whats your earliest memory of going to an arcade

bottlejunkie

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mine is going to "THE VAULT" in baytown texas in 1978 i was 8 years old it was next to bay plaza theater my older brother's HAD to take me with them. i remember they had an entire room dedicated to a pinball machine that was called ????? i can't remember but it was HUGE!!! THE FLIPPERS WERE HUGE THE BALL WAS HUGE HELL THE WHOLE THING WAS HUGE! i remember that pin more than anything but i cant remember the name?

o.k. i was wrong it was 1979
 
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Late 1980's bowling alley arcades here in NW Ohio. Tron, Donkey Kong, Vs Dual System (Mario/Excitebike) are my earliest arcade game memories. I didn't even really understand Tron, I just liked the glowing joystick.
 
In about 1991ish when I was 3 going to the local Cinadome theaters and playing STUN Runner. Also remember playing Ms Pacman, Simpsons, and Xmen there. I missed all the fun of the early 80's.
 
Early to Mid 80's when I was about 8-10 maybe a bit younger. I was but it was the old bowling alley in Granite City, IL. My uncle would take me up there and I played the arcade games and he always played the pinball's. The one game that always suck my money in the most was Dragon's Lair.
 
mid 80's going to machester mall with my mom and brother. they had an arcade in there and we'd try and convince my mom to let us go play everytime we went to the mall
 
Mid-70's at a place called The Hangout in Gulf Shores, AL. They had a Sea Wolf and either Jaws or Shark video games. Everything else was either an EM pinball or EM rifle game.

The place is still there, but nothing like back then. Back then it was a seedy little place where the older kids hung out, bought burgers and hot dogs, and smoked. Now it's a huge, fancy place where they have outside concerts, sip wine, etc.

Loved the old place, no desire to go back to the new place.

-JM
 
We would only get to go in the arcade at the local mall (GALAXY in Christiana Mall, DE) on occasion, because it was dark, filled with cigarette smoke at the time, and all the "druggies" hung out in there according to my mother LOL

One of the special things I remember getting to see during the Summers was the boardwalk arcade at Rehoboth Beach, DE. It was so neat to see so many games and pins lined up in an inside/outside location.
 
I was 9 or 10 (79-80), my best friend had his birthday party at Funspot. It was way cool... we each got 5 bucks worth of tokens... and back then when you purchased $5 you got 5 extra tokens!!! I also remember there used to be the elusive purple token... if that spit out of the machine you got 20 bucks worth of tokens for free!!! Never got the purple one.

It was great... Funspot was a lot smaller back then, it only consisted of the small building in front where the restaurant and ticket counter are today... no second floor no bowling... nothing.
 
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they had an entire room dedicated to a pinball machine that was called ????? i can't remember but it was HUGE!!! THE FLIPPERS WERE HUGE THE BALL WAS HUGE HELL THE WHOLE THING WAS HUGE!

could it be Atari's Hercules? that was the largest commercial pinball machine ever made.

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one of my earliest memories i have was Games People Play in Poulsbo, WA right next to Pietro's pizza. it was a sterile storefront in a strip mall but they had Firetruck which was a blast to play with my younger sister since we we would alternate between being cooperative and competitive.

the other early memory i have is of some arcade in a mall in either Topeka or Wichita (probably Topeka,) that had bumper cars all the way in the back. not go karts or anything but real, carnival-style bumper cars with a wall down the middle so you couldn't see well around the corners.
 
Not really an arcade, but when I was 7 or 8 the Chevron about 1/2 a mile from my house ended up with an Asteroids and a Star Castle. I remember walking through the field to Chevron to drop some change in the coke machine to buy some Mountain Dew and to play a few games of Star Castle (I wasn't a fan of Asteroids)...
 
My first arcade was Dream Machine in Hadley, MA. It had pinball machines, Skee-Ball, and all of the hottest video games of the day. Prize booth, on-site management, the works. You could walk through it; it had an L shape, with two large entrances. It was loud, and it was always crowded. It hit its peak in 1984. The last "classic" era game I remember them putting in was the laserdisc NFL Football.

It started languishing shortly thereafter. Then, on-site management left, and the prize booth shut down. Then they chopped it in half, put up a wall, and let another store take over the space. Today, it's a little room with broken-down DDR machines and about a dozen vids or so. And no one's ever in there.
 
The bowling alley in the basement of the Apache Plaza mall made a game room out of some storage space between the two sides. It had about a dozen pins and a "whack a mole" game until the day it was invaded by boxes that had creatures from space.......

ken
 
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I use to go to the Arcade in San Antonio (out door) and play EM games, probably around 1976/1977.
Then later play at the NY ARCADE in Boulder (where they filmed Mork and Mindy)

Jon
 
Early 90's- @ parents bowling league at bowling alleys-Mine would be Street Fighter 2 World Warrior. I remember I was around 12 yrs old. I was thrilled to see Guile. I played em all day along!. Beg my parent for another quarters! Now I am the OG for the SF2!
 
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I didn't see as many arcades as I did large hotel game rooms. I traveled with my parents a lot in the summer, and the big, fancy hotels in the mid-80s would always have very large game rooms, large enough to qualify as arcades. I remember game rooms at the Orlando Marriott and Las Vegas Hilton that were positively HUGE.

My earliest arcade memory might be one of the smaller game rooms that could be found at campgrounds, as well. I remember most campgrounds would have a couple of games, and I was always disappointed when one of them was Donkey Kong :)
 
could it be Atari's Hercules? that was the largest commercial pinball machine ever made.

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thats it hercules,thanks i havent seen one since. if i remember right it had a white ball?
 
For me it was the early 80s. If I had to guess I'd say 83 because of the games. That would have made me 7. James Madison Univeristy had a decent sized arcade (which as within walking distance from my house). They had Cloak & Dagger, Mario Bros. for sure. I vaguely remember Mr. Do's Castle. I think they may have had a Berzerk too. It's very likely that this wasn't the first time I'd been in an arcade (every mall had one) but that's the earliest clear memory I have of an arcade where I can remember playing the games. I was over there often so I'm probably mashing up my memory as well.
 
could it be Atari's Hercules? that was the largest commercial pinball machine ever made.

...

thats it hercules,thanks i havent seen one since. if i remember right it had a white ball?

Yep, looked like a pool cue ball. More pics of one here (taken at Hersheypark, 2007):

P1010293.JPG


P1010305.JPG
 
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