How many arcades did you have in your town growing up?

[Flack]

Shadow 460, it's too bad you didn't make it over to our side of town more often (northwest OKC). We had a ton of arcades to choose from.

 

In Yukon alone, we had 3 "stand alone" arcades and then two what I call "co-located" arcades (one in the roller skating rink, one in the bowling alley). Just east of Yukon was (and is) Cactus Jack's -- 20+ years and still going. Over in Mustang is Carnival Pizza, an independent pizza buffet/arcade (very large). Then there are the arcades in Crossroads, Quail, etc. There used to be one out in MWC at the mall but it closed a year or two ago (Star*Cade ... I bought a couple of games during the final auction).

 

I have been trying to make a list of all the old arcades I remember for my next retro Podcast (April 1st, check signature for link). The theme of the next show is (surprise) arcades!

[CARTRIDGE STEALER]

massapequa had a few.....

 

the first one i remember was right by my house in 1982. it was like the one from "fast times at ridgemont high". it even had a drug dealer in the back room! it didnt last long though.

 

then we had 3 more, furthurer away from my house. 2 were in a mall and 1 was in a flea market across the street.

[Blackjack]

I grew up in a TINY town of about 800 people.... my high school class was 23 students. We had one arcade with about 8 or 9 videogames and a pinball. The pool hall at the end of town had 2 videogames, a pinball, and a couple pool tables. The Cafe on Main Street had one videogame.

[CARTRIDGE STEALER]

my town probaly had about 1000 video games all togther. there were litterally 10,000, if not, more kids in out town and every business had at least 1 game. 7-11's had around 3-4 games and there were 4 of them in my town. every pizzaria had one as qell.

[Ransom]

In the arcade heydey of the early 80s, we had a total of 1 arcade (in a town of circa 70,000 people at the time).

 

That one arcade was constantly being denigrated in the local newspaper and by the city council as supporting juvenile delinquency, etc. The arcade went out of business in about 1984.

 

Now, since the arcade was a long bike ride from my house, I could only go there once a week. But on weeknights or when I just had a dollar or two, I could ride up to my local 7-11, which was just a few blocks away. They always had the latest Williams cabinet (Defender, then Stargate, then Robotron) plus one other game. I probably spent more total time playing arcade games at that 7-11 over the years than I did at the arcade.

[CARTRIDGE STEALER]

yea. 7-11's always circulated thier games. I remember playing them in supermarkets as well. I even remember a pet store that had a video games. I couldnt stand the stench but I had to get my video game fix on!

 

back in high school, we had open campus for lunch and there were a variety of stores that had arcade games like the supermarket, a couple of pizzarias and a card/candy shop, which I spent my whole lunch time in the back playing. I couldnt break into theose because the owner was always watching.

[Skylark68]

We had a bunch of arcades living in the east side of Houston. The one I remember the most though was an arcade built into San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, TX. It was called Yesterdays. I spent a massive amount of money at that place, circa 1982-1983, especially on Wizard of Wor with my best friend that lived next door. We'd go there just about every weekend with our moms on their weekly shopping trips. My friend was about a year older than I was and she'd beat me almost all the time (i was 6 or 7 at the time). I finally convinced her to play something else so we played Galaga and i'd outscore her on that. I do remember Crazy Climber and I think a cockpit version of Omega Race. I remember when they got the first laserdisc game outside of Dragon's Lair, it was a cockpit version of M.A.C.H 3 i think. The arcade is still there, but it's called Power Play and is a pale shadow of its former self. At one time the arcade expanded and even contained an old fashioned carousel. It was a huge place in the early '90s.

Edited April 28, 2008 by Skylark68

[spacecadet]

I don't think my town itself (17,000 people) had any actual arcades, although like others here, I remember there being individual arcade machines pretty much everywhere. Every pizzeria had at least 2 or 3, bars all had 1 or 2, even supermarkets had them (for the kids to play while their parents shopped). Bowling alleys always had a bunch too.

 

The mall we had just outside of town, though, had a real arcade, and I used to go there every weekend and spend $10 in quarters. That $10 would keep me going literally 4-5 hours. There was also a Nathan's Famous Franks in another mall that we used to go to sometimes that had a decent size game room that would probably qualify as an arcade.

 

When I got old enough to drive, there was another, even larger mall a few more miles away that had a bigger, better arcade. That was around the time arcades started dying, though, so just about the time I discovered the bigger arcade, the first one that I always used to go to went out of business. The larger one stayed around a little while longer.

 

Nowadays I'm lucky enough to live near another Nathan's that's like going back in time... they still have a big game room and they even play late 70's/early 80's music in the restaurant all the time. I love that place.

[HayakawaKen]

I live in San Antonio and back in the 80's I can remember quite a few arcades.. of course there was the convenience stores in my neighborhood, one of them I frequented, a Circle K had different games constantly. I remember playing SMB 2 on a Playchoice 10, Solar Warrior, Section Z, Vulgus, Rastan, and various others there. There was McCreeles Mall, which first had a Gold Mine which was a narrow room full of games, was the first place I played Street Fighter 2, Double Dragon, Ninja Warriors, Robocop 2, and others. Later the mall renovated, and with it Gold Mine disappeared to become Tilt, which was about 3x larger, and had more games and redemption games, they carried games like Martial Champion, Irritating Maze and other things..

 

 

Windsor Park Mall was another mall I frequented with my parents, Aladdin's Castle was the main arcade, and that always featured the newest and a lot of the times, obscure games, like Lifeforce, P-47, New Zealand Story, Nastar Warrior, Pac-Land and various others. It was also the place I played the full size Galaxy Force game, and one of the places that would get the newest Neo Geo and Street Fighter updates. The small theater next to it was always interesting as well, as they kept a lot of their classic games, and had obscure ones like Shanghai Kid, Omega Race and others. The mall later opened up an upstairs arcade and that featured games like G-loc, Lock-On, Turtles in Time and others.

 

 

Gosh, without going into details, other arcades I visited were in Rivercenter Mall, South Park Mall, Ingram Park Mall, Rolling Oaks... Peter Piper and Pistol Pete's Pizza had arcade games... Diversion's.. Cyber Zone... which were later on in my teens, but I still count them. Oh and I forgot about Diamond Jim's and Rocky J's...

 

Needless to say, San Antonio has been pretty fortunate in terms of having arcades, with a lot of variation. Sure there were the usual Street Fighters, Pac Man, 4 player Konami games, etc. but in my time in this town (all my life) I've been lucky to play a lot of great games, and a lot of obscure games that even friends of mine who have lived here in the same town don't even remember, but I chalk that up to me really enjoying the arcade scene.

[classicgamingguy]

We had two that were within about 5 miles or so of me..

 

The first was called Putt's Alley, conviniently in the town where I was going to High School. It was an easy walk from the school to there, and had all the latest games at any one time. You had to go into a basement, down a short flight of stairs into a smoke-filled, dimly lit "dungeon" (for lack of a better description) where there were two walls filled to the brim with the games.

 

The second was called More Fun, that had much more space than Putt's Alley, and was brightly lit, filled with all sorts of games and game types. Toward the end of it's incredible life, it moved once, then finally shut down due to lack of interest from the kids (who all had home gaming systems by then). That effectively killed our arcade era around me. :-(

[madhatter667]

That depends on what you mean by "gowing up."

I've lived in many places, so as a run down:

When I was living in Arkansas, I think there was one in the shopping mall. This was 84-87. I am not positive on this one... as most gaming was done at home, and I wasn't really old enough to hit arcades on my own at that time anyway.

When I was living overseas, there were 3... one near my house, one that was located in an amusement park, and one on teh naval base... oh yeah, one located in the bowling alley on the air force base as well... so 4.

When I was living in Wisconsin, I don't know... as I had the 2600, the NES, and SNES at that time... just about all my gaming was done at home.

When I moved out to Washington, there were initially 2... one in the local strip mall, and one in the larger mall in Silverdale. The one in Silverdale is still there. If you want to count Gameworks across the water, there's still two...but I don't. If you don't count the next town over, there was 1, and now there is 0.

This is why I love MAME.

[Fräulein]

I lived overseas as well. The airbase had an arcade, which was located inside the bowling alley. But it was not convenient if you lived off base. So the other place that had an "arcade" was the supermarket we shopped at.

The "arcade" consisted of Pac-Man, Jumpman (Donkey Kong), and Space Invaders.

It was great to sit there and play while mom shopped. But that was until you lost. Because there was ALWAYS a line to play.

 

Then Marcos put an end to all of the fun by banning "arcade games" because video games were corrupting the nation's youths.

Edited May 6, 2008 by Fräulein

[Atarifever]

Pretty much zero. There was a Ms. PacMan in a local pizza place right up until until it closed down a couple years ago. The "new" mall in town had an arcade game in the porch for awhile. Outside of that there was a small room with four or five machines at the beach, but with having to pay just to get on the beach, it wasn't exactly a place you went to hang out unless you were going to the beach anyway.

[Fellow Atari Man]

We had a bunch of arcades living in the east side of Houston.

 

...and there were quite a few on the west side of Houston too

 

Lordy...all the ones in Memorial City Mall. Games Games Games, I remember all the people crowding around Asteroids when it first came out (it had room for many others, of course, but that was one scene I remember pretty well). Right next door was the Celebrity Cafe, which I credit myself for the old man getting the idea to turn it into a huge arcade place Think the dollar changer was out of order and the attendant was nowhere to be found, so I went next door to see if he could break a five or something. "For the game room next door?" he asked. Then one day I went there it had suddenly changed into a much bigger arcade than Games Games Games was! Big surprise, to say the least. I remember when Stargate came out and there was a handwritten sign on it saying that it was the only one in Houston. I remember seeing Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and maybe even Tempest for the first time in my life, one day a couple of kids had tokens across THE ENTIRE CABINET...and that was a wide one too!

 

Quiptars (sp?) had the best deal with like 10 tokens for a buck or something. Too much to get into really, just remember Dragon's Lair being there (friend of mine with the big bucks with his paper route could not only afford the fifty cents to play it regularly, he would end up learning the whole game through and beating it), Gravitar, the curiosity of Reactor, the laser disc Interstellar, Bega's Battle (think it was called) and Astron Belt. They opened up a much smaller Quiptars 2 but it only last 15 minutes, don't know what the point of that one was.

 

The Sears there had a small room with a few games in it like Route 16, then one day a game room opened at that corner...had to have been Sears', since all the games in that one little room were in that much bigger space. I remember they had Black Widow, Jr. Pac-Man, Armor...Attack, Space Panic, others. There was also another game room elsewhere in the mall that I don't recall the name of, it got a Stargate too, so so much for the guy at Celebrity Cafe proclaiming it to be the only one in town! It wasn't a big one though and was only ok.

 

Lotta memories, just barely skimming them too!

[cougar302b]

GREAT topic! Anyone from Beaverton, Oregon that remember these arcades? All these arcades were within bike riding distance.

 

Innerspace - started out in a clothing store and she eventually opened up Innerspace.

Electricland - I dated the daughter of the owner and got free tokens.

Electric Palace - Got caught by my mom skipping school here.

Chuck E. Cheese - Probably the weakest arcade of the bunch, but still fun.

Wunderland - First time I played my all time favorite game 'Thayer's Quest'

 

And all we have left is Wunderland. It is kinda lame now, but still worth visiting every now and then.

[Fire Button]

Many of you are lucky to actually have had arcades nearby. This tradition never really took off where I live (in the Netherlands). If we wanted a real arcade, we'd had to go to 'the big city', in other words, Amsterdam. They had a few bordering the popuplar tourist hangouts. Gradually over the 90s however - and needless to say much to my dismay - they were transformed into one-armed bandit casinos. I've grown to hate slot machines because of it, as I never saw the fun of staring at spinning wheels doing close to nothing.

 

The only places that had one, possibly 2 or 3 arcade machines were snackbars and some restaurants. The machines you'd likely have found there were Pacman, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Pengo and Moon Patrol. Over the years those were replaced by fancy (but in my opinion ultimately boring) street fighting and racing games. Now, even worse, the only machines you're likely to find sitting in a corner in (snack) bars or likewise joints are either slot machines or the dreadful but ominpresent Photo Play machines.

 

For those of you who miss the arcades, I'd recommend a trip to Tokyo. They seem to have countless arcade joints, often multistorey, in which you will find anything from retro fun to the modern thrilling rides. I wish we had that culture here.

[Lord Helmet]

Shadow 460, it's too bad you didn't make it over to our side of town more often (northwest OKC). We had a ton of arcades to choose from.

 

In Yukon alone, we had 3 "stand alone" arcades and then two what I call "co-located" arcades (one in the roller skating rink, one in the bowling alley). Just east of Yukon was (and is) Cactus Jack's -- 20+ years and still going. Over in Mustang is Carnival Pizza, an independent pizza buffet/arcade (very large). Then there are the arcades in Crossroads, Quail, etc. There used to be one out in MWC at the mall but it closed a year or two ago (Star*Cade ... I bought a couple of games during the final auction).

 

I have been trying to make a list of all the old arcades I remember for my next retro Podcast (April 1st, check signature for link). The theme of the next show is (surprise) arcades!

 

NW OKC had several arcades I used to go to. Of course, back then, arcades were everywhere. Cactus Jacks, the Gold Mine @ Quail Springs...I used to love Crystals Pizza on NW X-way. I wanna piss on that Chilis thats there now

 

I actually grew up in Edmond, OK. We had a couple of good ones. There was a LeMans, and some other one on broadway, though I can't remember the name any more. Godfathers pizza had a small one.

 

I miss those days

[CARTRIDGE STEALER]

I miss the good old days where just about every store had at least 1 arcade game. smoke shops, pizzarias, card stores, 7-11, supermarkets, bowling alleys, taxi stands. hell, i even remember one in a local pet store!

Edited August 18, 2008 by CARTRIDGE STEALER

[boog]

Back in the early 80s, there were 6 arcades within 3 miles of my house. Six real arcades with 20+ machines each. Lots of machines at the local bowling alleys & pizza shops as well.

The latest games were always coming into town. It used to be a fun area with an amusement park, two drive-ins, waterslide, lake with a public beach, little food shops, and a bunch of arcades.

 

When the amusement park closed almost everything else went out of business. There's now a Chuck E Cheese where one of the arcades used to be, and the one drive-in that's still open is closing soon to build low income housing projects.

[KrazyKaiju]

We had three within biking distance of my house in Tampa. The 'Fun Place' was in the mall, with about 20 games total, all standup. I never went there much, as it was crawling with teenagers and other degenerates. It was your basic hole-in-wall arcade.

 

The second was Chuck E. Cheese, which only had about 25-30 games, though it had a sit down Star Wars and Mach 3. There were also a number of Pacman cocktail cabinets that were actually set up to be used as dining tables. I remember playing with one hand and munching on the pizza in the other. They also had those robot Pizza Time Players. I went there for my 10th and 11th birthdays.

 

The third was the 'Fun Stop' which was huge. It was originally a furniture store that had gone bankrupt. The new owner turned it into a mega arcade. They had over 100 games, skee-ball, air hockey, as well as a 9 hole 'Put-Put' mini golf course set up in the center of the building. The token machines would occasionally spit out a special red token, which was worth twenty regular tokens. I got red tokens twice during the summer of '83.

 

They were all closed down by the time I graduated high school in '90, even the Chuck E. Cheese. The current Chuck E. Cheeses don't hold a candle to the old ones.

[arcadebasement]

I grew up in North Wales in the late 60s/70s in LLandudno - a seaside town. There were arcades everywhere, obviously no video games until the 70s, but shove ha'penny games, those 'what the butler saw' motorized movies, fortune tellers and so on. The first vid game I remember playing was a sit down car game with scratchy old 8mm footage of a red car that you were supposed to follow. I believe it was simply projected onto a backscreen and the 'game' had a drum or tricker tape card to know when you weren't turning when you should then a white light would flash if you didn't turn at the right time.

 

Of course the space invader boom hit and so even more arcades popped up - we probably had 200+ along the coastline between LLandudno and Rhyl. Then as we all know things started dying down and many of them closed. In 1990 North Wales was hit by a massive flood submerging towns (particularly Towyn) in 20 foot of water. A lot of arcade owners who were reeling from the arcade crash took the opportunity to get rid of old cabs and cash in on the insurance regardless of the amount of water damage to them. I remember seeing scores of cabinets chucked into dumpsters most clearly with zero damages. Horrifying!

Edited August 18, 2008 by arcadebasement

[Tickled_Pink]

I grew up in North Wales in the late 60s/70s in LLandudno - a seaside town. There were arcades everywhere, obviously no video games until the 70s, but shove ha'penny games, those 'what the butler saw' motorized movies, fortune tellers and so on. The first vid game I remember playing was a sit down car game with scratchy old 8mm footage of a red car that you were supposed to follow. I believe it was simply projected onto a backscreen and the 'game' had a drum or tricker tape card to know when you weren't turning when you should then a white light would flash if you didn't turn at the right time.

 

Of course the space invader boom hit and so even more arcades popped up - we probably had 200+ along the coastline between LLandudno and Rhyl. Then as we all know things started dying down and many of them closed. In 1990 North Wales was hit by a massive flood submerging towns (particularly Towyn) in 20 foot of water. A lot of arcade owners who were reeling from the arcade crash took the opportunity to get rid of old cabs and cash in on the insurance regardless of the amount of water damage to them. I remember seeing scores of cabinets chucked into dumpsters most clearly with zero damages. Horrifying!

Oh? Where do you live now? I grew up the Welsh end of the A55 (Anglesey).

 

I didn't see my first arcade until around 1980 during a Butlins holiday in Minehead. Would have been around 11 years old. On my side of North Wales there was nothing. One opened in Bangor opened in the late 80's (still going, but mostly fruit machines). I remember there being one or two in Llanfairfechan, which is the other side of Bangor at around that time.

 

The only ones I knew of on the island were at Benllech, which had two. Again, this was in the mid to late eighties. I think it may be where I last played Galaxians and Pac-Man on an arcade cabinet around 1987/88. Having said that, I used to pump most of my YTS pay into the Double Dragon or Hang-On machines at the local pub when I was working in Benllech as a trainee programmer at that time (converting PET software to PC with GWBASIC and Clipper).

 

And as for that racing game you mentioned? I'm pretty damned sure I played that in Butlins.

[Vic George 2K3]

None that I knew of in Westfield. The only nearest arcade was in the Holyoke Mall, one town next to me, and that originally was three separate arcades before they condensed it into one.

 

In Fall River, where I went to school (St. Vincent's Home), there was an arcade next to where the old Bonanza and SRTA bus terminal used to be, but that's all I knew of.

Edited September 1, 2008 by Vic George 2K3

[pablum]

I only had one arcade in my small home town called "The Twilight Zone" and it went out of business around 1987. My parents wouldn't allow me to go anyway since it was a typical dark and dingy looking arcade of the era. For some reason my parents had no problem taking me to arcades in other towns and cities. I can only assume they heard rumors of drug use going on inside my home town arcade.

 

I did play arcade games in town at various gas stations, restaurants, and stores that had them. And back then just about all those businesses in my town did. Great fun that I miss seeing when I go out shopping.

 

As of now the only place I can think of with any arcade games around me is a pizza place 20 minutes from where I live.

Edited September 1, 2008 by pablum

[frogstar_robot]

There wasn't much on the Ohio side of the river where I grew up apart from the cabs you see here and there in pizza places and the like but Huntington WV had the Scratch 'n' Tilt. This was a brightly lit clean place on 5th ave with some pool tables in the back and about 20-25 cabs in the front. They had over the years Punch-Out!, Star Trek, Tapper (Budweiser), Stun-Runner, Tron, Missile Command, Kangaroo, Kick!, a monster truck racer I don't remember the name of, Bump n Jump, that coast to coast motorcycle racer, and so-forth. They were slow to get in new titles but did a good job maintaining what they had.

 

The Huntington Mall in Barboursville, WV had a pair of Gold Mines. One was larger than the other and seemed to get all the new titles first. They also had a quite a few vectors including a Quantum. The smaller of the two got really unusual things like Mach 3 and other oddball titles. They even had that "holographic" cowboy shooter. I'd flit between the two.

 

Later on, Ashland KY got a mall. The arcade there had a decent selection but it also had Claw games and ticket redemption games. This was the late eighties when arcades started going downhill with redemption games and the actual cabs gradually became either shooting, fighting, or MAYBE a racer. Around the same time, the Gold Mines in Barboursville were replaced with brightly lit places cut from the same cloth. Stll, Hard Drivin' was out then and I played the hell out of that and Hard Drivin' 2.

 

The last real arcade I frequented was a mall arcade in Lancaster from 94 to 96. I played more T-Mek than anything. It too was infested by ticket and fighting games. There were only a few other titles there I dropped quarters in. They had a game called GeoSword (I think) that looked a lot like The Last Starfighter as depicted in the movie. There was also a semi-realistic Atari helicopter flying title.

 

Everything pretty much dried up after that and life gets in the way of finding whatever may remain in Columbus OH. There's Dave n Busters which just plain costs too much and caters more to the adult with twenty bucks to blow on a half hour of fun as opposed to a kid with five. I did that once in 2000 and that was the last thing I saw that even resembled an arcade.