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Your first arcade

Jason Liang

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Do you remember the first quarter your ever spent at an arcade machine? Which game was it?

I still remember mine was Afterburner.

Got shot down in like 20 seconds, was terrified of arcade games and didn't spend another quarter until two years later.

I remember the Pizza Hut we would go to had Rastan and Kid Nikki and i would watch those screens with both longing and fear as we waited for our order to cook.

Also share which cabinets you'd like to own one day.

Mine would include City Connection, Gauntlet and either Rastan or Cadash. Also a motorbike racer cabinet would be awesome.
 
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Modron

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No I don't even remember my first pc games. Consequence of starting early, had a commodore 64 monochromatic green screen built into the case model in the kitchen was plugging away on that thing probably by 3 or 4.

I do remember playing Gauntlet, Street Fighter 2, Pac-man, Space Invaders, a number of racing games I don't remember the name of, and a whole bunch of Golden Axe likes: D&D golden axe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles golden axe, X-Men golden axe, Knights of the Round golden axe, et cetera. I think the last arcade cabinet I played on was one of those Time Crisis games.
 

Axe Father

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Space Gun from Taito. Spent all day in that humid death trap with a fucking knapsack of quarters only to get the bad ending on my last continue by shooting the shit out of the cockpit of the escape ship. Fuck you Bill Duke, your choice minigun technique in Predator (docudrama based on real events btw) never let me down until the END OF THE GODDAMN GAME you coprophage. Sister Act 2 was dogshit compared to the first one. You winning the American Black Film Festival Career Achievement Award was a human rights tragedy and the UN should have sent troops and put a stop to it.

PS - You owe me like 48 quarters, which because of inflation and stuff is probably at least worth your 663K house. gimme
 

Mustawd

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Do you remember the first quarter your ever spent at an arcade machine? Which game was it?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat em up.

tumblr_pkknjeYv4X1v4u49oo1_640.gif

NiceImportantEeve-size_restricted.gif


My school had a grading system that would grade you 1-5 (5 being the best) in 5 different categories. If I got five 5s, my dad would take me to the local Stop N Go gas station and give me $1 in quarters.
stop_n_go_gas_station.jpg


Each play was 50 cents, so I’d get two play chances. We were very poor.

Heh....actually tearing up thinking about that. When I have kids I wanna make sure they are as humble as I was growing up.
 

Jason Liang

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my first pc game was Rampage on DOS that came with our family's first computer. The second was a dumb action puzzle game called Kingdom of Kroz 2 that I convinced my mom to get for me from the local drugstore, it was like a $5 5.25 inch floppy file. I don't think we got any more games for that PC. Then my little uncle had a mac and he had a couple of games on that- Battle Chess, Glider 4.0 and a game that greatly influenced my childhood, Spaceward Ho! Sometime around jr high we got a Mac as well, and the games I remember we got for that (from Price Club/ Costco) were Gabriel Knight SotF, Kings Quest 7 The Princeless Bride, and a Mac game 4 pack bundle that had four games so obscure I don't think I can even search for their title anymore - some sort of mars colonization game where you had to build a mars colony, a polygon-based tank game that I guess was kind of like a proto- faceball/ counterstrike, and this pretty cool cyberpunk racing game that was kind of like grand theft auto (but not as cool as what I just described). Don't remember having any other games than that. I managed to secretly acquire an interactive sex cd on a trip to Vegas, it was called Private Pleasure Park 1 and it was amazing - made me a man. That's all the games I remember owning on PC until I started college - you have to remember that SMAC had come out as I was graduating from high school and Civ 2 was still considered a "hot" pc game as I started freshman year. Ofc I had a friend Paul whose family had a suped up PC with Myst, and Diablo 1 had come out around junior year of high school. PC gaming really evolved dramatically those 3-4 years.
 

agentorange

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I don't remember what my first arcade game was but it was probably Galaga or House of the Dead. My fondest arcade memory is when we went on an extended family ski trip and I didn't want to go skiing so I spent the whole time in the lodge playing Arctic Thunder. I got good enough at it that I managed to get first place and got a bonus game. Years later we went on another ski trip, this time I did go skiing and I ended up hitting a tree and fracturing my spine. My point is, don't go outside, stay inside and play video games.
 

Voids

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Not sure what the very first one was. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Street Fighter 2. There was a machine in the local round table pizza and we'd pump a few dollars worth of quarters into the machine. I also remember playing the Simpson's a lot too.
 

Wyatt_Derp

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I'm not entirely sure either, but my earliest memory of one was Star Wars Atari Arcade (1983) after seeing ROTJ with my family. Dad gave me a quarter to throw in and had to help hold me high enough to grab the controls. Speaking just from nostalgia sake, playing Star Wars arcade after seeing a Star Wars movie in the early 80s was enough to make a kid's head explode.
 

Cerulean

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I was born in the late 60's. I'm old enough to remember spending endless hours hanging out at the one honest-to-God arcade in my small town. A scene straight out of Ready Player One, or Stranger Things. A true child of the 80s. Cliches are cliches for a reason, I suppose.

I distinctly remember when the first genuine sensation showed up: A Pac-Man machine. People who had never bothered with arcade games before showed up, and when they did, they were four or five deep, infatuated, trying to get a good look at the game. No one had never seen anything like it before. It truly was a cultural event. For weeks, I just watched people play, looking over other people's shoulders. I didn't even try to get in line.

After that first few months, after the hype and initial excitement died down, I remember playing the hell out of it, and enjoying every moment. Decades later, it's still a great game, really. I still play it from time to time, on a VM, of course.

After that? Lots of Wizards of Wor, a TON of Tempest (I will forever enjoy spinning that dial), and the original Battle Zone. A couple of years later, plenty of the Tron video game (four games in one!), Galaga, Satan's Hollow, and Sinistar (run, coward!). There are plenty of other games, but these are the ones I will always remember.

The funny thing is (and I realize this might be time playing with me), I remember that arcades were actually more social and communal than the way on-line gamine is today; I suppose it was because you actually saw the other players in real life, and could talk to them about things that weren't directly related to gaming, and it didn't feel forced. That, and if you told a fellow gamer to go fuck their mother... it might not have gone well. :)

Looking back, I wouldn't change a single goddamn thing.
 

Mexi

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Barely. It was either Marvel vs. Capcom, Metal Slug, or Die Hard Arcade. The best of the bunch was Marvel vs Capcom, though. This laundry mat in the ghetto hosted that game and Die Hard Arcade. We used to play it only when we visited our cousins (they lived in the ghetto). Weirdly enough, for a huge city and the ghetto part of town, those games were never full. We've never had a problem accessing them. If anything, we were oftentimes the only ones playing the game with no one around.

I remember we got in trouble for spending all the quarters on that game instead of doing the laundry like we were asked to. My cousins got spanked, and my brother and I got off free :lol:.
 

Dr Skeleton

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Must have been some fighting game, because it was almost exclusively fighting games in arcades here but there's no way I can remember what it was. The only game I can still identify from playing back then is Metal Slug.
 

Jason Liang

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Some other great arcade memories -
We were vacationing in Vegas when Mortal Kombat 2 dropped. HO-LY-SHIT. I was in treasure Island, and they were running the game in the middle of the arcade on a giant projection. There were like 200-300 kids watching people play, the line was like 70 people waiting to challenge the winner, it was like watching an EVO grand finals live. When Shao Khan's arena came up, HO-LY SHIT. When someone got Kintaro the first time, HO-LY SHIT. When someone figured out how to shapeshift Tsang Tsung the first time, HO-LY SHIT. First time Shao Khan, HO-LY SHIT. Easter eggs - a lost art that Mortal Kombat arguably made the best use of. I guess that's the closest I got to the Pac-Man phenomenon Cerulean described.

Another experience was when we were vacationing in Europe, I was about 13. We were crossing the English Channel on a steam liner and in the evening the only for me to do was hang out in the tiny arcade that had like 4-5 cabinets. The only I remember best the Willow - it looked great but also very hard. Strider might have been another one, hm.
 
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Kabas

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Can't remember clearly the name of the arcade and what it was about, but i clearly remember playing it a lot. Of course played the well-known metal slug and mortal combat(only the first one at the arcade though).
There was that one game about two players racing as dinosaurs i remember more clearly for some reason. Also remember trying that aforementioned sea battle once.
 

Jacob

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
I don't remember the very first but these are some that are memorable:

A fantasy beat-em-up, I don't remember what game, but I don't think there's that many fantasy beat-em-ups out there. Maybe Golden Axe or the Capcom D&D games.
The Lost World light gun shooter.
KoF 96. I play as Mai fighting against Mai in blue. At that time I don't understand the tingling sensation in my pp. Very exciting.
 

Snorkack

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Some Pacman clone with the difference that you can alter the maze layout by shifting some gates. iirc you were controlling a ladybug and the enemies were lobsters and bugs. Played the shit out of that cabinet every summer when me and my parents went on vacation to that one italian town.
 

Parsifarka

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I've distinct memories of playing House of the Dead, but most probably the first was some highly popular derivative of Moto Racer. As a kid I loved riding the bike, which required to actually move the body in order to make turns; I got good enough as to leave my initials in some machines along the coast where my parents took me.
I was obsessed by the speed. I dreamt of racing through sunny beaches, green hills and mossy ruins; yet to this day I haven't ever ridden a real motorbike.
I guess I only like them in games :dealwithit:
 

Jason Liang

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I've distinct memories of playing House of the Dead, but most probably the first was some highly popular derivative of Moto Racer. As a kid I loved riding the bike, which required to actually move the body in order to make turns; I got good enough as to leave my initials in some machines along the coast where my parents took me.
I was obsessed by the speed. I dreamt of racing through sunny beaches, green hills and mossy ruins; yet to this day I haven't ever ridden a real motorbike.
I guess I only like them in games :dealwithit:
you should go for it
my cousin loves motor bikes and ended up splurging on a harley
my other cousin (his sister) met her husband through her brother since they were in the same motor club (great for socializing, great for getting hot women even if my cousin is not a hot woman)
I even say this despite her husband (then boyfriend) got into a serious biking accident and was in a coma for about six months. They got married when he woke up from the coma

anyway go for it. You'll probably love it as you did when you were a kid and you'll meet other people with the same passion
 

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