Okay lets be honest, companies just aren’t making fighting games for the arcades like they used to some 15 years ago. We’ve been lucky out here in NorCal to see some of the more popular titles (SFIV, Tekken) hit our arcades but if your an old schooler like myself you’d know that the arcade fighting game scene these days doesn’t compare to those golden days 15+ years ago. With the lack of new fighting games being made our arcade community was doomed and our days were surely numbered. Everyone knows playing online, at home, by yourself sucks most of the time. The true way to play fighting games has always been and will always be to play in front of a crowd of spectators, fans and other competitors but the way fighting games are released these days has definitely changed all that. So how does an arcade owner go about changing for this genre and still make profit? Thats a question I think I have an answer for and its actually right beneath our very noses right here in NorCal at MGL’s Arcade Mania.
Love or hate Street Fighter IV one thing is for sure, it has not only revived our arcades scenes but increased the fighting game community on a global scale. Theres one small problem, at times there are too many players and too little machines at local arcades. As a teenager I would hit up my local arcade(MGL) to find 4-5 Street Fighter II cabinets each with 10+ tokens lined up across the panels. The amount of competition was insane but there was surely enough cabinets to feed the Street Fighter hungry fans. These days we’ll be lucky to see 20-30 players show up casually but even with those numbers one cabinet just isn’t cutting it. This is partially due to the cost of the arcade games themselves going into the thousands per setup. The amount of players these days just isn’t like it used to be back then and arcade owners know this, thus they are skeptical on buying additional setups in fear of actually losing money. In the end getting fans to believe they are getting their money worth in Arcade Mania is going to be tough. Most of the time players are sitting on the side watching fighting games instead of actually playing them, which eventually leads to them not even coming at all.
As many of you know I work closely with MGL’s manager and technician “Scott & Neil” to help revive our scene and we’ve been brain storming on ways to do so. With my H2H plans from the past revived and reimaged recently you can see my dedication and persistence is finally paying off. So again, how do they approach changing the arcade for these newer titles? MGL already has some CRT TVs and consoles with some cheaply made control panels which have constantly been criticized over the past few years. That idea was good but it was missing quality equipment to make if feel more like it should, being that its an arcade after all. I recently pitched the idea of purchasing HD cabinets (similar to the ones you find SFIV and T6 in) and installing the consoles inside those instead. This is indeed a cheaper option to please fans but comes with one problem, how do they make money from these since the cabs don’t operate off coins? We’ve seen these “pay for time” cabinets popping up recently that we’ve all come to hate, however in this specific case theres MGL’s “Arcade Mania” which I feel is the better option. Keep in mind this doesn’t rule out the thought of purchasing actual arcade versions for play outside of Arcade Mania, its just a cheaper alternative for getting multiple setups for not only Arcade Mania but for future tournaments as well.
Below is a picture that was taken by Kineda at the MVC3 Launch Party in San Francisco. It’s a good example of what MGL’s arcade fighting cabs could possibly turn into with this petition.
http://www.kineda.com/marvel-vs-capcom-3-launch-party-pics/mvc3_launchparty10/
In order to go through with this plan on getting multiple wide screen HD cabs, I ask you the community for help. If you would like to see SSFIV, MVC3, MK9, SFxTekken, Tekken Tag 2, TekkenxSF and whatever else to be released in the near future being played this way at MGL, please make your voice heard in this petition. Vote on the added poll and fill out the template below with a reply and I will forward this thread to Scott.
Joe Flores (CPS IV)
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Yes, I would like to play the newer fighting games in multiple wide screen HD cabinets similar to the Vewlix ones found in SFIV:AE & Tekken 6 for Arcade Mania/Tournaments!
Real Name:
SRK Handle / Nickname:
Games you look forward to playing like this:
