When I was young, I spent my vacations at the seaside. We weren’t a wealthy family, but my parents made sure we had a break during the summer. Every year, we would spend two weeks in a rented caravan a few miles from the North Norfolk coast. Aside from learning to line fish with my father, I had little to do. One summer my mother drove me to a little coastal village. An arcade hall was hidden among the mom-and-pop stores that served fish and chips and sold buckets and spades. She handed me several pound coins and stood outside, keeping an eye on me as I entered.
Inside, my senses were overwhelmed by flashing lights and a cacophony of noises. I was greeted by a large selection of machines. This was the mid-1990s, but many of these machines dated from the early 1980s. There were games where you could ride a motorbike, such as Super Hang-On, and sports games that involved bashing the buttons as fast as you could. The most popular machines were shoot-’em-up games such as The House of the Dead, which used imitation guns to kill zombies. I was captivated. I rushed to the change machine and grabbed as many twenty pence as it would allow. The hardest of them all was R-Type, which I spent countless hours and change trying to beat.
It was exciting to check out the new games, which were often placed next to a vintage Space Invaders or Asteroids machine. I was a child, so of course I did not realize that many of the machines I was playing on were decades old. But I still had a feeling—the better graphics often instilled naïve youngsters such as myself with a false sense of confidence (a charming quality that diminishes with age). Certain games, such as Street Fighter 2, generated a lot of public attention. Fighting games required a high level of manual dexterity and impeccable timing, at which I appeared to excel. Crowds gathered as I progressed through the game, often losing to M. Bison at the end. I remember being goaded on with terrifying regularity by the 8-bit sound of “you lose.”
I happened to be in the area a few months ago and decided to revisit the old arcade. As I stepped into the room, I felt like I had been transported back in time. Almost instantly, I could hear the popcorn crackling and smell the doughnuts frying. An ancient Pac-Man machine sat alone in the corner, its screen covered with a thick layer of dust. I found it endearing. It’s hard to describe the appeal and charm of these old machines. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that playing video games used to require leaving the house. It was a collective experience—you would go with your friends and spend the weekend trying to hit the highest score as the machine ate your money.
Of course, many of the old arcade halls have closed now. The majority have been turned into trendy cafés, vape stores, or betting shops. And in the ones that do remain, most of the old machines have been replaced with less innocent pastimes: fruit machines and two-penny slots. Entering an intact arcade is like walking through a living video game museum.
I know that I’ll never be able to totally regain my sense of awe and wonder from childhood, but the decline is sad all the same. I remember how when a new machine was going to be installed, my friends would find out weeks before everyone else. It was a huge social event. We would watch it get plugged in, hoping to be the first to play it. Things are quite different today; nothing endures, not even video games. Instant access—often online or streamed directly to our phones on a digital platform—makes us accustomed to using something only a few times before discarding it or purchasing the most recent version. It’s unpleasant, disposable. Something about those old, dusty arcade machines that are still there after forty years gives me comfort—to quote The Legend of Zelda, a link to the past.
