Since when were Tekken and Ridge Racer 3D games? 
Seriously, nothing’s changed much except for that people don’t like to leave the house to play games when they KNOW they can just have it indoors. It’s not ALL that big a deal. If you still like going to an arcade, you can just go to one.
'xcept when they’re all CLOSED because gamers are a reclusive lot. The arcade used to be the only socialization gamers did, so they weren’t that bad then. With the advent of online gaming, gamers are even more reclusive (except casual gamers, because they actually do shit other than play games).
The main reason companies stopped producing as many arcade games is because they realized that the consoles were just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the arcade machines. That, and the fact that they were making a lot more money on home games.
And, SG, some of us don’t have arcades around us. Not all of us live in southern California.
I’m cool with the guy who runs my local arcade, and his story makes well over 15 grand in net profit a month. In fact, theres 4 arcades within 20 minutes of my house. The one right near me, Galactica 2, and 2 others in malls. And 8otb is pretty close to me as well. So, i’m always weirded out when i go somewhere and there are no arcades, or people are talking about arcades being dead.
I guess i’m just lucky
Lotsa arcades in my area are gone now. MAXIMUS and PLAYDIUM used to be so popular from where I live, but even they were closed down for a while back now.
*Sniff.
I miss you 2D.
I have to drive 45 minutes to hit an arcade, and it only has DDR and racing games (and one broken house of the dead 3 box). It’s the biggest in the area, too. They used to have fighting game machines, but they’ve all disappeared and been replaced w/ extra DDR machines.
i agree that the 2D were perhaps better than those of 3D; if only due to the sense of nostalgia. In my opinion, coders seemed to put more heart and soul into their retro offerings. Many of my favourite video games yet are old cabinets I haven’t had the pleasure of re-locating since my youth sigh
ah…the classics. joust was pretty sweet…a long time ago. Spy hunter…the first one, was a lot of fun. pac man is still great fun and you can’t beat tetris for endurance through the ages of gaming. they STILL remake tetris.
There’s still a couple arcades around here. There’s one in the mall (which is filled with new games and complete assholes), one in the other mall (which has about five old machines and a crazy old lady living nearby), and the nickel arcade downtown (which has a good mix of old and new games, a lot of DDR, and classic arcade games set to freeplay).
Cries for the dream theater arcade that was at the university mall till it got burned down sometime last year, can’t remember the cause though maybe all the cables? Don’t think they’re going to rebuild it either ;_; It was the place where i first experienced marvel vs capcom, can’t remember which number, cause i think there were a 1,2 and 3 maybe? It was fucking awesome even though i sucked at it. They also had skeeball 
List of Arcade games beaten so far :
Darius II
Metal Black
Cadash
Arabian Magic
Nastar Warrior (aka Rastan Saga II)
Rastan Saga III : Warrior Blade
Pu.Li.Ru.La.
R-Type Leo
Not much, I know… trying to beat some older ones like Rastan Saga I, Tower of Druaga, Dragon Buster, Light Bringer, etc…