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CAN YOU MAKE IT THROUGH THIS GALLERY OF SEASIDE ARCADES WITHOUT GETTING DEPRESSED?

22/6/2016

30 Comments

 
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And so begins the summer, a time for us all to scratch at the surface of our lives, in the vain hope that there may be something better buried beneath.

Many of us shall descend upon the seaside in the months ahead, those resorts that dot our coastline like benign tumours - a warning to any foreign invader that there is nothing here worth invading for.

Here we present a gallery of such resorts, with a specific focus on the faded glory of their arcades... WARNING: This might be the most depressing article you ever read.
Huddled beneath the sign, the machines seem to cower like creatures under a rock, shying away from daylight's glare. They dangle their lures, hoping to ensnare some distracted prey.

These two appear to have taken the bait, reeled in by the soft toys, unaware that they are stumbling into a trap...
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"Amusement Centre" they had to call it, for "Mental Health Drop-In Centre" was already taken...
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"Family Fun" declares the sign, assuring respite from the domestic purgatory you otherwise find yourself chained to.
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"Funland, Funland, Funland/The country where I want to be/Pony trekking or camping/Or just watching TV/Funland, Funland, Funland/It's the country for me..."
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"Have fun at the palace", it seems to implore, the desperate, disinvolved, plea of its burnt-out management.

Behold the Noo-Noo, forlornly scouring the seafront for discarded fag ends and dropped coins.

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"Get your 2p coins here."
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"Win me... WIN ME" the stuffed things shriek, desperate to escape this hellhole.

"TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS," cry the yellow bears, a deafening chorus of hoarse rasps, spat out between the sobs.
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"CHANGE HERE"... as much hollow promise as it is instruction.
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See her reading her novel, her 50 Shades of Grey, inured to the stuffed things hanging from the ceiling, like felt carcasses in a puppet abattoir.
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Every day is Derby day at the arcade... for you shall never attend a horse race. You shall never brush shoulders against the hoi-polloi, for you are not worthy.

This is the closest you shall ever get to seeing a real horse; to you a creature so exotic it may as well be a myth. 
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Behold the penny falls of the Rio Carnival. See the shining tuppenny bits. The Playboy keyring. Oh, how you thirst for it. Were you to win the precious, it would be the finest jewellery you own...
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Sweets. So many sweets. The Refreshers and Parma Violets. How long you have craved their candied embrace. To feel the fizz on your tongue as they dissolve... the sensation of something more than the endless, meaningless, drudgery that defines your time on earth.
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"One day, son, those ancient sweets could be yours..."
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All roads lead to "Loopy's Fun Zone". See how Loopy himself has his arms raised, as if confronted by an armed robber. 

"Put your hands up and nobody will get hurt..."

Please. Do not make promises you cannot keep. Loopy is already hurting. Your bullets would provide divine release.
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A slice of Vegas glamour crammed into the corner of some dismal resort, the equivalent of wrapping tinsel around the neck of an unconscious meth addict. 
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The shooting gallery. A Wild West scene as conceived by the paranoid delusions of a ruptured soul. The mummified corpse of a sheriff. The pirate skull. The jail and hotel as one - for the residents of this town such establishments are virtually interchangeable. 
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The polythene Minions seek shelter from the rain, for they have no home to go to, and the underpass is flooded...
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The amusements unite us all... Young and old alike, diverting minds from the pointlessness of their lives, the tiny voice which seeks to remind us that we are naught but reproductive flesh-bags, scrabbling around on a celestial orb that wishes us dead.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE:
​CUT-OUT AND KEEP: AMUSEMENT ARCADE CHECKLIST
FIND YOUR GAMERTAG
TOP 20 VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCES
30 Comments
Thom Yorke
22/6/2016 11:28:46 am

Well, that was a bit depressing.

Reply
James Burton
22/6/2016 12:02:43 pm

Is it weird that I find such places strangely comforting and reassuring? I think they remind me of childhood and seaside holidays spent in similar palaces of gaudy shite. Obviously we didn't spend the *whole* holiday in a cheap arcade but we'd usually visit one at some point in the proceedings, when we weren't eating overpriced, reheated fish fingers with Happy Shopper ketchup at a beach café.

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Bob Thingaling
22/6/2016 12:38:13 pm

that's not depressing at all i loved every picture, more please

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Leigh
22/6/2016 08:31:44 pm

Me too! Apart from Loopy's Fun Zone, that one looked a bit like where Jigsaw hangs out between films.

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Jonathan White
22/6/2016 12:50:56 pm

Don't go look at the remains of the Trocadero in picadilly, you will probably cry

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doniel
22/6/2016 03:13:28 pm

Oh, don't remind me!

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Gaming Mill link
22/6/2016 12:53:15 pm

The shooting gallery photo...quite familiar looking if you've ever lived in certain parts of Georgia.

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Blerkotron
22/6/2016 01:03:38 pm

It makes me so sad to go into arcades these days, as everything I loved about them is now gone - the long rows of classic stand-up machines (all in the wrong cabinets), the burn-in on the CRTs, the fag ends and broken buttons, the crowd of people around the Out Run machine, the carpet that you'd stick to if you stopped moving, the teenagers that'd push you around and pinch your money, the strange sweaty man who'd breathe really heavily in your ear while you were trying to concentrate on Pac-Man. All sadly missed.

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Nige
22/6/2016 01:08:58 pm

I used to work in the arcades on Llandudno pier. The best bit was when we used to put Ridge Racer (and Lucky 'N Wild) on free play and have compos after hours. The worst bit was everything else.

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Hamptonoid
22/6/2016 08:33:15 pm

On the plus side, at least you weren't in Rhyl

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RichardM
22/6/2016 01:39:44 pm

The Palma Violets are an indie rock band, Biffo.

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Mr Biffo
22/6/2016 01:46:09 pm

YOU'RE an indie rock band...

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Skerret
22/6/2016 01:46:46 pm

I'm very tempted by Funland's 'continental patio'. Sadly it'll be ripped up by a pick axe wielding Farage and his Brexit mob before I've chance to enjoy its exotic charm.

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Skerret
22/6/2016 01:49:32 pm

I also note this bastion of family entertainment has a lunchtime strip show.

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Panama Joe
22/6/2016 02:54:13 pm

"Slots of fun"

RichardM
22/6/2016 01:51:12 pm

Yessss. Replaced by a model village. A BRITISH model village.

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Clive Peppard
22/6/2016 02:00:41 pm

I love the 2p machines, they bring me joy.

I took my 8yo and her friends out for birthday treats on saturday that included bowling at an alley inside a giant arcade which meant we had to stop and drop a quid on them.

they all said "look a game based on that game show Tipping Point" if we arent careful future generations may hail Ben Shepherd as some kind of cultural lynch pin in early 21st century life - THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN. use teh arcades, tell your kids that tipping point was based on the arcade game NOT the other way round.

embrace mediocre British seasides

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Chorltonwheelie
22/6/2016 09:30:47 pm

Yes!
The fun to be extracted from taking a couple of eight year olds out of a Talacre summer of grey rain into an arcade to be given a £1's worth of 2p's to flutter is off the scale. Great way to spend a couple of hours.
Teenagers? Not so much.

I like seaside arcades though. It's the city center gambling dens disguised as arcades that look depressing as fook.

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Chris
23/6/2016 10:52:00 am

The city centre gambling dens really are that depressing. I did an IT upgrade of some description at one, and there was a woman in there from the time it opened, and still there when I left, gambling all her money away on the "slots". Not even a cuddly toy in sight.

Also: "Tipping Point". I don't know what that is. Somebody made a gameshow based on those 2p machines? Really? How does that work? It sounds terrible.

Clive Peppard
23/6/2016 02:09:53 pm

ITV 4.15pm so as not to go up against Pointless. its appalling and engrossing all at once. thankfully being employed means i dont see too much of it

Heeden
22/6/2016 02:41:57 pm

What upsets me is all the arcades only have gambling machines and cabinets full of fluffy toys. None of the video game wonders that my poor Spectrum-owning ass considered part of another world.

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Damon link
22/6/2016 05:32:50 pm

The joke is on you. I entered more depressed than the people, now stripp'd of all innocence and skinny in their souls. The blackness of mine put where my heat was once relished in the sticky floors made filthy from time. The cheap fibrous prostitutes traded for amusement are not whores to the winner, but time-- as we all are. The dripping of a soda left by a child fat with indulgence marks the seconds. Drip. Tock. Drip. Tock. Out lives waste away as the bourgeoisie put us in the glass case, tell us it's meant to protect us as the trade us skinny from burden and toil. We dig our on graves so that when we are dead we can finally lay and rest.

"Jim, uh, that was a pretty dark prayer. It's Christmas, lighten up a little."

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bit.bat
23/6/2016 01:03:15 am

There's something very "broken dreams" about the Rio Carnival one. I'm thinking of an older person remembering their youth and all the travelling they thought the would be doing only to stay in their town their whole life and the closest they came to Rio is in the form of a sticker on a coin machine. Oh boy.

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Tinker's Cuss
23/6/2016 07:43:05 am

I'm saddened to see former television personality The Noo-Noo hanging around the Palace Casino. It looks to me that they've managed to kick the habit of snorting absolutely anything before manically chasing the Teletubbies for a bit, only for it to be replaced by a severe gambling addiction. The desperation is written in those pin-prick pupils and limp proboscis.

"Ride The Noo-Noo for £1..."

:(

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Glasweigan reader
23/6/2016 08:10:36 am

The Playboy keyring - brilliant. By the time those sweets drop off they'll taste like 2p pieces. Yum!

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Voodoo76
23/6/2016 08:39:00 am

I loved this article Biffo, some of the funniest comments. Awe i have fond memories of these places, especially playing Hang on and Out Run.

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AlexR
25/6/2016 08:08:24 am

No mention of Afterburner? We were so excited when we first saw this. Only one of my friends could afford to play it though at £1 a go. We stuck to final fight. Other favourites included Space Harrier and Operation Wolf. Happy Days.

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John Miller
27/6/2016 02:55:03 pm

Does anyone else remember those glass cabinets with creepy looking puppets in that would all dance around when you put your money in?

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Chris Coltrane link
4/7/2016 09:33:09 am

I'll always go into a seaside arcade if I see one, no matter how old it is, in the hope that there might be a DDR machine tucked away in the corner. 4 times out of 5 I seem to get lucky!

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Joe Pineapples
16/12/2019 05:51:46 pm

What's supposed to be depressing about these pictures? You sound like a total prick and you're probably some cunt from a shithole like yankfuckistan. Idiot.

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