And they won’t until manufacturers stop strictly catering to older (mostly male) players. Almost every “new” licensed pinball theme is a band, film, TV show from 25+ years ago.
You’re absolutely right, that ship sailed around 1996 or 1997. I visited arcades regularly throughout the 80s and early 90s, but as home consoles improved I would go less frequently. Apparently a lot of other people weren’t going either because they started closing down. One of my favorites, an Aladdin’s Castle located in the Collin Creek Mall in Plano, Texas, closed down sometime before 2000. I stopped going to the mall a few years earlier, happened to be in the area, and stopped for some nostalgia but it was gone. The mall is gone now too.
I moved to Arkansas in 2001, and there was an Aladdin’s Castle located in the Park Plaza Mall, but I think it closed down sometime around 2005. And, honestly, I felt weird going there partially because I was close to 30 and felt too old. But thinking about it, maybe part of it was that I was no longer accustomed to going to arcades to play games.
Arcades tried to compete by providing an experience you couldn’t duplicate at home. Video games you sit in and games with peripherals like boxing gloves, guns, etc., etc., but they just couldn’t compete and they closed down. Will they ever make a comeback? I doubt it. But then if you told me in 1993 that people would go back to vinyl in 2023 I would have called you crazy.
You have cause and effect mixed up.
Older players went to arcades because home hardware couldn’t compete.
Now, the home experience is much superior. Players can interact with their friends from the comfort of their home. If they manage it, they can reach an audience of thousands of viewers every night. They get the latest software patches almost instantly.
Arcades can offer just the social aspect of that, and even there, kids can still go to their friends’ houses or just interact online and meet up in person for other things (sports, school, etc).
“Comeback” only to an extent. Physical media is still vastly outstripped by online consumption of music
I’m mostly talking about pinball, which is an experience that will never be superior on a TV or monitor. That said, most pinball machines today are purchased for home use; not arcades.
Ok, that makes sense. But still, marketing to kids isn’t going to help much. It’s very much a niche market.
Vinyl might be a good comparison here. There’s a “growing” market, but it seems to be more for enthusiasts and people who like cover art. It still appears unlikely a significant fraction of younger Americans will go back to the days of buying turntables for their primary consumption of music.
But it does. In the last 10 years, the best selling games have been cross-generational themes like Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Kids want to play these games but not if the theme is an 1980s hair band or a 50 year old TV show.
I guess?
I’d love to see the demographic breakdown in users, though.
How many of those sales are for barcades and/or for older players who still want new experiences in pinball? I could easily be wrong, but I suspect, as I noted above and as with vinyl records, even for the newer games, it’s skewed more towards the middle aged crowd than kids too young to drink (legally).
A pattern seen during the pandemic is parents (mostly fathers) wanting to share their passion with their kids. Thus the success of cross-generational themes. It doesn’t take long for a young person with their spongy brains and faster reflexes to outclass us old fogies. The best players will always be young people. Alas, the best pinball manufacturers have done to address this potential is themes like Toy Story…a franchise nearly 30 years old! If manufacturers could ween themselves off of nostalgic licensed themes and go back to originals steeped in current youth culture (don’t ask me what that is; I’m old) then the feasibility of viable pinball arcades without the crutch of alcohol sales is greatly increased.
My son recently went to a birthday party at an arcade place. There’s a cover price to get in (or larger amount to rent the whole place at once for a party). They have a bunch of emulators connected up to big-screen TVs. Some with couches, some for standing. All set up for multi-player games, and infinite “coins”.
The place sold basic snacks and soft drinks, and didn’t mind customers bringing in outside food. (But all food and drinks had to stay in the eating area.) It was basically like hanging out at your friend’s house playing video games, except more people.
They seemed to have fun enough.
Moved to the Game Room (from MPSIMS).
For pinball, there has been a resurgence - not massive, mind you - and I think it is a combination of two things.
First, the implementation of video screens. Technically, the first one was “Baby Pac-Man” in 1982 or so, but all that was was a miniature pinball table that was secondary to the Pac-Man game on the backglass. I am referring to having video playing on the backglass. I think the first such game was Wizard of Oz, but a lot of the new ones are themed on classic rock bands.
Second, “virtual pinball” - that is, the table itself is actually a large LED screen. While purists refuse to call this “pinball,” it does have the significant advantage of being able to put a considerable number of titles in a single cabinet, which makes it especially compelling for home use.
I haven’t noticed this with video gaming; it has gotten to the point where home systems exceed pretty much every game in arcades. There’s a reason most arcade games are either redemption games or the kind where you can, for example, actually sit on a motorcycle seat.
Do purists call this a pipe?
Local arcade Gallopping Ghost opened up a pinball section recently, featuring 44 units. All you can play for $20:
https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/gameslistgallopingghostpinball/
Their regular arcade has nearly nine hundred games you can play all day for $25. They claim to be the largest arcade currently in the US.
https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/
This is out here in the near west suburbs of Chicago.
Overall, I haven’t really noticed a “comeback” per se. Gallopping Ghost has been around for many years, though it has expanded. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy playing arcade games much, and I haven’t since pretty much the early 90s when the home experience started to catch up, but more so when the home experience included long-form games, not quarter-eating-style arcade games. Pinball has always been my jam since then, as you can’t replicate that on a computer with an emulator installed.
About a 20-minute walk from my house, in fact. I haven’t been there since COVID, and I need to make a return visit soon. But, yeah, they aren’t new; they’ve been around since 2010.
They’ve clearly done well for themselves; in addition to the two arcades you mention, they also have a gym and martial arts center a couple of blocks further east on Ogden Avenue.
Here is one owned and founded by a former active Doper:
Chicago is the center of the Pinball World. At a rough guess 3/4 of all the pinball machines in the world were built there.
I suspect you’re right, and that leads me to want to ask my friend Ben whether he’s being honest when he says he makes a comfortable living from his pinball tournament winnings.
The new Tilt that opened in Pearlridge a few years ago (I remember it was well before the pandemic) is still around. So is the old one, for that matter. Fun Factory was hit hard this century, but the ones that are still around seem to be thriving. Dave & Busters and Lucky Strike Social Club have been hopping nearly every time I’ve been there and aren’t going anywhere.
At this point I"m certain that everyone who shrieked over and over about “The arcades are DEADDDDD!!!” were from either 1. invested in PC or console games, hence had a powerful interest in seeing the arcades die or 2. just like shrieking on the Internet. The fact of the matter is, PC or console games is, always was, and always will be a major investment, both in money and getting the right components to make sure everything works. Not to mention recent, ahem, unsavory practices like microtransactions, lootboxes, and releasing bug-ridden or just low quality games, which have only gotten worse over the past few years. For a good time with a cheerful crowd surrounded by top-quality machines ready to go at any time, there’s really nothing that matches the arcade experience…and if you can combine it with a meal, hey, full service entertainment.
Look, I have no damn idea if anything is “coming back”. My philosophy is to enjoy what’s there for as long as it, and I, both exist in this world.
Now, pinball machines…that could be a tough sell. If your timing an board sense are not absolutely perfect, it will tear your throat out. I speak from painful experience.
I checked the new releases from my visits to California Extreme (arcade+pinball expo) in the past few years, and I see Rick & Morty, Star Trek (JJ Abrams version), Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a few others. Doesn’t scream boomer to me. Maybe Gen X. Sure, there are some old properties too, like KISS and The Munsters, but it seems there’s plenty of new stuff.
Yes and no. On a recent visit to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, I was cheered to see children and teens playing pinballs from long before they were born–the 1960s and 1970s. None featured a licensed property; their themes were cowboys, space exploration, games like soccer and bowling (and in the case of Gottlieb’s “Mibs,” marbles), billiards, and others. Card themes were popular (Gottlieb’s “Royal Flush” and “Jacks Open,” and Williams’ “Lucky Ace”), as were fantasy worlds (Gottlieb’s “Atlantis” and “Out of Sight”). Those kids were having fun playing those old pinballs–they’re a little slower than the newer pinballs, and (IMHO) a great way to introduce kids to the game. Heck, I played those games when I was a kid, and got hooked on the game.
As a lifelong pinball player, I am a little disappointed to see that most, if not all, of the newer games are based on licensed properties. Oh, they are fun and challenging, but it’s just not the same as trying to make poker hands out of drop targets, or complete “pocketing” all the spots or stripes billiard balls, then going for the 8-ball to light the Special. I still cannot figure out what the Kiss or Metallica or Game of Thrones or Aerosmith or Creature from the Black Lagoon machines want me to do in order to get big points. Additionally, they tend to be much faster than older games, owing to a steeper slope on the table, which almost makes them too difficult for children.
It would be nice if a manufacturer would make pinballs similar to those old 1960s and 1970s games. Nothing fancy, an innocuous theme, no license fees to an existing property, but I’m sure they’d get a new younger generation of players interested in the game. They need not be EMs as they were then, but they also need not be based on a band or movie from today’s kids’ grandparents’ generation.