Page 10 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #42 FREE Edition

were all pilots in Top Gun, just like Tom Cruise.
It was a remarkable time to be a kid that inspired a lifelong passion for video games.
Brett Weiss
OSG Writer, Book Writer, Content Creator
During the early 1980s, my brother and I frequently went to the arcade, primarily The Land of Oz in the mall, Malibu Grand Prix, or Putt- Putt Golf & Games. I usually only had 50 cents or a dollar in my pocket, but I managed to play a lot of games anyway. We would stay for hours, playing Donkey Kong, Frogger, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and the like. I also dove deep into the less familiar coin-ops, such
as Star Castle, Moon Cresta, and Mouse Trap. We both played a lot of pinball. The arcades were pure magic, and I LOVED all the games.
How did I play tons of arcade games and pinball machines with very little money? Out of sheer necessity, when I got to the arcade, I would search the coin slots in
all the machines, pressing the
coin return buttons as I went. This usually uncovered at least a couple of quarters or tokens, depending
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on which currency the arcade accepted. I would also look for random credits on machines, and this was effective as well, especially with pinball - some unknowing people would walk away after their final ball without staying a few seconds to see if they got a match.
In time, we got so good at pinball, especially Stern’s Hot Hand and Bally’s Dolly Parton, we could rack up a ton of free games on one credit and sell those games two-for-a- quarter and use that money to play video games. We had other, more sophisticated ways to play games at the arcade for free, but those are tales for another time.
Shane Stein - OSG Advisory Board Member
My earliest coin-op experiences (starting in the late 80s) cost me absolutely zero quarters, as my dad played a lot of golf when I was a kid, and he joined a club that, of all things, had a free-play arcade room. So I purposefully tagged along with him countless times and played a staggering amount of classic games like Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Kangaroo, Jungle King, and Mr.
frequent local arcades with friends, including Tilt, Aladdin’s Castle, Putt-Putt, and Video Quest, and here it became much more of a competition, with our favorites easily being Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam.
Beyond this, I simply loved arcade machines and would jump at practically any chance to try them, whether at movie theaters, pizza parlors, 7-11 (yep, they used to have game machines there) or anywhere else, and if I had quarters on hand, they inevitably would be munched by the likes of Virtua Fighter, Alpine Racer, Daytona USA, Ridge Racer, NHLPA Hockey, and many more. Tons of great memories, and even better, we can now re-experience them both in today’s retro arcades and by writing about them in Old School Gamer magazine!
Do. Later on, I began to regularly OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #42