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.