Sensors detect another quarter in your pocket
I grew up with arcades. The one I used to go to the most was “Space Port” in the Woodbridge Center Mall. The mall was split into 4 wings and “Space Port” was downstairs from “The Game Room” which had all the D&D and roleplaying merchandise. TGR is still there, but Space Port closed soon after the Playstation was released. Any time I’d be in a mall or at the shore, I’d ask (beg?) for as many quarters as I could get my hands on. Today, very few good arcades exist. The only one I know of in NJ that’s left is in Seaside Heights. There are other smaller ones, but they don’t have many old videogames. I know there was one in Hershey Park but I don’t know if it exists anymore. There was even a small one in an old Italian Ice store called Maglione’s on Rt. 27 in Iselin, NJ which is long gone.
If you had $5, you could play 20 games which could last you several hours which included the time it took to wait for games to become available. If you wanted to be next, you placed a quarter on the machine stating that you’re next in line. Some games had a few quarters lined up.
My suggestion is to fire up whatever Journey songs you have before reading the rest of this blog post. If you want to read more about these games and others, check out Arcade History or Digitpress.
I posted on Twitter today:
“If you had ONE classic arcade game to buy, what would it be? No cheating and saying MAME :D. Me: Star Wars vector.”
I picked Star Wars vector because the game was by far the most fun for me. What was great about it was that although parts of the gameplay started off scripted, as the game went on, things became more dynamic. TIE Fighters’ flight paths changed, lasers were shot from random points at random times. There was a little-known trick at the end of the trench run where if you did the entire trench run without firing a shot until you fired your torpedoes at the end, you got bonus points when you blew up the Death Star (100,000 on level 5 I think).
The responses I got were awesome, and shows just how much influence arcades (and Journey) had on some of our lives.
@isheepthings said “Gauntlet”. I remember the day I saw this for the first time. The game was MASSIVE because it needed space for 4 players. There was a LONG waiting time for this game because people were pretty damn good at it, even right off the bat. I may be wrong, but I think it was the first game I saw that asked for 50 cents for a play. The computerized narrator’s voice chastised us for making mistakes such as “Someone shot the food“, or “Valkyrie is about to die”.
@Pancho88 said “Galaga”. I was never a huge fan of this game, although it was fun.
@JeffHinz said “Donkey Kong”. This would probably make my top 5 classic videogames of all time. It’s what launched the then-unknown Mario into stardom. Everyone should know this game. Donkey Kong steals Mario’s girlfriend (was it officially Peach at the time?) and you need to climb towers to save her. What made this game addicting was how there was no pattern to the game and you needed quick reflexes to dodge and jump over the barrels.
@extralife said “Joust”. This was one of the games that really made you work a button. Flapping around while trying to make sure you’re at least a pixel above where you needed to be to knock your opponents off was a lot of fun. I never liked playng against another person, though.
@echuta said “Sit-down Spy Hunter”. Ok, I absolutely LOVED this game. The computerized “Peter Gunn” theme in the background while shooting bad guys while avoiding their tire spikes was one of the few games that got your adrenaline running. During the game you had to drive into a semi’s cargo area and upgrade your car. You could do oil slicks against cars that are following you which was always fun. Watch out for the cars that aren’t spies, though! I always loved changing to a boat also.
@shawncoons said “Depending on what “classic” is I’m going with Major Havoc, Gauntlet, or 720 (Skate or die!).” Major Havoc I don’t remember ever playing. 720 was fun to try but I never really got the hang of it.
@hossimo said “Dragon’s Lair”. This was an interesting beast. Animator Don Bluth did an interactive videogame with a CAV (constant angular velocity) laserdisc to provide what’s seen on the screen. You’re Dirk who needs to save a princess in a castle. As you progress through it, the game gives you visual clues as to where you should move or swing at. As you do each maneuver, the laserdisc player moves to the specific frame number (not possible on CLV laserdiscs) and plays that sequence. It was a great idea and although I was never a big Don Bluth fan, it was a respectable undertaking. My issue with the game was that it would hint for you to move left, which you’d do, but OH NOES! it was a trick and you’d die. That really annoyed me because you really didn’t know what was a trick and what wasn’t. I think I saw one person ever finish that game.
@new5thpants said “Space Harrier”. I don’t think I ever played it
@banannie said “Asteroids”. Who could forget this classic? The premise was simple: you’re stuck in an asteroid field and you need to shoot your way out. The catch is that the rocks get smaller as you shoot them, and pesky aliens try to shoot you down (how do THEY not get killed by the asteroids??) As you progressed, the alien ships got smaller and shoot directly at you as they emerge, making life in the asteroid field rather hectic. Your hyperdrive can save or kill you as it could randomly destroy you.
@tedkulp said “Paperboy”. An interesting game which I could never master. The game had the handlebars of a bicycle and you had to use them to move your Paperboy around the neighborhood, pressing a button on the side of one of the handlebars to deliver a paper. If you delivered it to the right house, you were granted a point for that route. If you missed, you lost a customer. There were “mean people” houses you could throw papers at and get points for. The downside to this game was that it was nearly impossible to line up your throw because of the angle you were throwing the papers at. If you were off just a little bit, the paper went in a customer’s window and you lose a point for that route. After a while I just gave up playing it. I also didn’t like the sounds and music the company made for those games.
@roadhacker on Plurk said “Defender”. Another one of my “top 5″. Your job was to save 10 humanoids from getting captured by aliens. If they grab an humanoid and make it to the top of the screen, it turns into a mutant which fired at you faster and had a more erratic flight path. If you took too long to run the level, a special ship would come at you to take you down. If all 10 humanoids were destroyed before every 5th level, you’d lose the planet and play levels against all mutants until you reached a 5th level again where you’d start over on a new planet. This game had a ton of controls on it. The stick, hyperdrive, smart bombs, and reverse. It was complicated and fun. I’d love to have one of these at home.
@robusdin on Plurk said “Dig Dug”. I liked this game, but it was too cute and easy. You could theoretically stay on the top of the garden and kill the little monsters.
Some others I’ll make quick notes about:
Tekken - I was never a big fan of fighting games until this came out. This also came out just as arcades were dying. I beat a guy using Michelle Chang. He was so pissed off he puched the side of the cabinet. I ruled with her back then. I even made a book for the Newton with all her moves so I could reference it while I was out.
Tempest - You had two controls: a knob and a firing button. You moved your cannon along (or around) geometric shapes and shot what was coming at you from the opposite end.
Robotron - THAT SOUND when you reached level 5 and all the brain mutants beamed in. Awesome game.
Space Wars - A very simple game where you put a Star Destroyer up against the Enterprise. The fun part of the game was that you could change the dynamics of the playfield. Black holes, boundaries, and other options made the game a lot of fun.
Arkanoid - A hyperactive “Breakout”. The surprised capsules that fell to the bottom of the screen were always fun to catch. My favorite was the lasers one.
Battle Zone - This was a tank game of the future where you SLOWLY moved across a landscape and shot at other tanks. It’s fun when you start, but then tanks shoot at you from behind and kill you with no way to shoot at them first. I never got the hang of that game.
Pac-Man - Everyone has to know this game. You moved a yellow circle with a “mouth” that eats up dots in a maze while four ghosts try to eat you. I pumped a lot of quarters into this game and its later sibling Ms. Pac Man. It had a pattern and I learned the first few levels until I found that there were different ROM versions which killed the pattern I knew. After that I kept playing for fun, learning how the game worked. Did you know that ghosts never attack you from above if you’re tucked in the corner above their pen?
Marble Madness - I. Loved. This. Game. The whole game was you trying to maneuver around a maze using a trackball. You had to have PERFECT precision with this game or you’d fall off the sides and die. I made it to the end of the game once, but it was always fun to try. The music on level 2 was just awesome. I think I’d have to put this in a Top 10.
Space Invaders - Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. That was all the background noise you needed to understand the unrelenting march of the aliens as they try to destroy you. This was such a fun game because it was so simple, but as you killed more of them, the game got harder and faster. You had to have a method to how you killed them or they’d be all over the place. There was a pattern to the game which I read in an old issue of New Jersey Magazine which I still have. I don’t remember it, but there was a certain number of lasers you would fire which would cause the next ship to be 300 points. I used to try to get an alien on the bottom row to be the last. It worked sometimes.
Sinistar - At first it looks like an Asteroids clone, but then you realize that the aliens you’re fighting are building this….thing. You shoot asteroids to mine Sinibombs which are the only weapons useful against the Sinistar. When it’s built, the game screams at you in a demonic voice “BEWARE I LIVE“. That was damn scary when you first heard it. The thing would come at you full speed and you had to deploy your Sinebombs while fighting off little aliens. If you had enough bombs, you took Sinistar out. It would taunt you too. “RUN, COWARD!“. “RUN! RUN! RUN!”.
Tron - One of the few tie-ins to a movie that worked well. You had two controls: a flight stick and a knob. When you start the game, you have 4 directions to go in and each direction brought you to a different game: tank maze, light cycles, bugs, or the MCP. Each game used the flight stick, but not all games used the knob. When you won all 4 games, you went up a level where you’d play the same 4 games, but at a higher difficulty. The music matched what was in the movie also. Such an awesome game and definitely a “Top 5″.
Starship I - Basically you flew around space shooting ships that came out of Star Trek. When the game was over it would say “Sensors detect another quarter in your pocket”. I loved that.
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