“As a child I was bullied because I was overweight and I spent my days in the arcade, those dark and smoky places that could accompany my loneliness thanks to the sci-fi colors and sounds of 80s video games”. To evoke the image is Antonio Nati, founder of Arcade Story.
Antonio of that room knew every title that was added or replaced by the manager and to see the latest news he took the bus and the train and went to the center of Verona from Florida. Games room so famous that it was the set for an episode of a television series with Fabio Testi.
Today Nati has a collection of over 400 original Arcade titles, some of great historical importance, he tells us “I could quote Death Race first game accused of child abuse in 1976. Quantum in 1982, the first game to be developed by a woman and which signed the agreement between Atari and General Computer Corporation. finally a lasergame, Ash Aurunmilla arrived in Italy from Japan thanks to an arcade manager on the Veneto coast and practically unknown in Europe “.
In addition to importing, collecting and selling arcade video games, Arcade Story restructures them in a philological way. Nati explains: “My job is to sell clothes but the uncontrollable passion for the arcade world pushed me to surround myself with competent people in the field of restoration like Andrea Genovese, set designer and skilled furniture and plastic repairer. Domenico Cervini, electronic expert who for 30 years repair pcb boards of video games and monitors cathode ray tube. Finally Michele Colucci who takes care of the Arcade Story social networks. Only with competent people is it possible to give new life to these entertainment devices “.
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The Arcade Story coin-ops have enriched the choreography of the X-Factor stage, recently those of Armani at Pitti Uomo and at Casa Sanremo an eighties-style games room has been set up. Nati explains: “The link with the past is very important for human empathy. Whenever we make available to the public a Pac-man or a Donkey Kong, we unlock a memory that has been dormant by time but which re-emerges with the colors and sounds that only these games can revive. The same happened in these important locations, the re-enactments of moments from a past life. A kind of time machine”.
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Arcade Story has opened the first vintage games room, with original furniture, in the Belgioioso shopping center in Carpi. Not an easy goal because to get there it had to overcome considerable bureaucratic obstacles. Nati explains: “This is a sore point in our legislation where a video game is equated to a slot machine! While in Europe incentives are given to open vintage arcades or environments dedicated to entertainment games, in Italy we are stuck with laws that hinder the possibility of putting a video game in a bar or restaurant, as was the case in the 80s, and authorizations are required. impossible to find “.
In the mid-1990s, some renters modified arcade games in such a way that, for example, a regular coin-op of Pac-man, by pressing a button, or by changing the position of the game settings, it turned into video-poker or slot machines.
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To stem the problem, the AAMS, a body under the Customs and Monopoly Agency, involved in the management of public gaming in Italy, intervened. Nati explains: “AAMS has adopted a census system for entertainment video games classifying them with clearances called 7 / C. Since 2004, every hirer had to declare the name of the game on the mobile so, if a check occurred, the agent would compare the game title with that of the clearance. Obviously this was done for all games already running before 2004 ”. The new arcade games must instead be viewed directly by the ADM employees in Rome, so a piece of furniture must be sent to the capital and left to the ADM at the expense of the manager. A cumbersome system that, in fact, today makes it very difficult to set up vintage arcades or clubs with coin-op cabinets in Italy.