Aubade to Arcades

"Apprehend my words, and look upon the horrors to be reaped by our posterity; there shall be, far in the Future, grand palaces of light and luminosity, immense jungles of plastic and steel and glass, bombarded throughout by the florid electronic screams of 'amusement' machines. Here parents shall surrender their children to the hellish caucophony — surrender them freely, and with relief! — to pursue their own crass consumerist exploits at the Churches of 'Macys' and 'JC Penney.'" 

A while ago — and by that I guess I mean almost a decade, Jesus — I wrote a tiny piece called "The Arcade of Your Dreams," where I lamented (nothing new) the state of affairs at a run-down bowling alley I use to frequent. Looking back, yes, that bowling alley was a dump and the arcades languishing there did bring to mind the abuses you sometimes see perpetrated to dogs, cats, and other animals under neglectful ownership. The only difference, aside from sentience and the capacity for suffering — and, really, is that so big a deal? — is that animals have organized groups and foundations that actively seek out their abuse and put a stop to it.

No such luck for old arcade machines. The connection may seem preposterous, and I freely admit that, well, it is — I'm just a stupid guy writing a stupid blog about stupid stuff, after all — but the neglect of aging coin-op machines really does yank at my heartstrings. They have no protectors, no advocates, no one to look after their well-being or protect them from cruelty. And they have no control over their eventual fate.

Incidentally (mercifully?), during the peak of the late-'80s/early-'90s arcade revival, some arcade cabinets were manufactured with batteries that would disable the game's inner workings when their lives came to a close. And some, the real bad-asses, the machines that didn't mess around, no sir, came with batteries that, while not explicitly designed to rupture, were highly likely to do so given enough time, and everyone knew it. They'd eventually spill their corrosive contents all over the game board and commit de facto suicide in an act of spectacular self-immolation.

(OutRun is a notable example; the mechanism whereby the game board is technologically disabled is called a "suicide battery." The leaky battery thing may just be a consequence of poor manufacturing or cost-cutting measures, but I'd like to think it was an easier, cheaper way of accomplishing the same thing.)

From the Dead Battery Society (www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html):

You may have heard the term "suicide battery" used before and wondered what the heck it meant. Several arcade game manufacturers decided it would be a good idea to put a battery on their arcade game motherboards that, when they die (and they will die), disable the game. Why they did this isn't exactly clear. Is it a way to artificially limit the lifespan of their games? Is it an anti-piracy measure? Do they want to assure that they will continue making money from the games by forcing you to send your boards to them for repair after a certain amount of time? Whatever their reasons, it sucks.

Programmed electronic suicide. Dignified, sort of, if you think about it. If only every arcade machine were so fortunate. Much worse fates were destined for the sickly residents at the Bowling Alley of the Damned. Me, from nine years ago:

Amid the devastation, I counted roughly half the machines were either not working properly or completely non-functional. Only one side of the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 console was up to snuff, the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet was suffering from some serious screen problems, the Air Hockey table could only manage to register one player's score and not the other's and, to top it all off, the management had apparently taken a run-down Super Street Fighter II cabinet (complete with a glut of dirt, grime and cigarette burns) and hardwired it to play Marvel vs. Capcom. Ugh...

My post would end up being featured on the main Xanga page, garner about a thousand hits, and solicit over seventy comments from nostalgic twenty-somethings who, like me, couldn't stand seeing their old childhood favorites subject to outright cruelty.

Nothing much else ever came of it. 

And those arcade machines? The Ms. Pac-Man with the jittery, faded screen, the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 with only one set of working controls? No protests were held in their name. There were no rallies, no hand-painted signs, no emotional pleas of "Free Q*Bert!" and "Motherboards Unite!". At best, someone, sometime, offered the owner a few bucks and hauled them away for scrap parts. More likely they were tolerated until they became unprofitable and were then unceremoniously thrown away, replaced by one of those gaudy "Stacker" machines, if anything.

Suicide isn't always tragic.