Video arcades' last gasp -- chicagotribune.com

Description

Diana Thompson hears Space Invaders in her head. She hears them in her sleep, marching ever downward, clomping ever closer. She hears them on her way to work. She hears them at work. And when they stop, for even a second, when there's the slightest glitch in their relentless stomp, when their incessant dun-dun-dun-dun hiccups, she hears that too. Thompson has worked at Gameland in Lake Geneva, Wis., for 12 years. Most days, most hours, especially during the off-season, she's alone with this cacophony of ancient coin-operated arcade games—beeping and wheezing and clanking and blasting and marching. And maybe a customer or two. And that's about it. Each blap and zap bleeds into the next and congeals into a digital orchestra, and like a conductor with a keen understanding of dense compositions, her ears prick up at the tiniest bum note.

But not for long.

Come September, when the tourists head home and school begins, this dimly lit room, awash in garish blinking Day-Glo— boasting machines so authentic they still bear the cigarette burns of 1982—will go silent. Donkey Kong will lay down his barrels, and Ms. Pac-Man will cease to chomp. And Gameland, a block from the lake, a charming staple of Chicago day-trip culture since it opened in 1944, will close for the season, and for the last time. So go now. The machines will be auctioned off. The plugs pulled. Its demise was inevitable. Its problems are the problems of any arcade—the rise of the Xbox, old machines, big electric bills, an overwhelming lack of youthful interest—and its lonesome decline more prolonged than a bad actor's death scene.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/explore/chi-arcades-end-0605jun05,0,3830088.story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/explore/chi-arcades-end-0605jun05,0,3830088.story