I graduated from high school in 1985 and some of the fondest memories I have from my teen years are the hours misspent hanging out at the local arcade. So it goes without saying that I got all nostalgic when I came across the following computer generated recreation of a classic 80’s mall arcade:
The animation was created by Dave Dries and has been around for awhile. He has higher resolution versions including an interactive Quicktime version at the CinemArcade website.
The arcade I spent most of my time in was called Aladdin’s Castle, part of a national chain that was owned by Bally, and it was a lot darker and cramped than what the video depicts. Five bucks got you 30 tokens and if you were any good you could spend the better part of an afternoon in there. I played just about every game shown in that animation and some of them I was actually pretty good at.
Time to dig out MAME and go a little old-school.
You can get a front-end for MAME called 3D-ARCADE that emulates this look. Makes me miss those day...I graduated high school in 1990 and if I try hard enough I can remember the old arcade where I hung out in 3rd grade.