Your Old Arcade Spot - Then and Now

[DefJam]

Memories.......

I grew up in Montgomerville, PA...and enjoyed the arcade boom..

Fond memories of quite a few arcades....listed in decending order of favorites....

1. Space Port - Montgomerville Mall - It was great for many reasons.... place looked great, they always seemed to have great games... new stuff constantly coming in and going out...  I still remember a radio station promotion where they had like 20 sega star trek vector machines there...  Anyhow, if you for some reason havent seen the training video on youtube you MUST go watch that video... google spaceport training video.  The pictures from the filmstrip were all taken at the montgomeryville mall spaceport from what i can tell and I received many quarters from the guys in that film.  the mall is still there, the arcade is not..... it was a time out arcade for a bit (which I think is the same owner as spaceport, but not sure).  First place I saw many machines including Quantom.

2.  Saturn V -  in a strip mall next to the lansdale bowling alley.....  GREAT place.... basically pitch black inside except really cool planets /space stuff on the wallls.  it was the first place I ever played Donkey Kong and Space Fury.  Arcade skewed a bit older.

3.  Odyssey Land - on Rt. 309.  It was open til at least midnight from what I recall.....   had some cool games.  I think there is a verizon store there now.

4.  Supercade - Plymoth Meeting Mall - great arcade as it was BIG, lots of games... sot they tended to have  a nice blend of the old and new....

5.  Hatfield arcade:  Maybe 10 games, great guy watching the store who would play chess with me.... usually let me go to the bank to get him change as well....  best man ever for me on Donkey Kong was there....  got to the 3rd elevators, and then lost everyone one of my men....  Easy to bike to so I was there often.

6. Honorable mentions....  7 eleven, laundramats, restaurants, etc...  also I would like to say that the Jersey shore had some incredible arcades on and off the boardwalks...I just have no idea what the name of them is anymore.... there was one in wildwood that i found a few blocks from the beach that was just incredible cause it was so big and had so much of the older stuff... i.e. that machine shaped like jaws, the look through the scope and shoot the submarine games, etc...

But SpacePort will always be #1.  Just too many memories in that place (and spent even more quarters)

[robertsig]

Mine was a placed called Mitsukoshi in Hawaii on Oahu.  They had everything on an entire floor.  I think it's all shops now, but I no longer live in Hawaii.

[stu33]

I had the greatest setup ever as a kid.  I grew up in a tiny tiny place in Northern New York.  My little town might have had 150 people, tops, but during the summer, being right on Lake Ontario, the place went crazy with tourists (and made for great summers in my teens...the rich touristy teenage girls looking for a summer fling...good times).  On the main street of the little town (Three Mile Bay, and I'd be surprised if anyone recognized that name) my grandfather owned two houses next door to one another.  One he lived in, the other one went through various incarnations.  Antique store, my family's house, antique store again...and then...VIDEO ARCADE.  My uncle ran it.  It had Atari Football, Battlezone, Burgertime (my favorite), a pin that I can't remember what it was, I think it had a motorcycle motif, a juke, Asteroids and Omega Race.  I'd go in, he'd give me as many quarters as I could handle, and I would kill hours there.  Battlezone and Burgertime were my games, although I did play quite a bit of Omega Race too.

Man, that was awesome.  Since then it's been torn down and single-wide trailer is there, I think.

I'd bug with my uncle or grandfather, they'd give me a ton of quarters, I'd go fire up Electric Avenue on the juke, and play.  I was encouraged to bring all the friends I could, as long as I didn't give them any of the quarters!

[boardjunkie]

Aaahhhhh the gool ol' days. My favorite place back in 1981 was in a small town (Durand, Mi) called the Nickelodeon. It was a pizza/ice cream shop up front and had a fairly large (and dark) gameroom in the back. Games all around the outside perimeter, and an inner "square" row. Played alotta Pacman, space invaders, battlezone, defender, galaxian, etc. I remember Qix had just hit the streets and I didn't know what to make of it. Older college age kids played it, it didn't look interesting to me. I missed out.....shoulda gave it a try. Anyway.....that place ruled. Always had the latest and greatest games, and Sundays was 12 tokens for 1$.

There was the Galaxy arcade in Owosso, mi. That place was more the seedy hangout and I never spent much time there.

Another place was set up in a former laundromat, I forget what they called it (if anything). Lotsa games (it was pretty big), but they often had problems which I felt compelled to report. I think at that time the seed was planted in my head to get into the game servicing racket.....

The local "Giantway" store (early incarnation of the wally world type place with grocery store in one half and depratment store in the other) always had 3 or so games in the lobby area. Remember play'n Asteroids, Vanguard, and Phoenix there frequently as it was just a few miles away and I could ride my bike there. I befreinded the guy who ran the record department there (hi Mitch wherever you are ) and remember going there to get a copy of Rush's "Moving Pictures" the day it came out. They had Electronic Games mag on the shelf there, so I always made sure to pick up the latest issue of that while I was there. Next door to that was a drugstore where I played Berzerk and Kickman alot.

Good times.....back in the "boom years" you couldn't go anywhere without finding at least one game....

[Silas (son of Silas)]

I don't know what happened to my most regular haunts, but I could take a wild guess. I haven't been back to anywhere in the US where I spent time as a kid for about 7-10 years.

The arcade I played most as a kid was in the Florida Mall. I used to pump every damn penny I had into that place.

The arcade related places I think about most are from a road trip I took back in '96. I drove an RV in a big zigzag across the US from San Francisco to Orlando over 3 months. For me all the little middle of nowhere RV parks that had frozen in time. That was the last time I ever played on a real Ms. Pacman, Joust, Pole Position, Double Dragon to name but a few. I always wonder what the names of those little nowhere towns were and whatever happened to all those machines still earning their keep after so many years.