bunkaroo

I remember watching a guy finish Dragon's Lair at Circus Circus in Vegas.

I of course played the original Star Wars game a ton. I would only use one shot at the end of the trench just like Luke. None of this firing like crazy at it.

Rob V

That new surround Star Wars game looks pretty damned cool.

TheBang

That reminds me of an MK3 memory. The summer of 1995, the 2.0 ROM update went out to arcades with the 10-digit Ultimate Kombat Kode which permanently unlocked the mystery middle character for play (turned out to be robotic Smoke). Of course, no one could get it for weeks (months?), but one day, someone posted it to the alt.games.mk newsgroup. I fully expected to find it entered into the arcade machines already, but I guess most people didn't have Internet access. I hit up every arcade up the Wasatch Front from Layton to North Ogden and entered the code into all of them. I enjoyed watching the amazed expression on people's faces who were there, and the knowledge that I was THAT guy who spoiled entering the code for anyone else who might get it and run to the arcade thinking they would be the first to input it.

james2025a

I used to frequent a number of arcades when i was young. There were around 4 that were dotted around the city. The Penny Arcade had the classics (4 player Gauntlet, Punch Out, Nemesis/Gradius, Double Dragon, Ghosts and Goblins, Operation Wolf, Super Sprint 3 player) as well as a tonne of slot machines. It was pretty dingy and down a real dangerous looking alley, but it was cool. Then there was the Starlight which was pretty much the same, but lesser. The games tended to be cheaper models and the games were more obscure and less interesting. Pole Position was the highlight. The name of the best arcade alludes me now, but it had much more up to date games and it was the first to get Street Fighter 2. I spent countless hours in that place watching and playing. It was here i got to know 3 guys who were hackers and who didn't work and found ways to beat slot machines. They were the top of the tier in playing SFII, that is until my best friend Dan started to take it seriously and was the first to beat the game with every character and he got so good he could select any character and beat you no matter who you chose. Easily one of the best players i have seen on the game. This arcade also had the one game that i became an expert on....Out Zone. I ended up being so good i could beat the game a couple of times over on a single life. I have it on Mame and still play it from time to time.

A few years later a large arcade called Center Four opened and it was huge. It was more a fun center, but it had tonnes of games and it had stuff like Mad Dog McCree (which i thought was shit) and the huge 4 player mini theatre Galaxian game which blew me away at the time. Stuff like Ridge Racer and Daytona. It was pretty great, but pricey.

The best arcade though was not an arcade at all. On the way home from school as a teenager i would walk past a video store and it always ad 3 machines inside. They would switch the games up every several weeks, but they had a lot of great games here and it was cheap. I spent a lot of time on Commando, Flash Gal, New Zealand Story.