This week I got to go to an arcade for the first time in about 10 years.  I went to the GameWorks location in the suburbs of Chicago.  I went with co-editor CigDangle on a fact finding mission.

Okay...I admit it: we went for the fun of it.

GameWorks is a departure from the arcades of old, in the old days you went into a 20” X 20” (6 Meter X 6 Meter) room that was always 85 degrees F (30 degrees C), and people were waiting in line to get to the games.  Our trip yesterday changed my perceptions on the way arcades are operated now.

We walked into GameWorks, and there was a front desk much like you would see at a family style restaurant.  Since we were hungry, we opted for a seat in the diner, sat down, and ordered the “Power Lunch Special”.   This special was an entrée, a drink, and a 30-minute game card.

A game card?  What no more tokens?

Yup, seems that old tokens have gone the way of the dodo bird.  We enjoyed a ½ pound burger, a cola, and lots of fries.  For dessert we decided to play some games.   Now, you should remember that I am from a time when the latest games at the arcade were ones such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and a really cool 3D shooter called Time Traveler.

The thing that I really noticed about the modern video games is the size of the screens.  I mean “back in the day” when I was playing Battlezone, the game actually had a small periscope like device to make the screen look bigger.  Most of these original games had 19-inch (or smaller) screens.

We started out playing House of the Dead 4, the fourth installment of the HoD series.  These games were so popular, two movies based on them have been produced.  HoD4 is your typical house crawler: the player walks around the house, basically shooting everything in sight.  A "boss" character will appear at the end of each level.  I think that we spent 1/3 of our time on that game alone.

After we both had died a couple of times, CigDangle and I went over to Star Wars Racer.  This game was a re-creation of the pod race from the movie.  It was a lot of fun after I figured out how to handle the controls.  And yes, CigDangle won the race.

I then moved on to BeachHead 2002, a game that had an Omaha Beach landing sequence and an actual Virtual Reality headset.  A player would stand with your head in a periscope like device that you could move up and down and rotate your entire body around 360 degrees.  This game had some neat features, but the attempt to make it look like you were actually on the beach made it so hard to see that it detracted from the game.

We played a few other games, and all in all, it was great to be able to go to an arcade again, revisiting my gaming roots.  It is an experience unlike anything that takes place in your living room, so put down that Wii remote, get out of the house, and give the old/new arcades a shot.  See what new games have come out since your last trip to an arcade.

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