Last weekend, as part of my diligent research as Howcast’s video game guru, I decided to venture out to a popular little spot deep in Brooklyn’s hipster country called Barcade. This isn’t the kind of arcade where you drop a dollar for five minutes in an elaborate race car simulator or team up with friends for a game of air hockey, but the kind where a quarter gets you a joystick and three lives in games like Asteroids, Smash TV, and 1943, just to name a few.

After grabbing a beer and hitting the change machine, I made a beeline for the vacant Donkey Kong cabinet. All it took was one quarter and three swift deaths to remember something I had long forgotten:
Old games are hard. Forget about a killscreen — I couldn’t even get past the first level. But with each barrel to the face and “game over” screen, I found myself putting in quarter after quarter to keep trying.

Some gamers complain that games today, like those we cover at HowcastGaming, are too easy and don’t hold up to the golden titles of yesteryear. To that I say: Yeah? So what? Arcade games were never hard because their creators thought difficult equaled fun. They were hard in order to make you part with as many quarters as possible — and judging from my recent Donkey Kong experience, the strategy was incredibly successful. Today, however, when I slap down my $60 for Skyrim (why isn’t it November yet?!) that’s all I’ll have to pay. The publisher at that point doesn’t need my quarters, so why try to kill me over and over? Developers, with massive advancements in the technology at their fingertips, can instead craft a unique experience that focuses more on immersing the player in another world.

That said, Barcade still ended up being an awesome place to drink and geek out to those old-time games. And P.S. I totally rocked at 1943.

– Rob Pimentel, Post-Production Coordinator