Right, so, remember 1995 or so? Yeah, me neither. I had to check Wikipedia for significant events, such as Michael Jordan giving up on baseball, the whole Oj Simpson fiasco, and the retirement of Bill Watterson from the comics industry. Good times! The point I’m getting at is this is around the last time I can ever remember arcades being at all populated by any significant number of people. Back in the pre-MMORPG days, the arcade was the place to be for video game interactions. Street Fighter II was still the proverbial bee’s knees, Killer Instinct provided ridiculous cheap 57 hit combos, and there was still the occasional copy of Trog off in some neglected corner.

Flash forward to the present, and you’ve got quite a different scene going on. Between the self standing arcade and the one attached to the movie theater, the local mall has the following arcade machines present:

* Dance Dance Revolution 5th mix
* Dance Dance Revolution Extreme
* Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2nd Mix
* Time Crisis 4
* Time Crisis 3
* Time Crisis 2
* Crisis Zone
* A bunch of racing games, some involving 18 wheelers
* One lone Neo Geo machine, with a memory card slot that I’m not sure has ever been used

And none of which are being patronized by anyone above the age of 10. And then, there’s this gem:

Which, as far as my recollection goes, is the first case of a console port to an arcade machine. Instead of offering riduculous customization of characters, it has a Legend mode, where you accrue points to level up whichever character you are using, and if you manage to beat the reigning champ for the fighter you’re using, you get to put a name stamp on them. Then, other people have the oppritunity to beat or improve them. Kind of mediocre, particularly given the conquest mode with persistent stats, from the arcade incarnation of the previous generation.

Look, at this point, we’ve all established that the internet is a fabulous way for antisocial geeks to mingle with each other in a relativley safe environment. It seems that an arcade could easily adapt itself to this, by having the various cabinets wired up, so you can share information among machines. Hell, you could allow people to access character profiles from any location, and have some server kicking around with persistent stats. Direct competition against others would be great (multiplayer Virtua On, anyone?), but even some sort of multinational ranking system would do something to get gamers out of their PC sanctuaries and out into the arcades. C’mon, one more port in the back of a cabinet is all I’m asking for. You guys can do that, right?