Remember the Arcades of the 70s, 80s and 90s? Asteroids? Pacman? Frogger? Centipede? And all the other games we used our allowances on as kids? I found a warehouse in St. Paul, MN that a game-collector opened to the public and talk about a walk down memory lane! IT WAS AWESOME!! The warehouse had about a hundred old games from the 20th century! A few dozen old pinball games too! I was there for two hours! $20 and you play unlimited! I hear Chicago has a HUGE place like that! I highly recommend that kinda fun walk back to childhood! What were your fav arcade games as a kid?
4 Likes
I threw away quite a few quarters at these places back in the day. I was really lousy at all of them; poor manual skills, I guess. I thought Q*Bert was cute, with the goofy characters and odd noises. Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace (do I have the names correct?) were “cutting edge” at the time, with their animated video sequences.
3 Likes
Dragons Lair! Yes! That game was too hard for me… 
I was addicted to and good at all the Star Wars games! And somehow…decades later, today…it all came back and I could still play them well and centipede too! It was a real kick!
2 Likes
Dragon’s Lair was a great way to lose money quickly. My buddy really liked Ms. PacMan, so I played a lot of that. If I was on my own it was Asteroids or Asteroids Deluxe. I was in my first semester of college when I saw them unloading Tempest from the truck at the University Center.
3 Likes
I covered this topic two weeks ago. It’s okay. I love talking about it.
2 Likes
Sure. I drive by one occasionally as an alternate means of commuting to work…assuming they use tokens instead of quarters, but who knows.
Nah, I didn’t really have a favorite. More of a grazer and hanger-outer as a kid at those places.
2 Likes
You are the thread-master! 
I just had fun today and had to talk about it! 
2 Likes
You could ask the mods to merge the threads.
2 Likes
As I said in the Bowling Thread, Altered Beast is a machine I drenched in quarters. I was 10 then and that seems to be the age. I couldn’t get past Level 3 despite all my efforts.
1 Like
I’ll leave it to them.
2 Likes
I could. But I’m not asking them to. They do a ton of it. I respect what he wrote. The more the merrier.
2 Likes
What was also cool was the old sounds of those games that were tucked away and forgotten in the back of my mind. It was literally like i went back in time, today! What a trip! Fun!
2 Likes
It engages you in a manner alien to today. The Hand Eye Coordination, The Simple Sound Effects, The Addicting Gameplay. It demands more of you. This appeals to our need for challenge and our enjoyment of frustration. I wasn’t ever the greatest but I respected those who were.
2 Likes
When I was younger…I frequented arcades if I was bored OR needed to work-off some steam OR looking for a distraction from something painful OR just be entertained and have fun. Sometimes I went alone or with friends. Temporarily re-focusing your brain and losing yourself in another reality can be VERY therapeutic. At least it was for me.
Plus, there was an arcade next to our theater, so when the flick was done, thats where we ended up!
I was good at a lot of sports as a kid and teen…so I had good hand-eye coord. And according to today’s trip to the arcade…still do…even as an old geezer! As a kid/teen I liked the challenge of learning a game and improving at it, over time. I didnt go to the arcade often, so it’d take months for me to get good…but I improved every time.
Today, I was REALLY surprised how it all came back after having been dormant for so long!
2 Likes
Some skills are like riding a bike. They never leave.
2 Likes
Mortal Kombat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, and Cruisin USA were the ones I remember playing the most. They were just at the front of our Walmart. I really didn’t grow up in a large enough community to have a big arcade.
3 Likes
I spent a good deal of money and time in arcades, and the 7-11 down the block that had Street Fighter, Galaga, and Paperboy. We would buy a Big Gulp and a pack of Dinosour Eggs and rock on!
My favorite was Cyberball and Cyberball 2072, both of which had cabinets that could accommodate four players. It was a sort of football game played by robots. My buddy and myself would dominate 2v2 games and even won some money betting on ourselves by hustlers, who thought they would beat us…
We had a place, called Wonderland, where you paid a cover charge of like six bucks, then ALL the games were only a nickel. They had all the big cabinets like Real Drivin and MACH 3, which suddenly became affordable to play.
I beat Hippodrome that way, and also the original Street Fighter. I once stayed for three hours playing Gauntlet, and that night, when we went to sleep, we still saw the game !
My buddy was an ace at Track and Field, where you had to tap a button in quick succession…we would literally wear those games out !
2 Likes
Yup! Played Galaga yesterday…did well! One of my best friends was so good at Galaga, he could play it for hours! It was amazing! The two of us and other friends would go to an arcade together…the rest of us would play several games for an hour and he’d STILL be playing that one game of Galaga! Incredible!
I think the place I was at yesterday had Cyberball! Watched two guys playing it! Cool you won money beating those guys!!
I talked with the guy working at the place, yesterday and the game-collector is a doctor/surgeon. He said they do update their line-up from time to time.
I told him if they get “Star Wars Trilogy” from '98, I’ll be making many more visits!
2 Likes
I sure do! Pacman, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter and more obscure titles too!
3 Likes
Within 5 miles of us in the early 1980s was a nice video game arcade in a large strip mall, also near an 8-screen cinema. Yes, you could watch Tron (the movie), then walk a few doors down and play the video game. The rumor was that it was run by the Houston police. Regardless or because of that, it was safe, clean and fun for kids and teens.
You could tell it was a class operation because they had a change machine 
. I think it started with quarters, but then later went to tokens. (Tokens were ok because sometimes they did promotions and gave 5 or more for each dollar, and maybe more per dollar for a $5 bill.)
4 Likes