I want to start this post explaining a bit about myself: For one, I’m not a writer. For the past decade my only writing has been procedural for applications or processes I’ve created, and I probably should have mentioned that in my first post. So, bear with me while I try to become more accustomed to people reading my ideas in a way that seems a bit more…how can I say this…conversational?

For context: I was born in a small town in the Midwest, I moved to a slightly larger town around the age of 5, and I moved to a top 3 population city for my state to go to college. I need you to understand this to get the perspective of which I’m writing for this post because while I have a wild love for the Arcade Scene, I rarely actually experienced it as it was meant to be.

According to a cursory Google the town I lived in until I was 5 had around 5,000 people in it. Unlike our next move, there is no reason to inflate this because as far as I know there is no reason to be there unless you are exclusively doing something for that town. This will be important to understand for the rest of the story.

When I was little, I was always infatuated with games. My parents inexplicable had an Atari and I remember being completely absorbed by it. My Dad and I would take turns with games or play the occasional 2 player “race to the dot” situation. As far as I was concerned at the time, Pitfall may as well have been the most advanced game of all time.

I started collecting tokens once I got a real machine that could take them.

I have 2 arcade memories when I was around kindergarten age. The first is going to a pizza place in town, most undoubtedly the only Pizza Hut in the city, where my grandparents gave me a couple of quarters to play Ghosts n’ Goblins. This is not a game for a child. It’s a brutal quarter muncher that I don’t remember making any progress at but I remember the thrill of using an arcade to play a game and seeing the most glorious Capcom graphics available at the time.

The second memory is a birthday party for someone in my kindergarten class. I distinctly remember my mother being concerned about why I wasn’t hanging out with the rest of the kids, but instead being completely infatuated in Burger Time. This is still one of my consistent “must plays” any time I see it. However, on this day, my coolest girl friend at the time was wildly interested in my rad Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles watch, which conveniently opened its shell to provide the time to anyone so cool to ask for it.

Shortly after my younger sister was born, we moved to a “big city” which consisted of around 17,000 people. This number may be low, however, as many people did commute in to work in various factories in the area, but was still maybe the 5th or 6th largest city in the state. Unfortunately, the (somewhat) increased population didn’t increase my ability to play more games. Around this time my favorite thing was my Double Dragon Tiger Wristwatch, which allowed me to play what could be the worst version of any game on the go possible. I remember actively being envious of my peers who had the Super Mario World watch, which had at least 2 more platforms. Thankfully my grandparents, parents, and uncle all had acquired an NES at this point (the last home console my parents would buy before they pivoted into “computers for learning” mode) so I fortunately had a larger spectrum of influences.

Around this time, I can only remember two options for an authentic arcade experience in my town. The first being the barber shop that somehow existed in a “mall” that to my knowledge really was never full. I distinctly remember them having both Altered Beast and Golden Axe settled outside their shop’s penny gumball machine. To this day these two games have influenced both my monster (Altered Beast) and Beat ‘em Up love for the genre. The second option was the rare expedition to the town’s skating rink. I assume that many in the same situation remember the skating rinks arcades fondly, but for someone like myself I could care less about the skating rinks entry fee and more about how many quarters I could be provided to play through many of the games that stick with me today.

My local rink had (what I thought at the time was) it all. We had Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, games thought I would identify with for years. These were the games I would read magazine entries for when my mother was buying groceries. I needed to know fatalities. I need to know how to throw hadokens. You mean to tell me that you have to hold directions to do a Psycho Crusher? The kids at school would never recover from my infatuation with special moves. But the games that REALLY got me weren’t the fighters, they were the co-op games that meant I could make progress with my friends.

It's time to talk about 2 of the best “friends on a mission” games of the early 90’s. By all means, I’d love to tell you about how my friends and I beat TMNT arcade at a Chuck E Cheese, but unfortunately that was a still in a bigger city for a different post. No, we are here to celebrate the pinnacle of Marvels Beat ‘em Up dominance with Data East’s Captain America and the Avengers and Konami’s X-Men arcade game.

The height of my juvenile arcade experience was in 7th grade. There was a “lock in” at the skating rink. While most of my friends were busy working to get couple skates, trying to get the DJ to play Metallica’s Memory Remains to seem edgy, or making out in dark corners I was out there doing real work. I needed to see the end of Captain America and the Avengers.

Captain America and the Avengers @ Galloping Ghost

For those that aren’t aware this is a side scroll Beat ‘em Up (or belt scroller if you will) where you can play as the titular Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, or (white) Vision. The sprites for this game are much smaller than the X-men, Final Fight, or Streets of Rage games of the same timeframe, but it made up for it with versatility. Every character could shoot some sort of projectile (arrow, shield, or energy blast) and depending on their “strength,” potentially pick up large objects. This was both remarkable for me for the versatility of the characters, but also as a way to play defensively in a genre that desperately wanted you to get hit and feed it more money.

I played for what felt like forever, starting out with one group of friends that eventually bowed out to see the fruits of their labors (the aforementioned activities) pay off, while I trudged along, eventually grabbing more friends as I got closer to the end. At the time, I don’t even know that I was aware of the game turning into a horizontal scrolling shmup from time to time, which only increased my excitement as I progressed. The game finally ended and I realized I was alone in my glory, but it is a moment that I still think about today.

One of the fantastic Cidercades in the Dallas area.

Before we get into my 2nd most memorable co-op “friends on a mission” game we need to take a detour because there’s about to be massive time skip. The years following my 7th grade best case scenario were littered with a lot of underwhelming experiences. Again, my region did not have what you would call an “arcade scene”. I grew up (and still find myself) idolizing peoples experiences with Chinatown Fair, Aladdin’s Castle, and the west coast arcade scene. You have to understand, the 2 best arcades I had been to were a Chuck E Cheese and a subpar mall Tilt that’s most promising games were X-men vs Street Fighter and Tekken Tag (which are undisputedly two of my favorite fighters to this day). My claim to fame at that time was that I could beat both of those games on one credit each, which was around how long it took for my mother to wonder about how long I was gone. I had no tangible knowledge of how great arcades could be until I was an adult that could properly travel. To paraphrase Bane: I was born in the dark. I didn’t see the (arcade) light(s) until I was already a man.”

Cut to around 25 years later when my friends and I were walking around a proper Barcade in Dallas. I walked in, bought a pass, and had unlimited plays for anything I wanted!? I walked in the doors and saw more games in one room than I saw for the first 15 years of my life (only later to be eclipsed by the beauty that is Galloping Ghost right outside of Chicago). We all grabbed a cider (it was a Cidercade so it seemed required) and headed back to the pinball area, hoping that they had the Godzilla game on free play.

On the way back I stopped breathless as I discovered a proper X-men 6-player arcade. I had seen one before at Logan’s in Chicago but this one was somehow even cleaner. What was even better than seeing my first at Logan’s: This time I had friends.

After allowing them to play around with whatever pinball and arcades they found interesting, I convinced them to come back to the X-men arcade. If you haven’t seen one it is a thing of beauty. The 6-man arcade is 2 monitors long and has bespoke coin slots for each character. You want to shoot typhoons and shock prone sentinels? Then walk up to storm. You want to bamf around and jump on people’s heads? Grab Nightcrawler. But, if you really know what you are doing, you walk up to Colossus and proceed to jam that special move button, scream, and pretend you can blow up the moon with your “wwhhuuuuhhh” exclamation.

That’s precisely what we did. While every game of that era was created to eat your money and run a little long (boss rush mode is brutal), having infinite quarters, and in this game, infinite specials, makes it an absolute blast to play. I’ve only finished the game a few times in my life because it’s very easy to play the first couple of levels and walk away, but when you’ve got a whole group there and are trying to keep them motivated to the end, you know you’ve got something special on your hands. It was an incredible experience that I can’t imagine I can convince any one of them to do again, but I appreciate them for humoring me none the less.

These days I’ve since bought a couple of things to recreate the youth I wish I had. Over COVID lockdown I purchased a Street Fighter Arcade 1Up machine, one of those ¾ cabinets. It did a good job for what it needed to and I eventually modded it to make it a fun little MAME cabinet. But it wasn’t until a bit after that I purchased a proper Tekken 5 machine. These guys are beautiful and can convert to a Japanese fighting game style sit down machine. It’s now been modded as well to run current games off of a Steam Deck until I can somehow find the means to acquire a smaller profile Viewlix machine.

That’s all to say, I’m still chasing the arcade dream. Every city I go to I’m looking up the closest (if they even exist outside of a Dave and Busters) arcade. Every time I have people over, I turn on every game in my house with the hopes that someone will want to play. Generally, I’m throwing on a fighting game on the Tekken machine and a beat ‘em up or shmup on the Arcade 1UP. The things that I love, but also the things I think that maybe, just maybe, I can convince someone to play with me and try to re-ignite that fire for that never got to be fully realized for me.

I’ve got Next…Never?

Absolutely Batty

The Handshake 5