Most memorable arcade moment

[saturnkk]

When I was about 11 or 12 and money was hard to come by my cousin and I would hammer nickels on his back patio until they were about the size of a quarter. In an hour or so we each do about 20 - 30. We thought that was the greatest thing! wow

 

[Token420]

I used to work at an arcade in Tulsa. We had a garage door type switch that we carried which when pressed activated a silent alarm. One day I was in there all alone when the power went out and came back on. A few minutes later some guy runs quickly passed the double glass door entry way. Then as I get close to the door he jumps out in front of the doors, pointing a shotgun at me.
It was a very wide eyed hyped up cop ready to shoot the culprits, me. No one got shot after I explained (from the floor) that I was the only one there and was working. Apparently the power outage triggered the alarm.

 

[cadillacman]

Caddyman just reminded me of mine...and it wasn't even at an arcade!

I played Hard Drivin at a science museum - the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA. They built a whole wing called "the future center" and it was really cool (back then). I honestly wish it was still around, but they had Hard Drivin because it showed the future of computing and virtual reality. They've since made the future center just another wing of the place, although the Omniverse (see: imax) theater is still there.

Fast forward a couple years and I was playing it at the Boardwalk Mall arcade in Wildwood, I could only play it a couple times because it was a buck to play and my parents were poor lol, but I couldn't believe that I finally had a chance to try driving a real (like) stick shift.

yup right down to the clutch and key ignition. At the time, that had that thing down pat. It even gives the feeling of driving a car, the feedback steering, force sensitive braking, handling carachteristics of the car, at the time there was nothing like it and they really nailed it.

 

[cadillacman]

the crowds around time travler & street fighter 2's

Yeah man i remember everybody oogling around the time traveler when it firat came out, but at the time( late 80s-early 90s iirc) it was like $1.50 to play so everybody looked, nobody played lol

 

[ArcadeGreg]

The summer of '94 and I was 13 years old. I went to Las Vegas with the family. My cousin (who was 11) and I blew through $500 it 4 days. We played everygame in almost every hotel on the strip, and that was back when the hotels still had bad ass arcades. We beat TMNT, Revolution X, The Simpsons, Terminator 2, and a couple others. It is one of my favorite memories. A 11 and 13 yeard old taking taxi's from hotel to hotel crashing every arcade; it was some much fun. By the end of the trip we had a garbage bag full of tickets for the MGM arcade. We got one of everything. LOL. I am smiling writing this stuff. I love it.

 

[Rrcade]

Someone mentioned play a game in roller skates, has anyone done that as an adult? It don't work so well now when you're taller than the game

 

[Black Matrix]

I think my most memorable experience was when I was a kid. I hated school and about once every 6 weeks, me and my mom would take a mental health day. I cut school, she layed out of work and we would head to the mall. Gold mine was the arcade at the mall. The game that sticks in my head the most was Firefox. I remember seeing it in the dark and was just amazed. I grabbed the yoke just playing around and the music kicked on for the attract mode. The airplane flying across the water just blew me away. Fast forward to today. I can't be 100% sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the firefox I own is the same one I saw years ago.

For me its the games that stick in my head the most for arcade memories. Red Baron at the first town's WalMart, Space Ace at the local pizza joint/arcade. Seeing an MKII in the dark with the marquee light burned out with a freshly capped monitor and thining to myself, that game is awesome, what the hell is it(well after I had played the game and its popularity had wained).

There's just too many great moments to list.

 

[Racetech]

I guess I have two--back around 1982, setting the high score in an arcade for Pac-Man at 1,414,000. The previous high was something like 400,000. It drew a small crowd (like 4 or 5--we're talking a really small crowd) but that score obviously wasn't otherwise noteworthy.

The 2nd was in a different arcade. This convinced me that I have the world's best wife. I was on a roll playing Q*Bert. I had something like 17M points. I'd been playing the same game for over 8 hours as my wife patiently waited. But her demeanor began to finally change. So I jumped all my saved lives off the top...28 of them as I remember (these details are somewhat fuzzy now). I had my name up on the list there as having high score and I was really really nice to wifey for a long time after.

 

[gorfchampion]

There's so many its hard to pick one. I guess the winter of '82-'83 at a local roller rink comes to mind first. There was good, loud music, an awesome disco ball lighting up the entire floor, hot girls all over the place, and a whole wall of games(maybe a dozen or so) with Space Duel, Sinistar, and Asteroids Deluxe all lined up. I loved that trio. Oh, and they had good pizza, too.

 

[jkoolpe]

For me...probably around 1981 or so...it was finally breaking the 1 million mark on Tempest to the sounds of the Beatles "Golden Slumbers" / Abbey Road B side medley (which was playing on the arcade speakers tuned to whatever station they had selected for the day).

I broke a million just about when Paul is singing "One sweet dream...came true...today. Yes it did!" (For those of you who know the album ).

The arcade was "Central Park" located in Mountain View, CA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FBi6Tu9Gq4). A great arcade of the time that I miss to this day .

Jon

 

[Racetech]

There's so many its hard to pick one. I guess the winter of '82-'83 at a local roller rink comes to mind first. There was good, loud music, an awesome disco ball lighting up the entire floor, hot girls all over the place, and a whole wall of games(maybe a dozen or so) with Space Duel, Sinistar, and Asteroids Deluxe all lined up. I loved that trio. Oh, and they had good pizza, too.

PM me if you're in the St. Louis, MO area. You can re-live that past (kind of, sans as many hot girls--I'm married). I attached some photos of my home arcade. Each one is restored to like new condition.

Complete game list:

Pac-Man, Sinistar, Dig Dug, Space Duel, Firepower, Gorgar, Pole Position, Baseball Champ, Space Invaders, Whirlybird, Donkey Kong, Galaga, and Ms. Pac-Man (not shown).

BTW, when my son and his friends arrive in town this Saturday, I'm going try for the "World's Record" on Sinistar (my son works for one of the few remaining arcade game manufacturers). I recently looked up the high scores as listed on Twin Galaxies for Sinistar. 761,305 is the #1 score and hasn't been beaten (officially) since 1984. I have three saved scores higher than that on my machine including one over 1M. It's been a long time since I played it, but on the first try I got almost 400,000 with the settings as shown at TG. That would rank me 5th. So I'll try to get played in for it.

 

[jswagner]

I have two:

Playing Turbo in a cockpit in a mall arcade somewhere in Philly. I was too short to reach the pedals, so my Dad operated the accelerator with his hands. Literally the only good memory I have of that man. It's a highlight recently because I just snagged a Turbo Mini.

My second memory was picking up a busted Bad Dudes cabinet for free. The monitor was dead, so after swapping in a new WG I was using on my JAMMA test kit, I threw in my Strikers 1945 board and found that I couldn't move down on the P1 stick (and the P2 stick was just unusable). In Strikers 1945, the powerups will 'bounce' a few pixels higher that your starting point, so you have to move forward a little bit if you want to grab them. I learned how to play by moving up just enough to get powerups, but still being far enough back to put distance between myself and the enemies. It's unreal how good you can become at a game when you enforce such silly limitations on yourself.