Last week I was in the Piccadilly area of London on my lunch break. As is usual when I'm over that way, I popped into the Trocadero to have a wander around Funland, which is probably the largest arcade in Central London (if not England). Or rather 'was' the largest arcade in London, as it has recently closed down.
I'd gone to Funland for years - as much as anywhere, it was 'my' arcade when in my twenties. I was never a frequent visitor - although comparatively wealthy next to students nowadays, even back in the mid-90s students didn't have spare cash to feed, in £1 coin increments, to Namco, Sega, Konami et al. I was a regular visitor though - probably dropping in every couple of months or so.
As with every arcade - except Segaworld - that I have ever been to (and I'm a gamer who grew up on the English South Coast, so I've been to quite a few), Funland was, even at its late 90s height, slightly seedy and down at heel. That has always been part of an arcade's charm, I think - the juxtaposition of the advanced gaming technology, with the sticky carpets, cigarette smoke (pre-ban, that is) and dingy lighting.
It had one of the best range of arcade games around - this was where I first played Daytona, in a fantastic 8-cabinet array - and used to get the latest cabinets, probably before anywhere else in the country. I've read that, at its height, gaming journalists would often visit to see the latest games in action (and then, no doubt, stay on them for ages for £1 with their mad gaming skillz).
As well as a great range of arcade games, there were a few other money-spinning entertainments in Funland. Dodgems, a mini bowling allay and, for a time, a range of games that you could win paper tokens on, that could then be exchanged (after amassing a huge number of them) for a range of tacky prizes, as at a funfair. I don't think I ever went on any of those - it was always all about the videogames for me - but I remember that, at one point, the dodgem circuit was lined with classic arcade cabinets that were nearly always empty and so good for a quick, wait-free game.
For a time Funland was co-located in the Trocadero with Segaworld London - a misguided attempt to create an interactive theme park by Sega in the years when they seemed to lumber from one massive mistake to another (blow your marketing budget for your new console on sponsoring a football team?). However, Funland was there before Segaworld opened in 1996 and it was there after Segaworld closed down in 2002 and, indeed, took over some of Segaworld's floorspace. This multi-floor expansion made Funland somewhat of a maze and, as I'd only go over every 6 months or so after I stopped being a student and had to get on with 'real life', I would frequently get lost while wandering around, wondering where the exit was. Fortunately, there was never a fire...
I checked the internets when I returned to work - it seems the arcade closed in July 2011. The official website (www.funland.co.uk) cites a 'power failure' (that has also knocked out their phones) but that is unlikely as the rest of (what's left) of the businesses in the Trocadero had electricity to burn on my visit. And 2 months to fix a power failure? The power was back on in Baghdad quicker than that. There are reports on the internet that the real reason was somewhat different but, what is definitely true is that the upper levels of the 7-storey Trocadero complex are being redeveloped as a hotel and I wonder if the landlords were all that keen on what was, by the end, quite a seedy arcade occupying the levels of the building below their shiny new hotel. Whatever the real reason for the closure was, the arcade docent look like re-opening.
I think that my admission that I only went every 6 months in its latter years, is probably indicative of why arcades are thought to be a dying business. I would go on a weekday lunchtime in the heart of tourist London and it was never all that busy. Given the overheads attached to such a venture, in that high-rent location (the electricity bill alone must have been astronomical), it is difficult to see how it lasted as long as it did. With the massive advances in console entertainment in the near 20 years I'd been going to Funland, gamers simply do not need to shovel pound coins into arcade machines to get high quality gaming fixes. Put simply, you can't run a large-floorspace business in Central London based on hardcore dance gamers (Funland was something of a shrine for dancing games, apparently) and nostalgic twice-yearly gamers like me. I am slightly disappointed that I never got the opportunity to take my daughter (who loves arcades) along to Funland (my wife, on the other hand, is probably quite relieved).
