Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A is for..........Arcade

As a child of the 80s, a good chunk of my time was spent in arcades trying to get my name on the high score list of various video games: Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Dig Dug, Joust. The list goes on and on.

I remember perfect Saturdays. Taking the bus downtown with friends and seeing how far our allowances could take us. We usually did some half-hearted shopping, someone buying music or maybe a pair of shoes if there was a little extra cash. There was really only one choice for lunch, and so we all came to appreciate Burger King.

Then it was time for the arcade. I can still remember the thrill of feeding bills into the change machine, scooping out the tokens that would help me achieve video game immortality.

You lost your sense of time in the arcade. The only thing that mattered were the tokens. As long as you had tokens, you had time. If someone ran out of tokens, it was an unwritten rule to pitch in and keep them in the game. With empty pockets, we gathered around the last person playing, hoping the game would never end. When that last game ended, we reluctantly made our way back to the bus stop.

Dreams of next Saturday already in our head.

8 comments:

  1. Hey Tim, welcome to the A to Z Challenge! I remember the arcades as a kid. I could play for hours on a couple dollars. Can't do that anymore.

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  2. Aww... love the last line. Even as kids we knew the sweetness of weekend fun wouldn't last forever. Nice post, Tim. Best of luck in A to Z!

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  3. I never was big into arcades, but I think it might have been more of a Guy Thing. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed your walk down memory lane.

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  4. I loved Ms Pac-Man. For some reason, I was better at it than Pac-Man (which is ridiculous as they are the same game!).

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  5. Hours in the arcade shouldn't count toward the total sum of your life, they should be bonus time.

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  6. Word. Arcades was da babomb. I only played Kong at home on Nintendo, at the mall it was all about Mortal Kombat II. Those combos blew my mind, and the fatalities were amazing too. Looking back I'm not sure how healthy that was. I'll probably want my kids to stick to Mario Cart and Wii Tennis.

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  7. Ms Pac-Man and Space Invaders were my favorites.

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