Did Arcades ever operate 24 hours a day?
 

If so, do you think they cycled the machines? Those games must have led a hard life...to be played by kids and adults who were rough on the cabinets etc.. But I am wondering if any video arcades were open round the clock. I reckon the games would only operate a year or 2 before the CRTs got weak from constant use if so..
I remember a few cases where old arcades were run til the games were totally burnt up...Games from the likes of Midway and Sega in the 90s...a lot of those developed poor focus or a tinted grayscale but were still in use.

I know there were a couple in a 24-hour laundromat that I used to live near. I remember Street Fighter II in there, and maybe TMNT, those suckers were on 24/7.

Cool. I am interested in this stuff...Do you guys think that some of these games used special tubes, perhaps ruggedized cathodes for longevity, or vibration-resistant? I know some mil-spec tubes were made, for raster-graphics color monitors, but what about the gaming sector? I mean, before the crash of '83, the video arcade industry was a HUGE money maker..

If they run arcades 24/7 in Japan right now with modern LCD based cabinets I have no reason to believe that they were not doing the same with CRT cabinets back in the 90's and early 00's.

I know there are some guys on here who worked on arcade monitors back in the heyday. I am sure they'll chime in with the facts.

24 times 365 + 8760 hours...I am SURE any decent CRT could outlast that long. At least the ones made "in the day" of the arcade games. I would say at least 25K hours or so... Maybe not the modern chineese junk though.

I did, many were on all day, and all night..... Never saw a bad tube, the ones I worked on
I always turned the brightness down...... And vector screens always looked like new....
Actually there was only 1 with a weak tube, it was a table game, and it was really old...
I don't even remember what it was, and I only saw one of them....

The ones that looked like they had bad focus most likely was just dirt. I use to open them
up and clean the screens and the plastic and it was almost twice as bright when I was done.
retouch the focus control and it was good for another 500,000 hours.

I had one screen where I had to replace a driver chip in one because it had poor contrast.

The company I worked for after a game got really played out they would get a new board
graphics, replace the control panel, and out it would go again..... same old screen....

Besides the hand controls and coin mechanism, most problems were power supply, and for
that, unless it was a top of the line company like Sega, Atari, or Midway, it was just a little
$50. box that for the most part we just replaced as a unit. Top companies had real power supplies
with a giant transformer, no switching power supplies.

I think all that stuff was designed to be on all the time.... New they sold for $5K so no games
with reliability....

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Yes indeed, many arcades were open 24 hours per day in the 1980s.

No, the CRTs were not special, industrial-grade ones. In the monitors I first worked on in 1981, many games (from Williams, Stern, Taito, and Bally/Midway at least) had a monitor chassis that was a customized version of a regular JVC color TV set, with a 19VJTP22 CRT.

Plenty of CRTs, even color ones, can operate 24 hours per day for years. I have some at my work place (a large airport) that still look bright and clear, and I installed them in late 1999 and have never turned them off except for occasional servicing or power shutdowns. As Username1 mentioned, I made sure to set them to moderate brightness and contrast.

Ah, the good ol 19VJTP22. Have seen a large volume of those in-line CRTs in many 1980s TV brands, from Panasonic all the way to RCA.
SO I guess my question is answered. I miss the old video arcades

I can see how a CRT would last a lot longer being used in a " vector" format.

Think about it. Over 90% of the screen...and therefore cathode..goes UNUSED at any given time. SO wear would be seriously decreased . Sure "burn " would be a real problem-- ( and WAS--even 30 or so years ago on games I played like centipede, ) even more so than a normal raster display which has a "background" glow, and is always lit to some degree. But the cathodes and phospor as a whole would seem to last a LOT longer. I doubt many games had the tubes replaced for burns unless it got to be so bad they were not useable.

In FACT..I would hazard to say...that LCD panels would last LESS time in a vector display than a CRT , given the BL has to be on ALL the time--other than modulated BL ones--(and I doubt any arcade games use them).. and so they would wear out quicker that way. Not too mention...there would be a bit of "glow through" on ANY LCD used in a vector display from said BL..

I don't think there can be such a thing as a vector-based LCD. LCD panels themselves are directly addressed pixel by pixel. Perhaps a vector-input circuit could be made that converts to pixel addressing, the way analog raster-scan-type input circuits are used on LCDs now.

I sure do mi$$ arcades!!!!!

THERE ARE SOME GAMES IN MOVIE THEATERS BUT THEY ARE GARBAGE,nothing good from the 80s...

Tell me about it...


Northgate mall USED to have a nice game room. Big and with plenty of nice popular games. I was there a few times, along with other malls ALl of them had plenty of nice games...THEN..

But NOW....Northgate mall has a PISS_-POOR game room, tiny , and only a few games, mainly for children--like those "claw " games and such..A FAR cry from 1979--1995 or so...

So I guess we need a multi-seat time machine..... :)

The vector games had not a great range to the brightness, turn them up just a little
and the lets call the reposition lines would begin to show..... So you could not turn
them up to the point of damaging the screens.... The only bad thing was that when
they were on, stuff like top score, and game title were displayed in the same spot,
the teaser stuff. But I never saw a vector game with a weak, or damaged screen...

And you are right, the guns were on only while painting the lines on the screen..... Bright
as you want, still on only .001% of the time of a scan line set for their entire life....

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I own two arcade machines.. Both are Mortal Kombat 2 and Ultimate 3.. I bought them back in the 1990s for 1k each.. I also had a few 80s machines.. Teenage Mutant Nija Turtles, and Double Dragon and Shinobi.. All three of those sadly were in my garage at the time that had bars for windows with no glass pains, so the climate killed the machines and I ended up having to take them to the road when we had to move out.. I called a friend and told them to get the machines or they are going to be in the land fill..

What I've noticed with arcade machines especially from the 1980s, is alot of phosphor burn in the TV monitors.. Usually it was "Insert Coin" or the name of the game that was constantly flashing on the screen when the game was not being played...

I worked on arcade games for 10 years. Saw some stuff.

Based on what I've heard and seen; sure, the monitors could be left on 24/7 and survive. But a lot of the Sanyo/Nintendo monitors would need minor repairs from faulty parts. It reduced the life of the monitor, sure; but if the game was making money an operator usually kept a spare monitor to toss in the game when the one would euventually fail.

Laundromats are a horrible environment for a game; and I saw many games fail as a result of excess dust and carbon built up in the monitor; those flybacks would get hot, crack, and boom. I know this because I used to service games in a laundromat. Not only do they get physically torn up (you wouldn't belive how much people just assume they can destoy the arcade games); but the dust is really bad for them.

Back in the 80's that stuff wasn't a huge problem (save for some Nintendo and Atari Vectors); they ran them till they died, even if it was 24/7 for a couple years. Some of the guys that fixed the things got to know exactly what parts needed to be changed and could often do it while the chassis was still in the machine. Of course by the time I got to the industry; age had just taken it's toll on these things. Chassis were failing left and right due to old caps; flybacks were stressed and blowing up.

Modern arcade games are usually garbage, both game-wise and to work on. It's just the same re-hashed idea after rehashed idea; all running on a standard PC that's probably two or three generations older than the one on your desk and vastly inferior to the gaming consoles out now.

I mi$$ the good days :(

I think the old arcade in town closed around 10pm.I would not do it with todays idiots that will destroy the place in no time.

The casinos here run 24/7 with the slot machine monitors are on all the time.Most of then if not all are LCD and not pix tube .

All arcades that are open today have nothing but garbage in them!!!!

NOTHING GOOD FROM THE 80s ..... Nothing pure :( (This movie theather near me has a bunch of games in it.... ALL TRASH)

Those are the two arcade machines I would buy if I had the money/space/chance!

You should probably say most arcades have garbage instead of all because there are still some really good ones out there! Not many but a few.

Is the one in NH still open?

Not an arcade but the one Ames here had three machines, I remember Space Harrier and Super Off-road, forget the third. I’m pretty certain they never shut them off. Only the one machine had any sort of CRT damage from it, Super off-road and Space Harrier cycled the screens enough and still looked plenty bright long after those machines were outdated.

This old one in Memphis near the train terminal did.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1533997564

I think I've only come across one arcade in the last four years that was actually enjoyable. The rest seemed to be crammed with "classic" (gotta have PAC Man, gotta have Mortal Combat, gotta have TRON, gotta have Crusin' USA etc.) arcade games that everyone remembers but cost a fortune for the cabinet these days due to desireability. Most of those places have since folded because they blew north of $30k in machines and were not getting enough cash in to cover the cost of starting up. Ironically the place I did enjoy because it had such a diverse mix is still around simply because they also support birthday parties on the side.

Indeed.. Most have crap in them now.... No good games from the 80s that are actually good!