I’m admittedly not clear on the
introduction of video games into Scottish arcades. There’s articles and writing
out there about the decline of the seaside arcade on the whole, but very few
seem to even acknowledge the presence of video games at all. At best they’re
ignored and at worst they seem to be considered as aggressive interlopers;
bright, noisy, obnoxious and you can’t even win any money on them!
Of course, no arcade is under any sort of
compulsion to have video games. In Scotland at least there always seems to have
been a bit of a divide between ‘arcades’ and ‘amusements’ with amusements
primarily focusing on age restricted fruit machines and arcades being more
family orientated affairs with a large degree of crossover between the two.
Aberdeen’s now defunct Leisureland Bridge Street arcade was a great example of
the schism between the two, with a downstairs section dominated by fruit
machines and a pretty amazing selection of video games upstairs including (but
not limited to) Street Fighter 3, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Scud Race, Fighting
Vipers 2 and various Metal Slug installlments before its decline. A bored
looking security guard ensured that the parallel worlds of video games and slot
machines would never collide, but no one I knew ever wanted them to. We were
too busy playing goddamn Scud Race.
