[rtpg]

To anyone who has an opportunity I highly recommend taking any chance you get to try and play any of the bigger "moving" arcade machines like the AX Monster Ride shown in the video.

Even for really old stuff like Space Harrier the feeling of moving along with the screen gives you a more visceral experience than almost any VR setup. Hard to fake the effects of gravity!

[0] has a list (in japanese) of moving arcade machines. Mikado in Takadanobaba has some of these. These things are getting older and older of course so the window of opportunity is unfortunately shrinking as time goes on.

(EDIT: just realised that list itself is over 10 years old at this point so YMMV)

[0]: https://www.space-harrier.com/arcade.html

[jonplackett]

This is where arcade machines should have all gone. More interesting experiences with hardware that are really difficult to replicate at scale.

The best arcade games sell did this - it doesn’t take much - like the pedal for time crisis. Sure you _can_ buy one at home but most people don’t and even then it’s a crap placid pedal.

[JohnBooty]

At least in the US, those "deluxe" cabs with motion just never seemed like a viable deal to me as a kid/teenager visiting arcades.

It was like, $1 per game compared to $0.25 or $0.50 for a normal cabinet.

As a young person with limited income, it DEFINITELY mattered to me... I preferred to sacrifice a little bit of motion and enjoy 2x or 4x the playtime on something else. I mean realistically you'd be spending $20 an hour or more if you stuck to deluxe cabinets. At that point (according to my teenage mind) I was basically halfway to buying a home console game that I could keep forever.

Operators really should have priced those deluxe cabinets the same as regular games during off-peak hours.

[anthk]

Today by comparison with that era (think 1996's Scud Race) arcades should have 4k raytraced driving games almost close to real life videos

[Forgeties79]

They’re being made but I just don’t think there’s a whole lot of demand/spaces for them. People sure don’t want them in their homes and arcades barely exist in many countries now.

I’ve seen a couple of bars open up that try to have an arcade as well but they never take care of the machines/drunk people break them, so after a few months half the games don’t even work. There’s only so many times I can lose a quarter or a dollar before I decide it’s not worth it anymore and I just go drink somewhere else with friends.

The only real arcade left in my city is attached to a laser tag, it would be super weird for a bunch of grown men in their 30s and 40s to roll up during kids’ birthday parties they weren’t invited to lol

[mikepurvis]

Yeah, this tracks. My city has a few "retro" arcade bars with pinball, pacman, etc, and it's fun enough but you're for sure going for the nostalgia more than anything else.

I think part of the barrier to expanding the attached-to-other-things arcade concept is the whole aesthetic: an arcade is loud, with flashing lights, giant and sometimes lurid artwork on the machines. I think if you were able to make some machines that gave a high quality experience without all that side of it, you might be able to install them in other semi-public spaces: airports, train stations, shopping malls, basically anywhere you currently see things like massage chairs.

That said, maintenance is for sure a concern. The state of most public pianos does not inspire confidence.

[masfuerte]

There's this in London and Birmingham:

https://f1arcade.com/uk

They have 50-odd full-motion Formula One simulators in each location and they seem to be aiming for a much higher quality experience than an arcade.

[ErroneousBosh]

In Codona's Amusement Park in Aberdeen in the late 90s, there was a Ridge Racer "cabinet" with three massive rear projection screens and an ACTUAL REAL MAZDA MX5 TO SIT IN.

WHAAAAAAAAAT

Seriously insane levels of money-no-object zero-fucks-given design.

[jonplackett]

I remember our arcade having one of these too! But I never had enough money to use it - and probably was too short anyway

[threetonesun]

This is painful to me on three levels: 1. Real estate costs have gone up so much it’s prohibitively expensive to do something this grand. 2. Advertising is now a race to the bottom where showing car ads on websites has almost zero cost with all return compared to something novel like this. 3. It’s impossible to find a car like a 90s Miata these days because manual transmissions are almost dead and every car had to get heavier to have enough safety features to survive being T-boned by a Cybertruck.

[kipchak]

Agree on the rest, but thankfully for #3 a modern base ND Miata with the 1.5 is pretty close to in weight to a NA due to a lot of weight saving work by Mazda.

[kgwxd]

A friend of mine had the moving After Burner machine. Thing was dangerous as hell, could easily break a bone or sever a finger, but soooo cool.

[mattbee]

Right?? There is a working original After Burner in an arcade in Leeds - on free play and just open to kids of all ages. Sooo many places where it could trap a finger, and it moves pretty violently.

[pezezin]

Yes, that list is quite old and lists some games that are not available anymore, while missing some others like the retro floor of Gigo 3 in Akihabara.

Anyway, Mikado in Ikebukuro has the standard F-Zero AX cabinet, and it is great. I have never visited their game center in Takadanobaba though, it is still in my TODO list...

[rtpg]

Is there anything worthwhile in moving games at Gigo 3? Even back in the Sega era it felt like it was mostly those generic Taito cabinets running most things.

[pezezin]

If my memory is correct, they have OutRun, Rad Mobile, Sega Rally, and a few other classic racing games.

[derr1]

That's correct, last time I was there they had those games.

Zenius: https://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/arcade.php?id=2701#games has a list of the games, please bare in mind that this is a community driven database.

[derr1]

There's Sega Rally 2 and Dirt Dash which both have motion cabinets.

[raverbashing]

Thanks though last time I tried that it gave me the mother of all motion sicknesses