ARCADE WATCH

Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks – but every month the arcade scene manages to surprise us, producing cabinets with ingenious modern twists on the classics that repeatedly convince us that Housemarque was wrong. But the pandemic is doing a disturbingly thorough job of nuking businesses and ways of life that were already under threat. Right now, UK arcade owners will be closely watching developments in other parts of the world, where arcades are beginning to reopen with social distancing caveats that reflect the ‘new normal’. In the US, a number of Main Event venues have already reopened in states such as Georgia and Oklahoma. With the safety of visitors the chief concern, the chain has expanded its arcade areas and placed each machine six feet apart, and is providing masks and gloves to visitors. In Hong Kong, where arcades have more broadly reopened, operators are required to place barriers between machines or leave every second console inoperable. Not all venues will be able to expand to allow machines to be spaced sufficiently apart, so for many this will mean fewer games in operation. Even as the lockdown eases, it’s likely people will remain hesitant to visit crowded venues, but steps such as frequent cleaning of cabinets and the provision of PPE and hand sanitiser will help reassure customers. It’ll be a hard road back for many, but with the right measures in place and sensible behaviour (no space invaders), hopefully we’ll soon be able to safely enjoy arcades once more. With luck, we might even start to see this determined and adaptable industry further push the boundaries of what the arcade scene can be in a post-Covid world – watch this space, in other words.