In my childhood, one of the greatest escapes was the local video arcade. Throughout the ’80s, there were several on the Westside that I frequented:
- The Sega Center (later Time Out Arcade) in Fox Hills Mall
- Westworld in Villa Marina Shopping Center and Westwood Village
- Captain Video in Westwood
- and my local Westchester favorite, The El Dorado Bowl
There wasn’t a better way to escape boredom, homework, household chores, and sometimes life in general, than to break my dollars into quarters which I routinely fed into the awaiting machines, whose passage to paradise all started with the push of the Player 1 button.
Video arcades these days are practically extinct. None of the arcades I mentioned above still exist, except for The El Dorado Bowl, whose current selection of arcade games is a scant hollow shell in comparison to the wonderland it used to be.
Yet, in a brief Google for “’80s arcades”—an attempt to find even the smallest shred of visual evidence of these arcades—I stumbled upon three websites which, if whose forces were combined, may be able to construct a complete virtual arcade environment which I could escape to once again:
The Arcade Ambience Project: Seemingly the most popular destination for those who did the same ’80s arcade search, Mr. Hofle has dedicated himself to painstakingly recreating the aural ambiance of a typical video arcade by combining multiple sampled arcade sounds pertinent to different landmark years of the genre: 1981 (which rules), 1983, 1986, and even 1992 (Boo!! j/k). Available as downloadable MP3s and as high-quality audio CDs, these reminiscent blips and bleeps are a must-have for those who miss those days like I do. And they’re not short, either—the 1981 clip, for example, is an hour long.
CoinOpVideoGames.com has regaled us with a whole slew of authentic personally recorded arcade sounds direct from 1982 (what a year), when two best friends decided to use their Sony TCS-310 Stereo Cassette Recorder to record video game sounds. The up-close and personal feel of the recordings made me feel like I was right next to them watching them play. Being able to hear their young voices commenting on the action brought me right back to my Vans Slip-On-wearing days, back when they made checkers on the sole. Yes, on the sole. Try flashing back to that, kiddos.
Last but definitely not least, Cinemarcade’s Arcade ’84 project puts us smack dab in the middle of a virtual 3D mall arcade, with a 3-minute walk through the aisles, surrounded by the sights and sounds of games in action, complete with background music (which was common at arcades)—in this case, “Stone In Love” by Journey, which freakin’ rocks.
Each of these sites captures the old video arcade ambiance in different ways. If these three guys met and collaborated, I think they’d be able to create a complete virtual arcade environment to thrive in. Perhaps I should make some introductions…
Update: June 29, 2011: As the saying always goes, good things come to those who wait. And who would’ve known that someone in the Flickr neighborhood would have a whole collection of Vintage Arcade Pictures and Magazine Scans, including the picture above (which is too awesome for words…where the heck was that arcade?!). His photos are also part of another rad Flickr group, Growing Up In Arcades: 1979–1989.
These photos are among the best discoveries I’ve had in this decade—one won’t get the sounds, but the sights are so dead on that one will hear them like it was yesterday. Sadly though, no picture of my beloved Sega Center/Time-Out Arcade in Fox Hills Mall, but nevertheless, there are some truly great pics to behold.
Tags: Flashbacks
WOW this is so cool! I’m a 31 year old dude & so I have a lot of great arcade memories from my youth & this is totally a fun posting of nostalgia to discover. This makes me wish there were still arcades around like there were for me in the 80s & 90s… it also makes me crave pizza for some reason, HAHA, like when there were still lots of pizza parlors around, not just places that are only for carry-out or delivery. I guess I’m mostly remembering my long gone local Pizza Hut that was actually the size of a restaurant inside so you could actually sit down inside whilevarious sports games showed on their old school projector big screen TV & played all their video games of course while feasting on my pepperoni pizza & chugging Pepsi or root beer. Damn good memories. Now I’m hungry too!! HAHA Anyways, thanks for the awesome post with all the great info!!
Hey Ed:
Glad you enjoyed. Man, pizza parlors were all the rage for me as a kid. There was a Shakey’s Pizza in Culver City where we ate pretty frequently. I remember the typical routine with any pizza parlor was to make a hurried bee line for the arcade room as soon as we came in through the door, just to see what games they had. I mean, even if I was starving, the only thing I really cared about were the arcade games.
I remember Pole Position and Galaxian being standard installments. Who could forget that starting line sound for Pole Position? LoL. “toot…toot…TOOOOOOT! RRrrrrrrrr”