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This Machine is Non-Operational:

A Study of the Pocket Change Arcade

It’s only minutes till lunch time in the food court of the Park City Center mall, revealed not by a clock but by the melange of cooking aromas hanging heavy in the air. It’s as if the competing vendor’s wares are dueling for customer olfactory space, influencing their bellies as they consider where to purchase a meal. A soft draft conveying the warm, buttery scents of

Annie Anne’s Pretzel overpowers the smells of Burger King, Sbarro, China Party Express and others. A rapidly growing line of customers forms by the small counter with the whirling rack full of soft baked pretzels, confirming that this war does in fact have a clear victor. Customers who have made executive decisions concerning meal-time seat themselves on small wooden chairs at white laminate tables. Other patrons ride up and down the escalator to the second floor of the Mall, the skylight in the ceiling framing their journey in a brilliant square of mid-day sunlight. Nearby, children shriek and tumble in a softly padded play area, while exhausted parents slump on benches taking a moment’s respite. It is only after wandering the perimeter of the food court taking careful observation that one notices that there is,in fact, a video arcade in the midst of this consumerist hustle.

The large sign that reads “Pocket Change” above the entrance to the arcade bears accidental anachronisms. The word Change is emblazoned in fire-engine red and leans to the right with an elaborate script-style font. The effect is Nagel-esque, harkening back to the apex of arcade culture in America, the decade of the 1980s. The word Pocket is formed by a vaguely Art-

Deco type font, and the protuberance from the letter P is formed with the shape of a Quarter, given greater distinction by the rough effigy of George Washington. However, the games within 2 the arcade no longer accept quarters or any other coinage-- instead accepting only the gold discs of the token traded for at an ATM-like kiosk.

Game Over

“Mommy!”

A young boy standing in front of a stout arcade machine cries out as he mashes the buttons on its face. A middle aged woman in tan slacks adjusts her glasses and peers closely at the machine.

“C’mon honey; this one isn’t working. Let’s find another one to play.”

The woman leads the child by the hand away from the machine, which typically would be eating tokens two at a pop for a chance to win some tickets, but instead flickers on and off, indicating some kind of electrical disturbance. It is not the only machine in the dim, rectangular confines of Pocket Change that is not accepting customer’s patronage. Just inside the entrance, a large mechanical game called Stacker offers high stakes prizes for eight tokens a play. The small digital display next to the token slot flashes ERROR1 with a hypnotic frequency. The Harley

Davidson: King of the Road motorcycle riding simulator sits inoperative nearby, realistic pipe styled handlebars protrude from beneath a darkened video screen. In the far left hand corner of the room, five other non-operational games are clustered together, screens faced inward as if conducting a football huddle. They remain inert and immobile as an employee in a red vest with

NAMCO emblazoned on the back squeezes past to enter the door to a small office behind them.

The mother and her son have wandered back out into the food court now mobbed by a lunchtime crowd. The arcade stands empty.

“It’s not just us; everyone is down. Burger King is down. Apple is down. Everybody is down.” 3 Luis, the house manager of Pocket Change, explains the lack of patronage in his store, despite it being a busy Saturday afternoon at the mall.

“We’re down eleven-percent since last year. Everybody is hurtin’.”

Luis is positioned between the faded blue pastel wall and the rear panel of a large-two seater futuristic video racer called Hydro Thunder. He reaches out from behind the machine, revealing thin, black tattoos on his heavily muscled arm and grips a socket wrench in his paw, removing it from his maintenance cart. This machine has been “called up” by the district manager to be placed at another arcade. Since having been acquired by Namco Cybertainment

Inc. many years ago, the arcade machines no longer belong to the store, and instead belong to the larger corporate entity. They are rotated in and out of different locations based on a perceived need as determined by a district manager that oversees multiple former mom and pop arcades now existing under the benevolence of the larger Namco umbrella. Luis will have to deal with the absence of the machine for the time being and wait to see if corporate will send a machine in its stead.

“I got parts comin’ in for one of those busted machines over there in the corner.

Computer parts; sometimes you get lucky with those, sometimes you don’t, ya know?”

As the Hydro Thunder machine is wheeled away, all that is left behind is a dusty rectangular space between the other machines. On the floor, a wide fissure in the carpet has been repaired with black duct tape. The rip spiderwebs out into the store, and evidence of similar self repairs are everywhere. Next to the tear where the machine once stood is a heavy brass plated outlet housing the twin 220 volt receptacles required to power the machines. More brass plates pepper the floor elsewhere in the arcade, the tell-tale sign this was where an once stood. There are still more machines than not in Pocket Change, but that distinction is closer than 4 ever now.

Press Start to Play

Of the twenty or so machines that line the arcade’s confines, the majority are mechanical amusements, most offering a chance to win tickets which can be exchanged for a variety of prizes found in and around a glass case across the room from the broken Stacker machine. These trinkets range from small baubles such as pencil toppers and army men up to larger prizes like whoopee cushions and oversized inflatable baseball bats. The most costly item is a Hello Kitty themed version of the enduring classic board game Monopoly, priced at five thousand tickets. A bulk of the attractions contain their own prizes, earned through crane style claws that the player attempts to maneuver into snatching up a stuffed animal or other tantalizing trinket. Two teenage boys pump tokens into one such machines shaped like a fire truck and covered in licensed

Namco character art. A plush orb shaped Pac-Man continuously falls from the ineffectual claw before reaching the prize hopper.

“C’mon dude; let’s get out of here,” One scruffy teen punches his compatriot on the arm, and the two take off in mock chase. The play area outside of the arcade is now overflowing with children climbing on the molded plastic play apparatus. Nearly all the food court seating is occupied and a constant stream of customers descend from the second level of the mall on the escalator.

The “biggest earner” in Pocket Change according to Luis is Sweet Land, a large mechanical attraction that dominates the center of the arcade’s open floor space. The circular machine contains a series of rotating platters and troughs overflowing with loose candy. Inserting two tokens allows a player to manipulate a small shovel that extracts a portion of candy that can then be maneuvered onto one of the moving platters. The candy will fall in an area where several 5 moving ledges will push the pile around. If enough candy has accumulated in one of these areas, the excess will spill out into a bin as a reward to the player. It’s no coincidence this draws the attention of the parents and children who sporadically trickle in throughout the day-- it offers a form of instant gratification the video arcade machines do not. The video game units are attractive to customers based on far different criteria. Namely, they offer an interactive entertainment experience that cannot be found in the home or elsewhere, presenting huge spectacle through cutting edge graphics and audio technologies. They are often designed with conceits that are hard to replicate in the home, such as the racing titles featuring a cockpit or seat with a steering wheel, gearshift and foot pedals. The shooter games similarly have massive gun peripherals with heavy recoil motors built in. These games also rely on creating tension between the player’s skills and their wallets-- performing well is incentivised by having to pay less money to progress further in the game. Displaying this skill in public is also a way to gain minor celebrity status as being able to complete an entire arcade game on just two initial tokens is a sight to behold. This, of course, requires the public be present for such a spectacle.

Upgrades Available

In terms of technology, the most current video arcade machine is a racer called Fast and

Furious, styled off the popular film series of the same name and produced in 2004. The rest of the video games reach back well into the late 1990s. The rear wall of the arcade is dominated by several machines from the series of games, shooters that require the player to use a brightly colored plastic light gun to shoot their way through swaths of fictional terrorists. Time

Crisis 2 was, in its heyday, a “big earner” like Sweet Land when it was released in 1998. Over a decade later, its one time cutting edge graphics look like silly polygonal puppets moving jerkily 6 across a blurry sub-high definition screen. Like so many of the video games at Pocket Change,

TC2 is caught in the nexus of being too recent to draw in players with nostalgia and too outdated to woo them with sheer spectacle. These arcade machines spend their days quietly cycling through their Attract Mode, a short game-play demo and title screen crawl, repeating a thirty to forty second loop of sight and sound endlessly, waiting for the drop of the token to activate.

Luis speculates that the downturn in revenue at Pocket Change is due to America’s economic woes beginning in 2007. He feels people have become more cautious and less frivolous with their money in general, leading them to avoid spending on distractions like the arcade. Yet, a weak economy has not kept the patrons of the Park City Center from spending five dollars on a single slice of Pizza from Sbarro, or shopping at the Payless Shoe Source, the lone retail store in the confines of the food court. On a balmy Saturday afternoon, the mall is packed with patrons and shoppers, all trading time with a beautiful spring day for another shopping experience. The reality for Pocket Change is that time is passing it by, and consumer technology is replacing the thrills it once offered. A good many shoppers enjoying lunch in the food court fixate on their smart phones, browsing the internet or playing games, satiating the need for a momentary distraction the arcade may have once provided. Others seeking a cutting edge video gaming experience can simply return to their homes and play on a home console connected to an high definition television, both of which have found ubiquity in the living rooms of Americans in the last decade. To combat these cultural changes, some arcades across the country have begun a return to form-- that is the classic era of gaming from the 1980s. These locations offer patrons a chance to play restored machines of enduring legacy such as Pacman, , Donkey

Kong, and the like. Along the same lines, other proprietors offer factory restored machines for play; these were the true forebearer to the video arcade gaming experience, unique 7 in their antiquated yet intricate technology. Pocket Change does not offer either of these types of attractions and is instead mired with ineffectual machines from the somewhat recent past provided to the public in a less than appealing locale that has seen better days.

Insert Token to Continue

As the afternoon wears on, more families arrive in the arcade, deftly avoiding the non- operational machines in favor of the working attractions. It seems as if the presence of people in the room has a multiplying effect, drawing in more and more customers. The drab, melancholic atmosphere of the place changes as the games are activated and the volume increases from both the customers and the games themselves. Calliope music fills the air as the carousel in Sweet

Land whirls, dropping candy for its players. From the rear of the room, heavy explosions and gunshots reverberate from the speakers of L.A machineguns, a futuristic shooter. A couple in their mid-twenties delight over Wonder Wheel, a game which functions like a skee-ball machine, launching tokens into slots designating denominations of tickets. They gain a rhythm pumping the tokens in, tittering with delight as the tickets slowly unfurl from the slot, coiling across their feet in a huge mound. In a matter of minutes, what was once a poorly lit, poorly maintained locale filled with a sense of grim anxiety has now turned ever so slightly towards the light hearted joys of community entertainment. Luis hands a snuffling young boy a token who alleges he lost one underneath a machine. The Wonder Wheel couple takes their huge mound of tickets to the counter where they choose prizes while standing arm-in-arm.

The bustle of activity only lasts for a short while as the shoppers thin out and a lull descends over the lower level of the mall. Pocket Change becomes dormant once more, rife with potential energy to entertain the masses despite some inherent flaws. Outside the entrance and in the food court, families begin their slow exodus from the play area to parts unknown. A young 8 boy breaks away from the embrace of his dark haired mother, dashing past the play area to stand just inside the door of Pocket Change, looking up at the flashing lights of the machines. From the ceiling, a large vinyl banner reads BANDAI NAMCO -- Dreams, Fun, and Inspiration! In a few moments, the mother has grabbed the child by the wrist,

“C’mon Tyler: we don’t have time for this!”

The boy glumly acquiesces, stealing one last glance over his shoulder back at the arcade.

The twinkling lights from within the confines of Pocket Change confers a muted response. In a few hours time, the competing smells of fried cuisine will fill the air, jabbing at the nostrils and tugging at the bellies of the shopping masses; dinner will commence, and the cycle will begin anew. In that time, Pocket Change will be waiting.