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How Many Different Places Did You Play Arcade Games?
captainpotato:
Ah, yes, I remember Downtown on Hindley Street here in Adelaide. Garish, tacky, but it was the quintessential 1980s arcade. Roller skating, skeetball, but for me it was the maachines - even if trying to get money from my parents was like getting blood out of a stone. When I had my own money, Downtown was gone, but there was Timezone with its all-night lock-ins.
I remember the first place I played Gauntlet - the Woodville Bowl in mid-1985, and coming back from there racing along with mates in shopping trolleys.
Then there was the Ice Arena where I played Barttlezone for the first time when I had a broken finger and couldn't go ice skating at my friend's Adrian Head's ninth birthday party.
Or even playing Galaxian on the cocktail cabinet at Happy Valley shopping centre - and being really crap at it, but better than my brother ;)
If I weren't in front of my ancient Libretto, I may even dig up a Google map to show you all :)
Mark70:
I was a rural canadian boy, so I was addicted to video games by my father who generously supplied us with a C64, a TRS 80, a MAC 10, and a console called the Oddesssy. My first recallection of playing an "arcade" game was when I was about 7 or 8 years old at a ski resort in Mad River Glenn Vermont. We would stay there for a week every year. We became friends with a ski racer working as a waiter (well I'm sure we were just little kids bugging a teenager) and he used to do a little dance to the opening music of scramble, a machine that they had in the games room of the resort. I spent my time growing up in Peterborough Ontario, Canada where, as highschool kids we would drive in to the local pool hall called Papas Billiards (It's acutally a name pronounced PAP-ASS, but everyone calles it Papa's). There I played just about everything. The rotated machines frequently. I remember spending about six dollars palying Superman one time. They always has a version of 1942, and they always had at least one fighter, usually a street fighter.
The next haunt was one location of an arcade chain called Mr. Arcade. Again they had a place with easily 40 or more machines in it which rotated frequently.
And lastly, I worked at a go cart track (which in retrospect was the best job I ever had) where we played a lot of pinball. We used to play with the manager when it was slow. Addams Family was the first, then they got Go Fish (or something), and after that was Star Trek TTNG. We'd play if we showed up early for work, stay after and play, play when it was slow. It was a great job. Especially the year that I turned 19 (legal drinking age in Ontario). I guess the reason I remember that student job as great was because my other student job was hot asphalt roofing, which was not nearly as much fun.
Sensei Fu:
Even in my small suburb there were several places to play video games.
I played mostly at the bowling alley (which was only about .5 miles away) and at an arcade/pizza parlor a few miles away.
Occasionally, my parents would take us to Putt Putts (which had a TON) of games and I would freak out for awhile. It was the only local place which had multiple copies of the same game and I thought it was heaven.
God I miss the old days.
saint:
My first arcade game was either at a kegel-bowling alley in Germany (the pins are on strings and get pulled back up instead of sweeped into the back like here in the US) -- a cocktail Space Invaders, or at an arcade in Italy, game unremembered. I was instantly hooked, of course. I was somewhere around 8 or 9 years old.
--- saint
F1r3f1ght3r:
First game memories....
cops n' robbers
starship I
sea wolf
don't remember which was where but I seem to recall that these were at bowling alleys... mom spent ALOT of time bowling... all over the state.
other places I dropped coin at:
skateland
and some other skating rink in lincoln.
coolcreast
gateway mall arcade
pontellos <sp> pizza
Jack and jill grocery in belmont
National guard armory and the PX at the lincoln airfield.... PX at offut air base in bellevue. mom was in the guard...
couple of arcades in downtown lincoln that I can't remember the names of.
slugo's
hugos
wc franks
among others.....