When was the last time you went to an arcade? Has it been a couple of weeks or has it been years?  With the advent and proliferation of modern gaming systems the weekly trip to the arcade has become a thing of the past.

Back in the old days, the early 1980’s, if you wanted to play videogames at home you had very limited choices.  The home gaming systems of the day were the Atari 2600, Colecovision and Intellivision.  It wasn’t until late in 1985 that the first Nintendo Entertainment System arrived in the States, so if you wanted real gaming action you had to make a trip to your local arcade where you could find dozens of different games to play.  I would go to the arcades on Friday nights after finishing work (okay, after finishing milking the cows), and I would play for hours. 

The experience of an arcade is hard to describe to someone who has never been to one.  First, you never had to worry about being cold; the average power consumption of one of the old style arcade games was around 500 watts!  With that kind of power draw these units were large space heaters.

The feel of an arcade is hard to describe: imagine 40 machines in attract mode with weapons firing and other various beeps and squawks.  The smell of sweat and Clearasil would permeate the air with a smell of old Coca-Cola emanating from the sticky carpet.  I think that I would best describe the sound of an arcade to be a lot like that of a casino: coins clinking, lights flashing, and people yelling at the machines.

The game that I played the most in my early years of going to the arcade was Dragon’s Lair which had the distinction of being the first laserdisc-based video game.  For those of you who do not know, the laserdisc was the precursor to the Compact Disc and the DVD.  Imagine a disc nearly a foot in diameter.  These things were huge!

Technology aside, Dragon’s Lair was a fun game to play.  I would put a $5 bill into the change machine, get my 20 quarters, and load the machine up.  This game was also the first “expensive” game to play.  In a time when most video games were 25 cents to play, Dragon’s Lair cost 50 cents per credit and you only got three lives.  The game was fairly simple to play as there were only 2 controls: a 4-direction joystick and a weapon button.

I would play this game till my fingers were sweating and sore trying to jump out of the way of bats or dodging a giant snake. It was a great fun game to play and I can honestly tell you that this was the first arcade game that I ever beat.  It took me all night and $7.50 in quarters to do it, but I finally beat the game.

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