Searching on the web for photos of classic arcades from back in the day, tends to bring up a plethora of American locations. Which is all well and good and pretty informative, but sets of genuine photographs taken in the 80s and 90s that documented the British arcade videogame landscape are pretty thin on the ground.
Whilst arcades were of course popular over here, especially in seaside resort locations, we tend not to find many images online. Given that most visitors to British arcades would have been on holiday, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine that cameras would have been on hand at the time. We then have to hope that people many years later, might have taken the time to upload these pictures to the web for the rest of us to enjoy and study.
Well this week on the blog, we can go down that rabbit hole, thanks to a someone I was able to reach out to who had the wherewithal to snap some great shots of several classic videogames on location in British arcades over 30 years ago. Liz K is a prolific photographer who shares her work on Flickr. One of the albums she has uploaded to the platform are some great images of classic arcades taken back in the day. Liz has been kind enough to allow me to share some of these photos here on the blog this week. I’ve added some commentary under each.
These first two were taken in Skegness. Located on the East Coast of the UK, Skegness is a family-friendly seaside resort with golden sands, traditional seaside attractions and activities:
Skegness
An original Nintendo Popeye located at at Fun City Leisure Amusements
Another from Fun City Leisure Amusements in Skegness, a Taito Speed Race CL5 – this is considered a rare cabinet today
Captured at Tower Leisure Amusements in the town is this upright Irish Battlezone cabinet, complete with periscope view and twin sticks
The following were captured at various seaside resorts in North Wales, UK:
North Wales
This is the follow up to Speed Race. Taito’s Super Speed Race took the original game and added a sit down aesthetic with improved gameplay. Taken in Towyn, North Wales in September 1992
Taken just along the coast in Rhyl in the same month, this Atari Pole Position cockpit looks factory fresh!
Another from Rhyl, a Gremlin/Sega Carnival. It follows the design of its USA cousin, but with different bezel art and a silver coin door
Another coastal resort on the East of England, Cleethorpes hosted many an arcade on its seafront. As you can see, some great classics were located here:
Cleethorpes
No arcade was complete without a Space Invaders cabinet – interestingly, this one is a USA made Midway licence. Note the Atari Millipede in the background
I saw a few of these out and about back in the day. A Sega Space Tactics. Amazing artwork – playing this as a kid felt like being in a spaceship!
Taken at Lucky Las Vegas Arcade, A Space Firebird. I thought this was an interesting shot, as the cabinet captured on the left is a great example of the sort of things that operators were doing to dedicated cabinets at the time. This one used to be a Williams Robotron, but clearly had stopped taking money, and so has been converted to a generic cabinet. Notice the addition of several buttons to the control panel. Probably to accommodate the Jamma game standard
Another from Lucky Las Vegas Arcade, here’s a rare Sega Pulsar. Released in 1981, Pulsar allows players to control a tank tasked with navigating a shape-shifting maze, collecting keys to open doors. You can also fire projectiles at enemies. This looks like a Japanese cabinet to me, judging by those coin entry slots on the door. Also note the ashtrays bolted to the front of the machines here….
Another from the same arcade, I’m not too sure what to make of this. Clearly its Namco’s Rally X, but in a weird looking cabinet. Would love to know more about this if anyone has any ideas in the comments below…
Sandwiched between the Rally X and Pulsar is this Dragon’s Lair. Taking the arcades by storm, this game changed things up and started up a rush from other manufacturers to jump on the laser disc bandwagon. The first videogame I remember in the UK to charge 50p for a single game!
We only saw Crazy Kong over here in the UK (rather than the USA Donkey Kong). The game was developed by Falcon. Similar in gameplay but with a number of things thrown in, this particular cabinet was built by Italian manufacturer Zaccaria
Atari’s Sprint 2 was ubiquitous across the United Kingdom in the 80s and was wildly popular. Built at Atari Ireland for the European market
Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the North West of England is probably the best-known coastal town for arcade classics – they were everywhere here:
Blackpool
A great shot of a row of Taito Space Invaders Part II machines. Testament to the popularity of the game, is the fact that this operator saw fit to source multiple cabinets of the same title. An impressive sight…
Another from Blackpool – A sit down Sega Buck Rogers. I played this cabinet in my local arcade in Bristol (you can read about that in my book!)
Astonished to see this on site in the UK (never thought it made it over here). A Sega SubRoc 3D. This is a first-person arcade shooter game released in 1982. It is the first commercial video game in stereoscopic 3-D, using a periscope-shaped display with a different image for each eye. It was jointly developed by Sega and Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic), who developed its active shutter system to give the player a 3D effect while playing. The game has stereo sound, and also changes the backdrop to reflect day, night, dawn, and dusk.
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know I love a game of Xevious. Great to see one in situ on an arcade floor here in the UK
Morecambe Bay was North West of England, right on the Scottish border. Damned cold most of the time, so the arcades would have provided some relief from the weather!
Morecambe Bay
A rare game in and of itself, Roller Aces was released in limited numbers. Incredibly, this example was released by Streets, under licence from Williams. Talking to other collectors, no one has ever seen a European cabinet like this. I suspect none exist today…
JJ Butterworth Old Bank Amusements in Morecambe hosted this mighty Williams Defender. Released before the collaboration with Streets, who built and released their future video releases under licence
Continuing the Williams theme, here’s a European Joust cabinet. Slightly different to the USA version. Taken at Leisure Land Amusements
And back over to the East Coast, Ingoldmells is just up the coast from Skegness – a popular seaside town and a favourite for family vacations here in the UK:
Ingoldmells
A rare Baby Pac-Man cabinet. The gameplay combines pinball and videogame mechanics
Taken at the Funtasia arcade in Ingoldmells in 1992, here’s a Taito Grand Champion cockpit cabinet. Rare to see these beasts being operated. Their size put off a lot of operators. We picked up a couple of these from our arcade raid in Ireland a few years back
Looking at these pictures, what I find surprising is that they were all taken in 1992, and as you can see, these cabinets were all released in the early to mid 80s – its interesting that they all survived for as long as they did. Perhaps testament to their coastal locations, visitors to the arcades were transient, and probably didn’t see many of these titles at their local towns and cities – thus making them appealing.
But more than that, they do provide solid documentation of what games we actually had over here. That Streets/Williams Roller Aces is the trump card of all of these snaps – no one I know recalled that even being a thing! What a shame it likely ended up being scrapped.
I wonder how many other pictures are lying unshared in family photo albums across the UK?
I must thanks Liz again for allowing me to share these pictures on the blog. I’ve only shared a small sample of the total, so do check out the full gallery of incredible images here. There are many other cabinets, including pinball tables, one armed bandits and other amusement machines. Please do not share the images without permission.
If you want to read about the history of arcade gaming here in the UK, I can highly recommend Alan Meade’s incredibly detailed book, Arcade Britannia, available on Amazon here.
And if you want to read about my Missile Command exploits in British arcades in the early 80s, consider checking out my own book, Missile Commander which you can order directly from my website here.
Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane. Thanks as always for reading this week.
Tony
Subscribe
Source: https://arcadeblogger.com/2023/12/30/a- ... hoto-tour/