Modern entertainment is becoming more and more digital and detached from human connection. Arcades, for example, used to be everywhere. They started fizzling out in the 1990s, giving way to online video games and video game consoles in every home. Despite changing tastes, arcade games are still popular. Just go to any boardwalk, mall or restaurant lobby, and you might find a Pac-Man or Donkey Kong or Tetris machine. They provide the fun, excitement and communal experience that small, hand-held screens don’t.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History revisits the glory days of this pastime in its new, throwback exhibit, High Score: Vintage Arcade and Midway Games, which runs Oct. 16 to Jan. 24. Featuring iconic arcade and midway games from the early-20th century to the 1980s, as well as related objects, the show is a nostalgic nod to a time when arcades were the go-to hangouts for kids after school and on the weekends.
The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is the oldest amusement park in California, and the Boardwalk’s Casino Arcade houses more than 300 games. Curated by the MAH’s exhibitions manager Shanti Nagwani, the 20 items in the exhibit are culled from the archive of the Santa Cruz Seaside Company, which owns and operates the Boardwalk and keeps a trove of games in a basement below the rides.
“Shanti and museum deputy director Marla Novo wanted to put on an exhibit that was fun and lighthearted, and centered around the boardwalk, which is a mainstay of Santa Cruz culture and history, and bring that to the MAH,” says Jessie Durant, an archivist at the Santa Cruz Seaside Company and archives specialist at the museum.
Located in the museum’s Art Forum gallery, the games – and their artifacts – range from pinball machines to early coin-operated arcade games like Fortune, Basketball Champ, Electric Energizer, Scientific Batting Practice and Mickey Finn Tug-of-War. Also available will be such familiar midway games as Milk Bottles, Cat Rack and Greyhound Races that tested players’ skills, accuracy, concentration and luck. Among the games that visitors will be able to play are Fascination, where guests roll balls across a table and into holes, and Clown Toss, where they can throw bean bags into a clown’s mouth.
Additionally, the collection displays photographs, screens showing old TV commercials and historical tidbits that explore the local evolution of the arcade. One of the “Fun Facts” is that Pong, Computer Science and Star Fire were the first video games available at the Boardwalk. Another is that the most popular plush toy to win as a prize is a cow.
But toys can’t compare to the time when Sam “the Ham Man” Haberman ran a concession stand and handed out a whole ham or side of bacon during Thanksgiving in the 1920s. And then there was the time when the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History organized a show of 15 animatronic dinosaurs in the arcade in 1993, the year Jurassic Park was released.
Arcades experienced such a boom in popularity by the 1970s and 80s that the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department and boardwalk staff taught classes in the arcade in 1982 on how to play arcade games.
“In the early 1980s they were a novel thing and just getting off the ground,” says Durant. “It was a fun way to get people informed and interested in new video games and about this phenomenon.”
The museum also features a 1940s card vending machine in the gift shop that dispenses 16 collectible cards customized with images of various Santa Cruz locations taken from the MAH’s archive.
“The ultimate goal is to show how arcade and midway games were creative spaces for people to come and have fun, and make connections with each other, whether it’s friendly competition to see who can throw the baseball the hardest and the fastest or playing against your friend in a two-player video game,” says Durant about the exhibit.
“You’re building community and making connections. It’s a fun way to show how that’s happening at arcades and midways at the boardwalk, as well as at the MAH, which is also a space where we’re creating opportunities for people to come together and make connections through our exhibits.”
High Score: Vintage Arcade and Midway Games runs Oct. 16-Jan. 24. at MAH, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. Hours: Thursday-Monday; admission: $8-$10.
