Decline of an Industry...

There's been a lot of industry slow chat in the news lately to do with the whole world economic turndown.

The arcade industry has been in decline for a lot longer but is due to the drop in prices and technological advances in consumer home electronics.

In short, about 10 years ago, arcade machines had the advantage of power in that they were a lot more powerful that home consoles of the time. Now-a-days, the difference it pretty negligable.

There used to be a brilliant arcade in Union Street in Glasgow which was always packed with all the latest games. Standard stand up cabinets, fully hydraulic sitdown racing cabinets, shooting games, they tended to get them all. Everytime I was in Glasgow, I'd drop in to see what games they had but the last couple of times I've found that they've steadily replaced with slot machines.

Tonight I heard that as part of the promotion for the upcoming home console release of Street Fighter IV (the finest fighting series IMO), Capcom have brought an arcade version (not released in this country) of it across from Japan and set it up in the Edinburgh Prince's Street Gamestation.

Took a wee saunter down as Street Fighter is one of my favourite games series and it turned out they were actually running a small competition of winner stays on and if you get to 3 wins in a row, you win a T-Shirt.

I tell you, I couldn't play competitive gaming. My heart was going ten to the dozen.

Stunning looking game, plays just as Street Fighter should do and probably has some new intracacies that I would never have found in 3 games. Brilliant.