What's the most 'you had to be there' feeling from arcade gaming

[NickFury]

Not the games themselves necessarily, more the whole atmosphere, the crowd forming around someone on a hot streak, the specific smell of the carpet, the pocket full of tokens running low. Try to describe it to someone who only knows gaming as something that happens alone on a sofa.

[Anchor41]

The sound of six different games all playing at once somehow blending into one constant hum you'd stop noticing after five minutes but instantly miss the second you walked outside

[GhostRider41]

Standing behind a stranger watching them play, silently judging their strategy, and somehow that felt like a completely normal social interaction rather than the intrusion it would be anywhere else

[CMPunk96]

Running out of quarters with one life left was its own specific kind of heartbreak, a very particular flavour of loss that a continue screen at home just never replicated

[GateSeed70]

Someone getting their initials onto the high score table and the tiny ripple of applause that would follow, completely disproportionate to the actual achievement but it mattered enormously at the time