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VIDEO LOUNGES TAKE ARCADES UPSCALE

NEW YORK - Josh Langdon remembers when buying time to blast alien hordes or brave a digital maze meant lining up rows of quarters on a boxy machine in a claustrophobic arcade.

Nowadays, Langdon slaps down $5 at Game Time Nation in Manhattan and settles in for an hour of unlimited Xbox play. Stretched out on a cozy couch before a 32-inch TV with soft drinks and snacks nearby, the film and animation student dodges bullets in the crime game "Max Payne 2."

"It's a lot more relaxing atmosphere," said Langdon, 20, a "recovering game addict" who left his game consoles in Cleveland with his little brother. Visiting the game lounge three times a week offers him more control than keeping a console in his New York apartment.

"I know if I had one out here I wouldn't do any school work," he said.

Game Time Nation is one of hundreds of relatively upscale video game centers that have sprung up around the country in recent years, and one of the few exclusively using game consoles like Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2.

The centers, sometimes called lounges depending on the decor, fill a void left by the declining numbers of video arcades, which hit their stride during the 1980s with coin-operated games ranging from Asteroids to Zaxxon. Such machines often weighed more than 300 pounds and required players to stand up and feed streams of quarters to keep the game going.

Eight years ago there were only a handful of the new game centers, but that number has surged in the past year to more than 460, said Mark Nielsen, executive director of iGames. His company aims to promote the industry, helping game centers obtain equipment, Internet connections and game licenses.

"Game centers are going to be as important to the games industry as movie theaters are to the movie industry," Nielsen said.

Most of the centers offer access to the Internet, desktop computers customized for gaming and a sprinkling of game consoles. Many have big-screen TVs and a game selection of up to 200 titles. While some centers are dedicated to gaming, others are offshoots of Internet cafes, restaurants or clubs.

Entrepreneurs in the nascent industry say the centers have an appeal beyond hard-core gamers and answer an enduring need to make gaming a communal experience even in the era of powerful consoles and PCs at home.

"It's about putting the social back in social gaming," said Tom Beauchamp, 32, president of the LAN's Edge game center at the Northcross Mall in Austin, Texas. The center has 40 networked gaming PCs allowing for team play and four Xboxes wired to 50-inch projection televisions.

"People don't come in here just to play the games or because our computers are better than theirs at home. What they come in to do is to sit down besides their friends or make new friends," he said. Even with online gaming, it's not the "same as having someone sit side-by-side with you and when you kill them, jumping up and saying 'Who's your daddy!'"

The prospect of a growing industry is attracting more than just lifelong gamers.

Wilson Kriegel, 28, owner of Game Time Nation, is a former Wall Street analyst who has never owned a console or TV - except for the 18 game stations in his New York lounge.

Since opening in June, business has been brisk, with a customers ranging from high school students to 20-something professionals and families holding birthday parties, Kriegel said. He said he plans to expand to up to 25 locations by the end of the year, including spaces in Austin and Atlanta.