Fond Memories

I’ve always been interested in gaming from the first time I saw an arcade machine up until I was able to start playing games at home. My earliest memory of any game was playing the original Star Wars created by Atari when I was about five years old. Honestly I don’t know if I did actually get to play it or if my parents just helped me pretend I was playing it but it the experience has sat in my mind ever since. Every once in a while it peeks out to remind me; hey you played that!

Fast forward to when I was 11 and I discovered that my grandparents had an old Sears gaming console at their house. I was fascinated by the idea that I could play games at home without spending any money. However, the console wasn’t very advanced and contained only a few games (it didn’t have a cartridge slot that I remember.) I remember a breakout clone, tennis for two (two player pong), and a light gun game that used a rifle; kind of skeet shoot game–shot the moving rectangle. My parents hooked it up to the TV and played it a bit but I wasn’t allowed to, probably because they felt it would distract me from school work.

Meanwhile one of the kids down the street received a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for his birthday. I spent a lot of time hanging out with him, partly because I wanted to play on it. I remember us playing Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and World Class Track Meet (yes Nintendo was kind of in to fitness way before the Wii Fit Stuff). We discovered that you could cheat at Track and Field by simply jumping off the Power Pad and waiting and then jumping back on it or even just using your hands to hit the pads and wait a bit before you hit the pads again.

Around the same time I started messing around on my grandfathers computer and learning how to use that. He saw something in me that he decided to invest in so I was soon learning how to use PC’s. I also started to learn how to build computers as well. Thankfully grandpa invested in me despite the fact that I made a lot of mistakes (as in damaged hardware on occasion) and I soon learned what to do and what not to do.

Somewhere over the next few years, probably around the time I was 14 I managed to score an Atari 2600. I don’t exactly remember how I got ahold of it but it was mine and I was able to play on it. I spent hours playing on my mom’s little black and white TV (at least until she upgraded to color) playing games like River Raid, Ms. Pac-Man, and others. I think I had Pac-Man but since it was so horrible on the 2600 I never really played it. I actually still have the Atari 2600.

During this time there was also an Arcade at the Mall. I used to spend as much time as I could there; spending what little money I had on games there. If I didn’t have any coin, I’d stand and watch other people play various games. There was a pretty nice selection there as well; things like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, and more. They also had classic arcade games like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-man, Galga, and others. Additionally, arcade games were common in places like the grocery store, the movie theater, and even places like Hobby Lobby. If my mom went in to a place that had an arcade machine I would try to either spend the whole shopping trip at the arcade machines or at least hang out by them when mom was checking out.

One of the fun things about different places having arcade machines was that I got so see all sorts of games. There were games like Mortal Kombat (I remember when Mortal Kombat came out) and Street Fighter II (along with it’s various incarnations) but I also got to see games such as Pac-Land, Rolling Thunder, Raiden, Tetris, and more. At some point I decided I wanted to have my own arcade machine that way I could play at least one of those games at home. I also decided I wanted to learn how to make my own games.

One of the coolest things that happened was that one of my friends father decided to go in to business for himself by opening up an arcade right near the High School I was going to. Since it was with in walking distance of the school I’d hang out there as much as I could. There were plenty of games there as well like T-Mek, Mortal Kombat II, and others. I also got to play one of my favorite game genres; light gun games. My friends and I would spend hours playing games like Area 51, Revolution X, and Virtua Cop. I even bought a very old arcade machine from the guy who owned the place.

Around the time I was 17 I ended up working at a start up cyber cafe. Not only were their computers to play on but there was a dedicated room that had loads of arcade machines. It was even more fun to be able to hang out and play on the machines as well as work on them. I got to spend a lot of time playing on machines like Bubble Bobble and other arcade classics. Additionally I got to learn how to service some of the machines. I also moved my arcade machine there as well so I could hopefully upgrade it. Unfortunately I made some mistakes and lost the position at the cyber cafe and I had to leave my arcade machine there.

During all this, as I was growing up, I worked to get as many game consoles as I could get. I was able to get quite a few including the original NES, SNES, N64, the Sega Master System, the Sega Genesis, the Sega 32x, Sega Saturn, the PlayStation, and more. I’ve gone to collecting gaming systems and I still have all of the systems I bought. It’s a long list and at some point I’ll post all the hardware I’ve collected.

This is just a little bit of background behind why I enjoy gaming, and why I think arcade games are so fun. One of my big ideas is to build a working arcade machine based off of many of the games I’ve played and that I own. So stay tuned, we’re going on a pretty big adventure; learning to build an arcade cabinet and playing games on it.

-J