Page 8 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #42 FREE Edition

be ones to take me out of the way to go to the arcade to blow money we didn't have, I would have to settle for the arcade in the mall we were going to anyway. Not that that was a bad thing. Whoever was running that arcade clearly had money to keep it current and put some really unique cabinets in there for people to play. I remember spending all of my meager $5 allowances at TILT in Bayshore Mall in Eureka, CA, every beginning of the month.
Back then, that place was BUSTLING and always packed
with patrons. In its prime, I'll always remember crowds of people gathered around Street Fighter II Champion Edition and since you could only get so many people around the cabinet to witness some ass-whuppin', they set up a second monitor above the cabinet so that people could still see the action that weren't right in front of the screen. Daytona USA, with its 60 FPS racing action, has always been so impressive to me. Killer Instinct was so insanely loud and in your face. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was always there to "take me for a ride". That jerk I played in Mortal Kombat that simply swept me over and over to death will always be lucky he didn't get punched in the face IRL. The Simpsons, TMNT, 6-player X-Men,
Michael Jackson Moonwalker, Smash TV, T2... all so vivid and awesome.
The weirdest one, and the one I feel so privileged to have been able to play in the arcade, was (Hologram) Time Traveler, with its cool gimmick of using mirrors and whatnot
to make the action seem like a hologram in front of you. The script is beyond hokey if you go back and play it now but it was a technical marvel back then. It's an arcade game in the same vein as Dragon's Lair in that you have to have quick reactions to prompts on-screen or your hero dies. Only instead of a cartoon, this one is recorded with live actors. My favorite stage is when the time traveler warps into the middle of a baseball game, right between a pitcher and batter. You end up shooting both the pitcher and batter (violent much?). The umpire then signals and says, "You're Out!". Man, I miss arcades...
Kevin Unangst OSG Board Member
Arcade games in that era were everywhere - from convenience stores to mini golf centers to retailers like Kmart.
My friends and I would ride our bikes through the neighborhoods
to the local Kmart. In their heyday, many Kmart stores had a dedicated arcade area in the back of the
store. There was something so thrilling about going once a week
to see what was new. I remember when Astro Blaster arrived with a huge sign saying that this game had electronic speech, or playing Battlezone in a dedicated cabinet set up in the corner with a stool for shorter kids to see properly. The sound of standing in an arcade with so many different lights and sounds was magical.
There was a dedicated arcade area at our local swimming pool/mini golf center. I recall when Dragon’s Lair first arrived. There was a massive line to experience this entirely new type of game, with a handwritten waiting list to ensure no one cut the line.
My final memory is the glory days of the arcade in my local shopping mall. It was on the second floor, just inside the main entrance. It was the largest arcade I had ever seen and was one of the few that didn’t have redemption games. It was totally focused on pinball and arcade machines, and my friends and I were incredibly envious of the staff. How lucky we thought they were
to have jobs working every minute of every day on video games, and the power they possessed to simply open a machine and grant credits when something wasn’t working - blew our young minds.
There were two particularly memorable moments at that arcade. First was the day that Sega’s
Time Traveler showed up. We had heard rumors from the staff that something new was coming. It didn’t last long, but seeing the hologram and the cowboy reflected felt like living in the future.
The second machine that changed what we thought was possible was Sega’s After Burner in the full- motion cabinet. Its hydraulic motion made my friends and I imagine we
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