Coin-Op Eulogy – A Passionate Look at the Arcade Scene

Coin-Op Eulogy – A Passionate Look at the Arcade Scene
Redrapper by on March 28th, 2012 at 2:43 pm

(NSFW) Back a couple months ago, I started reapplying to film school in order to finish up college. As a some of you may know, that in itself requires a small little film or video entailing “what you’re passionate about” or “what drives you.” I circled around my head about what to do, and came up with this.

At first, I didn’t want to show this to you guys. Some of the footage in the video is spliced from Ranbat (as well as some of my documentaries), and I didn’t feel it was something to make public. I changed my mind a few days ago. I made this video because I really am passionate about everything that exists here. I really do hold this community very dearly to my heart and what I do. Sometimes I may disagree with it– but as I’ve said before it’s an irreversible part of me now.

I hope you all enjoy it. After all, you inspired it.

Source: Redrapper’s Youtube Channel

  • Anonymous

    TL;DR

    He likes arcades.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dakota-Dotson/100000657054347 Dakota Dotson

    I think to anyone that went to the arcades and played games competitively, They feel this video….

    The soul of the fgc is weak, damage, and changed. And its because it was left in those spots around the US.

    RIP Arcades it was a  indescribable atmosphere that forged both champions and hosted loser and low life’s.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Yusuf-Joseph/39604386 Yusuf Joseph

    This video could’ve had no dialogue and still hit home. Awesome edit and appreciation for what is sadly a dying culture.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Yusuf-Joseph/39604386 Yusuf Joseph

    This video could’ve had no dialogue and still hit home. Awesome edit and appreciation for what is sadly a dying culture.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Yusuf-Joseph/39604386 Yusuf Joseph

    This video could’ve had no dialogue and still hit home. Awesome edit and appreciation for what is sadly a dying culture.

  • Anonymous

    3:02

    Gootecks :(

  • Anonymous

    3:02

    Gootecks :(

  • Anonymous

    3:02

    Gootecks :(

  • http://www.facebook.com/rokninja Jelani Akin Parham

    I wasn’t as in to the arcade culture as most, only been a few times locally, but this still hit me a bit.

    Good vid.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rokninja Jelani Akin Parham

    I wasn’t as in to the arcade culture as most, only been a few times locally, but this still hit me a bit.

    Good vid.

  • Anonymous

    Great vid.
    I’m new to the FGC and all but damn, that was great.

  • Anonymous

    everything comes full circle..everything comes full circle…

  • Anonymous

    everything comes full circle..everything comes full circle…

  • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

    Much more of a view of a latecomer than somebody from the real peak.

    For some reason the ‘legends’ thing kind of bugs me.  By the time there were famous players, the best times were over…  The real heart was going into the tiny local 7-11 and meeting five dudes you’d never seen before lined up at the machine, and figuring out how to beat the tricks you’d never seen.

    The essence of the arcade experience was EQUALITY not trying to be as cool as that entitled douche giving you the ‘who the fuck are you’ look.

    By the time there was a real Fighting Game Community, the best of the arcade spirit was already dead.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=727955098 Stephen Christopher Marshall

      You’re looking it in terms of “legends of the global FGC” as opposed to “legends of a local community”. In any arcade gaming community there were guys locally that would be considered legendary, who you couldn’t touch, who you wanted to be like. These were the guys who would drive you to improve, to one day stand on the same stage as them as equals.

      It’s not about the community we have now, but about the communities that once were, segregated to their own locales. Those were the communities that were real to arcade gamers, those were the building blocks that laid the foundation for today’s global community, and to say there was no community back then is a fallacy.

      It wasn’t like it is today, but back then it very much still was, and only those who actually spent their lives in an arcade as part of a community can understand it.

      You, sir, clearly didn’t.

      • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

        I was playing in arcades before most of SRK was born, and that wasn’t really true (or maybe I was one of those guys and just didn’t know it).  Sure you knew who was good or who wasn’t, but at least for me and my friends it was never about proving ourselves to anyone, it was about playing and winning (or alternatively playing and trying retarded shit that didn’t actually work).

        I get your point about community, but what I meant more is that there wasn’t so much a ‘community’ with hierarchies and meetups and stuff, there were people who played games.  

        It wasn’t so ghettoized or romantic as people tend to color it, it was just what you did.

        … which kind of fits, there’s a difference between starting in as a kid in the early 80s and being there and playing throughout the real heyday and coming in say the late ’90s when arcades were mature or already in decline.

        The tone of the OP video is just so… submissive and worshipful.  That’s not what it was about at all.

        • Anonymous

          If you didn’t play at Southern Hills Golfland, Western Arcade (Now Super Arcade) in Walnut, or Chinatown Fair you really didn’t experience the arcade scene therefore your opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. 

          Not to come off like an elitest but it’s the truth.  If you did experience this during the heyday of Arcades then you wouldn’t be talking like this.  

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            Lol no.

            The hero worship the OP is talking about is the exact negation of a legitimate arcade scene.  

            It’s this obsequious myth people have come up with to honor the people that SRK culture is centered on, and its kind of pathetic.

            In the real deal all that mattered was that it was your turn up and how you did once you started playing.

          • Anonymous

             also what about the age of the gamers? In a lot of countries you could not enter arcades unless you were 18 or older. I mean arcades with a lot of games, not 2 or 3.
            Only in amusements parks was it possible. Of course unofficially and especially in the countryside that rule was not followed. It was kids who had the cash and it would be a waste to let such an opportunity slip.
            So I had to be content with the NES and occasionally with the Amiga to experience some arcade games.
            In Japan and USA are  underaged kids allowed in the arcades ?

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            Yes, at least in the US, I presume Japan but dont know.

            In the very early times (80s) I snuck into them a lot, my parents thought they were dangerous :D

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            Yes, at least in the US, I presume Japan but dont know.

            In the very early times (80s) I snuck into them a lot, my parents thought they were dangerous :D

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            Yes, at least in the US, I presume Japan but dont know.

            In the very early times (80s) I snuck into them a lot, my parents thought they were dangerous :D

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            Yes, at least in the US, I presume Japan but dont know.

            In the very early times (80s) I snuck into them a lot, my parents thought they were dangerous :D

          • http://profile.yahoo.com/QACNJRDPAUCL2ASRPC2GTHJIPY andrewc

            I played at Southern Hills and SVGL, at Beach & Warner, at Camelot and most other arcades in OC between 94 and 98.  I sat through the queues when SFA2 first launched at Southern Hills, and I haunted the VO:OT machine.

            There was a scene and known players for sure, but there were twice as many people who came in to play for an hour or two with their own friends, and then left. Friday and Saturday nights were packed, but most of the day the arcades looked like the shots of daytime Super Arcade.  Daylight and bright fluorescents, aisles of machines on attract mode, and then a clump of players around two or three games.

            The decision to make the arcade a “home” is distinct from the decision to try and make the FGC “a family.”  Redrapper’s piece conflates the two, in part because he’s younger and in part because he’s done *both*.

          • http://profile.yahoo.com/QACNJRDPAUCL2ASRPC2GTHJIPY andrewc

            I played at Southern Hills and SVGL, at Beach & Warner, at Camelot and most other arcades in OC between 94 and 98.  I sat through the queues when SFA2 first launched at Southern Hills, and I haunted the VO:OT machine.

            There was a scene and known players for sure, but there were twice as many people who came in to play for an hour or two with their own friends, and then left. Friday and Saturday nights were packed, but most of the day the arcades looked like the shots of daytime Super Arcade.  Daylight and bright fluorescents, aisles of machines on attract mode, and then a clump of players around two or three games.

            The decision to make the arcade a “home” is distinct from the decision to try and make the FGC “a family.”  Redrapper’s piece conflates the two, in part because he’s younger and in part because he’s done *both*.

          • http://twitter.com/g13flat9th Mr. anon

            my scene wasn’t the famous cali scene or chinatown fair, but you couldn’t tell me back in the early 90′s that our shit wasn’t poppin’.  the cali spirit was alive in every good sized arcade in america.  it was the spirit to be the best, and if internet had existed back then (not just shit like prodigy bbs’s *shoutouts to 1995!) or evo, then who knows who would’ve been crowned the best. 

             just because people didn’t live in cali or ny doesn’t mean they were less hardcore.  i had friends who dropped out of high school to play these damn games.  and yes, everyone had their legends.  so what you’re saying is inaccurate.  

            essentially, imo, if you didn’t play during the early to mid-90′s–the beginning and pinnacle of fighting games–in an arcade then you aren’t really an old timer who was really there.  

            shit, evo has 9 year old kids and shit travelling around to that thing, but do you think some 9 to 12 year old (back in the 90′s)  was gonna convince their parents to fly or drive them to cali to play tomo or mike watson in a tournament? lol. most kids back then could barely convince their parents to drive them to mcdonald’s.

            everyone’s scene was their scene, and it wouldn’t have mattered who walked into that arcade.  you weren’t shit until you showed it.

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            that’s kind of the thing yeah…

            In the real deal you wouldn’t be excited to be ‘witnessing greats’, you’d want to get in and play.

          • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

            that’s kind of the thing yeah…

            In the real deal you wouldn’t be excited to be ‘witnessing greats’, you’d want to get in and play.

  • Irvin B

    Shout outs to the This Will Destroy You track being played to make the emotion of the video that much more elevated. Props Redrapper

  • Moribund Cadaver

    It’s inevitable that any culture will start to mythologize its own history. Veneration is great and all, but the more time passes the more the past is put upon a pedestal.

    The thing about the American FGC is that it was something perhaps destined to never last. America is too large, too varied. American game fans tend to mislead themselves in their admiration of communities like the Japanese fighting game scene. That’s a far more compact and homogeneous culture.

    For the states, the arcade culture would have never grown, and would have spiraled down into an every more fragmented collection of groups. The narrative of elitism that is woven in to romanticizing the arcade scene isn’t something that can work with a growing culture that embraces more people.

    Don’t get me wrong. It was great on its own terms. It was a special time. But it was a phase, a stage, in the growth of what we see as the fighting game community. Worshipping it, yearning for things to be as “the old ways” falls into the same traps as any culture that yearns for “the old ways”.

    Or much like an adult who remembers a cloudy version of what it was like to be 16 and wishes to be 16 again, and forever… they don’t really know what they’re wishing for.

    • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

      see I’d take it differently, the arcade scene was much more than the fighting game scene.  In what’s maybe my own romanticization, I’m hesitant to even call it a scene… its just where you went to play quality games, and where you went to play games with other people.
      The fragmentation you’re talking about is more a symptom of the decline of arcades, as it became more of a niche, fringe audience.  As consoles became better, and especially as online play became a thing, most people just… stopped, except for a dedicated core who happened to be near arcades big enough to keep supporting competitive play.

      That’s where the ‘arcade culture’ people are talking about came in, imo.  Young kids coming into these hyperdedicated arenas full of people that all knew each other super well, and idolizing that.

      Which is fine, but its not at all what arcades were at their best.

    • http://twitter.com/windsagio windsagio

      see I’d take it differently, the arcade scene was much more than the fighting game scene.  In what’s maybe my own romanticization, I’m hesitant to even call it a scene… its just where you went to play quality games, and where you went to play games with other people.
      The fragmentation you’re talking about is more a symptom of the decline of arcades, as it became more of a niche, fringe audience.  As consoles became better, and especially as online play became a thing, most people just… stopped, except for a dedicated core who happened to be near arcades big enough to keep supporting competitive play.

      That’s where the ‘arcade culture’ people are talking about came in, imo.  Young kids coming into these hyperdedicated arenas full of people that all knew each other super well, and idolizing that.

      Which is fine, but its not at all what arcades were at their best.

  • Moribund Cadaver

    It’s inevitable that any culture will start to mythologize its own history. Veneration is great and all, but the more time passes the more the past is put upon a pedestal.

    The thing about the American FGC is that it was something perhaps destined to never last. America is too large, too varied. American game fans tend to mislead themselves in their admiration of communities like the Japanese fighting game scene. That’s a far more compact and homogeneous culture.

    For the states, the arcade culture would have never grown, and would have spiraled down into an every more fragmented collection of groups. The narrative of elitism that is woven in to romanticizing the arcade scene isn’t something that can work with a growing culture that embraces more people.

    Don’t get me wrong. It was great on its own terms. It was a special time. But it was a phase, a stage, in the growth of what we see as the fighting game community. Worshipping it, yearning for things to be as “the old ways” falls into the same traps as any culture that yearns for “the old ways”.

    Or much like an adult who remembers a cloudy version of what it was like to be 16 and wishes to be 16 again, and forever… they don’t really know what they’re wishing for.

  • Moribund Cadaver

    It’s inevitable that any culture will start to mythologize its own history. Veneration is great and all, but the more time passes the more the past is put upon a pedestal.

    The thing about the American FGC is that it was something perhaps destined to never last. America is too large, too varied. American game fans tend to mislead themselves in their admiration of communities like the Japanese fighting game scene. That’s a far more compact and homogeneous culture.

    For the states, the arcade culture would have never grown, and would have spiraled down into an every more fragmented collection of groups. The narrative of elitism that is woven in to romanticizing the arcade scene isn’t something that can work with a growing culture that embraces more people.

    Don’t get me wrong. It was great on its own terms. It was a special time. But it was a phase, a stage, in the growth of what we see as the fighting game community. Worshipping it, yearning for things to be as “the old ways” falls into the same traps as any culture that yearns for “the old ways”.

    Or much like an adult who remembers a cloudy version of what it was like to be 16 and wishes to be 16 again, and forever… they don’t really know what they’re wishing for.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001303688078 Alexis Monsivaiz

    Damn, bro :’(

  • Anonymous

    Better than the arcade scene was the random places you could find a SF2 machine. The local grocery store, the Ice Cream Shop, the kiddy pizza birthday place, drug store, ect, before SF2 the same thing took place around Karate Champ machines “Full Point!” 

    • Anonymous

      I went to a bar last week, and they had Champion Edition, in this day and age.

    • http://twitter.com/g13flat9th Mr. anon

      yie ar bartop in a hair salon, 1988-1989.  lol.

    • Anonymous

      The first time I played SF2 was in a Pizza Hut. They were always super slow with your order, but we didn’t mind…as long as mom would hook us up with a few more quarters.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/JEO5FBZPQ5WTOPROFQDDY4T53I Shining Knuckles

       Pizza places w/arcades for the eternal win, my friend. Maxwell Street Pizza will always hold a special place in my heart for being the place where I first played Super SF2, SFA and XMen vs. Street Fighter. Good times, indeed.

  • dean elmansy

    arcades yo.

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    toomuchvid is too much

  • Anonymous

    Arcades in casinos would be nice!

  • Anonymous

    Arcades in casinos would be nice!

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/JEO5FBZPQ5WTOPROFQDDY4T53I Shining Knuckles

       I spent the summer of 1997 and 1998 in Vegas and the arcades at the casinos I went to with my parents (which was where I stayed all day) had a pretty buzzy atmosphere. Especially with games like SFA2, KI2, Soul Edge and Samurai Shodown 4 making waves.

  • Anonymous

    Man, I remember when I was 4 years old, and I went to the Ice cream shop at my local park. Unusually though, it was packed. There were groups of people nearly lined up till some were left outside the shop hopelessly waiting around. I only understood when I walked inside. There was a Street Fighter III: Third Strike and a X-Men Vs. Street Fighter arcade machine, and everybody was just hype. I don’t think that anybody even bought anything from that shop but were just spending their pounds on the arcade machines. And nearly everybody played on the Elena stage because of the soundtrack. The thing is though, that is what actually bonded me to Street Fighter III and Third Strike especially. I feel that the spirit of actually enjoying games now has perished. I also think that the introduction of online mode in computer games now has taken away the togetherness of the FGC.

  • Anonymous

    “Wow, the arcade scene was super interesting.” Said no one ever.

  • michael bradford

    never do your own dialog again please ive heard better voice acting in porn 

  • Anonymous

    Man I miss the arcade. I would gladly give up my console (all I have is a PS2) to get the old local arcade back. I can still remember beating our local MK3 god in a Stryker mirror match…caught him in the air with a high grenade…served him right, picking my character to try and get in my head. Me and my buddies tried to play it cool, but we were giddy as schoolgirls.
    He then proceeded to completely destroy me with his Smoke. The bastard blew up the whole world.
    Good times.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/JEO5FBZPQ5WTOPROFQDDY4T53I Shining Knuckles

    Not just major arcades like Super, Golfland and AI, but places like the local pool hall with XMen COTA, MK3 and Killer Instinct. Hell, there was a liquor store down the street from my best friend’s place that had a Street Fighter Alpha 2 cabinet.

    I gotta admit, some of my fondest memories really were around the arcade cabinets in the IE. This video really brought back that feeling. If we can continue to raise the bar, not just the FGC, but the gaming community as a whole, we can most assuredly forge new, lasting memories and bring back that feeling again.

    It’s like he said at the end of the video, guys and girls.

    “We’re still here.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Zak-Wayne/100002988963635 Zak Wayne

    Sick vid, seriously. Great memories in arcades, growing up in arcades for me was awesome and I didn’t have nearly the size of a scene of cali. The best I had when I was younger was dreaming of chinatown fair. When I got heavily into the FGC, I lamented the fact that I’ll never be able to experience that…but I think EVO and what not are pretty fun too :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Zak-Wayne/100002988963635 Zak Wayne

    Sick vid, seriously. Great memories in arcades, growing up in arcades for me was awesome and I didn’t have nearly the size of a scene of cali. The best I had when I was younger was dreaming of chinatown fair. When I got heavily into the FGC, I lamented the fact that I’ll never be able to experience that…but I think EVO and what not are pretty fun too :)

  • Pingback: Redrapper Releases RANBAT Movie Trailer; Tentatively Set to Premiere May 30th Before Wednesday Night Fights « Shoryuken

Upcoming Tournaments
Follow Us
Authors
Copyright © 2012 Shoryuken. All rights reserved. Design by Kineda.