Worse Arcade memory?

Leinhit

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Anyone got bad stories from back in the day?

Got beat up?

Money taken from you?

got a body part caught in a machine?

It took me 25 years.. but I realize now a pedophile tried to kidnap me from the arcade...

not scared for life or anything... but some perv. was watching me play DK... place was empty.. he said he was not from the area... asking directions to a motel..

acted like he didn't understand my directions.. and then asked if I could show him where and he'd bring me right back..

freak! see that crap does really happen! funny if not true!

Hopefully your stories are funnier
 
My brother getting showed into a machine becuase some kid couldn't get his credit to work and I did. So his brother pushed my brother.

Finding out the guy who use to run the local arcade when I was in HS killed himself. He was in his 60ties or 70ties.
 
I can remember getting shot down trying to hit on cute girls many, many times.

Oh, to be 14-15 again... trying to be all cool with your friends, but keeping an eye on the time 'cause your mom's gonna pick you all up in the station wagon an hour from now.

Was I the only one that had to do the "your parents drop us off, my parents will pick us up" bit in order to get to the mall before you had your driver's license?
 
When the local arcades began shutting down. That was the saddest arcade memory I have.

- M1A
 
I played Dragon's Lair once....worst 30 seconds of my life.

Best quote EVAR.

But in the spirit of the thread:

1) Watching a fat, balding, flaming red-headed (and I mean caricature beer belly fat like octo-mom pregnant redneck fat) Junior High School PE coach who also moonlighted as the HS driver's Ed teacher tally up a high score on Pac Man in a local 7-11 back in the day. I was 15, and although his name was Billy Burge, we called him Billy Barge. It broke my preconception of "cool." I spoke to him later in life and learned he was really a very cool guy. Still is, and I regret my childhood preconceptions. But. Imagine this with bright red in the hair:

achopper.jpg


Handily making you look like a n00b on one of your favorite games back in the 1980's.

2) Playing Red Baron for the first and last time in your life and having Dad tell me it's time to go when I still had all 3 lives. Back when I was like 14.

3) The worst? 1999, Florida, arcade in Sandestin mall, playing that tank/hovercraft game that had 2 machines linked and it was a lot like Mechwarrior but you had full 360 degree freedom with those two sticks and triggers, and not only beating my cocky son (at 17 he had some attitude) but also gaining his admiration....until the power dropped for a microsecond, not only wiping out my super high score, but rebooting the game and wiping out my credits. I would have towered over the scores that day, due to blind luck and just being in the zone as I had not been since 1986 on a Tempest machine in Washington DC - plus a combination (I realize now) of the machine losing high scores when the power surged at that arcade.

4) Freshman year, high school at Godfather's Pizza (being in Louisiana, our churchgoers often referred to that place as God the Father's Pizza, ha, ha) on a date, trying to impress a girl, and having never played Pac Man before - not knowing anything about the game and looking like a fool as other kids yelled mercilessly at me to EAT THE GHOSTS NOW!!!!! AWWWW, YOU WAITED TOO LONG YOU ARE DEAD.....

For those of you who grew up with video games in the home, you won't understand that last one - but what seems obvious today was often the fodder of cheap paperback strategy guides in the early 1980's. Hell, Time Magazine even wrote an article on Asteroids trying to grasp the allure of destroying little rocks that never hurt anyone. None of us back then knew how to play these games outside what was on the tiny instruction card. And we learned by playing and dropping quarters which would be the equivalent of about a buck fifty a try today.

Now get off my lawn before I turn on the sprinklers.
 
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aint that the truth..

there was no internet, no you tube, no cell phones, etc.. to learn the fast way how to play a game..

it took weeks / months of playing to catch onto a trick...

your only communication was the small world around you and some other kids just like you in the arcade...
 
Anyone got bad stories from back in the day?

Got beat up?

Money taken from you?

got a body part caught in a machine?

It took me 25 years.. but I realize now a pedophile tried to kidnap me from the arcade...

not scared for life or anything... but some perv. was watching me play DK... place was empty.. he said he was not from the area... asking directions to a motel..

acted like he didn't understand my directions.. and then asked if I could show him where and he'd bring me right back..

freak! see that crap does really happen! funny if not true!

Hopefully your stories are funnier

I have 2 of them

The first being on "sports day" in 7th grade...the final day of the year for school....a friend of mine (who had money) and I skipped out on the stupid events of competing for ribbons and hit the arcade.....as I was playing Joust (and doing well) I had a hand drop on my shoulder and haul my ass outside very roughly......and it was my father....I was reamed out on the spot for skipping school.....but my excuse of "it was a useless sportsday" held up and I was not given the gears further.

The 2nd event was in the same arcade but a couple years later....I had been dominating the Exiting Hour game for about 1 1/2 hours on a single quarter...I had run through the staple of the games competitors multiple times as well as defeated anyone that put a quarter in the game....I got rabbit punched in the ribs a bunch of times whilst playing...I also got a few shots to the head.....I got kneed in the thigh continously as I played....after I has had enough of that shit I decided to leave....as I went out the front door I had a smaller guy from the horde of assholes pick a fight with me...I did not respond and tried to leave....I got sucker punched and kept going as it was nothing.....I got sucker punched again and then booted in the ribs when I was down.....I then got hit with everything the guy could give me.....all the while his cronies were cheering him on....one asshole was yelling for him to throw me on the hood of his car.

I could have easily kicked th guys ass...no problem at all......but I knew if I did that then I would have the rest of the asshole friends of his on me like Oprah on a cheesecake....short story is yeah I got beat up...I still walked away after everything the guy did.....he could not put me away and make me cry like a pussy for mercy.....nor could his friends (all 6 of them at the same time) later on down the road.
 
Not an awesome story, but I remember next to the high school in fortuna (starbase 1 was the name of hte arcade).
I was out of school for a doctor's appointment one day (10 years old) went into the arcade after my appointment (around noon) and they kicked everyone out after lunch hour ended.
I got tossed even though I wasn't in school. mother fuckers.

They used quarters painted flourescent orange as tokens, in a black light lit room.
 
Going to Canobie Lake Park in Salem, NH in the mid-80s and found that they converted their DK into a Domino Man. Since then, I've hated DM, and have never played the game. I have no desire to, either. Traumatizing!
 
My friend and I were driving to Chicago to compete in a Super Street Fighter II tournament back in the day. We were going to win it all. (It was an 8 hour drive.)

Our car broke down in the middle of no where. We missed the tournament. :( We'll never know what could have been.
 
It was about 1997 or so. Sort of a 'date' (I paid for it all) at CEC with a friend of my niece (cut me some slack - she was 24 or so - my parents had me late in life so I was only a few years older) and the child she was a nanny for. Some 'mom' asked me to quit playing a game so her kid could play. I offered them tokens because it was so weird. I was playing the game where one shoots balls at the 'teeth' of a clown for tickets. Also, no payoff later. :)

Story of my life. ;)
 
Getting kicked-out of an arcade in 1984. The op said I was beating-up his game (don't remember the game), which I honestly wasn't, but I think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was clearly having a bad day. To make matters worse, I had just gotten a bunch of tokens, so my adult buddy got into an arguing match with the op to get my money back (he won, I got my money back, and the arcade folded within 6 months).

Scott C.
 
This one time, I put a dollar in a change machine and only got 3 tokens instead of 4.

Also, sometime in 1987 I had a part time job as an attendant at a strip mall arcade in Tulsa. I am the only person in the place when there is a momentary power outage. A few minutes later while "attending" to the games, out of the corner of my eye I see someone or thing dash past the double glass entrance doors. As I approach the doors a guy leaps in front of the outside of the doors. He is pointing a shotgun at me and crazily yelling at me to get down on the floor which I promptly do. Turns out that he is a cop that was responding to a silent alarm that was triggered by the power failure. To this day when I think about it, the feature I can most recall about him is the way his eyes were bugging out of his head with pupils the size of a token. I wonder if he saw that same look on me.
 
worst arcade memory, going to my favorite arcade and finding the doors locked and a going out of business sign on the window :(


Yep, same here. I spent all my preteen and teen years in PuttPutt and then one day the doors were locked and shortly after it reopened as a craptastic Pho Soup spot. My soul shed many a tear that day.

That was the greatest arcade ever...I'll have to pour some beer on the curb in rememberance...
 
while doing routine cleaning of the games I happened to be cleaning the monitor for our Star Wars upright. Somehow I pulled the HV led out of the flyback transformer and when I plugged it in of course it didn't work. I thought for sure I would be in big trouble but all that happened was that the game was removed from our store never to be seen again. To bad too because I enjoyed it
 
Kid story coming up... :D

Crashing and burning at the Tron contest. :(

A buddy and I used to push each other on this game before the contest and we both qualified for the finals to be held in center court without much effort. Him and I both had pathetic attempts and both of us complained very vocally(on deaf ears) about the joystick being loose and the spinner only half working. :(

That was on a Saturday and the following day I scored 1,000,000 points on my first guy on Tron. I quit playing Tron until a couple years ago when I picked one up. :D

Oh to be young again and only have to worry about those type of "important" things.

-Jeff
 
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