Be Excellent To Each Other

Donkey Kong and Mr. Do on tabletop machines in the adventure playground in Watford.

Mr. Do would definitely be one of my Desert Island Games. Such... vibrant... colours...

Those tabletop cabs (cocktail cabs or something?) seem to stick in my memory for some reason. I remember playing a half-decent wrestling game (possibly Mat Mania but I'd have to check Mame) on one in the Bear pub near me. Plus there was a great Star Force tabletop in some working mens club in Rugeley. Pretty generic games but they stick in the mind.

It always terrifies me when someone mentions somewhere close to where I live on Internet forums.

Really? Excellent!

YER MAM'S HOUSE.
SPAR.

Except for you, spanner.

Herne Bay! That's where my arcade memory comes from anyway. Anybody freaked out?

I'm guessing you're not the mate I went to visit in Little Haywood though.

Chocolate thick shake, Spyhunter, Operation Wolf, 1942, Salamander, Shinobi, Bingo in the corner, chips, Wardner, ashtrays on cabs, 10p games, 5p 'OXO' gamblers, Pinbot, weird elephant-round-the-mountain mystery prize thing.

Fleetwood Pier

But I always mention your house every time we play CoD4, and I don't terrify you, surely.

But you don't go "I remember a place in Rugeley!" quite so much.

Shinobi! Yes yes! Skegness there again.

Argh!

First coin-op I remember playing is Naughty Boy at the swimming baths when I lived in Barnoldswick (anyone freaked out by that? No?), around 82/83 -- so I would have been 4 or 5 at the time.

The most vivid memory I have of playing old coin-ops is from a week's holiday at a caravan site somewhere (probably either Rhyl or Southport) around 86/87 (which would make me 8 or 9), where the big shed where the evening entertainment was held had Juno First, Soldier of Light and Rock ("and" -- Ed) Rage. I also came fourth in a disco dancing contest

Worst coin-op memory was playing The Simpsons in a bar in Spain years ago; credits were ridiculously cheap so every time I died I pumped another coin in and continued, only for the coin mech to go screwy near the end and all my hard work was lost I've since completed it in MAME but it's not the same

My first arcade memories are from when I was very young the early 90s, probably somewhere in Essex like Southend or Clacton. All kinds of games, I remember stuff like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Simpsons beat-'em-ups, and Virtua Racing being absolutely stunning. It always helped that my dad was a gamer too, so he could compensate for my general five year old rubbishness.

I have two favourite arcade memories. The first is beating Virtua Fighter 3tb's single player mode in the late 90s - a small crowd had gathered and I'd done it on a single credit, after practicing once a week for quite a while. The second is going to the launch event for Sega Rally 3 and playing against the former Sega Racing Studio employees, which is quite a vivid memory as it was less than a week ago.

Hello I am very old.

I actually played Pong at an airport in 1978 before a family holiday to Ibiza.

I then played a table version of Space Invaders at the horse riding stables where I used to go (Look I only went because my sister did and I thought I was missing out and actually I was quite good at it and etc.)

The first proper arcade I remember going in was in the East Coast somewhere, probably Hornsea or Bridlington and there I played Asteroids and some other vector game where you had a shield but I can never remember it properly.

The best memories, however, are from "youth club" at my secondary school (officially the shittest school in the North for a while - Huzzah) where you could get cheese toasties for 25p and they had 2 arcade machines and 1 pinball table and I'd go in there on a lunch and sacrifice my toastie money to go on the games. They had Galaga, Galaxians, some penguin game that I can't remember the name of and a jet pased pinball table. At some point I managed to have the high score on all of them.

I never had a girlfriend at school for some reason.

Yes. I grew up in Barnoldswick. Most of my family live around there (Earby, Colne, Gisburn). 82/83 I would have been 9. If you lived on the Coates estate then, I will have to officially freak out completely and becoming a gibbering wreck.

That reminds me - our local youth club had Scramble.

By some remarkable coincidence, I didn't have a girlfriend either... spooky

I miss the 'cocktail table' versions of games, which you used to get a lot in slightly more downmarket restaurants that also had a dedicated bar area.

When I was 11, I had appendicitis. All the kids in the hospital lounge were dribbling over the TurboGrafx-16 and NES, but I had a huge thrill in the (set to unlimited credits, natch) Missile Command machine. And in the neighbouring lounge, there was an (also set to unlimited) cocktail table version of The Pit.

As nobody else was interested in these two ancient games, I more or less had them all to myself for the entirety of my two week recovery.* Hurrah!

*At least, when I wasn't playing the 'Mario Bros' minigame of Super Mario Bros 3 against the cute nurse. I was 11, but I had my priorities straight.

A friend and I have long had a project in mind to build a MAME cocktail cabinet, one of these days we'll actually get around to it.

Whereabouts is the Coates estate? We moved away in 84 when I was 6 so I don't really know (or at least, remember) it too well. For what it's worth, we lived in a street just off Skipton Road ("The Orchards", if I remember rightly) and I went to Coates Lane primary school. Close enough?

Well, that is indeed quite freaky. Coates estate is the big housing estate across Skipton Road from where you grew up.

I went to Coates Lane primary myself for a while. Chances are you were there at the same time, or joined very shortly after I left.

*gibber*