This post is great. Judging by the post and the comments, there are lots of people my age that were at the perfect age at the dawn of video games. I was right there with ya, Ed (and 92BuickLeSabre, and I suspect, others), and I remember it fondly. In fact, my coworker and I were talking about our arcade experiences today--not too much the games specifically, but the whole experience.
@harshmellow: They filmed a lot of the made-for-TV-Movie Surviving at one (of the three) arcades we went to regularly. It starred Molly Ringwald and Zach TheguyfromGremlins.
I still can't decide if it is the perfect homage to an era or the gods' smug dismissal of my entire youth. Or both.
(At the time, I must admit, we all just wanted her autograph. You know, because she would totally dig us if she only knew us, even though she was 17 or 18 and we were like 11 or 12. Because we were so badass.
(I was totally one of those surly (pre-)teenagers. With my spiky hair and rat tail and my t-shirt vaguely torn up to look like it was the result of some bad-ass skateboard accident, which it wasn't, and my arm sporting a piece of jerky that totally was the result of a bad-ass skateboard accident, and Airwalk's with skulls all over them. And my buddy stealing cigarettes from 7-11 and napkin dispensers from McDonald's which we thought was even more bad-ass although we were totally way too chicken to actually do it ourselves. And the game was at the movie theater where they showed Rocky Horror, which we thought made us even more bad-ass still because everybody was older than we were, and it wasn't until much later that we realized that all of these qualities could either signify badassary or geekdom and because we could get girls we thought it was badassary, but it turned out it was totally geekdom we just didn't realize it for another couple of years.)
@Belabras: I loved it so much, I bought it when an arcade was going out of business. I was able to get Total Carnage, NBA James Tournament Addition (He's on Fire!), Xenophobe, and the big brute grand daddy kick ass game Cyberball (Two delicious screens, four players, and great sound make it the centerpiece of my little home arcade. Amazing!)
My buddy picked up Choplifter, Dragon's Lair, and some Sony hologram game that sucked, but looked cool.
11/27/08
11/26/08
Excellent.
11/26/08
I still can't decide if it is the perfect homage to an era or the gods' smug dismissal of my entire youth. Or both.
(At the time, I must admit, we all just wanted her autograph. You know, because she would totally dig us if she only knew us, even though she was 17 or 18 and we were like 11 or 12. Because we were so badass.
We could only get Zach's.)
11/26/08
(I was totally one of those surly (pre-)teenagers. With my spiky hair and rat tail and my t-shirt vaguely torn up to look like it was the result of some bad-ass skateboard accident, which it wasn't, and my arm sporting a piece of jerky that totally was the result of a bad-ass skateboard accident, and Airwalk's with skulls all over them. And my buddy stealing cigarettes from 7-11 and napkin dispensers from McDonald's which we thought was even more bad-ass although we were totally way too chicken to actually do it ourselves. And the game was at the movie theater where they showed Rocky Horror, which we thought made us even more bad-ass still because everybody was older than we were, and it wasn't until much later that we realized that all of these qualities could either signify badassary or geekdom and because we could get girls we thought it was badassary, but it turned out it was totally geekdom we just didn't realize it for another couple of years.)
11/26/08
11/26/08
"You do not want to fuck with me, but you do want to fuck with me."
Well, that's certainly what we thought we were saying.
11/26/08
looks like an awesome game though.
11/26/08
11/26/08
My buddy picked up Choplifter, Dragon's Lair, and some Sony hologram game that sucked, but looked cool.
11/26/08
11/26/08
11/26/08