Kids today don’t know what a video game arcade was.
This June will have been 15 years since I graduated from high school.
The first time I saw Mortal Kombat was in the video arcade at the Swap Shop Flea Market in Fort Lauderdale. I distinctly remember because I heard the machine yell “get over here” and this was in an era where games were just starting to seriously switch over to digitized voice and music from the beeps and pings of the Pong years. A ton of kids were crowded around the machine and instantly you became aware of two things this game had that others didn’t: 1) It had video images of real people, which was huge and 2) It had blood. Buckets of it. One punch would unleash a geyser of the red stuff.
So of course it was like manna to a teenaged boy. The game cost a whopping $0.50 to play, but it was soooooo worth it.
And now they don’t even know what an arcade is. Lord.
Hehe. I linked that rpg.net thread on Metafilter. It really is strange to feel so old.
The kid never asked “What is an arcade?” He asked “What were arcades like?” The kid clearly knew what an arcade was but, having never been to one, was not privy to the nature of an arcade environment.
Once again (for the umpteenth time) you have failed to carefully read and comprehend a piece of writing. Lord.
Mortal Kombat? Hah!
Berserker. Space Invaders.
You kids….
There were two lines – win, you keep playing. As I was surrounded by teenagers who could afford to do little else but play MK, I never lasted past my single round. And I could never – NEVER – do a fatality on the arcade version.
Oh, my deep and aching scars.
I am amused greatly by kids who can’t operate a rotary phone.
Wow!During the summers I would travel from Germany to Louisiana and visit my grandfather and cousins. When there was nothing to do, I went the movie theater and I saw Mortal Kombat. Much like Oliver, “Get over here” was the spear..or hook to get me playing. Of course MK3 and Ultimate MK3 were arcade bliss. Like Parthenon, the fatalities were way too hard. Not enough time to execute!
RBI Baseball- where even Dwight Gooden was white
Don’t get me started. The kids these days…
Don’t know how a bicycle coaster brake works.
Never saw a slide rule.
Never had to take the film to the drugstore to get it developed.
But they can all type faster than anyone I ever knew in the fifties.
My brother Greg told me about a conversation he had with a young niece and nephew. They were interested in a couple of old cassettes they found in the house.
Kids: Uncle Greg, what’s on these videos?
Greg: Those aren’t videos. Those are eight-track tapes.
Kids: Eight-what?
Greg: A long time ago, we didn’t have CDs for music. We had these eight-track tapes that we played on special players.
(The niece and nephew weren’t buying it.)
Kids: If you don’t us to watch those videos, Uncle Greg, that’s fine. But you don’t got to lie to us.
My little brother owns a video arcade. Dance Dance Revolution is a big thing with the kids there. A lot of the first-person shooter games draw an older crowd but what it’s especially good for is parties and outings for teenagers and groups that want to have fun without alcohol being involved.
It being located right across from a Marine recruiting station doesn’t hurt, either.
A.
Umm, I hate to break this to you but the little guy obviously knew what an arcade was, but he just wanted to know what they were like because he’d never been to one. There’s a difference.
“Kids today don’t know…”
Yeah, so? And how well did you at that age know how to use a punch card machine, or skate key, or for that matter a buggy whip?
Some day today’s kids will bemoan how “Kids today” look oddly at a DVD because movies all stream over the net and how they don’t know how to operate a keyboard because it’s all voice activated now.
While waiting in line for the most recent fake Star Wars, a friend and I were talking about the number of times we saw the Real Star Wars and the Real Star Wars II in the theater. (Not the crazy revised numbering that they put up after Lucas had his head injury.)
Anyway, the 20 year old kids behind us in line overhead and were obviously puzzled by so many repeat theater viewings. We had to point out that in those days, once it was out of the theater, you never expected to be able to see it ever again. That blew their minds.
Berserker. Space Invaders.
Dude. Space Castle.
“Finish him!”
Damn, us Gen Xers are getting old.
What I find fascinating is that a lot of kids these days are familiar with Internet memes, like “you might be eaten by a grue”, without knowing the games they came from.
OW, at the Beltway Plaza mall in Greenbelt there is an arcade, of sorts: a row of about 6 machines in the main corridor on the west end. MK4 is one of the consoles.
Also…at last night’s showing of “Rocky Horror” in College Park, the cast spliced several extraneous bits into the video. One of them, right after Rocky is killed, was an MK fatality. The crowd went apeshit!
When I lived in the Twin Cities, I had a dream of starting an old school arcade (no game newer than 1992 or so) in the Mall of America, and playing a non-stop track of late 80s and early 90s metal: Anthrax, Guns n’ Roses, Slaughter etc. It would be a perfect recreation of my Jr. High experience. And the games would be cheap too. Nothing over a quarter. I figure there must be enough husbands waiting while their wives shop to make it viable.
But maybe the music would be a bad idea. You want to hear every punch in Street Fighter.
Dude, I’m only 22 and I knew what arcades were like. Perhaps SF4 will revive the venue. Barring that, Rock Band and DDR.