When I was in my early teens, my group of friends and I were too young to have the real arcade experience. For older folks going out to the arcade meant having a new gaming experience every time you went out. A huge room full of games could take months to work your way through even if they only cost a few quarters per play and the landscape was so varied. In one corner players were throwing shoryukens at each other while across the room Rick is on a mission to save his girlfriend Jennifer from the Splatterhouse.
My gaming sensibilities came of age in an era where major game releases started to get stale and homogenized. As the Gamecube lost its foothold in the industry gamers wanted more brown and green shooters and less Pikmin. We had less and less interesting titles to play each month and the indie market had yet to bloom with the advent of digital distribution, but there was one sanctuary left for the open-minded gamer. One place allowed independent game developers to share their work with the masses and get constructive criticism from the community. What was once a portal for killing celebrities or working WAY too hard for a poorly drawn picture of a naked anime girl had become a site for ideas to gestate that would become phenomenons. I'm of course talking about Newgrounds.com.