing them out of the store in order to enjoy their hobby.
7-Eleven wasn't the best arcade I ever visited, not by a long stretch. Those honors are reserved for a few spots I'll share with you later this week. Still, it was my first home away from home, and the memories I forged there, next to the beef jerky and the magazine rack, have forever defined the gamer I have become. For that, 7-Eleven, I thank you, and whenever I drive past your giant green sign, I'll smile.
You can read part two of Jesse Henning's retrospective "The American Arcade" right here.
Got an arcade story to share with us? GameCyte wants to hear about your glory days! Leave a comment or send an email to Jesse.
This article was, in a word, brilliant. Not only did it bring back all kinds of memories of games I'd forgotten (Arch Rivals?), it also captured that feeling I used to have of wanting more than anything to hang out with friends at convenience stores and blow stuff up. (Of course, when the grumpy anti-gaming clerks spoiled the fun, we were never bold enough to do a damn thing about it. Adults were scary.)
December 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
This article was, in a word, brilliant. Not only did it bring back all kinds of memories of games I'd forgotten (Arch Rivals?), it also captured that feeling I used to have of wanting more than anything to hang out with friends at convenience stores and blow stuff up. (Of course, when the grumpy anti-gaming clerks spoiled the fun, we were never bold enough to do a damn thing about it. Adults were scary.)
Thanks for a great read.