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Gonna nab some quarters from my change bucket, ride my bike up to the mall....


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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Oh, and for those of you feeling some nostalgia, you need to read up on MAME.  It can be a bit daunting to setup, but it might be worth your time.

You can have every game you could ever want on your PC or Mac

We have an arcade at home in our game room that we designed (a company made) and we assembled that has 3000 arcade games. It’s pretty rad. When the kids have friends over it gets used.

Edited by troph
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Posted
14 minutes ago, troph said:

We have an arcade at home in our game room that we designed and assembled that has 3000 arcade games. It’s pretty rad. When the kids have friends over it gets used.

How’s the bottle service there? I may be interested in patronizing this establishment. 

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Posted

If there was actually a sane god, this thread would be the norm on this site. Instead, we have to worry about nonsense. But every once in a while, a nice gem like this comes along. 

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Posted

In the ‘90’s a friend and I would search out pinball machines that wouldn’t tilt. There was one at The Crown & Anchor and another at Ego’s. We would get drunk and abuse the shit out of those machines. Simpler times.

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Posted
20 minutes ago, BottleRocket said:

In the ‘90’s a friend and I would search out pinball machines that wouldn’t tilt. There was one at The Crown & Anchor and another at Ego’s. We would get drunk and abuse the shit out of those machines. Simpler times.

We would hit up Waterloo Brewing Co. some afternoons when we were slow at work. Stars Wars Pinball and a few pints of Ed's Best Bitter. God Bless you and RIP, Steve Anderson.

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Posted
6 hours ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

I still remember the "eureka moment" when I realized that it was a genie in a turban on the Aladdin's Castle token, and not some kind of strange Slimer- or Jabba-esque blob creature. 

AladdinsCastleR.jpg.d930f8f2d59232620e2bcfaec6b53ed0.jpg

 

e55dc90b-3f1c-417b-bbf4-914d56917f31_tex

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Posted
1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How’s the bottle service there? I may be interested in patronizing this establishment. 

Self serve mostly 

Drunk Bachelor Party GIF by Bachelorette Weekend on CMT

Posted
7 hours ago, NorthLoop said:

btw if you ever are in the Pikes Peak/Colo Springs area, Manitou Springs has a whole city block that's basically nothing but old arcade games and kids old quarter slot rides. It's pretty fuckin cool. Except I got Covid there. 

They just got a new owner, so I'm not sure it's the same.  The previous family owned it for 92 years.  And yeah, some of the games are that old.  

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Posted

With the exception of Donkey Kong and a bit of Pac Man never really got into video games, it was strictly pinball. We’d give sob stories to old ladies about needing bus fare home or stealing people’s soda bottles off their back porch to redeem ourselves to pay for our games. 

Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, BottleRocket said:

In the ‘90’s a friend and I would search out pinball machines that wouldn’t tilt. There was one at The Crown & Anchor and another at Ego’s. We would get drunk and abuse the shit out of those machines. Simpler times.

The convenience store in my home town had one of these for almost a year or so.  

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One day, a few of us were there playing and we noticed there was a sizable gap between the siderails and the glass, especially at the top left of the playfield.  Hmm.

192_31.JPG

 So, we brought in a wire coat hanger and discovered that if we manipulated it just right,  one of us could play a game and  catch and hold the ball with a flipper, the other could knock down all of the drop targets in the upper left lane that held the captive ball with the coat hanger, bumping up the score and triggering a special, then doing it over and over.  I have no idea how many credits were taken in that manner.  It was a sad day when we found out that table was taken away.

 

 

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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Posted
14 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Us 90s kids in Northwest Hills had Tilt at Northcross Mall. Give me some Mortal Kombat and TMNT followed by the Great American Steak and More. Then a visit to Petland and Oshman’s. 

We

Posted
15 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

Adult?

What did it have, a couple of buttons?

If you didn't get crippling hand spasms and early onset arthritis from hours of Defender, you may as well have been playing Mappy.

defender_a.thumb.jpg.2fdf5771465eabb91f7afb3310fe06d6.jpg

StarGate for the win. 

Houston area Horns, here's your new hang out.  Right by the Icebox or Daiken Park.

Home - Joystix Games

Posted
14 hours ago, troph said:

Was named the Gold Mine before that.  Lock ins at north cross mall were phenomenal peak middle school fun. 

I don’t even remember that Gold Mine location anymore. In my mind when I think Gold Mine it’s always the one at Highland. 

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Posted
16 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

Adult?

What did it have, a couple of buttons?

If you didn't get crippling hand spasms and early onset arthritis from hours of Defender, you may as well have been playing Mappy.

defender_a.thumb.jpg.2fdf5771465eabb91f7afb3310fe06d6.jpg

I ruined my right hand on this plenty of times.

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Posted

I worked at SportsPark in Austin (Pleasant Valley/Riverside) in the early 80s.  Batting cages, mini-golf, skating rink and an arcade that had a shit-ton of pinball and video games.  So many good times there.  My favorite games were Eight Ball Deluxe (pinball) and Pole Position (video).  Joust, Defender, and Galaga also got a lot of playing time.

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Posted

I could never master Defender.  We had a few savants who could play that damn game for hours on one quarter.  I was mostly a Galaga and Moon Patrol guy.  The latter was a really dumb game but I loved playing it.

Posted
37 minutes ago, Native Horn said:

I worked at SportsPark in Austin (Pleasant Valley/Riverside) in the early 80s.  Batting cages, mini-golf, skating rink and an arcade that had a shit-ton of pinball and video games.  So many good times there.  My favorite games were Eight Ball Deluxe (pinball) and Pole Position (video).  Joust, Defender, and Galaga also got a lot of playing time.

In my experience, you were either a Pole Position man, or a Turbo man.  I was team Turbo.  I rocked that shit.

Man....I kinda wanna hit the arcade with my kid now.  He'll be home in a month, sounds like a plan.

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Posted (edited)

My grandfather started a vending business in the 70s and sold arcade games, pool tables, air hockey, foosball, crane machines, etc. Basically anything you put quarters in, he sold.

We had a Galage (my favorite game ever), Ms Pac Man, a Cyclone pinball table, juke box, and a pool table at the house permanently. We also used to rotate in a few games and had Joist, Spy Hunter, Star Wars (fucking loved that game), Pole Position, Donkey Kong, Tapper, Frogger, etc... It was awesome. I used to have sleepover birthday parties at his warehouse and he would turn on about 50 arcade games and we'd drink all the sodas from the soda machine (which was mostly filled with beer) and play video games till like 2am. 

Pinballz seems to do everything this new adult Chucky Cheese arcade does. I love pinballz, but my only complaint is that my 9 and 11 year olds can blast through a couple $100 cards in less than an hour. 

I've still got an old 45 juke box. When friends come over we just turn that on and let people play whatever they want. 

13 hours ago, mdmost said:

I worked at Crystal's Pizza off Inwood from the summer of 1992 till it closed in the fall of 1993. That was a great place to work. My friend was the MOD in the evenings and when it was slow enough or we were closed for the night, we'd open up the video game coin returns with his key and set everything to free play. 

I played about 1000 games of Street Fighter 2 at Crystal's, as I went to both grade school and high school across the street at St. Rita and Jesuit. Sorry we were all a pain in the ass.

However, I did something similar when I worked at the TCBY at Preston/Forest in 1994/1995. I would leave all the frozen yogurt machines on when I closed. We would go see a rock show down in Deep Ellum where the age of admission at most of the clubs playing punk/indie shows was 16. We would go back to TCBY after the show and make gigantic sundaes and eat them with the WW2-vet security guard at midnight. That was kinda fun. 

Edited by irishtexan
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Posted
3 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

Here’s my juke box. It’s heavy on crowd-pleasing classic rock and country
7fb72d9e07b782d414b1adfa8b92d54a.jpg
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That....is fucking AWESOME.

Goddamn I love a jukebox.  Just the other day on the way home, I got to thinking about one of my favorite Waylon songs: The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want to Get Over You).  Truly one of the most clever, evocative songs out there.  I still love hitting the Little Longhorn on an off day or afternoon, when there's no band, and you can pop a coupla songs on the jukebox.  That's the good stuff.

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Posted
15 hours ago, StassneyHorn said:

Aladdin’s castle taught you real life lessons like if you take the tickets given to you, and slowly and gently tug on the sides, your returns will compound. 

Aladdins castle taught me how to steal 

 

Childs play.

 

Me and a buddy would sneak into the "employee room" when the teenager employees were busy playing grab ass with each other at the Games People Play on 1960 in Houston .  They kept all the loose tokens in a 55 gallon trash can.  It must have been like walking into Fort Knox for an adult.  We would load up as much as we could hold.  At first we would just hang out at the change machine and sell other kids 5 tokens for a dollar.  Realized that was just too small time.  Next step was taking as many tokens home as we could and rolled them up in the old school quarter coin wraps and took them to the customer service booth at Gerlands and walked out with cold hard cash.  Not long after, Gerlands somehow went to the clear plastic coin wraps for some odd reason.  I like to think I am the one person in the world who caused the banking industry to make that change.  

 

Amazon.com : Quarter Coin Wrappers, 1,000 Flat Striped Coin Wrappers/Coin  Rolls for Quarters : Office Products

 

 

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Posted

Well since we're all reminiscing...

Man we used to ride our bikes to the Hobby Shop at the Village, dream of buying model airplanes (or, since I'm a total nerd, Dungeons & Dragons stuff).  We'd play Star Wars or Tron at the Handy Andy, and then when we got bored we'd ride across Anderson to Northcross Mall and hit the Gold Mine.  Sneak into Spencer Gifts and giggle at the dirty posters and stuff.  Then back to the Village for ice cream at Swensen's (if we were feeling flush) and on back home through the creeks with all the crawdads.  Real vintage movie stuff.  My 15yo son dreams of living the life I did in the 70s and 80s.  I told him I'm the exact same age as the kids in Stranger Things and it blew his mind.  

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Posted
58 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

 

I've still got an old 45 juke box. When friends come over we just turn that on and let people play whatever they want. 

A good friend in London, England restored a ‘60s vintage juke box about 10 years ago. 
I sent him a half dozen old 45 hit records from the late 50s-60s to add to his collection.
He had put it in storage at his business warehouse until he could finish renovating his vacation home in France.

Tragically, half of his London warehouse was undermined & destroyed by a huge sinkhole caused by a watermain break underneath it. 
Tens of thousands worth of his inventory supplies and the juke box fell into the hole and was all washed away underground, never to be seen again. Bad, freakin’ luck to be sure.

 

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, irishtexan said:

Here’s my juke box. It’s heavy on crowd-pleasing classic rock and country
7fb72d9e07b782d414b1adfa8b92d54a.jpg
995b892098dd95792521753d1c75fda4.jpg
b88158f8107242ea1efcd631b9432e55.jpg

O’Connor Vending 

Username checks out

Edited by royiv
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Posted

I have spent a small fortune in arcades.  Lot's of games mentioned have emptied my pockets.  Gyruss, Star Castle, Tron, Star Wars (game based on Star Wars, not sure about title...) where some others... 1941, 1942, etc... too. Then there was the most memorable pinball game for me in my formative teenaged years - Xenon.  1st pinball game to feature a female voice.  I can still hear 'Try a tube shot' caroming around in my brain.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

In my experience, you were either a Pole Position man, or a Turbo man.  I was team Turbo.  I rocked that shit.

Man....I kinda wanna hit the arcade with my kid now.  He'll be home in a month, sounds like a plan.

beep…beep…beep…BEEP

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Don't you have a Messican last name?  He might get sent back to wherever he flies in from.

It's not an issue of zero concern.  FFS.

Posted
15 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

, Robotron 2084

 

 

 

I beat this game back in the 80s. I could play on a single quarter until i was physically unable to move the joysticks anymore due to wrist cramping. 

That was the only game I ever beat. 

 

Watching this video makes me get itchy. This must be what its like for a recovering heroin addict, decades later. 

 

 

Sometimes I hear those electronic screams of the last human family being stomped by the HULK Robotrons in my sleep. 

 

 

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Posted
31 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Addams Family is the best pinball machine and that's indisputable.  

Not sure I played that one.  I did spend a lot of time and money on this legend:

Captain Fantastic Pinball Machine - Elite Home Gamerooms

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Posted
20 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

Adult?

What did it have, a couple of buttons?

If you didn't get crippling hand spasms and early onset arthritis from hours of Defender, you may as well have been playing Mappy.

defender_a.thumb.jpg.2fdf5771465eabb91f7afb3310fe06d6.jpg

Mappy (table top @ Pizzahut) > Defender

 

Team Tailgunner 

Honorary mention in the laserdisc era:  Badlands  Straight up Japanese fever dream version of the wildwest.  Also basically impossible.

 

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