So looking back at my first post about the history of arcades (shameless plug, I know), I only really focused on the U.S’s golden age of arcades and the birth of gaming itself. However I didn’t focus on the rest of the world, with many of the games we saw in arcades coming from primarily Japanese companies and manufacturers, what was it like for the rest of the world, and what was it like for Japan, the place that seemed to be making all of these amazing arcade games? Here at the Arcade Academy, I’ll be taking a closer look as to what happened back then and how arcade games hold up now.
So I apologize yet again for posting so late, as one of my siblings flew into town for their spring break that I don’t see very often. The other unfortunate news when researching this topic is that it will be my shortest post yet, I may not even have pictures for it.
So the idea of arcades in Europe, Asia and even Japan I thought there would be a lot of interesting things to talk about, different ideals of what should be in games, PAL versions, outrage. No, none of that actually. Instead we look around the world and even in Japan where many of these games were made we see a very similar history to ours. Japan used to have many arcades, as many as 40,000 but now they barely hang on to existence, unlike in the U.S where we still try to preserve their memory and having arcades actually make a comeback. The same goes for Europe, they also have their own version of the biggest arcade known as Boing Boing, an odd name but impressive none the less that someone in Europe would have the same dream of preserving the idea of arcades like in the U.S. The only thing that really stood out was Russia, with the mention of them making Soviet Union games that could be played, which is rather humorous to think about, games based around the Soviet union with heavy ideas of communism and hatred for capitalism and the U.S. I can’t imagine they were very good, but still a piece of history that needs to be preserved.
Well I guess that’s all for today, be sure to come back next week when we talk about a more interesting subject, the different kinds of music, the most popular of its age, 16 bit tunes that we could still listen to today and love them. I hope you enjoyed this shorter post and hoped you learned something at the Arcade Academia, see you next week.
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