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| markrvp:
This is my 2000th post, and in celebration I thought I would reminisce with you guys about where I used to play arcade games in the 80s. Here is a Google satellite map that shows the area around my house where I use to ride my bike to go play videogames. Click on the image to make it larger (It's 800 pixels wide). My House - designated by the red star Arcade 1983 - This is the log cabin arcade that lasted a year. Mostly bootleg clones. Dairy Queen: Space Invaders, Galaxian, Gorf, Moon Cresta Convenience Store: Pacman, Scramble, Joust, PunchOut Kwik Stop: I would ride all the way up here to enjoy the magic of DRAGON'S LAIR Tacon Inn: I put probably $100 in a Donkey Kong machine here. I still buy soft drinks there daily. 1st Arcade: This place was great. It introduced me to Defender, Stargate, Crazy Climber, Astro Blaster, and many others. I wasn't allowed to go there, so I would have to be sneaky and park my bicycle in back in case my parents drove by. Not pictured: Pizza Inn. This place was too far to ride my bike, so my mom would take me there once a week. This is where I played the Pacman cocktail (which I recently restored one for my home) and was introduced to many of the new great games like Asteroids, Tempest, Rally X, Super Sprint, Warlords, Tron, Missile Command, and many others. There was a place in Fort Worth about 40 minutes away called Crystal's Pizza. It was a beautiful place that looked like a 1920s grand ballroom. They had a grand piano that an old guy played just beautifully. In the back was a small movie theater where they played Three Stooges films and Warner Brothers cartoons. The theater had stadium seating with tables so you could eat your pizza while eating (this was before projection TVs and widely available VCRs). I played my very first videogame here which was a sitdown version of BOOT HILL. Boy was that a thrill. This place added a ton of videogames as they came out. I remember specifically that Crystals was the place where I first played Centipede, Moon Patrol, Ms Pacman, Dig Dug, Mr. Do, and Frogger as well as many others. I could rarely get my parents to take me to Chuck E. Cheese, but I distinctly remember playing MouseTrap there. There were also two malls in Fort Worth each with their own arcades. It was in these magical places that I was introduced to such greats as Star Wars, Q-Bert, Battlezone, Time Pilot, Xevious, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I got caught playing arcade games when I wasn't supposed to more than once. Arcade games were an early addiction for me and I got in trouble one time for taking $10 out of the studio cash box to play games. Another time I skipped choir practice to go play Pacman at the convenience store. One night when my parents were out photographing a job, I went up to Dairy Queen (when I should have been home) and my parents saw me in the window driving home. I was sitting down playing Moon Cresta when I looked out the window to see my dad loading my bicycle into his car. I got grounded for two weeks and even missed our school's Halloween Carnival (which was a huge deal and I still resent it to this day). |
| mccoy178:
Excellent work! You've put a little time into this. :o All I can remember is our county fair once a year and Pizza Hut. I grew up in the late 80's and early 90's, so I was a part of the SF and MK uprising. I also really really wish I had an air hockey table. Man that was fun. |
| APFelon:
I'm not even clost to 2,000 posts, but I think I'll join the chorus. The first arcade I remeber was the Picadilly Circus at Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. It closed down around 1983 because it attracted a "bad element" (zoom foreward 20 years and the mall is a friggin' dump even without an arcade). I remember playing Depth Charge there with my grandpa who served on a destroyer during WW2 after eating at Brother's Restaraunt. He said it was just like being on a destroyer (an exaggeration, I know... but hey, it was kind of neat to hear anyway). It was a typical arcade... dark and crammed full of games (my mother would let me hang out there while she shopped until she saw the T.V. movie "Adam" about a kid who gets kidnapped out of a Sears). I remember playing Kangaroo there as well. I saw Gorf for the first time at that location. Some big kids were playing it, and I was watching for about two minutes when the big kid playing turned around and said "get lost, kid. I fugging mean it" (or something that sounds like "fugging". I played Dig Dug for the first time at Showbiz Pizza Place. While playing, some bigger kids were taunting me while I was learning the game. Fygar got me with his dragon breath, and one of the kids yelled "flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!" (you'd have to hear it to get the full flavor of the interjection). Now when I play Dig Dug with pals, I shout "Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!" Of course, there was Circus Pizza in Brooklyn Park. They had EVERYTHING there... and I mean EVERYTHING. Stuff that is rare as bull titties nowadays... they had. I remeber squaring off with my father in Warrior, shoveling ~20.00 in Fantasy (no comments, please) , I remember them hauling in a Rad Baron cockpit which sat next to the Missle Command, Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger, Bega's Battle and Thayer's Quest for lazer disc games, Front Line, Krull, Reactor, Gravatar, Journey, and Elevator Action all sitting next to each other inthe row bythe restaraunt, etc. I remember the hordes of people who stood around Karate Champ when that game was new and never being able to get close to the Double Dragon machine. I went to Chuck E. Cheese (back when they had "violent" video games) and playing Frisky Tom. I was about 12, and a female CEC employee came over and told me how good I was at the game. I felt like a king until I worked for the rat 15 years later as a service tech and learned that CEC employees were supposed to interact with and compliment guests. There went THAT childhood memory. APf |
| PoDunkMoFo:
Ahhh the good ol' days..... I am from a small town that I know no one around here has probably heard of (Gustine) but I remember crankin on down to the local bowling alley to play Donkey Kong. All the way across town (1.5 to 2 miles) was a little convenience store where I was introduced to QBert and Zaxxon. I remember trips to Modesto where we would be left at TILT the mall arcade. This place was the sheite back in the day. DigDug, Tempest, Congo Bongo.... the memories are flooding back now :'( Wipes away a tiny tear :-\ I can remember a couple of trips when I was a little older (12 or so) to Circus Circus in Reno. First time I saw or played Discs of Tron Environmental, loved that game. Also remember lines of people crowded around Punch Out. I just don't think the young pups around here can possibly imagine what it was like to grow up in that era. Gameplay was king. When you saw something like Dragons Lair or DOT you thought man this is as good as it can possibly get. OK enough sentimentality for one night. |
| odysseyroc:
Seems like you couldn't walk into a building in 80's without playing a video game. The liquor store around the block from my house had Centipede and Frogger. The friends I used to walk home from elementary school with would stop there, buy a soda and play games with what little money we had. Occasionally high school kids would be there playing and we would stand in awe of their awesomeness. Across the street from the Liquor store was a 7-11, they had (at one time or another) Gauntlet, Mat Mania and Kick. I always wanted to play Kick, but was too short to see the screen. It seemed like the CP was about 5 feet high at the time. There was also a doughnut shop next door to it that had Contra and some other game that I want to say was Mr. Do. Disney land arcade was the first place I ever saw Dragon's Lair and is to this day the only place I've ever seen Nintendo's Arm-Wresting. In Gardena we had Ted's arcade. It was a tiny building that I want to say was maybe 15"x30". I remember falling in love with Yie Ar Kung Fu there. That was a big hangout when I was in Jr. High. Right next door was Teds Burgers, nothing better than chowing down on a burger combo and playing some video games. Some of the shadier kids figured out that they could photo copy dollar bills and use them in the change machine. Other arcades in the area were Aladin's Castle in the Del Amo mall, the arcade at old town mall, the Underground arcade at the Redondo Beach pier, Malibu Castle and the grand daddy of them all the Redondo Beach Fun center on the other side of the pier. The fun center had a tilt o' whirl at it's center and a bunch of carnival type games. Malibu Castle was a big place to play Cyberball and later Street Fighter 2. Bowling alleys and pizza parlors were the best places for gaming. We had Missile Bowl, Gardena Bowl, South Bay Bowl, Bowl-O-Drome, Shakeys Pizza, Pizza Hut, Straw Hat Pizza and of course Chuck E Cheese. Every where you went you were asking your mom for a quarter to play a game. Grocery Stores, Restaurants, Movie Theaters. It was a great time to be a kid. |
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