I saw something about another abandoned mall today and I was reading the comments, which were invariably nostalgic, which is bullshit. If people liked malls so much, why did they die? But I digress.
A lot of the comments were about the arcade, and I thought back to my local arcades. They had a good mix of old and new games, with Donkey Kong and Pac-Man/Ms. Pac Man and other games of that era, and newer ones like Ridge Racer 2, with some other well-known games like Double Dragon and some relatively obscure older ones like Fire Truck (unique game from 1978, look it up).
I was good at most games, as befits someone who probably dropped a few thousand dollars in quarters over my lifetime, the game I could not be beaten at was a relatively obscure game from the mid-‘90s called Cyber Sled. It was a Namco game with two sticks that moved in any direction and each controlled one side of the vehicle, like a tank only with no movement limitations. You had guns, missiles, and shields, and the game was to go head to head with another sled in an obstacle course and kill them before they killed you.
When I went into the arcade to play Cyber Sled I spent at most $1.00 and played until I got bored, had to leave, or the place closed. I took on all comers (winner stayed, challenger paid) and never lost even once to my recollection.
Was there a game that any of you were the kings/queens of the arcade at?
I used to be the king of Street Fighter II Turbo in my college dorm. Could perfect the game (beat everyone without ever getting hit) with any character and no one wanted to play against me.
I’m sure I would have gotten my ass handed to me in Round One of a national tournament but, in my own small pond, I was the undisputed big fish.
Pac-Man, Joust, Donkey Kong and Asteroids - I could basically play a quarter until I got bored with those. I sucked at Centipede and Missile Command, and to this day I can’t tell what the hell is going on in a game of Defender - it’s just random pixels to me.
I wasn’t great at any of them except Punch-Out!! And being great at that time meant you could get to Kid Quick. I was good at Off-Road. Rolling Thunder and Rastan I was decent at. I could finish a lap in Hard Drivin’. Pretty good in Bad Dudes although I never really liked the Simpsons/TMNT/Double Dragon type games.
If pinball games count then I could crush the competition on two of them. The first was The Addams Family that came out around 1991 or so when the movie was released. The second was Creature from the Black Lagoon released around the same time. I could put .50 cents into either one of those machines and walk away with several free games pending. I don’t know what it was about those games as I was never particularly good at pinball before or since. But I was a beast when playing those two games.
There was a Galaga game at the college I went to, and I traded high scores back and forth with one other guy- nobody ever came close to our scores. We had entirely different approaches to the game-- I’d watch him play, and he’d employ more strategy, like waiting until a bug ship had two bug ship escorts and shooting the bug ship in the middle to get extra points. But that meant he scored more points per level but didn’t get as far as me, since his careful targeting meant he got killed more quickly.
I just blasted away and tried not to get killed so I’d get farther while getting fewer points per level, and he’d watch me play and say “I haven’t seen that level yet”.
But my best and most favoritest game, and you’ll still see my initials at the top over at the Pinball Hall of Fame, is Robotron 2084. I can still kick ass at that game.
I played a lot of Block Out at my college student union arcade, and my quarters lasted a long time. I had seversl of the top ten scores. I wasn’t better than average at most other games I liked.
I liked playing Cyber Ball, and could beat the computer every time, but I sucked at beating most real opponents.
Both Cyber Ball and Block Out had home versions that were terrible. Particularly Block Out, because it had a unique control system to rotate on the various axes.
I could play a single game of MouseTrap or Galaga for as long as I wanted. I could beat most people at Joust, Bomb Jack, and Outrun. I was decent at Donkey Kong, Pacman, and other classics. I could go through hundreds of dollars playing Defender without getting particularly good at it. One day, I’m going to buy an arcade version and master that thing.
I held the world record on a game called Vanguard for a while there- I played the hell out of it at the local skate rink in junior high, all those quarters had to pay off somehow, right? I think I got a t-shirt.
Years later, while in college in Waco, I entered a video game contest and won at NARC and Pole Position- I won a windsurfer, and briefly made the news for the first time (the second time was when I found a kitten and was exposed to rabies).
We have us a challenge! Yes, I could also play endlessly on a quarter.
I did play in a series of tournaments in Texas sponsored by 7-11, where I eventually came in third. One trick I learned there was that in the interest of speed (this was “most points in a set time limit”), instead of rescuing your humans you could blow them all to shit and then kill the converted ships. It didn’t make a difference to your ability to just play endlessly, but it did amp your score faster.
Our university arcade had a Super Mario Brothers pinball machine that didn’t seem to be very popular. I liked it because it was only 25 cents whereas all the other pinball games in the same arcade were 50 cents. They also must have had it on an easy setting because I could play pretty much as long as I liked for a quarter (between having long games and getting replays). I don’t claim that I could crush anyone else at it, though.
I used to hang around arcade rooms in the 1980s. I pretty much sucked at all the games with the exception of one: Tempest. I mopped the floor against anyone I was playing against.
I never played in any kind of tournaments or anything like that, but Karate Champ (VS) was the game that would get a crowd watching behind me. I could get to what I think is the 15th or maybe 16th level, if I remember right, which is the second or third level at increased opponent speed (the game wraps around after the 13th level–or was it 12th?) Anyhow, it takes long enough to get to that level (about a half hour or more, as I remember) and once the game goes double speed it’s near impossible. Or at least I thought so as a kid. Via the internet, I see many people have been able to complete the game, but there’s just no way I had enough quarters and patience to work my way through the game to keep trying the double speed opponents. At any rate, in my area, I was as good as they come for that game.
Super Pac-Man. I was never particularly good at Pac-man or Ms. Pac-Man but for some reason I killed at that game. I mostly quit playing when I had the top 5 scores on the machine. However, if I saw that someone had gotten on to the top 5 list I would play it until I wiped their name off.
I was pretty good at Berzerk and even better at it’s successor, Frenzy, which I loved. But my best was Crazy Climber, although a long game of that constant up/down with the joysticks would beat up your hands and arms sometimes.
Just looked it up. It’s 12 levels each x 2 difficulty levels for a total of 24. In my neighborhood, the rumor was that you fight the judge at the end as some sort of “final boss” before “final bosses” I think were really an established trope in video games. Alas, not true.
