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I miss the Arcades

Started by confettiinmyhair, June 08, 2020, 12:45:30 PM

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Quote from: the on June 10, 2020, 01:26:06 PMDidn't each pack of stickers also come with a scratchcard game of Pac Man? A printed maze where you had to scratch the silver dots off and hope you didn't reveal a ghost.

Oh yeah, that's ringing a bell. I'd forgotten all about those!

Quote from: petercussing on June 09, 2020, 08:50:02 PM
My first arcade experience was in a dodgy cafe and was a centipede table top game i played after putting 10p in a fruity only for it to spunk out lots of cash. That was a weird/good period where arcades were just in cafes, pubs and cornershops, not just fruities, real arcades.

Our local-ish corner shop Raj's had Cabal, Robocop and later streetfighter 2. My and chum spent so much one day and very nearly completed both Cabal and Robocop.

One of my conceptions of heaven would involve me being between 10 and 12 again with my mates and having infinite money at the Rotunda in Folkestone which somehow has all the arcades up to about 1993.

That reminds me of my local chip shop. They had a cabinet you could play whilst you waited. Some Taito military run and gun that nobody cared about. It just sat there for about 5 years. But one day they inexplicably got a NeoGeo MVS multi changer. An actual NeoGeo in our little provincial chip shop. Fancy. Once word of that got out, everyone would pile round there after school to play Fatal Fury, Super Sidekicks and King of the Monsters.

It was a double edged sword for the chip shop. On the one hand they had kids in every day chucking in 20ps and buying tins of shandy, but on the other the kids all had dinners waiting for them at home, so they never bought any food.

Of course it couldn't last. Takings were down because you couldn't actually get near the place to order a fish supper, kids started fighting, a window got broken, a bit of minor drug dealing started up and the police got involved cos kids were bunking off school to congregate in there of a lunchtime. One day it was gone and they never got anything in to replace it.

But I'll never forget those glorious few weeks when the future really was now.

I.D. Smith

Arcades were a novelty for me as a child, as there was nothing close enough to where I lived that didn't involve a car journey. The closest I had within walking distance was when my local Sports Centre had a Shadow Warriors cabinet for a brief period in the early 90s. Seemed a bit odd and out of place at the time, and I never bothered with it much as I already had the home conversion of it on my Atari ST.

For a full arcade experience, I had to rely on my family taking a rare day trip to Largs. It was sensory overload whenever we went there as it seemed to be a town made up entirely of arcades, chip shops and ice cream shops (or, at least, that was my younger-self's impression of it). I remember seeing the arcade cabinet of Mortal Kombat 2 there for the first time, and actually feeling sick with excitement at it. I had a go, lost my one match, and had the Pit Fatality performed on me. Amazing.

Whenever I was at the arcades, either at Largs or any others we happened to visit, I was always on the lookout for the WWF Wrestlefest arcade cabinet. I was besotted with that one, and would've killed to have it in my house. Even now, nearly 30 years later, I still get a frisson of excitement when I see those big, chunky, colourful characters. I even convinced my parents to let me phone one of those rip off competition phone lines you get at the back of the magazines, which gave you the "chance" to win the cabinet if you simply just phoned this number and answered one question, all the while being charged a rate of 30 quid a millisecond. Never did win it and my parents never told me what the phone bill actually was.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: I.D. Smith on June 10, 2020, 05:45:50 PMNever did win it and my parents never told me what the phone bill actually was.
"Of course, he never knew that he actually won it, but that we sold the thing to pay for the next 25 trips to Largs."

I.D. Smith

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on June 10, 2020, 06:03:28 PM
"Of course, he never knew that he actually won it, but that we sold the thing to pay for the next 25 trips to Largs."

Hahaha, to be fair I wouldn't blame them: my plan if I won it was to put it in the kitchen, for some reason.

petercussing

Quote from: I.D. Smith on June 10, 2020, 05:45:50 PM

Whenever I was at the arcades, either at Largs or any others we happened to visit, I was always on the lookout for the WWF Wrestlefest arcade cabinet. I was besotted with that one, and would've killed to have it in my house. Even now, nearly 30 years later, I still get a frisson of excitement when I see those big, chunky, colourful characters. I even convinced my parents to let me phone one of those rip off competition phone lines you get at the back of the magazines, which gave you the "chance" to win the cabinet if you simply just phoned this number and answered one question, all the while being charged a rate of 30 quid a millisecond. Never did win it and my parents never told me what the phone bill actually was.

The WWF arcade's chunked up wrestlers were indeed amazing. That, Simpsons arcade and the Avengers game were all sit down, giant screen versions at Rotunda, which were the nuts and made the WWF dudes look huge.

I remember Your Sinclair or S.U. having comps to win both cabal and dynamite dux and entering, then being convinced i was going to win them for some reason. I dunno where i'd have put them either, my folks would have been highly bemused, or we would have been off to Largs.

We had two actual, small arcades in our town but they had lots of fruities in them and you'd be immediately turfed out my the mean staff if you tried to go in and play a game, which we did a few times. Why do that to kids? Have two different bits, rather than temp them so! Odd though as Rotunda had loads of fruities but you never got turfed out of there and you could have a go on them and do some gambling.

Hux- That's sounds like a dream chippy. The SF 2 cabinet got rinsed by all the kids after school when i was a tad older and ended up with a similar situation. Raj's expanded into the house next door and got a video rental bit and SF2 was there, out of sight of the owner. I think they ended up getting rid of it in similar circumstances to yours.

Cuntbeaks

Arcades were an addiction for me, every day out would simply be a chance to find new arcades or revisit ones i already knew.

Largs was indeed the Las Vegas of the West of Scotland. No less than three arcades within 100 yards of each other, each having it's own reason to exist. The Big Cumbrae was absolutely enormous and could house a lot of the bigger cabinets. As well as a good selection of pinball tables.

I had the ability to 'flick' the Bally Midway cabinets, the ones with no black lid on the coin return. If it had a 50p slot, i could get 6 credits for 2p. This meant that not a lot of money could last a long time, although you were restricted to just those machines. Usual suspects were Tron, Spy Hunter, Space Invaders, all Pac Man variants and Galaxians. The best thing was when these cabinets were repurposed and housed other non Bally Midway games. It was like panning for gold as you hunted through new arcades.

When I went to Blackpool in 1986, aged 14, it was like landing in the Promised Land. The sheer amount of arcades was overwhelming and some of them where enormous. It took days to get round all of them, but i did. Finding a flickable Space Ace was probably the high water mark.

All this misspent time resulted in me being able to complete Chase HQ and Robocop with one 10p, which was quite the thrill. I can still hear the booming SFX of games like Gauntlet, 720, Marble Madness, Robotron, Star Wars and Space Harrier. The cocophany they created was like a drug.

I recently bought a 3A Pandora's Box 6 and currently have about 2,700 games on it. A lot of duplicates and a LOT of absolutely terrible games and it's definitely a better experience with two of you. Found some great games i had completely forgotten about including this 1942 style game where you collect smaller red drone planes that surround you and you can change their formation. Can't remember the name though.

Back in the day the idea that you could have a console that housed nearly 3,000 arcade games at home was little more than crazy talk.


Cold Meat Platter

Quote from: Cuntbeaks on June 14, 2020, 12:27:17 PM
Back in the day the idea that you could have a console that housed nearly 3,000 arcade games at home was little more than crazy talk.

And store them on a wee thing the size of your pinky nail along with every Commodore 64 game, Spectrum game etc.
Jimmy Hill would be invoked instantly.