Arcades of Old -or- Pac in the Day

I am going to pretend I'm getting old. Actually, there isn't much to pretend. I'm middle-aged, and today I look around at young people with their modern consoles, sitting in front of their flat-screen High-Definition televisions jamming on their controllers or flailing around with motion controls. They are lucky. They will live further into the future than I, and they will see devices I can only imagine.

But I, too, am lucky. You see, I was there for the Glory Days of the video game arcades. I bore witness to the birth of an industry. I share much in common with the first folks who got to see television for the first time. Those early adopters of the television must have been dazzled by the new wonder machine that brought video right into their homes, just as my generation was dazzled by the wonder machines that brought video gaming into our homes. But that will have to wait for another post.

First, let's be honest. Those early consoles, at the beginning, did a mediocre job of bringing decent arcade transitions home. (Atari 2600 Pac-Man, anyone?) In the early '80s, if you wanted the real deal, you had to go out. The graphics were vastly superior to even the best of those early machines, as were the sounds. Put simply, the home versions were something that you "settled for". They were "close enough", or "similar". They were not the same by any stretch. Return with me now to yesteryear, and my favorite Arcade in particular, Aladdin's Castle.

I grew up in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. About 20 miles north of the Mason-Dixon, and about 45 miles west of Harrisburg, the State Capital. Somewhere between the years of 1980-'82 we had a ritual at our house on Saturdays. My brother and I would clean the house and do chores, and we'd each get $5. My parents knew all to well what we wanted to do with the money, so they also took us to the nearby Chambersburg Mall where there was an Aladdin's Castle. We would finish cleaning, then I would put on my Pac-Man t-shirt, Pac-Man wristwatch (had a simple Pac-Man game built into it), and after combing my hair with my Pac-Man paddle comb, that would be slammed into my ass pocket. I looked sharp. I had the "Pac-Man Fever".

We'd make the trek to Scotland, Pennsylvania where the Chamberburg Mall was (and still is, I believe), and my brother and I, bursting with anticipation, would make a beeline for the arcade. There was a movie theater across the hall from it, and we would be greeted with the smell of hot buttered popcorn and freshly shampooed carpet. The Aladdin's Castle was immaculate. No smoking, food or drinks allowed inside. We would walk in, and there they were. Some 70 video games, and about 5 pinball machines. Lights, noises, pulsing and tweeting. Barely audible radio playing in the background. $1 got you 4 tokens, but $5 got you 30 tokens. This operation was world-class. They had the best games available. They were always getting new machines in, and kicking old ones out. They had more than one Pac-Man machine as I remember.

I was one of those kids that could post a high score on Pac-Man, usually getting up into the keys. From time-to-time I would have a few people around me, watching me take the high score for the day, marveling at my mad skills. But Pac-Man wasn't my only pleasure. There was Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Kick-Man (remember that one?), Mousetrap, Tron, Qix... the list goes on.

My mother loved Qix, and would dump the bulk of her tokens into that one. My dad got ihis groove on with a game called Alpine Ski. My brother was much like me, sampling any and all of the flavors. Often when our tokens ran out, my mother would fish out another dollar or two so we could continue a bit.

The experience was amazing. Today, we download many of these old games or buy discs containing 20 or so of these titles. There's also emulation. But none of those are remotely the same as traveling to an arcade, a virtual reality palace of entertainment technology that was new on a mass scale, that reached people from all walks of life.

I had the pleasure of experiencing arcades in other places; Michigan (when our family went to visit relatives), the Philadelphia area (when our family went to visit relatives), New Jersey and my second favorite arcade at Hersheypark. This arcade sticks out in my mind because it had a broader selection of games and because of it's sheer size. It still had Space Invaders and Computer Space when everyone else was retiring these. It was quite smoky and dirty, and the smell was like, well... smoke and old food bordering on garbage. Not so pleasant.

The era of the arcade is sadly over. There was a brief return in the early '90s but it wasn't the same at all. The games were more exclusive, more difficult, had far better graphics, and cost $1 a play. This coupled with consoles that were much better at delivering arcade experiences (although many were still "alternatives") spelled a quick end to this flash-in-the-pan.

Young people of today, I play your games. You will surely live to see fantastic video game experiences in the future that I can only imagine. But I got to see the beginning, and I remember when an Asteroids machine was something that few could have imagined , just a few years before it's time.