Arcade Safari

One thing I want to do with this blog is use it to document classic arcade machines in the wild. At one point in time, the classics were everywhere. Now, not so much.

I used to go to school in New Haven CT. There is a record store there of some note called Cutler's. During the late 90s, Cutler's had a whole row of classic 80s video games and pins up back. They had Tron, Centipede, Ms. Pac, Galaga, and a whole slew of others. I recently went back there, and all they had up back was one solitary Ms. Pac machine.


Quite a few years ago, I had spoken to the guy who had his machines on location at Cutler's. He was a local collector. Apparently, the owner of Cutler's lease was mandating that they move next door/reduce their store to a smaller space, and also madated that they ditch the arcade machines. The claim (so he said) was the machines brought in a 'bad element'. Funny, the people I saw playhing the games during that time were in their 30s. Heck, some of them were bringing their children with them to show them the games they used to play. I used to get a lot of inspiration to fix up my Tron (and collect more games!) by visiting Cutler's. I certainly dropped my fair share of quarters into those games, and I had some good high score battles on the Tron there.

You know what stinks? Cutler's had a retro arcade set up to celebrate the arcade goodness of the past, and even that got shut down. If you appreciate the history of these things, do what you can to preserve and celebrate it, because not everyone looks fondly on this stuff.