The lights are on
When I was a kid in the late eighties and early nineties I grew up with a lot of gaming friends. I mean, alot. And one common place for me to be found was a penny arcade two blocks from my school in Colorado. The owner of this imporium was the late John, God rest his soul. John was a gigantic 'Nam veteran who died a few years ago to heart failure.
John, the way I understand the story, came into a large sum of inheritance from his father, and because of this, he could literally buy all of the arcade cabinets. He had a good sized place that is now a Kosher Deli, and inside of it were at least two dozen arcade cabinets with the familar Pac-Man to several obscure titles. To play any game costed literally nothing, and John's place was a little gamer's Candy-Land.
All of my friends would pile into this store right after school on Friday, there pockets jingling with change from a week of saving, and we'd stay there until at least 8pm. Next to his place was a little joint that served chocolate shakes for a dollar and thirty cents, (John usually payed for part of the tab,) and we would eat a little for maybe thirty minutes before resuming gaming.
I'm sure that this generations gamers of the late nineties to now could never appreciate things like this, mainly because of online play. Instead of friendly competition, gamers cuss at each other and whine how unfair getting shot in Modern Warfare 2. What ever happened to social gaming?
While you may protest that the online gaming of today is still as good, but I say no. All of the personality of plinking your pocket change into an arcade machine has changed to pushing a button and playing with whoever you want. Why convenience is good, alot of the fun of gaming with friends has all but disappeared. Sometimes social gaming is actually grieveng, and you cannot contest memories like mine.
I remember PAL when I was growing up was similar to this, and it was awesome spent many days there, until it closed...
I remember plunking down many a quarter at the arcade where I grew up back then. It was right next to the theater so catch a movie and then game for hours with some friends.
It was a great thing at John's place.
Why must i be so young...
I agree with him so much. I remember the days (mid to late 80's) when my friend tommy would come over and we would spend hours playing madden, darin and me on baseball or my friend rocco coming over and we would play blades of steel or nhl...
Those were the days
True story. Nothing like an arcade. And FiveMinutesTill, you have nothing to lament. You may be a young gamer, but you're still a gamer, and while your earliest memories of gaming may be popping in 'Final Fantasy VII' or playing 'Halo' all night with your friends, you still have the memories from early gaming. Our memories (yes, I'm almost as old as Gamebeast23456) are just different, is all. If you want to play some of these outstanding classics, you can get on the internet and find out if there is any type of arcade near you. There's a Nickelcade just about an hour from me. Of course, most games can be played just as well on a console these days, either available by download or you may be able to find an old console, dust it off, and play many of these classic games. Even that's not quite the same, but I firmly believe that no matter how primitive, gamers should know their roots, and while that does start a little earlier than Atari, that would probably be the way to go. If finding an Atari should prove difficult, many classic games are available on a PS2 compilation (with updated versions of some games) called the 'Atari Anthology' and of course you can download a plethora of classic NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, and other games onto your Wii via the Virtual Console. Arcades...how we will miss them. *sniffle*