Valentines Park, Fairground

Original article hand written early 2000.

As with arcades now, are travelling fairs also in decline? Once upon a time this particular funfair used to stay around for a month or more during the summer but this year as with the last it's been here for just a few days, August 31st to September 4th to be exact.

I used to visit these public ‘melees’ back in the day just to sample the video gaming delights on offer. Sadly, just as the arcade industry appears to be in a bit of a decline of late so are the games on display at the various stands. Although I rarely attend these days, I thought I would pop along on the last few days to check out what was on offer.

The funfair is quite large and is located in the section of the park labelled as Melbourne field. There are a number of large rides and dozens and dozens of stands and stalls catering for all kinds of activities ranging from ghost trains and helter skelters to coconut shys and spinning wheels of fortune. The funfair as a whole is located in one corner of the park and is quite an audio visual spectacle, especially after dark.

From past attendance, I was aware that there were at least six stands which offered arcade gaming machines but as I approached the first of these I began to have a strange sinking feeling. Initially some fruit machines and crane games came into view. A few steps into the stand and...what the!? They’ve turned it into a fruit machine parlour because that’s all that was on display. Okay, relax I thought, this is just the first stand. I hastily retreated and plodded off to the next stand.

Again, on first approach (I know it sounds like a plane landing but there you go!) those dreaded fruit machines were making their presence felt sounding off with their two channel tunes and effects. However,  all was not lost because as I entered a Sega Daytona USA twin cabinet was available for play. But that was the beginning and end of video gaming inside the stand. The remaining contents consisted of fruit machines, crane games and coin stackers.

Was this some new worrying trend? Sadly, this seemed to be the case as other stands I visited offered a similar array of leisure machines. In total, I came across just eight games, that’s right, eight. So, apart from the aforementioned Daytona twin cabinet, one of the stands has the ancient 3 player Beast Busters from SNK and the just as old Line of Fire from Sega. The most contemporary games were a Sega Rally twin cabinet, Die Hard from Sega and Soul Edge from Namco. To add insult to injury they are charging astonishingly high prices to play at 50p to £1 a go.

So, what’s gone wrong? Well, first, let us travel back in time shall we for the sake of comparison. More specifically we are going back to the early to mid-1990s. As any long time arcade goer knows PCB gaming was still very much in evidence. This actual travelling funfair showcased and lived in harmony with the more expensive games housed inside dedicated cabinets that began to appear, spearheaded by the dawn of 3D and multiplayer arcade experiences.

I remember one particular summer, that of 1991 or 1992 with the Street Fighter 2 craze in full swing, the funfair arcades offered a respectable selection of games at decent prices with 20p to 30p a go being normal. There were several units of the game including some housed inside large screen cabinets such as the Sega’s Mega Lo range usually only found inside arcade venues in the West End of London. One of the bigger upright cabinets drew a fairly large crowd and this might have been due to it hosting one of the infamous pirated copy boards of the 'Championship Edition' of the game, now unofficially being referred to as the 'Black Belt' or 'Rainbow Edition'. On various days when passing by the cabinet it was always in use with people either watching or waiting to play. All I can say is that the owner of the stand housing the machine was probably making a small fortune.

Away from Street Fighter there were a great many games in abundance vying for your attention. Titles such as Final Fight, Captain Commando, King of Dragons, Mercs and UN Squadron were all Capcom classics showing up inside a cabinet of some shape or form. Other greats included Double Dragon, Outrun, Chase HQ, Afterburner, Nemesis and Shinobi, almost all usually found across two or more of the stands.

Fast forward back to today and the number of games have dropped dramatically, so much so that it feels like a non event. Okay, so let us examine some of the reasons for this. The cost of the newer games inside dedicated cabinets it too high. For example, a Daytona USA twin costs in the region of £12000 where as a PCB game like Street Fighter 2, that can be swapped into a generic upright cabinet, starts around £800. Therefore, as far as newer games inside dedicated cabinets are concerned, for the fairground stand owner that's a massive outlay when buying outright. I am not sure if they are able to hire such large expensive games as there will be obstacles to this too such as its maintenance and the exact division of profits or returns, which might not favour them.

The funfair never stays in one place for too long and if repairs are required does the stall owner possess the skill or is he even allowed to repair a game he has hired? From the appearance of some of the upright cabinets and condition of their screens, joysticks and buttons, either the owner does not care, does not have the skill to repair it, is lazy and cannot be bothered, is greedy and does not want to fork out the money to replace the controls, or, a combination of these factors.

The simplest of facts is that the stand owner, like the rest of the funfair stall owners, is there to make as much money as possible and maximise his profit. And, if games a not generating money, then stall owners have to look at other avenues of income to survive, hence the arrival of numerous fruit machines and prize games.

Sadly, in conclusion, there is no going back to the good old days. Even if the owner did risk tens of thousands to buy in some of the newer games with their dedicated cabinets the chances are he might not make a decent return on investment as customers shy away from paying the higher price of play. It’s just a sign of the times and with consoles getting more and more powerful, ironically kicked off by the Sega Dreamcast, there will be a newer generation of gamers who really won’t care about what you can play in an arcade because the games available to play at home are just as good.