This weekend, I went to an old arcade on Porto Alegre and felt as if I was on the 90’s again. There are a lot of soccer games from the past decade and machines like Jurassic Park’s and Cruis ‘n USA. All of them are really old and the majority of them is “retired”.
Even with a lot of old games, there’s still space for things from this age, like Marvel vs Capcom 3. There’s usually a lot of people on queue to play Street Fighter 4, but I went on an almost-rainy day and there wasn’t many people. The arcade machines also included Virtua Tennis, Virtua Striker, SNK vs. Capcom and King of Fighters 2002. But even with a lot of old games like this, released more than 10 years ago, there’s space for new ones like King of Fighters XIII, Mortal Kombat 9 and PES 2014.
Games like Marvel vs Capcom 3 and PES 2014, which doesn’t have an arcade edition runs on a “machine by time”, which is just a XBOX360 running inside an arcade cabinet. Without a proper credits system, the coins are replaced by time counters controlled by the manager.
The place is commonly frequented by people on their 20/30. I tried playing a match on King of Fighters 2002, and as soon as I lost, a guy came to talk. It was Alan, a 23 years old student who loved King of Fighters 97.
“I love this game. Sometimes, I come with my friend Jesus and he’s totally into Street Fighter 4, but I always play this one”. An interesting thing was the fact that even being clear that he plays a lot, he called everyone “this guy” or “the old man”. When he lost at the 3rd match, he just waited till the time was gone to put another coin and I asked why he didn’t put it on time. “This way I would lose two matches. I like finishing it from the very beggining”.
