Season 18, Episode 10

I really do miss arcades. I know they still exist in some form or another but, even now, they just can’t hold a candle to the arcade you can have at home. And I’m not even talking about building cabinets and such. We talk about this on the show but I’ll say it again here […]

I really do miss arcades. I know they still exist in some form or another but, even now, they just can’t hold a candle to the arcade you can have at home. And I’m not even talking about building cabinets and such.

We talk about this on the show but I’ll say it again here – arcades, as a kid, were like walking into the future. You had your games at home, sure, but they were nothing like what was in that arcade. That’s where the most advanced tech was. The best graphics and games you’ll NEVER get to play at home. Only at the arcade.

That’s how it was for me, anyway. Then it all changed and morphed and sort of went backwards. I’ll give credit to the arcade/bar synergy thing that happened, but I don’t run around those places wide-eyed at all the cool games like I did way back when. Now I look for whatever will give me the most redeemable tickets…or pinball. And that’s only if I make it out to an arcade to begin with. Not everyone has those places within reach and mostly, if you do, it’s full of just redemption games. Actually, it’s been forever since I’ve been into any local arcades here so I don’t know what they stock them with now.

Given the way technology is going and how great we have it at home, we’ll likely never see arcades be, to me, what they once were. And I’m okay with that. I absolutely love what we have at home on our consoles and PCs and handhelds. I also love that we can bring over most of everything we had at arcades into our home with custom built cabinets housing hundreds of games and even pinball tables too.

Which reminds me, I need to really work on building those two things, actually.

You can probably easily spot the transition here. You know what else used to be great but is not a ghost town of nothing – the Splinter Cell franchise. Ubisoft, it’s been 3,843 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.