Many houses did not have this, but then arcades were also not conveniently in your home, usually. So, over time, the convenience of the home console outweighed going out and socializing or pouring gigantic amounts of quarters into machines. Of course, today arcades have the good sense to give you free arcade machines at a door price, rather than the alternative: spend every quarter you can find.
Once I got a Sega Saturn, everything changed. Where I loved the rail shooters of old, especially Terminator, Virtua Cop solved that problem for me immediately. I was never good at racing games, so I never was very good at reaching the checkpoint in the alotted time. Well, Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship scratched that itch just fine. Every single 3D and 2D fighting game was matched with Virtua Fighter 2 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. The Sega Saturn was already going above and beyond.
I never truly stopped going to the arcade. In fact, I went to the arcade as often as I could. Through high school, that grew harder and harder until the arcade finally closed. Now, of course the Saturn and the Dreamcast answered many of the problems that came about the arcade's demise. What it didn't do, was offer a proper substitute. Anyone will tell you that getting off your butt and going somewhere fun is a good way to kill an evening. You can game at home anytime you can carve out a moment to do so, but sometimes, you need to stretch your legs and check out some retro and new games at the 'cade, bro!
This was a great example of not knowing what we had when we had it. Even I was stupid enough to think that just because the games were getting more awesome and graphically inclined as the arcades, then why would I need to go somewhere to game? Well, arcades took a nap for a while, and there were some places that offered you to game on PC's in LAN settings, but those did not last very long. There were even places that let you game on a console for a door fee, but for some reason, those places were often overpriced and often did not last long at all. It seemed we were going through more experimental phases, leaving arcades in lobbies of theaters and other facilities instead of full on arcade facilities.
It wasn't until in the past decade that arcades have started to gain more traction with the onlooking public. Real arcades with the aforementioned door fees started coming along and offering old arcade cabinets, consoles and new arcade cabinets with game menus that offer more games. The better arcades will even come back with pinball machines along with them, though they still require more expensive and elaborate maintenance. It is very nice to see people come to their senses and actually get up to go to these places, learning from their mistakes from the past.
The arcades are just a fun place to be, whether it be with friends, family, or people you wish to get to know. Remember to not take them for granted, because they can die out as easily as they did in the early 2000's once again if we ignore them. Gaming graphics shouldn't affect our decisions on such a level that we forget we have friends and sometimes arcades just have the atmosphere we crave with a crowd we like. Just remember to not over do it on the soda and drink some Liquid Death... which is just water.
