The Quarter Munchies-the Arcade Classics

If you can think of a pic to put into this article than go ahead and let me know, for an entry this somber I'm kind of out of ideas, visually.

At every arcade back in the day, you could see what games are popular and which weren't. What amazes me is the games that were NOT all the popular but still stayed in those arcades.
I'm not referring to the great classics like the NEO GEO games, because SNK had never made a shitty game for arcades. Midway rarely did either (I said RARELY). In fact there were few companies that made shit that didn't deserve a cabinet. But every once in a while a game company would crank out a so-so title that really gets outshinned by the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter cabinets. Yet, through the haze of popularity and after all the hype over that big-name fighting game is calmed, that shitty game still manages to keep its spot on the arcade floor, even when that popular (yet expensive to play) House Of The Dead machine has been hauled away by the vendors.


When I was kid I used to go to this shitty roller rink in Florida (so shitty I can't remember the name of the place and as far as I know now that place is now probably a strip joint). Thier back room was a little arcade filled with more games then pairs of rental skates that were availiable at the front counter. The room had a door that sealed off all the pounding, repatative, extasy induced crap music, and let the games speak thier language of love and hate. Im not meaning to oversell this, but I loved games as a kid, more than roller blading in circles under colored lights, anyways.

I was too busy with Mortal Kombat 2 and the Killer Instinct games to even notice Timekillers but I had seen it and thought it was kinda mediocre looking on the outside and besides which this son-of-a-bitch punk kid was playing on it, and I hated and still hate playing against strangers. I just wanted to play MK and be part of the cool crowd that refused to try anything else.

I was down to 1 quarter and that after a failed try at scavenging for another out of all the return chutes, I finally gave up and said 'screw it' andf went to the now abandoned Timekillers game. It only need 1 quarter which was nice considering most of the other games needed 2. I played 1 match of this fighting game and I was very impressed but not as blown away as I wanted to be, maybe it was just the fact that it was my last game before I packed it in and headed home. I saw a game though that was way more violent than MK and KI. In the one one match I played that the computer beat my ass on, my fighter, Rancid, lost both limbs and on the second round got his head chopped off. It was sick! I liked it but when your a snot-nosed brat at the age of 14 anything with blood or boobs is fuckin Oscar-worthy.

Years later, I had gone to that same roller rink and noticed that the arcade was now really in the crapper. Almost all the games were gone, including the quarter thives like MK, KI and Street Fighter. I can kinda guess that business went bad there and perhaps all the games were damaged by little dickheads that broke the joysticks or deliberately jammed the buttons in too far. The point is, this was now 1999 and the arcade was being replaced, and by what? The Sony Playstation, the Dreamcast (before it failed) and other home consoles that delievered arcade quality without the long drive to the real arcade. It was an electronic graveyard.

In fact the only new game at this arcade was Dance Dance Revolution, which (in case you've been on an island for the past 9 years) is a stupid assed attemp to combine video games, music and phys-ed class. I like to play a video game cause I'm fuckin lazy! People crowded around this machine like Jesus was on the screen and everyone had leporsy. It was sad. The joystick was replaced with a foot pad, and frankly the crowd that surrounded this thing all looked like a rich kid, hipster group, not the usual skateboarding punks with the pizza complexion and the pizza making job.


I remember seeing an old Mortal Kombat 1 cabinet, just the first game, not the sequels. I foundly remember playing that again and seeing what had started it all. I also remember kicking that games ass, and winning my first arcade game and finishing it completely.

These days, we have home game systems that rock with great 5.1 surround sound, killer graphics, and games that couldn't possibly function in an arcade. Can you imagine Halo in an arcade? Game companies now make millions off of the 50 dollars we spend on the CD's for games at Walmarts and Best Buys, so screw quarters, screw driving to the arcade and screw that fat bastard that emptied the machines at the end of the night or that other fat fuck that delivered games on a two wheeler cart. We got our X boxes and the only bastard behind that is Gates (well sorta).

Its weird. If any arcades are still thriving you'll still find a pac-man machine, a Timekiller machine, and a origional Street Fighter 1 cabinet. Maybe those are still makin some dough for them, by people like me. People that DON'T go to video arcades to have a computer give them dance lessons.

Strange Finds- The MK Game-in-a -controller thingy

[this review was written by myself, however before this blog was made it was originally posted on the Ultimate Console Database website. The owner of that site- "mark" -has small reviews and personal thoughts on nearly EVERY game system ever made since Atari's 2600 machine and even before then. Awesome site so please check it out, I owe a lot of thanks to him for not trashing what could have been just ANOTHER Mortal Kombat review. Thanks, Mark]

At the tender age of 11 (or maybe 12) I was in a bowling alley arcade. As I bounced around from one Street Fighter II game to the next I discovered something that seemed odd. A group of about 5 adults crowded around an arcade game that I couldn't make out because I was so very small and unable to see over them. Adults? In a arcade? What, no beer at home?

At about 10 pm I got my last 2 quarters from my deadbeat father and headed back to the arcade. The crowd was gone and I could see the machine they had been gawking at for the last 4 hours. I didn't really read the name, which was odd now that i think of it, but the screen seemed to be alive to me. Then when I noticed 2 joysticks and on the screen some punching, kicking and fireball throwing, my 50 cents found a home. This encounter would scar my mind. This was Mortal Kombat.

A gong sounded and I picked my fighter, Sonia. I always picked female fighters in video game because most of the time those characters were faster, and fun for an 11 year old to watch jump around on screen. I did my first round and my character was real. Street Fighter was a cartoon that came to life, all in all, good fun but this was far more subversive. I jump kicked my opponent only to get jacked by an uppercut that would spray out the first sight of blood I'd ever seen in a game before. My jaw dropped. The third round I was already hypnotized. The sounds were agonizing, the music was darker than SFII and I had made it winning until I found my character killed by being upper-cutted into the famous 'The Pit' level. The image of Sonia Blade being impaled in a lower level of a level upon spikes sticking out of the ground next to other dead bodies drawn into the background was like watching Faces of Death. I had that dirty feeling, I had lost 2 quarters and saw something so "grown up." I loved it, but this was the kind of game my mother didn't hear about when I got home. Well,... not until its console release on the SNES (best 16-bitter in my opinion by the way). The SNES version was limited but still bad ass fun and I didn't even need the quarters to have it. Unfortunately the SNES release had no blood, or even a code for it like the SEGA Genesis release. The "fatalities" were there but some were modified (no head-exploding fun for Rayden or Head-ripping-with-spine-intact fun for Subzero) which was a downer, but MK II's console release pulled out more stops and gave me what I saved 2 months allowance over.

11 years later, I cruise into a Walmart and check out those videogame in a controller gadgets and find something (in the stack of bullshit Atari rehashes) - Mortal Kombat TV game. The rest of the day I felt like a teenager again. The quality and gameplay can be compared to the SNES versions and this time, NO CENSORSHIP! Blood, Original Fatalities, Special moves, All in a great and small package. The controller itself is cool looking, though uncomfortable for long playing. Don't expect the joypad to be sensitive, expect a red blistery thumb instead (it makes me wonder how that passed the test stage). Also the there is loading times, including for Shang Tsungs morphing from character to character, very annoying, its not a CD so why the hell am I waiting? Goro is there in his four armed glory, the mysterious Reptile, those funny and cool shadows in the moon on "The Pit" level. Its all here and its all still good. Great gift for someone that hasn't owned a system since the PS1.

Midway's name is on the controller, along with Jakks Pacific. It takes 4 AA's and also an included 2032 button cell for its memory (I suppose at Jakks they think we care about keeping our high score initials saved). There's a input on the front of the unit and link cable included for 2 player hookups which is a good move. As I said before, the joypad is heavily textured for grip and after an hour your thumb will be throbbing. Included in the packaging is the manual to the game which features unnecessary character stories and all the finishing moves, I wish they'd done that 11 years ago it would have saved me a lot of flipping through EGM's. A great deal for less than 20 bucks, and better than what the cart cost me 11 years ago.

The Good: A nostalgia classic in a small, cool looking package. Doesn't gobble batteries, and gives you the adult oriented SEGA Genesis blood, with good looking SNES quality looks and playability. FOR JUST 20 FUCKING DOLLARS. Niiiice.

The Bad: Its hard to type right now my thumb is sore. I guess the loading times on a non-CD game(?) give my joypad thumb a chance to rest (sarcasm).

The Ugly: Thank you Jakks for the ability to use a button cell battery for saving my high score, now I can type in SEX and ASS or other 3 letter obscenities and treasure them forever.

I've fallen out of the MK loop. It went to 3D action during the PS1 days and since then I haven't cared for it. Its bad enough Sub Zero has the unrealistic ability to yank your head off and leave the spine in great shape (?). I don't care to see it every time, and every sequel from 100 different angles. Midway has and always will be wringing out the corpse of MK and if a penny seeps from any orifice of it, they'll surely keep it going. I'll stick to the game that started it all, and was the back cover story of the 16 bit golden age that lead to the end of those days, and Midway can sell Mortal Kombat Go Cart Racing (no, that game doesn't exist) to some other 11 year old gaming brat.