Your first arcade memories!

[paigeoliver]

This is primarily for the under 30 crowd, since I am betting most of you older guys remember when all these games came out and got to play all the classics on location. I am 26, so I missed a lot of them.

The last few years of collecting games has sparked a lot of long dormant memories though.

I am going to list these in rough order of how old I was.

Galaxian cocktail. This is probably the first game I ever played. I had to have been under 5 at the time, because I still lived at the place that we moved out of right after my 5th birthday. We had gone into someplace in town (must have been a restaurant?). And I got to play this one. It (obviously) didn't last too long.

Red Baron cockpit. This one was in the same place as the Galaxian. I remember sitting in it, and holding onto the stick, but I don't think I actually got to play it.

Next major arcade memory was a trip to showbiz. I remember Moon Patrol, Peter Packrat, Star Wars cockpit, Paperboy, Pole Position cockpit, Galaga and Pac-Man.

The Alladin's Castle trip was around the same time period. I remember Dragon's Lair, Crossbow, Warlord (upright), Kangaroo, and Berzerk.

My final really young arcade memory is a movie theatre arcade. Baby Pac-Man, Junior Pac-Man, Centipede (cocktail) and Ms. Pac-Man.

Other classics I played on location but can't place in a time period, include, Joust, Dig Dug, Dig Dug II (yes, I really played one somewhere), Space Invaders, all 3 Donkey Kongs, Asteroids (skating rink), Gauntlet, Tron, Battlezone, Frogger, Bump N' Jump (Deco cassete version with the wrong marquee, at Pantara's Pizza), Space Ace, Q*bert, and Elevator Action.

[JeSo]

Well, mine aren't as long ago as you folks', being only 20 and all, but yeah. (add to that the fact that I have a dodgy memory and forget almost everything :| )

The earliest I recall though was going to a huge arcade in a shopping centre when I was maybe 11? (I think), but then again, it may not have been huge, I may have just been little but yeah, I remember playing Toobin', Hard Drivin' (cockpit), Outrunners, S.T.U.N. Runner, The Simpsons, and Cyber Sled (I think that's what it was called, 2 player, dual joystick 3d tank game).

The next arcade memory that sticks in my mind was at my 12th birthday party at an arcade (although it may not have been my 12th, but thats what I remember it as), most of us spent around half our time there crowded around the brand new Mortal Kombat II machine.  

[Nailz]

Ahhh c'mon, I wanna play too.  

We had a Bartell Drugs in town and I remember seeing Asteroids for the first time, holy crap was I mesmerized.  I was about 10 and my Mom gave me a dollar in quarters to keep me busy for awhile, and I was hooked.  Not long after that they brought in a Space Invaders, and then the game that took over my life for awhile, Pac-Man......  I would ride my bike down there in the summer and blow my paper-route money playing that one.    

Remember paper routes guys, the days when it was a kids job and wasn't done by 2 or 3 full grown adults driving around in a van throwing the paper into your hedges?

Anyways, not too long after that, I started riding the bus downtown with my Mom in the summertime, I would spend the entire day at Ivory's Arcade in Seattle.  I remember when the first $.50 game came out, Dragon's Lair, unbelievable......

[nighthawk2099]

I remember when the Atari 2600 was the hottest thing on the market.  My grandmother use to take me to the local Kmart on Saturdays.  While she shopped, I would sit in front of the HUGE !   ! display that had all the games listed, and you use to be able to play them by punching in the number of the cartridge..... I would spend HOURS playing them FREE !!!!!....

I remembered I cried when we went one afternoon and saw they were taking it apart.  They had to make room for the NEW stuff that was coming out..  I beleave it was something like coleco.

[Apollo]

First arcade game I ever played was Space Invaders. I was about 11. I used to spend all my lunch money on it on the way to school. Boy were we excited when that same shop brought in Galaxian and Scramble wahoo! I recall making it to approx 40th or 50th wave in Galaxian fairly regularly and going through Scramble approx 7 or 8 times ( don't know if that's any good ). Ah the memories. I also have fond memeories of Dragons Lair. By the time you got to the closing scene with the dragon there would be about 10 people crowding around the machine watching ( there were only about 3 or 4 people around who could clock it at the time ). That was fun.
Man I can't wait for my cab to be finished!

[CitznFish]

Red Baron was my first experience. I didn't know how to play and promptly flew into the hill a few times.  (6 yrs old maybe? some pizza place)

My next experience that i remember is Asteroids Deluxe in some arcade inside a Sears...

Then Asteroids and Scramble at the local grocery store. Then I discovered TILT at the local mall...

[SNAAAKE]

well started with street fighter 2.
then we had cadillacs and dinosaur(best game evA!),captain comando,punisher,warrior of fate...
Yeah,mostly CPS1 games.

The good ol days of me wasting ALL my money  

[Ledbetter]

I remember when Space Invaders came out. It was so advanced from all the other timed games that where around back then.

Asteriods was the next big game that came out. I remember using the trick where you would save one last asteriod and fly around and shoot the saucers.
 
Everyone went nuts when Pac Man came out. Everywhere you went you would see one of those, Pac cocktail cabs were in every pizza place and bar.

   We always waited for the next Atari or Williams game to come out. I remember meeting a kid who was missing three fingers on his left hand and two on his right, but could still play Defender all day long on one quarter.

  The arcade was so exciting back then. Everytime you would go in, there would be a new game that would completely blow you away. I remember hearing that there was a sequel to Defender coming out soon, and then when Stargate finaly showed up it was amazing.
    Tempest was another game that was so impressive back then.
   Donky Kong was big hit nobody was expecting. It was from a new company we never heard of and it always had a line waiting to play.

   Crazy Climber was a corney game but it was always a good laugh hearing the guy yell as he fell. Kings and Balloons also with the guy screaming "Help! Help! Bye Bye!"

  I think Joust was the last game I really got into. I remember playing that one for a long time waiting for something new to come around.Then there was big hype going around about a laser disk game coming out that was going to blow everyone away. Then Dragons Lair showed up one day. Even at 50 cents a game had the biggest crowd around it I have ever seen.
    I think I had to wait an hour just to get near enough to the screen to see what was happening. The graphics and sound were great, but once I figured out what the hell the guy was doing I was so let down. It was a total mechanical memory game. It didn't reward skill, just the person with the most quarters to spend. There were a few guys who kept plugging away to get to the end, but after that the game died quickly.
    It soon went to 25 cents a play and a short time later they wheeled the cab out of the arcade to make room for something else.

  Heh, Then i come on the Internet and see how much people love that game. I guess we just missed the point of Dragons Lair, because it was flop in the arcade I grew up in.
 

[J_K_M_A_N]

My parents used to drag me up "camping". I use the quotes because we had a trailer that had a screened in deck built on it and the place it was parked had a pool and an arcade etc etc etc... I still remember playing Breakout for as long as I could. When you got 100 points you would get a free game and I would ALWAYS get a free game. I believe that was the same year they had Atari football. What a blast. Beating the crap out of the trackball and ocasionally getting your fingers pinched in the gap. Later, they had Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Tempest, Super Cobra, and Sprint 2 to name a few of my favorites. They also had a juke box that we would set to play songs that we would record onto a tape player so we didn't have to keep paying to hear them. If I only had mp3's back then. I could talk about those times forever! So much fun and so much trouble to get into.

J_K_M_A_N

[Smittydc]

I remember playing Biplane against my brother at the small local amusement park arcade -- he used to pummel me relentlessly...

Asteroids and Missle Command at the roller skating rink.

I remember walking into an arcade in Myrtle Beach FULL of Galaxian machines -- they had the volume cranked up so loud on them you could feel the bass in your stomach.

One of the best parts of playing the mame games are the sounds of the games -- they really take me back to the places I used to play them.

[HeadRusch]

You guys are embarrasing, Space Invaders was like a NEW MODERN Game
MORTAL KOMBAT as a first agme experience? You poor ---daisies---

Cape Cod, early 1970's. (Thats the hook hanging off the end of Massachusettes for you non-New Englanders....a prime vacation destination spot for those in NY/CT/MA etc...).

Two places: SEAVIEW PLAYLAND (its still there folks!) and Tasty Tower Pizza.

Tasty Tower had all these black and white video games, the kind you saw in seedy bars in movies fromthe 70's...Grand Prix.....Super Bug.....Atari SPRINT...those kind of games.  But my favorite...SEAWOLF.  My dad would get me a chair to stand on, or he'd hold me up to the periscope so I could play.  God those were awesome games when you were 5.  They were super high tech and you figured they cost about a million dollars each.

SeaWolf holds so many memories I'd ALMOST consider restoring one...problem is, I'd wind up with a 400 lb cabinet that played...well..seawolf....which ain't nearly as cool as it was when you were 5

SEAVIEW PLAYLAND on the other hand had the Space Invaders and Galaxian machines..and really old mechanical games the size of volkswagons.....where the games were opto-mechanical....the baseball game that looked like a pinball game (you actually hit a big ball bearing), some battleship destroying type game...but it also spent the bucks to get the color video games like Galaxian.  I remember Tastey Tower had SeaWolf, but Playland had the color Seawolf II!

Oh, I really can't leave out the old arcade at Lake Compounce.  Back in the 80's it was this decrepid, falling-apart and pretty-damn-dangerous amusement park in Bristol, CT......before they sold out to Hershey Parks in like 1985 or so, they sold every one of their arcade machines...$100...$200....too bad I wasn't working yet, $100 bucks was like a lot of money to me back then  I remember going in there and wondering who the lucky guy was that was going to take all these games home.  *sigh*....WELL, IS IT ONE OF YOU GUYS HERE?

The cool thing was that they had tons of really old games....Atari Sprint, some other old B&W's....modern games.....and games that were even older...the kind that used projected light and tiny models to simulate stuff....this helicopter game comes to mind.

Quassy Amusement Park also had an arcade but its been ages since I've been there.....but the last time I was there, they had lots of old, dirty games.....who knows, maybe they still do!

*sniff*...MEEEEEEMORIES......
<Choke>

back in the day when you'd be perfectly happy to stare for an hour at a store display full of Atari 2600 or Intellivision promos....Sears always had cool stuff (this was before Toys R Us existed out here)...

[RacerX]

I guess the first arcade game I remember seeing was when the local Dairy Queen got Night Driver.  I would always bug my dad until he gave me a quarter to play it.

I remember later on going to the skating rink and being in heaven (as long as I had some money).  They had Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Tempest, Track & Field, Atari Football, and Space Invaders.

There were a lot of games that I only got to see once a year during the county fair (I grew up in a small town).  There was this 18 wheeler that they would set up that had an arcade in the trailer.  It had Atari Stunt Cycle, Gorf, Missile Command, Dragon's Lair, and NFL Football (the Cowboys vs. Redskins version).  I remember saving my money for 3 months before fair time just so I would have enough money to play those games.

Those were some great times...  *sniff*

[SirPoonga]

Most of my arcade playing when I was a kid was at the local roller rink.  I played Space Duel cocktail (my favorite game they ever had), Battlezon, Sprint 2, Firetruck cockpit, TMNT, Simpsons.  The bar down the road from me has Tempest and Bally Skillshot (nickel skill game).

[zero-one]

My memory is fading but I believe that my first video game experience happened at a truck stop somewhere between Toronto and Quebec City. It was a grade 10 school trip in the spring of 1979. I was 15 years old.

The place had 2 machines, a Space Invaders and an Asteroids. I was in awe; I had never seen a video game machine before. I played both that day but couldn't get enough.

My other fond arcade memory is about playing a cocktail version of Pheonix in the basement arcade of the CN Tower in Toronto. I remember this vividly because the joysticks handle were missing their ball-tops and my friend and I both came home with open blisters on our thumb and forefinger. Ouch! talk about being addicted to a game! I've come to learn that the orignal Pheonix only had buttons so someone must have converted this machine.

I also remember being really impressed with Joust as it was the first non-driving game I saw/played that allowed two people to play at once in competion or co-operatively.

I stopped going to arcades regulary once I got an Atari 400 for Christmas and I could play most of my favourite games at home.

The fighter games totally went under my radar. Looks like I missed a whole lot of fun. At least I'll be able to play some on my mame cab once it's finished and catch up on all the fun.  

Cheers all.

[kspiff]

Hm.. that's a lot.. I would have to say video games have been more like parents to me than my real ones..

RoadBlasters at the local bowling alley;
DK Jr. at the local DQ;
Star Wars (UR.. never played a SD) at the local Gatti's pizza;
Ms. Pac-Man at my father's company picnics;
720 and Jungle King at the Family Fun Skate Center;
Centipede at the movie theater;
Tron SD and so many others I can't even remember at the dankest, darkest arcade in town (my fav.. long closed .. don't even remember the name anymore, but it was always packed with choice stuff, new and old);
APB, Assault, and EftPotRM at Wally World;

Then there are the pinballs.. oh!  The pinballs

[RetroBorg]

Great topic, where does one start?

Pong - Adelaide Royal Show
Outlaw - 5KA Expo
Canyon Bomber - Chelsea cinema
Space Invaders, Breakout, Superbug - Eastwood rollerskating
Galaxian - Marden Ice Skating Rink
Asteroids, Frogger, Battlezone, Missile Command - Athelstone Shops
Moon Cresta, Cosmic Guerilla - Cambelltown Squash Courts
River Patrol, Stratavox - St Bernards Recreation Centre
Mr. Do!, Crazy Kong, Cheeky Mouse - Athelstone Football Club
Rally X - Tilt Pinball City
Phoenix - West Beach Life Saving Club
Roc'n Rope - Motacute Shops
Juno First - Kaleidescope
Pac-Man - Acadamy Twin Cinemas
Time Pilot - Club Mildura
Ms Pac-Man - Grundy's on the Gold Coast
Dig Dug, Jungle Hunt, Centipede - North Adelaide chicken shop

The list goes on and on and on.

Apologies to any video games or locations I might of missed due to memory being blurry from drinking to many cola slurpees.

[Chris]

Let's see... even though I fall into that older group.... These are all in Southern California erxcept the last one.

Pong... My first video game experience, at a Shakeys Pizza.  Man, my brother and I dumped a ton of quarters in that!  We finally got an Oddessy 2 home pong unit and the whole family would play Pong for hours...

Sprint 2... Pizza Skidoo.  It would play either one or two players on one quarter, so there was this annoying kid who would hide in the shadows near the game and the moment you put a quarter in, he would leap forward, hit the 2-player button, and grab the second wheel....

Space Wars... Some bowling alley.  We discovered if you unplug it and plug it back in, you sometimes get free games of random time lengths.  I got an 8-minute game once...

Space Invaders... Rollerama.  People would be lined up ten-deep to play or watch...

After that, the dam burst as arcades and a PJ Pizzazz (the forerunner of Chuck E. Cheese) popped up, but I also have strong location memories of:

Moon Patrol... Lamppost Pizza

Red Alert... Lamppost Pizza.  I played a TON of this!

Rip-Off... The Underground in Redondo Beach

Red Baron (Cockpit)... a tinly little hole in the wall in Solvang.  The only light in this tiny arcade came from the game screens, and a tiny lamp at the attendant's desk.  THe Red Baron cockpit was crammed in a corner, adding to the dark.  The resulting experience was absolutely surreal.

Tron... first Disneyland, later (oddly enough) a campground in the San Gabriel mountains.

Dragon's Lair: The first on in our area was at Raging Waters water park, and it drew massive crowds.

{fast forward}

World Series 99... CiCi's Pizza, Augusta, GA.  A co-worker and I would play full 9-inning games almost every day: me playing the Los Angeles Dodgers, him playing the St. Louis Cardinals.  I found an unsung hero in bench warmer Tripp Cromer, who was so good to me electronically that I almost wrote him fan mail in real life.  We had a serious grudge match thing going with this game, and would count our wins and losses.  At the time he left the company, our record was tied, and on his last day before moving back to Missouri we headed down to CiCi's to decide it once and for all.  The game, however, was gone, replaced by some fighting game conversion with a blurry screen.

[menace]

pac-man and turbo at the local convenience store (Sander's if memory serves) it was such a big deal when they cam in--every kid from age 8 to 20 was there to play the games--there were line ups in the store.  They then built a back room and put in galaga, tron, fast freddie, hyper olympics, contra, us championship volleyball, arkanoid, gyruss, double dragon...

not all at once mind you, there were probably a dozen games full time being rotated through there--but that was THE hang out place for a town with less than 1000 people. hang on...I'm getting misty...snifff...snifff...

  ah the memories--now I'm in the process of getting 2 of my friends to build their own machine--I feel so evil! if only they knew the time and money ahahahahaha

[hyiu]

well..... I feel that I should also say a few words here too....

My life simply got sucked into arcade games after the first time I saw them..... I forgot which game is the first game I saw / played.... I think its a space invader......

somehow... my parents thinks that only gangsters hang out in the arcade... so... if I want to be a good kid... I need to stay out.... (well... I was in Hong Kong when I was small...)

anyway.... I sneak in after school.... before going home... when I go to supermkt to buy something.... basically any chances I get.... I stop by....

and most times... I have next to no coins in my pockets and my skills is VERY limited.... (my coins don't last me too long...)    so... I mostly stand next to a machine and watch people play.....

I got beaten up by my parents a lot of times because I went to arcade and cut class.... practice sessions.... etc.etc..

but its all worthed when I get to see some guy which is good pulls out stunt moves.....  

good old times..... (other than the beat up part....)

[1UP]

I remember being out with friends somewhere when I was 9 or 10, and seeing Space Invaders for the first time.  Didn't get to play it as I had no quarters that time...but I was baffled by the graphics that seemingly "floated" in front of the printed backdrop...and the deep, ominous, pulsing BG music as the invaders advanced...

After that I begged my Dad to take me to an arcade, where I first experienced Battlezone!  Back then I was actually short enough to use the little step on the front of the cab....  I think I spent all my money just staring through that periscope, blasting wireframe tanks into oblivion, just trying to drive far enough to find out what was up in those mountains!  

It's funny what an immersive experience that seemed like, given today's photo-real, raytraced, surround sound, force feedback games, but in 1980 it was a friggin blast!  

Probably my favorite memory was when I was 14 on a youth bus trip.  We went to an indoor mini-golf (the only one I've ever seen.)  They had an environmental Discs Of Tron there, and I got really good at it!  So good, that eventually everyone in the group was standing around me watching and cheering, kinda like that scene in Last Starfighter...heheh!  

[jcoleman]

This is the best topic ever.  EVER!

I have many fond childhood memories of arcade games.  There was Happy's, the local flea market/mini-golf/arcade/all around amusement center...they mostly had older b&w games, but as they started paying more attention to the flea market side of things, they got more and more color games.  I distinctly remember them having Sprint, Sheriff, maybe a Sprint-8 and a Krull later on.

Then of course there were the games at the grocery stores and drug stores...I would stand next to the Pac-Man Plus and watch for entire time my parents were shopping.  I'd also do the obligatory "let me play one of your men" whine.  Hey, I was 6, what can I say?  Kroger had the best games...they had Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Ms. Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong in succession.  They always had at least two games at a time, too.

Then there was the Super-X right next to Kroger (anyone remember when you'd never see one without the other?).  I distinctly remember them having DK Jr. and Pole Position.  Sometimes I'd go watch those games while Mom and Dad bought groceries.

Tomboy was where my grandmother liked to shop...and they had Xevious.  And of course Grandma would *always* give me a few quarters to blow.  Man did I love me some Xevious.  Right down the road from Tomboy was the Revco drugstore...they had, in succession, Bubbles, Foodfight, Robotron, and a few other great classics.  I probably got those out of order but it was 20 years ago!

We also had plenty of arcades where I grew up (Roanoke, VA).  There was Time Out at Crossroads Mall...they had a Star Wars cockpit, an environmental Discs of Tron, Gladiator (which for some reason I thought was a great game, until I played it in MAME the other day), Gorf, TONS of pinballs, and a few other games I can't remember.

The best arcade by far, though, was The Electric Connection.  It sat in an old Kenney's building about 3/4 of a mile from my house, right on Williamson Road.  They had a deal where kids could bring in their report cards and get something like 4 tokens for every A and two for every B.  What a great deal!  Especially since I was a straight A student with 7 classes (this was when I got to jr. high around 1985-86).  They still had plenty of classics at The Electric Connection.  Wow...MACH 3, Tempest, Zoo Keeper, Yie Ar Kung Fu (my favorite at the time), Super Mario, Excitebike, Dig Dug, Qix, Mr. Do!, Tron, a Pole Position (maybe II?) cockpit, Donkey Kong, Dk Jr., Popeye, Jungle King (later a Jungle Hunt!)...there were many more, I'm sure.  The best was that they were open all day on Saturdays and NO ONE played there during the day.  It was mainly a pool hall, so I basically got to play whatever I wanted.  Man, those were the days...

And of course there was the arcade at the new mall they built in 1987...Mindboggle!  They had all the latest and greatest games...Paperboy, Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Roadblasters, Indiana Jones, 720...as you can see I have a special fondness for Atari games of that era.  Great great innovative games with a distinct visual flair.  And of course Grandma would take us over there at least once a week and give me a couple of dollars to play with.  Ah, the good old days....you know, if I had SAVED all those quarters, I could build the greatest MAME cabinet ever!

And who could forget the Pavilion at Myrtle Beach?  Nothing like an arcade on the boardwalk.  basically it was a big concrete slab with a roof over it right next to the beach.  Just about every arcade game you could think of sat under that awning at one time.  You could literally walk right off the beach and into the arcade.  One big open space with a couple of hundred cabinets in it.  Man, if only I knew the operator...

Clearly I have gone on far too long.  But of course this is *exactly* why we're on these forums in the first place, right?

John

[jcoleman]

How could I have forgotten the skating rink?!?!?  Jeez.  They always had the coolest games.  To this day I have never seen a Pac-Land cabinet besides the one at the skating rink...I forget the name...they were also the first to have Super Mario Brothers in the area.  I used to go to the skating rink and do nothing but play video games.  I would sometimes not even skate!

Waffle House had a Super Pac-Man...Pizza Inn had an Asteroids cocktail...Tastee-Freeze had a Pac-Man cocktail that they later converted to Galaxian...at one time you really could find games just about anywhere.

John

[MameMaster!]

 
1978 (79?)...the Playboy Club in Vernon Valley NY...Pong.

I was about 7 / 8....and no my parents weren't perverts. My dad worked for MetLife (Metropolitan Life Insurance Company back then) and they had a convention there (OK, well I guess the insurance guys were the perverts).

Any hoo...that was one of the first games I remember playing.

After that I remember spending A LOT of time in the local stationary store where I saw my first: Tempest, Centipede, Breakout, Clowns, Donkey Kong, Popeye...and not at the same time...they rotated about 2-3 at a time over a couple of years....sigh....life was just all about candy and another 25 cents back then!

The MameMaster!  

[Zapper]

Oh yeah, skating rinks! I remember the grade school skating parties, when they would start the ghey romantic music and the boys and girls would skate together. I'd just go play video games instead. I have this old song stuck in my head from back then, it was the popcorn song. No singing in it, just popping sounds. The same song used in Pengo?

[pepsidx20]

 My oldest memories are going to ShowbiZ with my parents and playing  in the little arcade  they had in there. Kinda looked like a space ship with lights all along the floor. I remember playing Dkjr. pac man, zaxxon, galaxian, Tron(which never worked right).Pizza and that big gorrilla that played the drums, lots of fun! Now its a chuck e cheese. The little arcade is gone, I guess to make room for the pizza parties.
 Later I remember going to 7-11 to play Sf2.Putting my qaurter on the panel to get my turn.  That was the kool place to hang out after school. there was always a bunch of kids .

[zero-one]

somehow... my parents thinks that only gangsters hang out in the arcade... so... if I want to be a good kid... I need to stay out.... (well... I was in Hong Kong when I was small...)

Hyiu, you're not the only that had "watchful" parents. I felt your pain too.  


My other memory of video games was the frustrating fact that girlfriends and arcades were mutually exclusive ativities. For me, interest in arcades and girls was developing at the same time. I can't count the number of times I missed part of the conversation while walking by an arcade with my girlfriend. She would bring back by tightening her grip on hand and tugging me away. I imagine it must have been like walking a dog to her. No you can't go snif that arcade! Come!

[tiggertoo]

Ah, yes, a great thread!

I remember when arcades were allowed by the schools. On the way home we would stop and gaze at the machines, sometimes three of us sharing a quarter or two to play Defender. The raucous noise from that game.....just awesome.

Many times my father would take me to the local taverns with him (I was too young to drink, silly) and I would sit with my soda at the bar with images of Q-bert, Pacman and others burning patterns into my retinas. If I sat quietly and patiently I might be rewarded with a quarter, which always seemed to be spent too fast for my dad.

Many campgrounds also seemed to have arcades, and I remember Pheonix swallowing all my spare change. And at this one campground there was a pinball machine that I just couldn't lose. After playing for about an hour, I had to stop and gave the machine to an envious kid with 31 credits racked up. (I think there might have been some settings that were set lenient).

Of course there were also Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Pole Position at other times, but the best were the vector games. Spinning the dial like a madman on Tempest, making it wobble and zapping geometric shapes was pure heaven. Then I found Omega Race at a bowling alley, and totally forgot about bowling. And, yes, there was Ripoff at a carnival. *sigh*

And for the non video experience, I really liked the bowling games where you slide the puck down a lane about 8-10 feet long. I almost got one at a bar auction that used balls instead and was about 20' long. It was a shame to let it go, but a monster like that needs more room than I have.

Cheers!