Comment by neomantra
3 days ago
The true social media. Walk up and stick a quarter on the cabinet. With the ever present sounds of bowling balls hitting pins at the Sports Center, you know exactly which one is yours out of the seven up there. Everybody hovering around, watching and kibitzing. Emotions bounce from stoic concentration to exuberant trash talk. Respect is briefly granted to the kid running the joystick for a half-hour until the hollers and applause when a frame perfect dragon punch knocks him out mid-kick, dethroning the current champ. Quarter laid up again, back in the line for the next dopamine hit shared with strangers.
We are more connected than ever, yet still so far apart.
We had an Asian store across from the middle school where I hung out and we played Street Fighter for hours after school. The second generation Hmong that came out of the Vietnam war would would hang out and play. We all loved it! I'd often play Ken and they'd play Ryu, haha, we love our avatars. Sometimes I gave them a run for their money, sometimes they taught me new techniques, like a new sequence of moves.
Some of the other kids on my street went to private schools and I think they missed out on some of the lessons/bonding I got from interacting with a variety of people in public school. It's good to get out into social setting and mix it up with folks.
> Some of the other kids on my street went to private schools and I think they missed out on some of the lessons/bonding I got from interacting with a variety of people in public school. It's good to get out into social setting and mix it up with folks.
I went to private school, and would "miss the bus" after school on purpose so I would have to take the city bus home. There was an arcade in downtown Minneapolis a few blocks from the school where I'd hang out and play Mortal Kombat for an hour or two before heading home. Maybe stop by Shinders on the way to the bus stop to grab the latest copy of Wired or whatnot.
Definitely let me get out of the private school bubble a bit, and gave me some lifelong problem solving skills - both socially and practically speaking.
Wired was such a great magazine to read as a teen in the 90s. I remember just itching for the next issue.
Yet there was always that one kid that knew how to soft-lock Street Fighter II arcade cabinets with Guile. Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, and Mortal Kombat were also fun. =3
I had a pre-teen death rivalry with another kid over Samurai Showdown. I was the blue tuberculosis guy and he was the long haired samurai, and we'd meet Tuesday-Friday afternoons to burn quarters killing each other. At one point the owners used toy finger-handcuffs to tie us to the machine until one of us won. There was pizza!
I've always wondered what happened to him.
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Note that this wasn't a global phenomenon. We had SF2 in Spanish arcades, and I a lot of people wanting to play, but basically nobody played versus in the arcades I visited: The game was too expensive to make someone's investment last a single 3 round fight. So instead you'd see a line of people waiting to play single player, and helping each other out.
The multiplayer games that did well were all PvE, like Gauntlet or Knights of the Round. A very different culture.
> The game was too expensive to make someone's investment last a single 3 round fight. So instead you'd see a line of people waiting to play single player, and helping each other out.
Custom among my friends was to put a quarter in, and wait to press start until the computer was about to win its second round. Then the challenged essentially got to play you for free.
Doesn't work as well when it was two coins to start, one to continue though; in that case, the next challenger would rather pay one coin to challenge right away rather than letting the winner play the computer until almost dead at the price of two coins.
I recall during the 90s spending a bunch of time on SF2 and Mortal Kombat in arcades: shopping malls, bowling alleys, even some restaurant/bars that had a small arcade. One of the fun experiences was one arcade that Saturday mornings they had a "Freeplay" time for a few hours where everyone paid like $5 and every game was in Freeplay mode. It always amazes me how we all learned the special moves and fatalities word of mouth and eventually they'd get published in gaming magazines. The whole winner stays, loser pays - folks setting their quarter on the arcade to reserve their next spot. Many years later a coworker and I bought a very well used (cigarette smell and burns) MK2 machine for the office break area that took me back. Comically we found at least $10 worth of quarters inside the enclosure. Good times.
It was somewhat anesthetized compared to running out into an empty lot to play football but yeah better than staring at a screen and calling it networking.
Certainly! I left out the part where I would ride my BMX bike with my friends, without a helmet and without my parents tracking me, 5 miles in an urban environment to get to the arcade, then we'd hike the Hollywood Hills fire trails afterward.
Very Terminator 2!
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I'm not so sure... Where I grew up there was no arcade.
It's easy to say that we are more connected but far apart, but only if you ignore the democratization that has come with that connectivity.
Might be a stretch, but have you tried climbing or similar social sports?
Climbing is a bit more for young adults, but since the wall is a shared resource, you have a lot of these social interactions, and it's mostly strangers as well, you just walk up, pay for a couple of hours and start climbing.
I'm sure there's social sports more appropriate for adults and elderly as well.
Even just keeping the focus on fighting video games, the community still exists. Search for something like "<your city> FGC" (ie "fighting game community") and you'll probably come up with several hits. Join the Discords, figure out the schedule for local events, then just hang out and be a positive person. I was playing SF2 with folks in person just this past Saturday.
You can still go out there and do things like join a running club. People are still going to arcades in Japan.
Comments like these are kind of ironic.
Nowadays' Japanese arcades are not like the ones GP is describing, most players don't interact with each other directly anymore.
Notable exceptions are places like Mikado centers that organize tournaments and keep the old flame alive.
I don't think the culture is the same due to cabinets having network capabilities now, but I do think it's possible.
At the taito station in Akihabara, I've met tourists a few times when I was in town for a large tournament (EVO Japan) and made friends from it. I've also had people watching me play, but unfortunately I don't speak Japanese.
I know there's a few arcades that still have some street fighter III: third strike cabinets with regulars. I can't speak for other games but at least for street fighter, people are almost always open and friendly.
I was there 2 years ago. I went inside one of the multi storey gaming places in Akihabara. The old school (90's and older) era games are a small section in one floor when there is 6 storeys of gaming.
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> Comments like these are kind of ironic.
Why, because there is one country in the world where this doesn't apply?
It's a commentary on modern Western culture, not a request for hobby suggestions.
>not a request for hobby suggestions
Of course it's not. Why look at anything positive or actually do something when you can instead engage in the tired tropes like looking at the past with rose tinted glasses as a way of comforting yourself.
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