It's wandered around the blogosphere already, but over at the basically SFW bit of the often NSFW SuicideGirls, Wil Wheaton has an excellent post on the decline of arcades in the U.S..

He starts: "Though my family started with the Odyssey2 before moving to the Atari 2600 and Atari 400... much of my gaming took place in various arcades, or local businesses — pizza parlors, drug stores, bowling alleys, liquor stores and even a head shop — and they played such an important role in my life, I still have all kinds of very clear and powerful memories associated with certain games and the places I played them. It's good that I do, because arcades in America are vanishing like rainforests."

I'm not sure I was in quite the same era as Wheaton, but I like his emo clown sweater-wearing style: "But in the back of my mind, and on long lonely drives where a melancholy saxophone solo seemed to come out of nowhere to accompany me, I'd think about Tron, and Star Castle, and Mr. Do! and Zaxxon. I'd hear the jukebox playing Journey and Judas Priest and Asia and Van Halen. I'd smell the waffle cones and feel the quarters heavily banging against my thigh as they weighed down the pocket of my two-toned corduroy OP shorts, and I wouldn't miss the games as much as I'd miss the places where I played them."