In the many stories of the Arabian Nights, a young Chinaman named Aladdin who would be a very bad slacker by today’s standard ended up tricked by an African Sorceror into risking his life to retrieve a lamp that imprisoned a powerful Genie.  Amongst the feats he had the Djinn perform was to create a magnificent castle in a day and a night…    BUT - this is NOT that Story…    Yet it is about a Magical Castle, an Enchanted Cave, that to me appeared almost as overnight.  It was an Arcade Chain called “Aladdin’s Castle” and its tokens were passage coins to and from some magical , digital wonderland.     As far as I knew it was privately owned and the design was high tech ‘Vector Graphics’ done on computer as it looked like something that could be done with Tempest or an ancient Vectrex…  I was half-right, it was a major chain but they let the stores be independantly owned.  The coins were made old school but the influence of vector graphics were obvious.    Beyond the high tech games it seemed magical to me.  It was on the surface a small store, barely the enterance and a small sign.  Not a big box but a long corridor carved out of what had been several storeplaces in inopportune parts of my local mall.  It seemed to get bigger and bigger the farther in you went until there were branches and places to go in a circle.    The games seemed endless and constantly changing.  In a smaller middle American town it got the older games, at least a year after they had been used in the city and lots of ancient games, but they were new to me and far more to play than I had money for tokens available.

   It had it all, save the “Virtual Reality” that came out after it closed, though technically “Battlezone” an ancient game is in that genre.     

.   I played mechanical games such as keeping a truck on a road that was light projected beneath it or crane games that gave small die-cast toy cars.  Lots of pinball games, including some I shall get to later.  Arcades from the ancient vector era to the later multiplayer stuff like Simpsons and Turtles.  A few skill games though I never played with those.  In the back I saw their technicians working on the games, mostly endless fixes to joysticks and diagnosis on the more complex but much loved pinball.  In part it sparked my interest in electronics as much as games.    It lasted approximately 15 years then went bankrupt as a corporate entity.  Individual arcades were owned by private owners but the malls used the Reagan era breaking up of unfair competition laws to push out non-chain stores by high rents or deciding to believe 3rd hand claims - it was drug dealing in my local one’s case - completely false, as a kid who visited so often I almost lived there I could assure it was the LAST place in town to buy drugs…  But as  Property Barons who own Malls can write off and NOT pay “Property Tax” on “Un-Rented Space” they certainly can out of whimsy throw out a store not part of some ideal fantasy business model and not worry about the property taxes or keeping bills paid…  That and the decline of American Malls might be for another page here, but later.

    However, this is to praise the memory of Aladdin’s Castle which was the cornerstone of American Arcades for a long time.  Eventually changing times they largely declined, replaced by less social home video game systems.  There are still arcades of course, in large cities.  I’ve been to one in Seattle, there’s also a legendary one in Las Vegas that I’d go just to visit - along with Cirque Du Soliel. (I don’t gamble, btw)