Campground arcades

musicman282

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Anyone used to go camping with their family and play in the campground Arcade. I have many fond memories playing pole position and pacman in these arcades. I remember when our family would pull into a camp ground the first thing my brother and i would do is seek out the arcade.
 
Same here. Except in my case I would burn though most of my allowance that night.

There was always an interesting mix of games at the campgrounds my parents would go to. I remember seeing games like Super Shifter and Whirly Bird along side of pinballs like Gorgar and Solar City. It was unusual to see the real popular video games at the campgrounds but I do recall Space Invaders and Atari Football.
 
Yup. It was my introduction to arcades actually. This was late 70's and early 80's.
Lot's of EM games like those "chopper on an arm going in circles" games, Sega Basketball (push the right letter), and Chicago Coin racers (of which I managed to learn the pattern to play forever).
Also the first B/W games, 280ZZZapp, Pong clones of course, SI etc.

The campground next to "ours" had a more modern and larger arcade. I'm pretty sure I played Atari's only EM game, the racing game with the big screen there.
Also loads of pins there and a bit more modern video games of all sorts.

I HATE it that we never thought about taking pics of places like that BITD..... :(
 
Oh yeah! If I remember correctly I think the KOA campground in Gatlinburg was my first ever experience with arcade games and EM pinballs.
 
On a bike trip this past Summer we stayed at a camp site in Pennsylvania on the way from Pittsburgh to Erie. The arcade was pretty much the same as it probably was 20 years ago. Jukebox, bubble hockey, couple of pins, a few videos games, and a pool table. It was pretty weird but welcome after riding 60 miles in a heat wave. In fact the whole campsite was pretty weird. All the streets in the park were named after religious things like "Angels Way" and "Blessings Road" and I think the swimming pool doubled as a baptism pool.
 
Discovered Centipede at a campground about 8 years ago. Always played it before on the 2600 and realized what was missing all those years. I'm now a proud Centipede owner.
 
In the late 80s and early 90s, I used to ride my bike down to a nearby campground to play the games in their laundromat. They only ever had four games at a time, and the one constant during that entire time was Gyruss.

Other games that rotated in and out were Vs. Super Mario Bros, Express Raiders, Frogger, Carnival, PacMan, Ms.PacMan, Crime Fighters, Black Tiger, and Time Pilot in a converted Defender cab.

Kyle :cool:
 
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I used to spend hours in the arcade at Chute Pond Campground. So I don't make you old people feel older, I won't tell you what age I first played High Speed, but I loved it from the moment I laid eyes on it. They only had it for one season, and I went at least 20 years before playing one again. They also had Excitebike, Golden Axe, Rampart, Birdie King II. Somewhere there's a picture of me playing a Turbo cockpit there.

Last summer I went to see my parents up at their camp-trailer. They have a permanent site at a private campground. I was amazed to find a gameroom, then my nephew fished a handful of quarters out of his pocket and asked if I wanted to go hit the game room. We ended up playing through The Simpsons, a game which was over 10 years old when he was born.
 
What was it about campgrounds, pools, and laundromats that attracted so many games? I remember playing Berzerk at a country club while my parents played a doubles tennis tournament, and it was in the pool house and was soaking wet. Saw lots of games in the laundry too back in the day. Not to mention the occasional game OUTSIDE. Like the Last Starfighter movie (had that not been set in the desert I'd have walked out of the theater when I saw it as a teen).
 
My family growing up hit the campgrounds pretty hard from about 1973 until about 1985....and I can't remember a single campground that DID NOT have an arcade. They were always strange little arcades....in an old shed....in the 'other half' of the bait shop....an ice cream cooler and a few games piled under a lean-to....a rotted out pool table that had not been played on for 30 years.....always a squeaky old screen door or even no door at all....always smelled funny and had dirt or sand on the floor....man.....if anyone was smart enough to take pictures of those out of the way arcade places they would be priceless to look at today. Every day spent at a campground you always seem to have at least a 1/2 hour or so playing arcade games before your Mom or Dad said 'We didn't come here to just play arcade games!"....and then you went on some kind of crazy 1970's adventure (those were the best!).

The funny thing about the 'campground arcade' experience for me is the many outdated games and never the 'new stuff'. You could walk into a campground arcade in 1979 and play all EM pinballs and shooters from the 1960's, games like Tank, Maneater and Gunfight always seemed to be present...oh those old campground arcades.....
 
One good memory for me was a KOA campground somewhere in South Dakota in 1979.

The arcade was above the laundromat (second level). There was probably 10 pinballs, a jukebox, and one video game...a Gun Fight cocktail. We played the hell out of that thing.

I remember another campground in the early 80's had a Wizard of Wor among the mix. Played the hell out of that, too. Wanted a Wizard really bad after that. Finally picked up one (and still have it) in March of '98.
 
This is from a campground I went to for the last few years. Seems a little *exposed* to the elements for my taste, but a cool site nonetheless.

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I remember a campground somewhere around Michigan/Ohio that had a Yogi bear theme, and it was always a big deal to got out that way...
They did have an arcade but I mostly remember playing minigolf and ice cream.
 
The Lakewood Campground Arcade in Myrtle Beach was my favorite growing up. Well over 100 machines, it was run by Rosemary Coin Machines-which I think is part of Green Coin Machines. I do remember that in the early 90's they started putting all of their games, including the classics, into dynamo cabinets. You pretty much had games like Galaga, Pac, Ms. Pac, etc. in all of these dynamo cabs. Took away from the look if you ask me. Still a great arcade though.
 
In the mid 70's our family would go to a campground outside of Gettysburg. They had a bigger room with a few pinball machines and a huge air hockey table. In a smaller room there were arcade games. I remember the first time my older brother saw the game Tank, he would play it with anyone around just so he could play. I don't remember what else was there, but probably mostly EMs.
 
The campground game rooms is where I got hooked on pinball growing up.

We camped all over the US (Europe too) back in the late 60's/70's. I really only remember the EM pinballs....the sounds...the chimes, ching ching ching, and numbers chugging as they rolled.

I remember playing pinballs that you had to push a plunger in to get the ball into the plunger lane and a window where you could see how many balls were left.

I always checked out the game room first thing when we got to a new campground.

I will own an EM pinball someday.
 
We went to many KOA campgrounds BITD and I always played the games, I especially remember one rainy afternoon somewhere in the deep south at a KOA.

Everyone was piled into the main clubhouse since it was raining, and the main attraction was a single pool table being run by these two guys. They were taking on all comers so my two older sisters put their money up and waited.

Back at home our local pool hall called "The Burner" was strictly off limits since it was a breeding ground for trouble, drugs, etc. Nonetheless, my sisters still went there and learned to play pool especially well. In fact, my oldest sister won several local tournaments, a secret kept from my parents for several years.

So it's finally time for my sisters to play these two rough looking guys, and there's a huge crowd looking on, including my parents who had no idea what they were about to witness. They destroyed the guys, and ruled the roost the rest of that afternoon; my parents were shocked.

Years later at a family gathering, they fessed up to being regulars at The Burner.
 
I grew up in campgrounds nearly every weekend of my childhood. My parents were camping fiends. We did it A LOT. Back then if I got a dollar to play arcade games I was a millionaire. :) It's where I played most of my classic games BITD. There was one arcade in Colorado that had a great arcade with a Donkey Kong. I figured out that the operator forgot to latch the CP down and was able to lift it up and coin up the game. We were at that campground for 2 days and I spent most of the time playing DK for free. It's what got me hooked on the game and almost good. I think that single event in that campground really shaped what I like today. :D
 
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