Sega had Eternal Champions for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and later Eternal Champions CD for the Sega CD/Mega CD. Check out that ad - they take a swipe at Street Fighter!
This one had more of a plot. A being called the Eternal Champion has taken a number of fighters from history; if these people had lived, they would have changed the world for the better as it’s implied the distant future has Earth as a wasteland. Anyone who defeated the other combatants and then defeated the Eternal Champion (not an easy task) was allowed to return just before their deaths to change the future.
The Eternal Champion was very hard and losing to him even once was an automatic game over. You also had a spirit meter that would only let you do special moves when it actually had energy - no spamming of fireballs or energy blasts like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat.
Still, this was a fun game and they had a good selection of fighters to use.
Ah, the arcade, where I spent a lot of my teenage years. We had the one at the mall, but there was a Putt Putt minigolf place much closer that we mostly went to. There were the big fighting games, which were always busy, but I probably spent more time playing X-Men and the Neo-Geo machine since they had less of a wait. And there were always a few older machines like Joust tucked away in the back of the room when you wanted something a bit different. Sometimes we’d go to the other Putt Putt where they had Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, which was always exciting.
I wish I could find a decent controller to play some of the older fighting games, but I’ve never found a thumbstick that consistently accepts any input. Double-tap? Nope, two separate taps. Try again and it’s only counting one tap. Quarter circle forward? That could show up as anything! I’m sure my slowing reflexes don’t help.
Our Putt-Putt also had a mini-arcade. I remember one day, a service guy came in to convert the Gauntlet cabinet into a Gauntlet II cabinet and he let me and my friend watch the whole thing and explained everything he was doing to us and showed us all the diagnostic software and such, despite both of us being maybe 10 years old at the time. It was a very memorable experience for me.
That sounds pretty cool. I mostly remember playing Gauntlet I and II in the bowling alley, and I still love firing them for a bit of dungeoneering. Sometimes I really miss simple gameplay.
"…I’ve got this great idea
Why don’t we pitch it to the Franklin Fckn’ Mint
Fine pewter portraits of
General Apathy and Major Boredom singin’
Whatever and ever Amen
Oh, well maybe not. I’ll try again
This should cheer you up for sure
See I’ve got your old I.D.
And you’re all dressed up like the Cure…"
MR_Potroast (not yet of the House of Potroast at that point, of course) introduced me to this, along with other whiteboy pop highlights, and then at random moments on bad days, one of us would sing half this stanza, and the other would complete it.
Coffee chains really took off in the 1990s here in the USA thanks to…STARBUCKS!
Starbucks existed in the 1970s and 1980s but was just another coffee shop. That changed in 1982 when Starbucks bigwig Howard Schultz loved the Italian coffee bars he visited during an Italian trade show. It took until the 1990s for Starbucks to spread like wildfire across the USA and then around the world.
We got their names for sizes like the tall, venti and grande; we got the Frappuccino; and we also got their ready-to-drink canned & bottled coffee sold in stores!
I’m old enough to remember when Starbucks stores popped up everywhere! I remember seeing as many as 3 or 4 in the same neighborhood the 1990s!
The irony of this 1990s coffee boom by Starbucks? I HATED coffee then! It wasn’t until 2005 that I started drinking coffee regularly as I had my first full-time job then; even today though, I only drink iced coffee. I will even drink iced coffee in the dead of winter.
It was covered in a few obscure rags at that time that they would supplant established small shops by dubious means. Such as going to the landlord and offering to pay twice what the current tenant was paying. Thus, the latter would vacate and Starbucks would settle in.
And don’t get me started about the guy who owns all that now, either.
I’ve had a really good cup of coffee at maybe 1 out of 7 Starbucks I’ve ever patronized. Local single-owner shops and even local chains are nowhere near that hit-and-miss.
The office thought I wanted a Starbucks card for Xmas. I thought about how the nearest one was a fifteen-minute walk, at least. But one local shop and one that was part of a small local chain were each no more than five minutes away, depending on which direction I wanted to walk while on break.
I cursed under my breath, hacked the gift card to pieces, and chucked it into the trash. Eff Starbucks.
Well, instead of effing them, you gave them free money. They got the money for the gift card and never had to deplete their inventory. So it was a win-win for them.
It wasn’t my money in the first place, so who cares?
Also, I didn’t have to drink lousy, burnt coffee while trying to chew through a piece of biscotti with less flavor than drywall.
It’s just wild to me that so many suits mouth off about community this and that, but none of them at my job thought to ask the two close, local shops, “Hey do you sell gift cards?”
Or, y’know. They could just give me more money. Directly. Then I could choose for myself.
There are 5 or 6 local coffee shops a fairly short walk from me in the part of town I’m in, and the closest Starbucks is about a 35 minute walk away. One of the things I like about Portland.
I admit that I did patronize the Mermurderer when we were still working in U.S. Bank Tower. The only other coffee place to go if you were in a hurry was, uh well let’s just say they were horrible to a co-worker one day, for no good reason. And she was one of the nicest people you could work with. So I bit the bullet and chose Evil. But hedged my bets by usually ordering tea instead of coffee.
I worked in the US Bank tower on the 29th floor the first several years I lived here. It was one of the only times I ever worked in a big skyscraper. Pretty memorable. We had coffee in-house, so I didn’t need to go out for it.
Yup, reminds me of the time I received a $50 Starbucks card. I did the exchange thing and used the replacement card for cool stuff I liked instead. Yay!
$10? I’d have just kept that and had a few passion ice tea’s (that’s about all I can drink there anymore). I actually have an old Starbucks card that I use when I get a new computer and need to use their free wi-fi to get everything set up (don’t ask, it’s, complicated). I’ve had it for years and years, so I didn’t really need $50 worth of Bucks, I’d be dead before I depleted it.
The exchange takes their cut, so it would be more like $8 for your $10 card.
I ‘member back in… well somewhere early 90’s +/-5 years, a full page ad in the newspaper telling us that Starbucks was coming, and a checklist for how we had to order. Not a menu, because that’s OK. The ad said pick what you want from this list, and say it in this order. Then it gave examples.
Oh, hell, no!
Fortunately, I make coffee how I like it, and everywhere I worked allowed me to have coffee makings at my workplace.
FTR- Coffee, hot, black. French press or moka pot if you have it, otherwise as close as you can get. I’d rather have no coffee than cold coffee.
I have and will enjoy espresso, in the little cup with a sugar cube. But that’s not coffee, it’s dessert, either after lunch or dinner (or supper, depending on your local language). Maybe a mid-afternoon quick pick-me-up. But it’s not really coffee.
"…I’ve got this great idea
