Press 1P

We were out the other day, and I saw a woman texting. Nothing too special about that, except this woman was texting faster than most people type, and she didn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, either.

Watching her, I flashed back to my formative years in the 80s, particularly the time spent in the local arcade, where we would gather around someone who had memorized all the Gauntlet patterns, or had achieved communion with Galaga. It was our generation’s version of Pinball Wizard.

We had an awesome arcade at our mall. They always had the latest games, and gave you plenty of warning when a game was about to be retired, so if it was your favorite you could make your peace. In fact, they would usually place a card on the console announcing that if you could beat a certain score, you would win the game. It was brilliant marketing. We would play those games for hours, hoping we’d soon have it loaded up on a truck to take home. I had no doubt that if I had Tron:Deadly Discs or Joust in my bedroom, I’d’ve been real popular with the ladies. Nevermind that the male/female ratio in the arcade was always 99/whoops-this-isn’t-Claire’s. It was all the flashing lights; I wasn’t thinking clearly.

And of course, that was always the complaint of the parents and school marms. “These kids today…spending all their time hypnotized in the game room instead of studying at the library.” They were just jealous that no one ever placed a quarter on a copy of Moby Dick to “call” it after the current reader finished. Our arcade also ran specials where you could bring in your report cards and get free games for every A and B you earned. Straight As got you $20 in games, if I recall correctly.

Remember the Dragon’s Lair bubble gum cards? Each set had scenes from the different parts of the game, and on the back it would tell you how to get through that scene. Those were cool. I probably spent $400 trying to get the Dragon card. That’s in addition to the $400 I probably spent playing the actual game. I held on to my first Mac computer long after it became useless for anything else solely because I had a copy of Dragon’s Lair that was formatted for it.

Having a personal game system is nice (Atari 2600 represent!), as is being able to MMORPG from anywhere in the world, but it’s a shame that it seems the time of the standalone arcade has passed. Anytime you see them nowadays, they’re tucked away in the corner of some pizza buffet place. It's weird going back to that mall now, because they remodeled it some years back, and the section that held the arcade isn't there anymore.

Anyone have change for a dollar? And a time machine?