ADRIAN HON
Alternate Reality
Notes from videogaming’s borders
One of my favourite T-shirts was created to promote The Lost Arcade, the 2015 documentary that told the story behind the closure of New York’s Chinatown Fair arcade in 2011. I never visited Chinatown Fair, but its story of friendships found and lost amid the merciless tides of technology and commerce summed up the dismal fate of arcades worldwide.
When I was growing up in the ’90s, arcades were already on the downswing. Outside of my visits to the Trocadero in London and entertainment complexes in the US, it was slim pickings for anything but the most popular arcade games in British cinemas and bowling alleys. I’d scour Internet forums to find the closest Dance Dance Revolution machine, and whisper tales of Konami’s fullbody motion-tracking lightgun game Police 911 to wide-eyed friends.