The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: TJCOMBO on August 23, 2012, 06:34:22 pm
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Bring back those old memories. I want to hear them! :applaud:
Where were some of the places you'd like to frequent to play arcade games. I have been to a number of them: in pizza places, bowling alleys, amusement parks, casinos, gas stations, museums, bars, man caves - they were everywhere back in the day. For me it would have to be two. St Louis had an arcade museum featuring everything from Pong, Berserk, all the Pacmans, crazy climber, Jungle Hunt, Cloak and Dagger, Night Driver, Mr Do, Qbert, and a whole lot of others. Looks like they closed down there doors years ago. This was back in the early nineties and I was 13 and still appreciated them. Then there was a summer camp that had vector games, asteroids, millipede, all the pacmans including baby pacman! Kick man! Popeye, qbert, and some oddities I can't recall
Also had to mention Reno NV had some of the best arcades. One at the Pepper mill and one at Harvey's
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Tough but I go with:
#1 Donkey Kong
#2 Pac-Man
#3 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Oh you said Favorite Arcades... I'm an idiot.
:P I never really had anyone in particular that I hung around. Just went to pretty random places.
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There is a bar in Dallas that is called Barcade with lots of oldies. Really cool. The worst is Dave & Busters. Went there last week and they had a loner Namco multicade with a LCD screen in the back corner amid driving games, shooting games and DDR. Lol.
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Tough but I go with:
#1 Donkey Kong
#2 Pac-Man
#3 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Oh you said Favorite Arcades... I'm an idiot.
:P I never really had anyone in particular that I hung around. Just went to pretty random places.
Random is what is good. Like the Pizza Hut with 720 degrees in Cali back in late eighties was gnarly.
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House of Dead 2 ;D
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I love the Fun Spot, I haven't been there in a few months so thats in the past.
But when I was a kid in the 80's and early 90's, we use to hang out at a mall in Milford Ct. The arcade there was called Fun Factory.
It was a pretty decent but somewhat small arcade. It was decently dark with some lighting effects. it only had video games and pinballs. No space was wasted on kids redemption games.
I remember going in there with my sister once after Dragon's Lair had just come out. Man I was amazed at the crowd of kids around that game, they had a tv on top of the machine so everyone could see the game play.
Located right outside of the arcade was this kinda long dark outdoor corridor that lead up to the Caldor. As teens, we would all kinda hang out there and smoke and what not. I'm not surprised that a lot of shoppers didn't enter the mall through that entrance.
We also had an arcade called Savin Rock which was kinda cool with lots of video games and pinballs but it kinda sucked because the building had all these windows so it was pretty bright in there.
Of course we also had plenty of corner stores and they all were rocking some kind of games. I still remember quite well when the store around the corner from my house got Crazy Kong.
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jejeje i loved Snow bros i was 4 back in 1991
best game ever
Toki,Condillacs & dinosaurs and golden axe
were cool
i was too young to play street fighter
i only was able to kill blanca (first character jejeje)
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ShowBiz Pizza Place - I had quite a few birthday parties at Showbiz Pizza. I was pretty young and I remember avoiding a lot of the arcade games because of the steep learning curve and a quick loss of tokens. I stuck to pinball and a lot of the ticket redemption games like skee ball. After Showbiz Pizza went through "Concept Unification" with Chuck E. Cheese things just weren't the same. Maybe it's because I had gotten older but I just didn't enjoy Chuck E. Cheese as much as I loved Showbiz Pizza.
Aladdin's Castle - Continuing with my video game birthday theme my Mom discovered that my local Aladdin's Castle would do birthday lock-ins. They'd shut the doors and set all the games to free play. It was awesome. By this point I was older and really enjoying the more "complex" video games. Around this time period I would say Rampage was one of my favorite games. I always played as the Werewolf. I had three birthday parties at Aladdin's Castle before they closed up shop. I've been meaning to dig through my family photos and post some pics of the Pac-Man cakes my Mom would make each year.
Oddly enough I had actually come to post this and I figure that this thread would be as good as any:
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/2899/img001copy.jpg)
Sadly Aladdin's Castle shutdown. It probably had a lot to do with a video game store that opened up a few feet away that had 10 Nintendo Kiosks set up on unlimited free play.
Tilt - A year or so after Aladdin's Castle shutdown it was replaced with a Tilt on the opposite end of the mall. It was "the answer" to home consoles. I remember it being very bright, with neon lights, and the cheapest game was fifty-cents. Lots of high-end games that could not be reproduced at home. I still remember the thrill I got when I saw Time Traveler for the first time. Sadly they didn't do birthday parties.
These days I like to get my gaming/pinball fix at the local bowling alley.
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Where I grew up we didn't have any true "arcades" nearby, unless you count a pizza joint that had about 3-4 machines plus a couple pinballs. When I was a teenager, a couple places opened up and instantly became hang-outs. I can remember even while going to college and having a part-time job I would drop far too much money in one afternoon/evening in those places.
Good times, good times...
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Probably the arcade at Miracle Strip Amusement Park (RIP, 2004), followed by Fun Land (still around, but mostly modern games now) down the beach from it. Miracle Strip had damn near everything back in its day.
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There's a small resort town called Geneva-on-the-Lake located along the Lake Erie coast in Geneva, OH. Along the main strip there are four arcades that have been running for about 30 years or so. Of these, my two favorites had always been Woody's World and Sport Center. Both always had most of the popular and classic upright cabinets, but what set them apart from each other was Woody's World had more pinball machines while Sport Center had more skee ball and other games of skill and such. The other arcades were either small and crowded with half the floor space devoted to billiards, or struggled to keep games operational.
Last time I went up there was this summer with the wife and kids. It was pretty sad. Either it doesn't live up to its former heyday, or it just doesn't live up to my recollection of its former heyday. I didn't find anything I wanted to spend time and quarters playing. It seems like the skee balls and some dopey boxing simulator is all that remains of Sport Center. No "classics" anywhere to be found.
I wept the whole way home and gave my MAME cab a hug.
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Fave arcade was "The Sting" in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Close to the transit (was back in the high school years), always had awesome tunes blasting out of the juke box, and the crowd always contained a good number of members of the opposite sex. Sigh... those were the days... back when you could impress that girl you were interested in with how bad you could whoop the other guy at whatever game you were playing (be it pinball, arcade, or pool).
Wasn't the cleanest or most presentable place in town, but that was also part of the appeal; on Friday/Saturday nights you could always find somewhere there getting baked before they head off to a party.
Man... we spent years going to that place, even after it changed hands a few times.
Lol... thinking back on it, Sunday mornings were also a good time... crowds of Italian dads would descend upon the arcade with their kids to try and show off and be macho, and we'd kill 'em at pool. "Sunday morning pool" helped pay my rent for many months, playing double-or-nothing against those guys.
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Connecticut: Vernon Game Room (still standing AFAIK), and the Manchester Arcade (long gone and forgotten). I grew up at Manchester...used to do BMX tricks out front for money. Throw the hat down and change would be thrown in there. This was '81 -'85ish.
Vernon is still there with pitch and putt golf, mini-golf, go carts and a gameroom. Haven't been there in 20 years since I moved to Ga.
AJ
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Unfortunately I never got to experience a large arcade as a kid. The local Pizza Inn is where I got to first experience the awesomeness of TMNT, so I go with that..
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Out local mall had a Space Port and a Tilt.
Space Port was way cooler and so I wound up going there most of the time.
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Just about any decent amusement park arcade. They never seem to retire the games, just add more. I was at Cedar Point a number of years ago, and the arcade was jaw dropping. Not because it was particularly great for atmosphere, but seeing everything from late 60's to current games in a massive room full, in good, playable condition was astounding. Arcade and museum wrapped up in one.
But the best one that was close to where I grew up was Aladin's Castle. I got to be inside the place when they were building it, as my dad is a sign painter and got the contract to do interior signage for the whole place. My job was to paint graffiti on the fake buildings they had inside as part of the decor. ;D
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Wow, great stuff. I have a few places that have really contributed to getting me to the state of arcade addiction I am today.
Aladdin's Castle at the local mall: Skee-ball against the back wall, lines of kids waiting for a shot at Dragon's lair, STUN runner for what seemed like hours, playing through Simpsons with 3 other kids I've never seen before or since but was best friends with for about 45 minutes. Putting my token up on the marquee of Time Killers and KI.
Skateland: They had a Crystal Castles that I used to dominate and a SW cockpit in which I felt my first boob! She may have been introduced me to tongue kissing in that machine as well, can't remember.
Some hotel in Hawaii: I was 9, there was a Superman in a corner of the lobby by the guest laundry room. It rained one day and I dumped every quarter I could scrounge outta my mom into that machine.
Bowl-o-rama: Dad used to take my delinquent brother and I there every Sunday. There was a smokey Ninja Gaiden in one corner by the air hockey and I would play a few levels every time we went there. When I built my first MAME machine back forever ago the game it was built for was Ninja Gaiden. Everything else was gravy. In some form or fashion a lot of my happiest childhood memories seem to have an arcade machine in the background.
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I loved the seedy bars and gas stations that had a dusty Shinobi, Dig Dug or cocktail with galaga and ms pacman.
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There was a place a block away from me that I spent WAY to much time in. Wunderland Nickel Palace. You'd pay an admission fee and get a wristband that was good for the day. All the machines were wired to run on nickels. They made their money on the overpriced snack-bar. The awesome thing was this arcade was next door to a $1 movie theater.
We hit the arcade in the morning and get our wristbands and then bounce between the arcade and the theater. You could spend an entire day, morning till night on $15. LOVED that place.
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Contemporary Resort Hotel game room in Disney World. My God, a whole floor full of every arcade game and pinball machine known to mankind. I would save up allowance for weeks and weeks before vacation....all for that arcade.
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There was a law office in Channelview, TX (on Woodforest for those in the area) that closed and someone turned it into an arcade in 1984. It was cool to go into each room of the building and see what games they had. I liked it better than a wide open standard arcade, though the hall would get kinda cluttered at times.
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Schwegmann's super market! My Dad would get $3 in quarters every Friday, and while Mom shopped we would pwn! Started with Track and Field. Then they brought in Spy Hunter, Popeye, Xevious, Tron... Ahh those were the days! Also had Shinobi, and Altered Beast at Marty Mart. Asteroids, Journey, Saint Dragon and Street Fighter II at Mid City Rock N Bowl throughout the years. Oh.. and CROSSBOW!!! One of my favs back in the day! Don Carter All Star Lanes had some favs, Dragon's lair, Discs of Tron, Gauntlet. Time Pilot was in there somewhere too, as well as the Pac man series. My parents bowled a lot when I was a kid, and I spent most of my time and grass cutting loot in the arcade section!
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As a kid in Fayettevile, NC, Putt-Putt ruled. I poured so much money into Dragon's Lair and Crossbow. Also, on Saturday morning form 9a to 1p, it was "Super Saturday", all the Golf, Games you wanted plus hot dog lunch for ~$8.00
The Mall in Roanoke Rapids, NC used to have an arcade themed as a old west mine called The Gold Mine. It had wooden support beams up the walls and across the ceiling an the wall scones looked like torches. One of the reasons I really liked visiting my Grandmother.
Yay for the 80's
-ceburto2
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The arcade that my friends and I hung out in the 80's and early 90's was Circus Circus in Brooklyn Park, MN.
I recall taking my report card to the redemption counter and being able to get something like 1 token for a C, 2 for a B, and 3 for A's. For a kid without money to play games, it was a big deal when report cards came around.
I think Chuck E. Cheese bought the place out in the 90's before closing it. The strip mall that it was located in is now gone.
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Time OUT in the Massepequa NY "Sunrise Mall" Best spot hands Down back in the 80's
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I'm in Indiana but my Dad's side of the family is in New Brunswick, Canada... every summer we would make the two day drive (we'd stop in Syracuse, NY) and the 2-3 games at each travel center along the way made the drive bearable in a world before gameboys and in-car DVDs. Unfortunately, no real arcades around my area growing up.
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Where at in Indiana?
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Where at in Indiana?
Currently in the far northwest, but grew up just outside of Kokomo in central IN.
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Skateland: They had a Crystal Castles that I used to dominate and a SW cockpit in which I felt my first boob! She may have been introduced me to tongue kissing in that machine as well, can't remember.
Sweet! I remember you mentioning this.
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I've mentioned it before, but my favorite arcade is still around!
http://www.castlesncoasters.com/ (http://www.castlesncoasters.com/)
It's nice to have a place to go to.
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Bigfoots arcade in ft. lauderdale florida was where I used to go.. Im sure they are closed down now but I found a bigfoots token on ebay.. I had to buy it. It sits on my MK2 arcade now.. memories
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I worked at Space Plex on Long Island, NY. It was a pretty cool arcade that became famous for the Katie Beers kidnapping. I miss that place.
In my earlier years, I loved the arcade in the Emporia Carousel in Monterey, California.
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Plus one on the skating rink and Tilt those were big parts of my childhood...
But I put a lot of quarters away at the local gas station that featured Ghosts N' Goblins and Golden Axe amongst various others through the years.
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There was a small place in Carmel Indiana that had about 8 pinballs a Space invaders and a Night driver. I would spend all my time on Invaders and Spirit of 76 Pinball. Then it got to a point where you would walk in and a pin was gone and there would be a Galaxian or an Asteroids in it's place.It was a really great time and then 2 arcades opened up near by, Porky's and Jungle Jims. 3 arcades in easy bike/moped distance. Porky's ended up being the place I liked the best they had all the latest and greatest machines,T shirts for hi scores ,You could smoke there and someone would get busted for drugs every now and then so of course my parents banned me from going there but that just fueled the fire. >:D
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Forgot about the skating places. Skate Fantasy in Manchester, Ct. where I gut my teeth on Donky Kong. They had Pacs and a couple of pins. Probably 15 machines in all.
Skate Palace East in East Hartford is where I discovered Bubble Bobble.
Then, there's where we used to ride BMX...Rt. 5 BMX in S. Windsor Ct. Just a couple of machines, but the most important was Exitebike and USA hockey.
Man, what fun.
AJ
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Haven't posted here in a long time, just lurk now and then but I figured I'd chime in for once... So many games over the years, I grew up in the arcades so my favorite game just depended on the decade I suppose... :)
Arcades... Aladin's Castle in Visalia, CA and Gold Mine in Redding, CA were the most memorable... There was another in Carpenteria, CA that I frequented but can't remember the name but hung out after school almost every day (yes, lived up and down CA)...
Some of the games I can remember dropping a lot of coins in... Donkey Kong/Donkey Kong Jr., Tempest, Gyruss, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Dragon's Lair/Space Ace (never got to play Dragon's Lair II until Daphne), and then all the different iterations of Street Fighter.
Now I'm old and live in Sacramento, and no real arcades here anymore... Tried gaming at Golfland Sunsplash, but the games were in a shameful state of disrepair...
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Crystal Palace in Brookgate shopping center (Cleveland area)
I still remember my most played :
Bump n Jump
Defender
Mad Planets
Mystic Marathon
Journey
Mario Bros
Food Fight
Rastan
Black Tiger
Star Trek sit down
Sinistar sit down
Congo Bongo
Pac / Ms. Pac
and that plastic domed foos-hockey game that was popular for a bit
plus MTV on a big projection screen
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Golf N Stuff, Norwalk, California
Cerritos Mall Sega Center, Cerritos, California
Bobo's Arcade Downey California
Redondo Beach Arcade (downstairs by the marina) Torrance California
Disneyland Hotel Arcade, Anaheim California
The Roaring 20s Arcade at Knotts Berry Farm, Buena Park, California
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While I never really had a HotSpot that I visited frequently. My biggest arcade memory was at a Cheap Skate roller rink. It was memorable because It was a school field trip where I was supposed to skate. Ended up spending 80 percent of the time there playing The Simpsons arcade game. ;o
Another memory was walking with my cousins to a local K-Mart getting an ICEE and playing Street Fighter 2 until I was out of quarters. Which was usually just a couple dollars then lol.
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What about yer 7-11s? Mine had Moon Patrol and Spy Hunter. The entire reason for building my cab was:
1.) Vs. Exitebike
2.) Donkey Kong
3.) Moon Patrol
4.) Bubble Bobble
5.) Galaga
6.) Ms. PacMan
AJ
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there was a pizza place on the way home from school. They had Ms PacMan, Galaga and Track & Field. It was a daily stop.
the 7-11, only had one game, it was commando.
When we went to Springfield, MO, the alladin's castle there was awesome. I loved playing temple of doom at that arcade. I mostly remember playing USA vs Russia superchex hockey (for some reason I loved being the commies). Also played a lot of punch-out.
Last but not least, the "Gold Mine" in Norman, OK. really good arcade for the time and size. Time traveller even made stop there. It's where I spent most of high school playing SF2.
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My favorite "quickee mart" had an Astro Blaster. Played the hell out of that one. The bowling alley had a Space Wars, and the roller rink had a Moncaco GP cabaret. Wish I had both of those games today.
My hometown only had one real arcade, it was owned by a guy who later became a dog track gambling magnate, and recently beat two federal indictments for bribing legislators.
It was an odd town...
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Can we start an awkward arcade moments thread? Here's a few from me:
On vacation at Virginia Beach, hiked what seemed to be miles to a little arcade. I liked going slow in Paperboy, but some older kids bullied me into going faster. I did out of peer pressure and crashed, got mad at them for wasting my quarter :(
North NJ mall(my favorite spot) - asking an older kid how to do a Hadouken and him telling me to practice and figure it out myself. Jerk!!
Same place as above - hot girl watching Smash TV, me gets caught looking at her, she whispers into her boyfriends ear. Me running away.
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My uncle owned one in Three Mile Bay, NY in early 80s...didn't have a chance with the population of 200 in that town. He had a BattleZone, BurgerTime, Omega Race (upright), Pac and Ms. Pac, Asteroids Deluxe, some solid-state pin with a motorcycle on the side, I think, a juke and the giant atari football with the trackballs. As long as I brought friends, I got all the quarters I wanted.
The P+C supermarket in Watertown had a Choplifter and a Roadblasters for awhile, and the Salmon Run Mall in Watertown had an arcade that was pretty much skee-ball, 5 street fighter cabs, and redemption stuff. The Ames (Zayre's previously) had a Spy Hunter. And the gas station in Chaumont had a Time Pilot.
Northern NY didn't have much arcade-y goodness after my uncle closed up.
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Was pretty spoiled over my years.
I remember the Mac’s corner store about two blocks from my house had a dragon’s lair for a while and after that they had a Sega time machine.
Though the years between this Mac’s corner store and me being older I don’t specifically remember too many arcades.
There was a couple 1943 shooter games on the ferry we used to take to visit my grandma.
They had a pretty awesome arcade at the paramount theater not far from my house but I more specifically remember the batman pinball game.
I grew up in Vancouver being so close to the border I went to the larger arcade in Seattle when it first opened called gameworkz.
Moved to Edmonton later on and Being older I was quite spoiled living in Edmonton, my local mall had an arcade, had an off-road machine, marvel vs. street fighter, had the six player x-men, As well west Edmonton mall at the time just opened playdium, they didn’t last to long but it was pretty awesome much like gameworkz, I used to play xevious there when I got low on money.
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Kinda odd for me to jump in here, because I was barely ever allowed in an actual arcade. I do have some memories to add, though. Probably most of my game playing was done either at Hill's department store or at a nearby laundromat. The laundromat had a Dig Dug and a TRON, and to this day, Dig Dug is just about the only arcade game I might be considered "good" at, although a lot of that is from playing home versions. I actually went back to that laundromat this past Saturday, and they now have a Super PAC-MAN, which I played.
Another thing I did Saturday was to drive by "The Forum" mini-mall, which is a group of shops in an enclosed "pocket" of a strip mall. Back in the day, there was an arcade in the back called Silver Odyssey, and the doorway was constructed to look like the door of a spaceship. After the arcade moved outside to a "regular" space in the strip mall, they closed off the "spaceship" doorway with a wall containing a regular door. The "spaceship" door frame is still in place, though, and that was cool to see. Kind of a permanent monument to the '80s and the golden age of arcades.
Here's my attempt at a graphic representation of what the "spaceship door" looked like... hope it displays correctly:
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/ \
\__/
Probably the first time I saw a color vector game was at "Video Venture" which was in the same shopping plaza as Hill's and the laundromat (a different one from where The Forum and Silver Odyssey were located, though). My siblings and I got to spend an hour or so in there once, and that was about the most "arcade time" I had until I was in my late teens or early 20s. I did get to go into Silver Odyssey for a few minutes as a kid, but I don't think we played any games. Really early arcade experiences as a kid would have been at Natural Bridge (probably my first experience... I played "Cops 'n' Robbers" I think) and "Tweetsie Railroad" (where I discovered the awesome Star Trek sit-down machine).
The coolest place in town was an old movie theater that eventually gave up and "went dollar" in its last days. They had a huge game room which took up most of the lobby... there were just walkways around the perimeter to get to and from the concession stand and theaters from the box office, kind of like "tunnels". In its later years, they would set all the games on "free play" and charge a flat fee for admission, completely separate from a movie ticket. There were a LOT of old classics still there, and it was a blast to finally get some time on those machines. I talked to someone about buying the machines after they closed, but I had no real financial means to do it at the time.
Other than occasionally finding a machine at our local Food Lion, that's pretty much my arcade experience. Hope that wasn't too boring.
Oh... and I noticed some people talked about skating rinks. I worked at one in the late '80s, and my favorite game they had was a High Speed pinball machine. Funny... I don't remember any of the video games they had except for Fire Truck, which I was way too old to play at that point, although it was popular with the little kids.
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Forgot about the skating places. Skate Fantasy in Manchester, Ct. where I gut my teeth on Donky Kong. They had Pacs and a couple of pins. Probably 15 machines in all.
Skate Palace East in East Hartford is where I discovered Bubble Bobble.
Then, there's where we used to ride BMX...Rt. 5 BMX in S. Windsor Ct. Just a couple of machines, but the most important was Exitebike and USA hockey.
Man, what fun.
AJ
Yeah, I forgot about our two skate places: Sunrise Rollerland in Citrus Heights, CA opened up with a wooden floor, red carpeting wall-to-wall, and a kind of medieval theme inside. Then Roller King opened up in Roseville and it had this super-weird new kind of floor that was plastic or whatever that "new" stuff was back in the early 80's.
Both of those places had a bunch of arcade machines, along with several pinballs.
You guys are taking me way back down memory lane... :'(
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Wow, so many.... it would be great if we had a database. Ok, my old hangouts... I lived in Pennsylvania in Montgomery County:
Spaceport - Montgomery Mall. Fun Fact: The guys in the Youtube training video worked at this arcade, and I am pretty sure that the spaceport in that photo is from Montgomery Mall. They also had a killer Star Trek Vector promotions, I remember going in and there were about a dozen machines all on free play. Still my favorite.
Odyssey Land - in Montgomery on Rt 309. Standalone arcade, open til at least 2am. Good for the older kids.
Saturn IV - In lansdale near lansbowl - awesome place, really dark inside, space themeed. They always had a good diverse line up. SpaceFury was there.
Supercade - Plymoth meeting Mall - It was a huge arcade, they kept an interesting mix of old and new over the years... it hung in there for awhile, but is gone now as well.
There are so many more, but they were the best of what was closest to me. I would kill for pictures of all of them.
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If yer gonna do a database, how about:
Home Town
Closest Major City
Location (or business)
Address (or close proximity)
Machines you remember
AJ