Your first arcade

[taxalot]

I will tell you my fondest arcade memory.

It was summer. There was an arcade near the house my family rented, near the beach. I was like, 8 or 9 ? Anyways, I used to go there almost everyday, while the rest of the family was napping and watching TV between walks. We were always a group of kids meeting there, becoming friends, and then never seeing each other again. It happened for a few summers.

One day I was playing Street Fighter II and beating the shit out of Dhalsim, because this is what Dhalsim was for.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned. A very dangerous situation for arcade games who can't be paused.
There was a girl, there, looking at me. A total grown up too. She must have been like 12.

She talked.

"Hi sorry I made a bet with my older brother". The manager waved at me. "I was wondering if you'd allow me to kiss you. On the mouth."
*ROUND TWO, FIGHT*
"Uh, no. No."

I turned back to the arcade to more Dhalsim beating.

I don't remember much what happened next. I remember the manager yelled at me and said I was not welcome back. It took me like two weeks to grow back the balls to return to this arcade.

I think I will remember this until the day I die. It was almost rape.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I feel like every arcade place in Poland during mid 90's had the very same setup and that's the one I met in '96 for the first time:

- Mortal Kombat 1 (replaced few month later with MK3) - never before seen game looked THAT good. I was devastated I looked like a movie and I don't been any of that ccinemtic shit of nowadays, it looked just real. Only games that made comparable impression on me later was Tekken 2 on PS (50 fps gameplay!) and games run in hardware mode once I've bought 3dfx Vooodoo 2 accelerator (Quake 2, GLQuake, AvP, Final Fantasy 7 demo).

- Punisher / Cadillacs and Dinosaurs - these was was ubiquitous, best 2D beat'em ups ever and it pretty RETARDED that they still haven't received arcade perfect reissues. There's Punisher port port Megadrive but it has been butchered beyond imagination (cannot switch between vertical and horizontal rolling fluently during rolling, bad hit detection, censored nudity).

- Fatal Fury Special or 2 - replaced soon with original Samurai Showdown.

- Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition - (though I have already known SF2 via unofficial SF2IBM on my neigbhour's 386).

Few months later I went on holiday and discovered MK2 and brand new cabinet of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

All of these titles have special place in my heart to this day and I feel sorry for modern gamers as they missed the arcade craze of nineties.

 

[Melcar]

I wish I remembered . Probably some beat 'em up with my kid sister.

 

[Kabas]

I see a lot of people have the problem with remembering.

 

[Melcar]

Old age does that. Goddamn kids.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

The game eat all my pocket money so fast...

 

[Tweed]

It was so damn long ago and there were so many games it's hard to remember, but it was probably Time Pilot 84.

 

[pakoito]

Hammerin' Harry for sure.

 

[DalekFlay]

I wasn't a big arcade guy, they were already fading when I was a teen and I had good games at home. I do remember when I was pretty young I would play the Terminator 2 gun game at my local Pizza Hut (back when you ate there instead of everything being delivery) and Simpsons The Arcade Game at my local department store.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

 

[Lady_Error]

My first arcade was this pure analogue soviet mashine "Sea Battle" when you sink enemy ships with submarine torpedoes:

More info on Museum of Soviet Arcade Machine.

I actually remember that one.

Other than that, in the late 80's there were private "arcade centers" in the USSR with Atari ST games. This one was by far my favorite:

 

[Lady_Error]

better than being a millenial I guess

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Don't remember the truly first one -- I think it was a pseudo-3D racing game, probably by Sega, and I only remember that hitting your opponents once or twice would crash your car.

Then, it was this:


IIRC the gun was poorly calibrated and attached to the cabinet itself, which made aiming way harder than it was supposed to be. That and I was pretty short at that time, which made things even harder.

I clearly remember my parents were questioning my decision to play this game, but back then I wanted to become a police officer, so I kept telling them to treat it like training. Unfortunately, I lost interest after learning that shooting gangsters in titty bars is not a common thing here.

 

[Filthy Sauce]