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Xerus
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Does anyone here have fond memories of going to video arcades when they were younger?
Back when I was a preteen of the early 80's. The first arcade I went to was called Flipper McCoy's. At first I loved pinball machines, then I discovered video games where Star Fire was the first game I ever played and I knew this was different from pinball. Then I played Space Invaders, Asteroids, and a wild western game.
Then a mall opened in our area and it had an arcade called Space Port and I found all these neat new video games. And soon a couple of more arcade games opened in my town such as The Golden Dome and Wildcat Video.
I started playing all these great games. My favorites were Pengo, Q-bert, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Vanguard, Venture, Kangaroo, and Crazy Climber. And I liked how some of my favorite games had sequels like Ms. Pac Man, Super Pac Man, and Donkey Kong Jr. And whenever my family took me on vacations, I visited new arcades and I'd find video games that couldn't be found in my home town.
The arcades usually had change machines where you can receive 4 quarters for a dollar while some arcades had the token rule where you could only play with special tokens. Like in Aladdin's Castle and Chuck E Cheese's.
Also some of my favorite games were really hard to get to play for certain people would play for long periods of time and they'd place their quarters or tokens on the top to show that the game would be occupied for a while.
And if you'd get a really high score, your name and score would be written on a card and pasted on top of the machine. I heard one guy got the highest score on Q-bert. I couldn't remember the score, but he had played for 8 hours and had 118 extra men. Too bad I was a kid back then, for my parents would've dragged me home if I had played that long, so it was kind of good that I wasn't an expert player back then.
Soon I got me an Atari 2600 and later a Colecovision with an Atari adapter and I got to experience my arcade favorites at home. Though some of the games weren't really like the arcade versions, but still fun.
However, there was a video game market crash in 1984 and arcade games weren't the same anymore. My local arcades started closing down. The Golden Dome became a laundromat and Wildcat Video became a bank. Space Port ended up featuring only racing, fighting, and war games. Flipper McCoy's still has a few of the classic arcade games like Super Pac Man and Mr. Do's Castle, but they could go out anytime for they were old machines.
Thankfully, today's game systems like Nintendo, Playstation, and X-Box are featuring discs where you can play the arcade classics again like Dig Dug, Galaga, Root Beer Tapper, and Pole Position. And the internet features things called Gametap and MAME where you can download and play all the rare and classic games. It's a great way to relive the wonderful age of the video arcades.
Back when I was a preteen of the early 80's. The first arcade I went to was called Flipper McCoy's. At first I loved pinball machines, then I discovered video games where Star Fire was the first game I ever played and I knew this was different from pinball. Then I played Space Invaders, Asteroids, and a wild western game.
Then a mall opened in our area and it had an arcade called Space Port and I found all these neat new video games. And soon a couple of more arcade games opened in my town such as The Golden Dome and Wildcat Video.
I started playing all these great games. My favorites were Pengo, Q-bert, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Vanguard, Venture, Kangaroo, and Crazy Climber. And I liked how some of my favorite games had sequels like Ms. Pac Man, Super Pac Man, and Donkey Kong Jr. And whenever my family took me on vacations, I visited new arcades and I'd find video games that couldn't be found in my home town.
The arcades usually had change machines where you can receive 4 quarters for a dollar while some arcades had the token rule where you could only play with special tokens. Like in Aladdin's Castle and Chuck E Cheese's.
Also some of my favorite games were really hard to get to play for certain people would play for long periods of time and they'd place their quarters or tokens on the top to show that the game would be occupied for a while.
And if you'd get a really high score, your name and score would be written on a card and pasted on top of the machine. I heard one guy got the highest score on Q-bert. I couldn't remember the score, but he had played for 8 hours and had 118 extra men. Too bad I was a kid back then, for my parents would've dragged me home if I had played that long, so it was kind of good that I wasn't an expert player back then.
Soon I got me an Atari 2600 and later a Colecovision with an Atari adapter and I got to experience my arcade favorites at home. Though some of the games weren't really like the arcade versions, but still fun.
However, there was a video game market crash in 1984 and arcade games weren't the same anymore. My local arcades started closing down. The Golden Dome became a laundromat and Wildcat Video became a bank. Space Port ended up featuring only racing, fighting, and war games. Flipper McCoy's still has a few of the classic arcade games like Super Pac Man and Mr. Do's Castle, but they could go out anytime for they were old machines.
Thankfully, today's game systems like Nintendo, Playstation, and X-Box are featuring discs where you can play the arcade classics again like Dig Dug, Galaga, Root Beer Tapper, and Pole Position. And the internet features things called Gametap and MAME where you can download and play all the rare and classic games. It's a great way to relive the wonderful age of the video arcades.
