Yea truly. The big one around here was Gametime Arcade in Alexandria. It was the stereotypical smoke-filled place with a buncha smelly chodes crowding around the machines. But because of this people from that arcade placed 1st & 2nd in the TTT and T4 regional tournaments all over the east coast (from nyc to Florida).
We even had Valle come out here to play our top Capcom players (he pretty much owned the machine). Same goes for that Southern Hills Golfland arcade that spawned all those well-known players on the west coast. Those were the days.
But now Gametime is closed down, as is SHGL in Cali. It\'s just real expensive to maintain an arcade with the controls busting all the time, new monitors, new games, cabinets, etc... Maybe one day online play will pick up where arcades left off.