What was your hometown like for video games 15, 20, 30, or 40 years ago? Was it good or bad? Was there anything unique to the area that stands out for you? Do you have any photos that capture your city/town for video gaming in the past? I think it will interesting to read different anecdotes and experiences.
I grew up in Vancouver. It's much bigger and busier now compared to when I was young but I think it was always a pretty good place for video game fans. There was never a shortage of arcades with obscure games, there were places to buy imports from Japan, pirated European computer games were in circulation, and I never had a problem finding games for less popular systems (the largest mall had five or more places to buy Master System games, for example).
For me it was cool reading the Nintendo history book Game Over and realizing Minoru Arakawa had come here and opened restaurants I knew, and the Chuck E. Cheese's I went to. Being owned by Nintendo, that Chuck E. Cheese's had almost every Nintendo arcade game and so I was fortunate to play NES games in arcade form around 1984 before the domestic release of the system. That building also housed Nintendo of Canada's first offices before they moved to a bigger location. I had to go over the border to Bellingham, Washington to find 'World of Nintendo' kiosks, though.
The '80s and '90s saw lots of immigration from Asia. This seems to have resulted in Asian bootlegs (and legit imports) becoming more common to find locally, first for the Famicom and Mega Drive, then to a larger extent for Playstation and Dreamcast.
Vancouver didn't have the amount of game developers back in the day it does now. Don Mattrick from Distinctive Software and EA became more famous later on. It was interesting watching EA Canada here grow from a small outfit to a large building that looks more like a college campus.
Neon lit Granville Street downtown was home to a bunch of seedy adults-only arcades. These arcades inspired William Gibson's science fiction and he coined the term "cyberspace". One of the old arcades on this street called Movieland opened in the '60s and is still there if you want to play Daytona USA and watch '70s coin-op porn. I don't know how it survives.
1972
2016
I grew up in Vancouver. It's much bigger and busier now compared to when I was young but I think it was always a pretty good place for video game fans. There was never a shortage of arcades with obscure games, there were places to buy imports from Japan, pirated European computer games were in circulation, and I never had a problem finding games for less popular systems (the largest mall had five or more places to buy Master System games, for example).
For me it was cool reading the Nintendo history book Game Over and realizing Minoru Arakawa had come here and opened restaurants I knew, and the Chuck E. Cheese's I went to. Being owned by Nintendo, that Chuck E. Cheese's had almost every Nintendo arcade game and so I was fortunate to play NES games in arcade form around 1984 before the domestic release of the system. That building also housed Nintendo of Canada's first offices before they moved to a bigger location. I had to go over the border to Bellingham, Washington to find 'World of Nintendo' kiosks, though.
The '80s and '90s saw lots of immigration from Asia. This seems to have resulted in Asian bootlegs (and legit imports) becoming more common to find locally, first for the Famicom and Mega Drive, then to a larger extent for Playstation and Dreamcast.
Vancouver didn't have the amount of game developers back in the day it does now. Don Mattrick from Distinctive Software and EA became more famous later on. It was interesting watching EA Canada here grow from a small outfit to a large building that looks more like a college campus.
Neon lit Granville Street downtown was home to a bunch of seedy adults-only arcades. These arcades inspired William Gibson's science fiction and he coined the term "cyberspace". One of the old arcades on this street called Movieland opened in the '60s and is still there if you want to play Daytona USA and watch '70s coin-op porn. I don't know how it survives.
1972
2016
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