Be Excellent To Each Other

When I were but a nipper, my family would go to the same guest house in Llandudno... almost every year. Over and over. It was fun, and one of the highlights for me was the basement. A pool table, some arcade games, all quite cheap. These are the games, which really are my earliest exposure to arcade games, and maybe all games.

Amidar

It's QIX meets Pac-Man! It's quite fun!


Time Pilot

Well, I like it.

havent really got much memories of arcade when i was younger except the simpsons arcade game, and two other from the local swimming baths that Ive no clue what there called.

first one was a horizontal schmup with a little red plane, seemed quite colourful from my shit memory, thats all Ive got to work on.

the other was a beat em up which I have even less memory of but im sure there was a character that was like a giant robot/machine that was controlled by a baby or something.

I remember when I thought Hunter for the Amiga 500 was the shit. You could fly a helicopter and other very box-like vehicles. That's not arcade though, but I'm now inspired to emulate it, just for fun.

Oh, and the next was Sky Kid.
.

Then Tempest. Then none for a while before Shinobi. Yes. So there we go. Also, hohoho - this is an arcade thread about arcade games, folks!

that maybe the one Im thinking of.

I remember seeing someone playing Pac-Man in the restaurant bit of Marwell Zoo. I also remember wanting to play it so badly, but not being allowed.

A cafe near my school had Hang-On, then Aero Fighters, then Martial Champion, then Numan Athletes, then got sick of us kids coming in to play them and got rid.

My very earliest memory of arcades is of the wireframe Star Wars game in my uncle's pub, which I was fearsomely good at despite being practically foetal at the time. I think the game is an extra on one of the Gamecube games, I recall spacking completely at my exes house once when she showed me it and spending the night achieving quite worryingly high scores.

Star Wars for me too. Skegness being the family holiday destination was heaven for me. Paperboy, Return of The Jedi, 720degrees.... sigh. Oh, and Wardner and Double Dragon at Pontins in Prestatyn. The only local place that had a cab was the working men's club in Rushall we went to every Saturday night. They had a cocktail cabinet of Gunsmoke.

Ooo! Another pub in Millom had Operation Wolf, and I remember getting a shock off it every time I pressed the grenade button.

Millions of games, most of which I didn't know the real names of ('cept for Roadblasters and Splatterhouse), simply referring to them as whatever I felt like calling them, as is a child's wont. The earliest was probably Bomb Jack, in Crete. The waiters of the hotel restaurant used to give me money to play it when my parents weren't looking, apprently.

By contrast, the cleaners were cunts. I once walked, wailing, up three flights of stairs with blood gushing from my foot, and two of them just let me walk right past with barely a second glance.

The first arcade game I played through to completion was Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, where you could turn in to a big robot with laser eyes. That game was ace.

I also remember going to SegaWorld when I were younger and playing the Daytona USA and Sega Rally machines when they first came out, I would have been about 11 or 12, then. They blew me away at the time, and are still favourites of mine to this day.

My earliest memory of any arcade machine must have been before I was five... the arcade in the Albion Centre in Etobicoke had a Fire Truck machine.



After that, arcades were still prevalent in most malls but I think the most time I spent with them as I got older was in the various bowleramas (where I got to enjoy such thrills as Roadblasters, Bad Dudes), the Balm Beach arcade (High Speed (the pinball table) and Operation Wolf), the arcade at the go-kart track (Bump n' Jump, 1942, Monaco GP) and especially Video Invasion which was a hugely popular arcade on Bathurst Ave. Oh, and the huge billiard hall (Metal Slug, Capcom vs Street Fighter, Total Carnage, Race Drivin').

I miss the old days - games were everywhere. Go to get a slice of pizza, there was a SFII:CE machine there. Dad coming back from a business trip so you go to meet him at the airport? There's Cisco Heat and Hard Drivin' there to entertain you while you wait for his delayed flight.

Hell - holidays were always great because all the sorts of hotels we went to always had loads of machines. The big Holiday Inn Holidome in Beaver Falls, Penn which had Dead Angle and P.O.W., or the hotel in Jasper, Alb with Boot Camp (which I never saw anywhere else), or the Holiday Inn in Lake Placid, NY, which had the utterly sublime Super Chase HQ and a Terminator 2 machine which was only a quarter a go, meaning I could put in two quarters and use both guns... I could go on forever.

Wow, writing all that brought back a LOT of memories (good) while making me feel really old (bad). It's worth noting, though, that even as I was turning 18 and leaving, there were still a few of the huuuuuuge arcades left on Yonge Street - giant places full of slightly creepy looking people who chain smoked, and stoned teenagers. You could find great stuff - the full size Virtua Fighter 3 cabinets, the actual Cannon Spike arcade machine, and lots of classics. There was also a local game store called Gamerama which would often have a pair of pretty darn new cabinets in. Likewise, in London, SegaCity still existed and was filled with games (as opposed to now, fruit machines)

Ooh, RoadBlasters! They had this at Felixstowe Pier Arcade many moons ago. I *loved* that game, for some reason.

I went on holiday to Llandudno in 1983 and the hotel had a table top Hunchback machine. I kept dying on the second screen where you had to swing across with the rope. That's the earliest one I can put a date to.

Thing is, as you became familiar with how it worked, would the younger-you go for the Desert Area (for a challenge) or Bubble City (where the proliferation of fuel ensured you'd have a fairly long game for your 10p/25 cents)?

Bubble City most times, as I recall.

Obviously my favourite arcade memory was being continuously disappointed with Spectrum versions of anything I'd played in an arcade.

My favourite memories are the times whee some kid or other would chang a huge amount of money into one of the four player machines and just invite a bunch of utter strangers to play the game through with them. It was unfathomably ace and happened several times.

My earliest arcade memory was discovering a defective Splatterhouse arcade that gave you unlimited credits.



Happy days!

Super.

Sprint.

That and Pole Position.

Not sure what my earliest arcade memory would be... probably a table-top version of "Puck Man" in a hotel in either Torquay or Bournemouth, in either 1986 or 1988.

I remember playing the TMNT game on a school trip in 1990 and being more excited than I'd ever been by anything ever. There was also an arcade in Wigan at the time that had up-to-date games, including TMNT and The Simpsons. One of the games had a defective slot - the left hand slot registered 10p as 1 credit, the right-hand registered 10p as 5 credits. Lovely.

Better still, there was a local shop within walking distance that sold newspapers and various bric-a-brac, but which also had 3 (later 2, sadly) arcade machines, the games in which were frequently rotated. The only games I remember were Crude Busters, 1943 and Dragon Ninja, but there were loads over the years. The shop - and games - are now long gone. Sigh.

You need to play Bomb Jack! And er, not play anything from 1990 onwards!

Bongo.

A frustrating but enjoyable platformer that was sat in the corner of my local newsagent.

Picking up a copy of the latest issue of 'Scream' and having a go on Bongo.

Ace.

I was happy when I saw the name "BombJack" appear on the Wii Virtual Console. Less so when I realised it's NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BOMBJACK I LOVED AT ALL.

That Bombjack music is awesome. *fires up MAME*

When I was about 8 or 9 my mum took me to ju-jitsu lessons at Skipton sports centre (Sandylands, I think it is called). Anyway, I was always more fascinated by the PacMan machine they had there. Same with Monaco GP at Brierfield Unit 4 cinema, which was replaced by Moon Cresta.

1986, had a week at Primrose Valley in Filey. Commando had just come out and that took a chunk of my spending money, I can tell you.

Sounds like Captain Commando


Earliest memories for me would be the arcades in Rhyl and Ffrith beach playing stuff - hunting out a Spy Hunter or Star Wars cabinet. Phoenix was perhaps the earliest game I played though. It's strange how you remember the occasional cabinet in the most obscure places though like finding a trackball missile command stuck on free play in a cricket pavilion (it was more interesting than watching my dad play cricket at least).

My brother used to always look out for Firefox which I remember looking great but was probably a rubbish fmv game thinking back.. I think we only saw it in one place. I guess that's not emulated yet.

I only ever went to an old seaside arcade when I was young. I was too small to play any machines but used to like the thing with eight little plastic horses that would race along and you could bet on which would win for various prices on each horse.

I did play Bomb Jack, and I pretty much retired my spectrum in 1990, so I guess I never played any of the really bad multi-load disasters that came at the end of its life.

Although I remember playing lots of "nothing like the arcade" spectrum games, in hindsight, I can't really put my finger on any of the ones that I'd call disappointing. Out Run was the obvious contender, but I still played it a lot, and in fairness the first decent home version of that was when you could finally run the arcade version in an emulator.

Some of my earliest arcade memories involve Sea Wolf, that racing game which project light onto a screen (just some shapes of formula 1 cars), Battlezone, Space Invaders (though I didn't pay it much attention), Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back, Monaco GP and Bump N Jump (though I knew it as Burnin Rubber), Ladybug. I can't say for sure which came first.

Our horsie racing one had a really robotic voice that said "PLACE YOUR BETS NOW, PLEASE". And it was usually red or blue that won.

I think you could only bet 2p pieces, too.

Hey! Not always!

Ok, I've already retracted my statement, but I think Bomb Jack was the only one of those that I played in an arcade.

Chase HQ and Rainbow Islands* on the Speccy are fab conversions and not a let down in the least. Both games also converted well to the CPC although Rainbow Islands suffers from sprite flicker.

Operation Wolf on the CPC with the lightgun is supposed to stand up pretty well against the arcade as well.

Also Pang on the GX4000 is a super arcade conversion.

Speccy Pit Fighter was a good conversion of a totally shit game. Not worth more than 200 bananas but the original wasn't either.



*Although should perhaps be renamed "Monochrome Islands".

Right, continuously was obviously a bit of an exagerration.
Era-wise, I'm mainly referring to the late 80's as that's when I would spend my summer holidays in the arcades and then try to recreate that experience at home.

Chase HQ, Rainbow Islands, Operation Wolf and Pang were all great spectrum games (most of the stuff that Ocean/Imagine did at this time was either really good or a movie tie-in, possibly even a good movie tie-in).

Double Dragon was presumably so bad on the spectrum that I can't even remember anything about it apart from the stupidly oversized box it came in.

I admit, not every arcade conversion was a disaster, and some of them were good games in their own right anyway.

I think I played Speccy Double Dragon a fair bit - playable enough but awful graphics

Mind you, the original hasn't really stood the test of time too well either.

When I was driving back from Hastings I got stuck in traffic outside a resturant called "The Double Dragon". This amused me.

And here we go:

http://www.doubledragon.biz/index.html

I'd be disappointed if the waitresses didn't wear purple and carry whips and the head chef didn't burst through the wall.

I think you're thinking of a different sort of Chinese business establishment there, mr MAD.

good call on captain commando.

I remember the adverts for the NES (or as it SMS?) port... two kids in karate outfits jumpkick past in a smoky room, and then a third kid emerges from the smoke holding the box and declaring 'I GOT IT!'

He's then sitting with another kid and they're playing it. 'Two player Double Dragon! We can play together, AT THE SAME TIME!'

A few shots of rubbish looking (even at the time) gameplay.

'Observe my deadly SIDE KICK! That's it, cover me, etc etc'

Was it ever that good?

I remember actual queues to play it at Pontins when I were a nipper. I waited my turn, put my 10p in, and got killed before the screen even scrolled. It was then someone else's turn.

Speccy version was good though.

And traditionally of course, every Valentine's day the proprietor will approach any young couples with a welcoming smile, and deliver a firm punch to the woman's kidney.

And the woman counts herself lucky it's not Double Dragon II they've gone to.

My earliest arcade memory is pretending to play Star Wars when I was about 3. It's something I'll never forget, because at the precise moment my mum stopped watching what I was doing and turned to look at something else, I jumped out of the cabinet for a wander around the holiday camp and ended up with the entire camp staff out looking for me.

The first game I ever remember playing was Space Harrier, in one of those massive pneumatic cabinets. I remember feeling really cheated that my 20p + infant gamesplaying skills = about 15 seconds of actual game.

After that, it was a strict diet of Out Run, Paperboy, TMNT and Galaxy Force II whenever on family hols, and Altered Beast, POW and Golden Axe whenever myself and my mate Neil went swimming after school. In fact, we probably spent more time on the sports centre's arcade machines than we ever did in the pool.

I once did so well on Space Harrier a small crowd gathered*. It was my proudest gaming moment.



* About 3 people. Possibly waiting for their own turn.

I don't think I ever saw a Space Harrier cab that was vacant so I've never played the arcade version. Unless you count Shenmue.

I had a crowd of about four 8-year olds gather around me in amazement as I finished one of the courses on OutRun 2 in an arcade in Southampton. I was about 26 at the time and I'm ashamed to say this is probably my proudest arcade moment.

My earliest arcade memories are of the Outrun arcade cab, with the force feedback steering wheel. I kept deliberately driving off the bridge and into the water and my Dad (who was probably doing the pedals) was getting increasingly annoyed while still claiming to hate computer games.