This
is the third entry in a series of posts that I’m writing about the
part that video games have played in my life. Today’s post was
supposed to be about the 16-Bit era and my time working at Video Game
Exchange, but I realized that I was skipping over a very important
aspect of video gaming in both my life and in pop culture – arcade
games.
If
you need to play catch-up before reading this post, I wrote about the
Atari
2600 in the first part
and followed it up with tales
of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Just
in case there’s anyone reading this that doesn’t fully grasp what
an arcade was, here’s a quick primer:
Back
in the day (in this case the 1980s and early 90s), there used to be
entire storefronts devoted to nothing but cabinets that housed huge
varieties of video games. We might still have places like Dave &
Busters that throw some arcade cabinets in amongst their obnoxious
gambling machines and neon bowling or pizza joints with row after row
of greasy joysticks, but I’m talking about retail spaces four or
five times as big as your average GameStop with nothing but the
latest and greatest video games. These places didn’t even serve
sodas
for the most part.
These
weren’t the only places to play arcade games, as I’ll illustrate
throughout this post, but they were the coolest.
Which
is part of the reason why I hardly ever played arcade games in actual
arcades.
Most
of my memories of playing arcade games come from bowling alleys,
skating rinks, and other places where things that I wasn’t any good
at happened. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not great at video
games, but I’m way better at them than I am at bowling or any form
of skating. These were also places where there were other activities
to keep people occupied, which meant I didn’t have to interact with
other people for the most part. I wasn’t good at that, either.
I
mentioned pizza joints in a somewhat disparaging manner, but that’s
because I’m an adult with what almost constitutes a phobia of
sticky things. I can barely stand to eat in an IHOP because if I get
sticky stuff on my skin I freak out. Not like, yelling or anything,
but I am intensely uncomfortable until I can thoroughly wash it off.
And I’m talking red, irritated skin from water that’s way too hot
washing it off. Rinsing does not cut it.
But
back when I was a kid there was no better place than ShowBiz Pizza
Place.
ShowBiz
was like Chuck E. Cheese, but rather than a rat with poor grammar
their mascot was Billy Bob the hillbilly bear and his band, The
Rock-afire Explosion. It would take a whole other post for me to
explain to you how much better ShowBiz was than Chuck E. Cheese and
how devastated I was when all of the local ShowBiz locations were
converted into Chuck E. Cheeses. It was one of the worst moments of
my young life, learning that Billy Bob and his pals were going away.
I still can’t see Chuck without thinking, “That fucking rat”.
And looking at dates I realize now that I was a teenager by the time
this was going on. I probably hadn’t been in one in years,
but that place was still so special to me.
Everyone
that I knew had at least one birthday party at ShowBiz Pizza Place. I
would guess that I was there at least once every couple of months for
a span of a few years. It’s not like it was a “little kids
place”. Pizza and video games spanned a pretty wide range of ages,
as is evidenced by the fact that that fucking rat is still around and
apparently doing better than ever.
Most
of the arcade games that I have ever played I played in a ShowBiz
Pizza. One that stands out to me is Dragon’s
Lair. I
feel pretty confident in saying that I am an animation buff from way
back. Sure – al the kids loved cartoons. But I feel like I was
slightly more critical of the things I didn’t like and slightly
more obsessed with the things I did. I recognized the differences in
animation quality at an early age. I remember trying to talk about
how Thundercats
looked so much better than anything else on the air and getting blank
stares. I noticed fluidity of movement and consistency of drawings.
If colors were wrong, I saw it and it bugged me. Nobody else I knew
noticed or cared about such things.
When
Dragon’s
Lair
came out I knew it was by the same guy that had done The
Secret of NIMH. I
was only seven and didn’t know what that entailed or who made the
drawings or even how animation worked, really, but I knew that
Dragon’s
Lair
was something special and that it didn’t look like any other video
game in ShowBiz.
Also,
it was impossible.
I
don’t know how many tokens I put into Dragon’s
Lair
and I honestly don’t know if I ever even figured out what the hell
I was supposed to be doing. It’s ancient now and everybody knows
how the game works, but at the time it was so counterintuitive
compared to any other game. You didn’t shoot or move a little
vehicle or person or any of the stuff you normally did in games. You
just did what the screen told you. And you had to do it immediately.
I am not an “immediately” person. My brain is not of the quick
response variety. So even years later when I not only knew how the
game worked but had actually seen it played through in its entirety,
I still couldn’t get past the third or fourth screen.
I
didn’t like Tron
when I was a kid. I tried watching it again when the sequel came out.
I figured I was older and wiser and that maybe it wouldn’t seem as
boring and goofy. That didn’t work out. But the Tron
arcade game is a thing of legend. No matter what you think of the
movie in its entirety, the concept of the Light Cycles and Light
Discs looked awesome both on and in an arcade cabinet. Everybody
wanted to play this game. I remember standing in line and waiting,
watching other kids racing the Light Cycles. It looked like the
coolest thing ever.
When
my turn finally came up I put my token in and then died almost
immediately. I want to say that Tron
is what jaded me at a young age and kept me from spending countless
dollars on video games that I was terrible at. I never got sucked
into the junkie’s world of arcade games. I saw and knew people that
would stand for hours at a cabinet trying to conquer games (or other
players). And I always remembered that brief, unsatisfying Tron
session.
That’s
not to say I never played arcade games, but I never allowed myself to
get obsessed with them.
I
recall being on a trip with my parents and finding Atari’s vector
graphics Star
Wars
game. This was well past its prime. We were river rafting or doing
some kind of outdoorsy thing and I was miserable. This might have
been a side trek from our time in Houston in 1987, as a matter of
fact. But I was desperate for some form of entertainment. I believe
we were staying at a motel and there was a sort of nook off to the
side of the lobby. You guys know the sort of nook I’m talking about
- oftentimes these nooks are inhabited by a pinball machine, a claw
machine, and around three arcade cabinets.
This
one had one old, dusty Star
Wars
cabinet.
I
already knew I sucked at the game from prior ShowBiz or bowling alley
experience, but I literally had nothing else to do. I spent at least
two hours standing there, putting quarters into the slot, and
actually getting further in the game. Whenever I ran out of money I
found my dad and asked for more. He asked what it was for and when I
told him he gave me the look that I do not have the creative ability
to describe but that I can picture in my head in an instant. It
conveyed exasperation, frustration, disappointment, and an utter lack
of understanding. He told me not to waste any more money on that and
to find something else to do.
I’m
sure he was getting me back for complaining about not wanting to go
fishing or something.
I
hate
fishing.
And
then there was Rampage.
Rampage
is my favorite arcade game. It is the only arcade game I was ever
good at and could actually beat other people in. There were times
that I stopped playing because I was out of time rather than money.
I
remember one birthday party at a skating rink that my mom basically
forced me to go to. Or maybe it was a church event. I’m not sure.
All I know is that I didn’t want to be there because I couldn’t
roller skate and didn’t particularly like any of the people there.
But when I got inside and saw a Rampage
cabinet in their arcade section I knew I was going to be okay. I had
money for food and for supposed rental of skates, but it was all
going to go into that game.
At
one point one of those kids came over and asked me if I was just
going to play that video game all night. They might have been
awkwardly inviting me to participate or they might have been mocking
me in some way. Whatever the case I made some snarky response and
shut them down. Even if they were being genuine about including me, I
had already developed enough trust issues for a whole book by that
point. If someone was talking to me, they were probably lining up a
way to mock or humiliate me.
As
far as actual, for-real arcades go, the one I was around the most was
in a shopping plaza called Mall Corners in Duluth, GA. I can’t
remember what it was called – though Galactic Adventure sounds
familiar – but it was a massive, dark, and loud place.
Mall
Corners was across from the proper shopping mall, which did not have
an arcade. Me and my friends would get dropped off at one place or
the other and, once we had exhausted the possibilities of one locale,
play a real-life game of Frogger
to cross the very busy six-lane road that ran between them. The mall
had Kaybee Toys, Circus World Toys, Gadzooks, Spencer Gifts, and Art
Explosion (this was pre-Hot Topic, but we for sure would have been
hanging out there, too if it weren’t). The proper mall also had
girls.
Mall
Corners had Toys R Us, Titan Comics, TCBY, and the arcade. And later
Video Game Exchange, which would be the first job I loved and my
first management experience at the tender age of 18.
It
did not have girls.
Side
Note: If you noticed my mention of three different toy stores and a
comic book shop above, then you know my girls comments were
superfluous anyway. Times are different now, but from birth until at
least twenty-five I met exactly three girls that read and enjoyed
comic books.
I
didn’t necessarily play a lot of games at possibly-Galactic
Adventure, but I spent a lot of time watching my buddies paly games.
The one that stands out the most is Mortal
Kombat.
I
can’t tell you what a phenomenon that first MK
was. Everyone knew about it even thought it was just an arcade game.
I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think all that many arcade
games had commercials. Not only did Mortal
Kombat
have a commercial, it was on all
the time.
It was inescapable. Even my mom new about Mortal
Kombat,
because she forbade me from even watching people play it, let alone
playing it myself.
I
only played it a couple of times at the arcade because I knew I would
be destroyed, but I watched it a lot. Those graphics almost made it a
spectator sport. And when you had people playing that were really
good and knew all of the Fatalities it got really
intense. I remember people betting on their friends and players
talking mad
shit.
I’m actually surprised I never saw a game come to physical blows,
though I’m sure many did.
I
can’t finish this thing up without talking about tabletop
Centipede.
I’m
not as good at that as I am at Rampage,
but I loved that game. Any time I see it I have
to play it. There was a Pizza Hut near the house where I grew up and
for years they had a tabletop Centipede
in their lobby. We used to go there as a family quite a bit. They had
a buffet that we all loved because who doesn’t love massive amounts
of all-you-can-eat carbohydrates?
I
would sit down at that console and play a game before we ate. As soon
as I was done eating I would play again. And then, when my mom
inevitably had to use the bathroom before we left I would get one
more game in. I don’t know why the tabletop version is so much
better than the standup console, but it is. It just feels cooler
playing it.
With
all of this nostalgia – good and bad – it’s easy to forget that
we live in an age of miracles. Among these miracles is the emergence
of a new cultural phenomenon – bars and eateries with massive
selections of video game cabinets, both new and classic. And I’m
not talking about Dave & Buster’s. These places are actually
cool.
I’ve heard great things about the Joystick
Gamebar
in Atlanta, but that place almost seems too
cool. The place that I really dig is out in the boonies in Loganville
– Flashback
Games.
It
has tons of classic arcade cabinets, as well as consoles from every
era. But it’s less a bar and more like a gigantic bowling alley
eatery. And I love
it for that. I don’t feel like I have to be cool to be there. It
feels like a place for nerds, by nerds. Like it predates the
widespread acceptance of nerd culture and is its own bizarre
throwback place. It’s comfortable in a way that no hipster joint
with neon lights and a fancy bar will ever be.
Stay
tuned for the next video game post where I will actually talk about
16-bit consoles and my time at Video Game Exchange!
In the
meantime, if you enjoyed this post and have a video game reminiscence
of your own, join the
Needless
Things Podcast Facebook Group
and get in on the conversation.
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