Ok, I am next to hop on the arcade band wagon..."WHEW", that was sure a nice climb to the top of the wagon. Anyway, I am now 34 and thus watched the popularity of video games grown and grow. The first "arcade" I visited really was not an arcade at all. There was no such thing at the time or at least not in my area. Mostly the "arcade" was a small niches in a shopping mall or in the basement of a department store. Most of the games were all black and white and were either driving or shooting games of some sort. What I mean by shooting games, I mean either the game used a gun that pointed at a large screen, or was of the boat/tank battle games where you looked through a periscope. Sea Wolf was perhaps the first game I ever played. I remember it clearly because my father had to hold me up to the periscope so I can play. Sometimes he got lucky and found a milk crate for me to stand on. My parents never let me play long either. I guess I would say the biggest change to happen in video games was the space genre with the release of Space Invaders. This game got noticed and not only by me. Up to this time, if there was a game in a store or pizza parlar it was usually one or two pinball machines. Space Invaders first made it's appearance at a local movie theatre that decided to "Add" an arcade in it's waiting room. They had three pinball machines and two Space Invader machines to start. Little did I know that this machine was ALREADY a big hit. I played a couple of games on it and I sucked...I did keep at it, but change did run out and I never completed more than 5 or 6 waves. But it did catch my interest. Space Invaders began popping up all over the place. By the time Star Wars Empire Strikes Back was released, another game made an appearance at the movie theater, Asteroids. This game I sucked at as well, but it appeared more interesting than space invaders, and the vector graphics were really hot, new and cool. I didn't go to the movies much in the following years. But now the mall had a full true to life "Arcade". My mom tried to keep me out of there as much as she could. So I didn't play too many games from this period. I did go to a Karate school and they had a Defender in the workout room for a long time. I got fairly good at this game being that it was the only game there. One of the younger classmates recommending adding to our game lineup, keeping defender and adding Pac-Man. I never heard of the game at time, but I went along and said OK. GREAT MOVE!!! Pac-Man was a hit. I liked to play it, but everyone crowded around it and I rarely got a chance to play...that is how I got good at Defender :), since few people continued to play it. Sadly around the time I left the school, they were pulling Defender out to replace it with a Ms. Pac Man. I never got to play Ms Pac Man until I found out the local amusement park was replacing it's Antique Carousel with a full blown arcade (which later I realized was a bad move). At was about 1984 and video games were at it's peak! This room had over 100 games and about 30 pinball machines, I was in heaven! They had all the hits. Frogger, Tempest, Dig Dug, Star Wars, both Pac-Mans, and an old classic Space Invaders and Asteroids. Now THIS was an arcade. I put more time in on Ms. Pac Man than regular Pac-Man. I like the change of screens and the better cut scenes. Two years later I began to work for the park and initially wanted to work for the games, but they had an opening with rides...I found that more enjoyable :). Around this time, games were winding down a bit from Pac-Man Fever. Fighting games slowly began filling the arcade like Punch Out and other games. I began to slowly loose interest in video games, except the classics. But I began to turn my attention to the pinball machines. Up until this point I was never good at them and hated them. But playing them more and more I began to get good at them and stuck with a few. I worked for the park for two more years and got fairly decent at pinball machines, especially Pin-Bot. I still stuffed quarters in the Ms.Pac Man machines, but noticed that all the other classics were disappearing. They long disappeared from the pizza parlors and other small shops. The funny thing though was that all these smaller places seemed to have an arkanoid machine. I didn't like that game too much at first. Content with pinball machines up until the late 90's, I got word that Williams will be no longer producing machines as of the millenium. That did put a big damper on my feelings toward the gaming industry. By now the local pubs and arcades have nothing but driving, Jurassic Park type shooting games, and those darn fighting games. Pinball machines are few. Only the amusement park has a good share of machines left. But I began to loose interest in arcades in general. They were no longer for me. I was now in my 30's and the games catered to the younger crowd. Most of them don't even want to be bothered with pinball machines. No wonder why the major manufacturers decided to stop making them. About around this time last year something special came along to rekindle my interest in arcade games....MAME! Ahhhhh! What a relief it is to see that someone has stepped up to the plate and found a way to play old classic arcade games on a home computer. Moreover, I saw what people were doing creating this big game cabinets (or converting existing game cabinets) to MAME cabinets that can play more than one or two games. A year before this I was planning to make a small game room in my basement with a couple pinball machines and pachinko machines. I did want a video game, but there were cost and space prohibitive. I know I only could have one...but which one out of all those classics! There was JAMMA which I learned alot about and could have a switch box to switch about 5 or so games, but many of the old classic games could not be used on the new JAMMA system. (I still had to yet learn about JAMMA adapters). But around this time I came across MAME. This was my answer. Now I can put all my classics in one cabinet! Dream come true!(posted 8318 days ago)That is my arcade story. I hope to have my game room finished by 2005. I should have two pinball machines, two MAME cabinets (one upright, one cocktail). One Bartop game, two pachinko machines, and one slot machine. Of course there will be a nice 1958 Seeburg jukebox pumping out the tunes while every one plays games. Personal arcade dream come true! YES!! Now I can play all my classics. Thank the maker for MAME!
Geo