...was the first person I thought of when I woke up this morning.
If you haven't seen 1983's 'Joysticks' by Greydon Clark you're really missing out on a great little sex-comedy romp set in an Arcade (an Arcade full of semi-nude blondes playing Galaga). John "Uncle Rico" Gries plays the ultimate in bad 1980's comedy-punks, King Vidiot, who is 100% in love with going to the Arcade. As was I during my youth.
My aim in this post is to document my Arcade-obsessed youth.
Although it probably wasn't the first Arcade game I played (I can actually imagine my Dad, pint in hand, holding me up so I could reach the steering-wheel of Pole Position or whatever game happened to be in the pub we would be spending our one day per-week together), my earliest Arcade gaming memory is playing Capcom's Ghouls N' Ghosts.
I seem to remember being around six or seven and disasterous at the game (shit, I still am now. It's tough as hell). Having to push my enormous glasses back up my nose every thirty seconds probably didn't help either. But I remember being transfixed. I most certainly didn't have a home console back then (and my 128k Sinclair Spectrum didn't arrive until x-mas morning 1988) so getting to grips with games for the first time was something quite special and new for me. Despite not being very good, I was instantly hooked.
The combination of being that young and an over-protective Mum/Stepdad plus very little money didn't give me many opportunities to excercise my new found love for gaming. It would often be holidays with Grandparents where I'd get a chance to spank my savings on nightly bouts of Wrestle War or Karnov.
Mr B's in Leysdown was my favourite seaside Arcade. I spent a solid two weeks in there during the summer school holidays of '89, '90 and '91. Mr B's had it all. The usual old, OLD 10p classics (Space Invaders {or various knock-off variants}, Pac-Man {and the awful platform game, Pac-Land}, Hang-On etc), the more recent titles (Captain America & The Avengers, WWF Wrestlefest, Moonwalker) and the latest advancements in Arcade technology (Mad Dog McCree, Dragon's Lair II, the numerous trackball-controlled golf games). Countless trips to Ruth the "change Lady" (back before automatic change machines, middle-aged women would be paid to sit in cages, magically turning pound coins into 10ps with the enchanted fag that would be constantly hanging out of her hairy mouth.), the smell of the low-quality in-house chip shop and the nods and smiles to/from fellow early-bird gamers every morning as we fetch our much-needed and much-worn stools will stay with me forever.
It was around this time that I started regularly going to Arcades in Milton Keynes (where I live) with my friends or alone. The one with the best selection was part of a cinema/entertainment complex called The Point (where I worked for ten years when I was older). They had so many great games there and were always the first to have the newest titles. The Point was where I had my first experiences of Final Fight, X-Men (6-player side-scroller, not the one-on-one fighter Children Of The Atom), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (one of my all-time favourites), Mortal Kombat (the first time I saw a "fatality" my heart skipped a beat, I had never seen anything like it before), NBA Jam, Shadow Dancer, the list is endless.
But there was one game at The Point that changed Arcade gaming for me and , well, basically everyone who frequented the place forever...
I had played the first Street Fighter in Mr B's and I remember hating it (despite having a "lucky" 20p that would fall through the slot, come out of the return flap but still register a credit!) but the attract mode (the "demo", basically) of the cabinet looked too good to resist.
I'm 99% sure I lost my first match, I'm not even sure which character I chose, but I instantly fell in love with it. The cabinet's panels thankfully had the characters' move lists on them so learning the special attacks was a doddle. After a month or so it appeared that my most used character was Guile. A character who was well balanced with very effective close, distance and air attacks. Taking out opponents, both real and virtual, soon became child's play.
I think at one point they even bought a second cabinet in to meet demand. So many people became good at the game which was awesome. As we'd all been playing it for as long as eachother we were all pretty evenly matched which lead to some tense bouts. I can clearly remember at least 5 actual fist fights caused by the game, usually started by the same person (who shall remain nameless as he's probably just as insane now as he was back then). Madness.
Unfortunately, lazyness and home consoles took over and I rarely stepped foot inside Arcades for the next couple of years.
As I reached about 15 years old I started socialising with people from school a bit more and used to go to a place called Rollers (large, soulless roller rink where people my age went to indulge in underge drinking and mutual-masturbation). Mainly to indulge in laughter, but would often break away from the crowd to check out their collection of Arcade cabinets. The ones I can definetly remember playing there were N.A.R.C (Midway's hilarious anti-drugs gorefest), Pang (Taito's ball-popping puzzler) and various insane "Bullet-Hell" shoot-em-ups. Oh, and a little number called Super Street Fighter II. I had fallen back in love with Capcom's boys and girls all over again.
While playing all the old games of my youth on Xbox Live Arcade, via the naughty MAME or on compilations can be great, nostalgic fun. They will never recreate the times I spent in Arcades during my youth.
These dingy , noisy, epileptic's nightmares made me who I am today. The arcades are where I grew up, learned how to interact with all walks of life, met my first girlfriend. A geek I may be, but I wouldn't have done those ten or so years any other way.
This summer a friend and I are planning on going to Funspot in New Hampshire, USA. It's apparently the world's largest collection of playable Arcade classics. I honestly cannot wait to go and I wouldn't be surprised if reliving it all brings a slight tear to my eye.
