Arcade Dreams documentary covers a century of game history

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/01/arcade-dreams-documentary-covers-a-century-of-game-history.html

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ooh, so nice. they aren’t wrong… Williams made Defender, Joust, Sinistar, Robotron, and so many other top games. Sinistar used to scare the hell out of me, haha. wish i had that one today, along with Defender and Joust!

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Not sure if these vids convince me that they have any particular insight that other doc makers wouldn’t have? Or have much new to say about arcades. I guess we’ll see. Kinda had to lol at the cliche statement at the end, “the golden age of arcades…is today” uh, I don’t think so…

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Hi KingGhidorah! I’m the writer for Arcade Dreams. I agree that there have been other documentaries and other doc makers that have covered arcades before, but I think this team really has something new to say. For starters, we’re covering the whole 100-year history of arcades and how games evolved from purely mechanical, to electromechanical, and then to digital, and there are some fascinating insights from those eras that we’ve already shot. Secondly, you won’t find any people that are more passionate about arcades than us.

As for the closing comment about the golden ages of arcades being now… it’s a real comment made by a real arcade owner. It’s certainly something you can argue against-- the numbers clearly show that total popularity peaked in the 80s-- but if you wanted to start an arcade today (well, maybe next year or so), you’d have a whole bunch of choices: nostalgia/retro, VR, fighting game community-focused, etc. These choices weren’t available in the 1980s. Sometimes a golden age can be more than just popularity. Cheers!

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lol, you weren’t actually supposed to see my rando armchair complaints! But thank you for the response, and I will definitely check out the documentary when it’s ready!

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I’m so there for this - this documentary looks great!

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Viva Amiga was a great doc. Looking forward to this.

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