The Classics Are Never The Same!!!

[doubledown]

I was at a local bar/arcade/pool hall last night with some friends. I hadn't been there in a while, but their usual stock of arcade coin-ops is newer, larger, and $1.00 per play type games. When low and behold I saw a large cabinet with the marquee title "Classic Games." The cabinet housed three all time classics, Galaga, Dig Dug, and Donkey Kong. Three of my personal favorites. I'll admit I have more Donkey Kong experience on consoles and through emulation, but I conisder myself pretty good at it, so I thought I'd start with that game. The first problem I noticed was that the joystick used must be an 8-way style making it difficult to climb a ladder without passing it first. Secondly the game must have been set on the highest difficulty level, because within seconds of starting the opening Girder Level there must have been 12-15 barrels rolling towards me with no slowing down or end in sight. After a couple of tries I made it past the first board and did fairly well setting the high score with a little over 60,000. Secondly I tried Dig Dug. Again the 8-way joystick makes it difficult to turn when you want to. I got the high score with a little over 49,000 and moved on to my all time favorite arcade game, Galaga. Now in this case the 8-way joystick doesn't affect my gameplay, but the incredibly large 30+" monitor makes it very hard to watch the aliens at the top of the screen and move my ship away from the deadly alien fire without actually moving my head up and down. I did ok. I got 59,590, a mere 410 lower than the factory set high score of 60,000.

While it was nice to play some old school classics within the ambience of an arcade, it's not qute the experience I remember.

[Saikyo]

If that was one cabinet with three games in it, then it was a bootleg and that's

probably why it didn't feel the same when you played it.

 

The cabinet sure sounds like a bootleg with an 8-way joystick and all!

[Dr Galaga]

Sounds like a piece of crap to me. Plus, I refuse to pay a dollar to play a "classic" game. There is a resaurant that I was in that wanted $1 to play the Galaga/Ms. Pac-Man Reunion game - I'll pay 50 cents, but not a dollar. I was actually surprised this summer when I went to the county fair and they had the reunion game set up for a quarter!

[doubledown]

It almost looked like a converted shooting game. The screen like I said was very large, and the podium that held the controller and buttons was out in front of the screen cabinet about 3 feet. Each game was only 25 cents, but you had to put in 50 cents to play. So you had to buy two games every time you wanted to play.