Kids today don't know what they're missing. At one time, arcades were the spot to get your gaming on. You would spend away your allowance by continuously popping in quarters and attempt to beat the high score as everyone in the arcade cheered you on. Man, those were the days.
But now with the ubiquity of computers, consoles and mobile games, visiting the arcade has become a thing of the past. We look back on it with nostalgia, but that doesn't mean we're going to put down the Kim Kardashian game and leave the comfort of our own homes to go find an arcade to play in.
Luckily, we have the Internet to remind us of the salad days of arcade culture. The Huffington Post's Ben Craw created a supercut of movies that feature arcade scenes, and with the '80s-tastic backing sounds of contemporary band The Sweethearts' "Burnin' Through the Nite," it's totally tubular.
The vast majority of movies in the video come from the 1980s when video game arcades were at the height of their popularity. If you think about an iconic movie from the 1980s, chances are it featured a scene in an arcade. Can you spot the moments from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Ghostbusters" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" in this video?
The most recent movie to be featured in the clip is "Double Dragon" from 1994, which Craw says "was deliberate and totally arbitrary." However, arcades were on the decline by that point, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be too many movies past that year that had arcade scenes in them, unless it was a period piece on the 1970s or 1980s, of course.
As this supercut shows, arcades were the source of a lot of excitement and drama, even outside of the video game. It looks like the arcades were a perfect place to find someone if you wanted to get into a confrontation or a fight. At least, that's what the movies tell us.
Most notably, Michael J. Fox really had a penchant for starring in movies that took place in arcades. His films "Midnight Madness" from 1980 and "Back to the Future Part II" from 1989 both made the cut. Seeing as how Fox was really at the apex of his career during that decade, it's no surprise that his movies would feature the arcade so prominently.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen the "Pinball Wizard" sequence from The Who's movie-musical "Tommy," even if it didn't technically take place in an arcade. Elton John's rendition of the rock classic and his outrageous outfit are enough to warrant a mention in my eyes.
Head over to The Huffington Post for a complete list of films featured in the supercut.
