Frank’s article about his days in the arcade really got me thinking about the time I spent at working at Skooters Family Entertainment Center in Bristol, Connecticut during my college years. I started off at the guy making pizzas in the back. Within a couple years, I was making employee schedules and running the LazerTron League. But most importantly, I got to play games for free.

I’ve certainly spoken enough recently about Street Fighter, and so I’ll be brief here, but it was by far the game I played most – both at Skooters, and in the arcade at Central Connecticut State University. I became fairly good friends with the 3-4 other guys in the area who were really good at the game, and I loved it when an out-of-towner with some real skill would show up to play. It was probably more than a dozen years ago, but I still remember the guy who showed up on a business trip and kicked my ass with Balrog. Good times.

It seems like a lot of the games I played most at Skooters were fighting games. Samurai Shodown 2 was another game I really enjoyed. I loved using Jubei’s parry/riposte attack, Sieger’s slide-punch-slam combo, and Haohmaru’s super-ultra attack, which I remember being very difficult to pull off.  Samurai Shodown let you fight the black-suited referee at times if you were doing very well at the game, which was neat. Too bad the ref always kicked my ass.

Darkstalkers felt quite a lot like Street Fighter 2, so I slid into that one naturally as well. I was primarily a Morrigan player, but I used Bishamon the samurai and the Sasquatch quite a bit. I also got into Virtua Fighter 2 when Skooters obtained a copy of that game. I first got good with Shun, the drunken monkey kung fu guy, but later started using Kage the ninja and Pai, since Pai had a really neat move where she could catch your punches or kicks if you timed the counter perfectly. I believe that Akira had about a hundred such counters, but I never got a chance to try to master that difficult timing.

Skooters never had a Neo Geo, but I’d play Neo Geo titles all the time at college and in a local convenience store. Final Fight, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury. I guess they were all fighting games and beat-em-ups, but Neo Geo had some good ones.

One Neo Geo game that always fascinated me was Crossed Swords. I never got much of a chance to play it, but being able to separately control your sword and your shield placement seemed a very cool game mechanic. Years later, I was able to try out the game via MAME, and while it was indeed very cool, its time had passed. You can see the screenshot pictured above in the header.

Probably the game I’ve been most looking forward to talking about in this article is Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom. The game was a side-scrolling 4-player beat-em-up in the style of the X-Men and Simpsons arcade games, but it had far more depth than either of these. The available characters were warrior, dwarf, elf, and cleric, and your characters would actually level up throughout the game. The elf and cleric would get access to more and better spells. Everyone but the elf had a shield with which they could block certain attacks. There were special dash attacks, jumping attacks, and slides accessible through Street Fighter-like joystick movements. You could collect money and treasure, and use it to buy healing potions, arrows, throwing daggers and flaming oil. There were arrow traps, pits, and spiked walls. There were secret doors, accessible only by shooting a lever or pushing against a suit of armor that had looked like part of the  background. The game had branching paths, and you could take different routes which would lead to you fighting different enemies. We all knew not to take the path where you’d fight the red dragon. That thing sucked up quarters like nothing I’ve ever seen. Anyway, if you ever get the chance to try the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game, give it a go. It’s probably my second favorite arcade game ever.

Dwarf using a lightning bolt ring

It wasn’t until my college days that I first discovered Point Blank in the arcade in the student center at CCSU in New Britain, Connecticut. My cousin Paul and I played the crap out of that game. Point Blank is the best light gun game series ever invented. Years later, I found a Point Blank cabinet at the Old Chicago in Colorado Springs near where I used to work. It was nice to play again.

While I first discovered Dance Dance Revolution at a camp in New Hampshire where someone had set up a Playstation, I later played it in the arcades quite a bit. And I got fairly good at it. There was a year or two where I was seriously obsessed with DDR – I got to the point where I could ace “Smoke on the Water” on maniac difficulty, which was no easy feat.

My daughter will likely never play games in an arcade. It’s a sad thing to see them go, really. Arcades were an integral part of many of our childhoods.

Although home consoles have always been a big part of my gaming history I can’t say that they were the major influence in my tastes today. My gaming teeth were really cut in the arcades, where I plunked down innumerable quarters and mastered the skills of ignoring distractions and building my tolerance for cigarette smoke.

I had older cousins when I was young and they grew up with the arcades. The Atari was just a cheap knock-off in their eyes, so if I wanted to be cool like my cousins I had to hit the arcades. So I’d pull up a stool and play like the big boys at games such as Zaxxon, Sinistar, Galaga, Tron, Dragon’s Lair, Pac-Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, Tempest, and Star Wars. Later when I was old enough to go to the arcade by myself I indulged in such favorites as: Altered Beast, Operation: Wolf, Superman, Street Fighter II, WWF Superstars, Terminator 2 and countless others at the local Boardwalk arcade. For $20 you could play all day and I did exactly that all summer long.

My arcade passion really hit a new level when I found X-Men: Children of the Atom at the local arcade. This totally blew me away. A game that combined the fighting of Street Fighter II and my favorite comic book heroes was like interactive crack. When I moved into my first apartment I found an arcade within walking distance and spent way too much time and money playing this game. This lasted for about a year until a new Marvel vs. Capcom cabinet arrived. This was too much, Marvel AND Street Fighter characters in the same game? Was Capcom trying to kill me? The gameplay wasn’t your traditional Street Fighter fare either, it was out of control, but I didn’t care because it was so damn fun to play. The crowds that game attracted were what really made gaming so much fun back then.

However, growing up gaming in arcades doesn’t expose you to a lot of RPG’s. I didn’t own a computer until I was in college and never got into the Zelda or Final Fantasy games. My gaming tastes usually ended up trying to recreate that arcade feeling at home, whether it’s the Super Nintendo, Dreamcast, or even today with the Playstation 3. Right now I’m salivating for the PSN release of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and praying for a TE Fightstick to fall in my lap so I can properly relive those glorious arcade days. All I’d be missing is the background noise of Mario jumping barrels and the smell of spilled soda. Ahh, those were the days.