Arcades in SC are dying!

paulsbuck5

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The arcades in my area are just dying.

Anyone on here have ever heard of "Gatti's Pizza"(originally known as "Mr. Gatti's")?

If so, I went there today. The arcade there just isn't as good as used to be. This arcade felt like THE best arcade in the area at the time. But I had a really fun time, though.

They had all of the coolest games at the time: "Tekken 2", "NBA Hangtime", "Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter", 6-player "X-Men", "Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters", "Top Skater", "Sega Water Ski", "Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders", "Alpine Racer 2", Gottlieb "Tee'd Off" pinball. Some of these I never played, though, at the time.

"Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders" was probably a big money eating hog. For one thing it probably attracted Harley fans so much that they ended up breaking the game. :C

Also, the arcade has no more fighting games, which is kind of bummer, but I can live with it, though, since there's "Daytona USA 2", "Sega Rally 2", etc.

For example, take out an epic row of fighting games and epic light gun games, and you replace with just two benches and a dancing game, like I'm showing in the picture above. :C

Anybody else have arcades in their area like this? This might be a stupid question.
 

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Well, that game is actually still there. It was actually kind of a scary game to sit on. You had to lay down on it.
 
Been there, last time I went was a few years ago but I don't remember it looking that desolate. We need more arcades up here, I've searched far and wide for them with little luck. About 3 weeks or so ago my wife and I went to Frankies in Greenville, place was packed to the brim. Of course no one was interested in playing the Ms.Pac/Galaga Reunion except us. No wait for the game and ended up playing it for a few hours without anyone else laying down their quarters. Whoops, I mean points cards. Ugh. I miss tokens and arcades in general!
 
I've seen some pics of Frankie's in Greenville. They look to have gone downhill, too. But I've never been there.

I've been to Gatti-Town in Greenville, which is actually better than Mr. Gatti's, as they have more of the older games. In fact, Greenville doesn't look to have a lot of arcades, which kind of sucks. They need to build a good arcade there with good stuff, from the 80s to late 90s, not some bull crap like "Guitar Hero" and that corny "NASCAR Racing" game from 2007.
 
I've seen some pics of Frankie's in Greenville. They look to have gone downhill, too. But I've never been there.

I've been to Gatti-Town in Greenville, which is actually better than Mr. Gatti's, as they have more of the older games. In fact, Greenville doesn't look to have a lot of arcades, which kind of sucks. They need to build a good arcade there with good stuff, from the 80s to late 90s, not some bull crap like "Guitar Hero" and that corny "NASCAR Racing" game from 2007.

+1 I have a hard time finding any classics in the wild other than reunion machines up here.
 
Is the Chuck E. Cheese in Greenville any good? And if you have been there, are there any good games (Sega games, and classics/reunions)? My local CEC has gone downhill a lot.
 
I lived just below the northern border, close to Charlotte and never knew of any classic games short of a Ms. Pac/Galaga here or there. As far as I knew, South Carolina (and North Carolina) was an area devoid of arcades short of Dave and Busters.
 
Is the Chuck E. Cheese in Greenville any good? And if you have been there, are there any good games (Sega games, and classics/reunions)? My local CEC has gone downhill a lot.

Never been but I would be shocked if there were any classics inside.
 
The Dave & Buster's restaurant will have a "Mrs Pac-Man and Galaga" reunion and the DK/DKJR/MB reunion. So that can keep the adults kind of occupied. But yeah, original cabinets of "Mrs. Pac-Man", "Galaga", and "Donkey Kong" can be hard to find these days, because you now have crap in arcades like "The Fast and the Furious", "Guitar Hero", etc. I won't be counting 90s arcade games as "crap", though, because the 90s games are great, in my opinion.
 
Never been but I would be shocked if there were any classics inside.

The CEC near me has the "Mrs. Pac-Man and Galaga" reunion, and that's actually the closest thing they have to old-school. Sadly, more good games (don't know if you like these) like "WaveRunner" and "Jambo! Safari" are gone.
 
Any of you local guys are welcome to come by my store in Rock Hill and play as many games as you want on the stuff I have in at the time. They're all on freeplay. I don't have a *great* selection, but feel free to come by whenever you're in the area and check them out. My favorite I have in right now is Wizard Of Wor! You'll NEVER see one of those on location.
 
The Gatti's in my area always had a crappy selection of games, and the pizza is terrible too, so I don't ever go there. The only place in Houston I know that has a good selection of games is an arcade store/bar downtown. They have a game night once a month, but I still have never been to it.
 
The Dave & Buster's restaurant will have a "Mrs Pac-Man and Galaga" reunion and the DK/DKJR/MB reunion. So that can keep the adults kind of occupied. But yeah, original cabinets of "Mrs. Pac-Man", "Galaga", and "Donkey Kong" can be hard to find these days, because you now have crap in arcades like "The Fast and the Furious", "Guitar Hero", etc. I won't be counting 90s arcade games as "crap", though, because the 90s games are great, in my opinion.

Not all the new games are crap, but unfortunately, all the GOOD new games I've seen have been Japanese companies, primarily Namco (Time Crisis 4 is a BLAST) and Sega, and come with appropriately inflated price tags, so they're much more rare than the garbage put out by Raw Bilge and Global Video Rage *cough*. There aren't any good American developers anymore, and that makes me really sad. Hell, an arcade version of Guitar Hero had real potential... and they really, really blew it.
 
The arcades in my area are just dying.

Anyone on here have ever heard of "Gatti's Pizza"(originally known as "Mr. Gatti's")?

If so, I went there today. The arcade there just isn't as good as used to be. This arcade felt like THE best arcade in the area at the time. But I had a really fun time, though.

They had all of the coolest games at the time: "Tekken 2", "NBA Hangtime", "Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter", 6-player "X-Men", "Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters", "Top Skater", "Sega Water Ski", "Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders", "Alpine Racer 2", Gottlieb "Tee'd Off" pinball. Some of these I never played, though, at the time.

"Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders" was probably a big money eating hog. For one thing it probably attracted Harley fans so much that they ended up breaking the game. :C

Also, the arcade has no more fighting games, which is kind of bummer, but I can live with it, though, since there's "Daytona USA 2", "Sega Rally 2", etc.

For example, take out an epic row of fighting games and epic light gun games, and you replace with just two benches and a dancing game, like I'm showing in the picture above. :C

Anybody else have arcades in their area like this? This might be a stupid question.

They are just dying now? Really? They've been dead in my area for a decade!
 
Any of you local guys are welcome to come by my store in Rock Hill and play as many games as you want on the stuff I have in at the time. They're all on freeplay. I don't have a *great* selection, but feel free to come by whenever you're in the area and check them out. My favorite I have in right now is Wizard Of Wor! You'll NEVER see one of those on location.

I'll have to check your website out.
 
Not all the new games are crap, but unfortunately, all the GOOD new games I've seen have been Japanese companies, primarily Namco (Time Crisis 4 is a BLAST) and Sega, and come with appropriately inflated price tags, so they're much more rare than the garbage put out by Raw Bilge and Global Video Rage *cough*. There aren't any good American developers anymore, and that makes me really sad. Hell, an arcade version of Guitar Hero had real potential... and they really, really blew it.

Yeah, "Guitar Hero Arcade" looks to have been a fail, and a game that is way too commonplace in arcades. It's expensive. And also, at newer arcades, you have to have card swipers and games cost around $1-$2. I miss big arcade games priced at 50 cents.
 
It's ironic: arcade games now have to have a "hook" into the games that people usually play on their home consoles. Back in the 70's-80's, it was generally the other way around: Atari 2600, etc. games were ports of popular games people played in the arcade.
 
It's ironic: arcade games now have to have a "hook" into the games that people usually play on their home consoles. Back in the 70's-80's, it was generally the other way around: Atari 2600, etc. games were ports of popular games people played in the arcade.

I'm not really seeing this; Guitar Hero is pretty much the only one. Even for TC4, it was the other way around -- arcade was the lead and the PS3 version was just a promotion for the ill-fated GunCon3. Even the american stuff is pretty much just arcade-exclusive; probably because they know they couldn't push their garbage on consoles and expect any kind of sales.
 
I'm not really seeing this; Guitar Hero is pretty much the only one. Even for TC4, it was the other way around -- arcade was the lead and the PS3 version was just a promotion for the ill-fated GunCon3. Even the american stuff is pretty much just arcade-exclusive; probably because they know they couldn't push their garbage on consoles and expect any kind of sales.

Really? Maybe it's just the parity between graphics that there seems to be now that I'm reacting to.

Back in the 80's the Colecovision Donkey Kong port wasn't too bad, but it was still a step down from the arcade version. And don't get me started about Pac-Man on the 2600...
 
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