Chris Pollette

Yeah, I remember that. They were always packed with people too.

Jonathan Strickland

There are certain experiences that you just can’t get like you can play on Xbox Live; you can play against other players which is fantastic. Other game systems support similar competitive or cooperative game play online; that’s fantastic. It’s still not quite the same as lining up to an arcade cabinet and plunking a quarter down on the screen to mark that you have the next game as two people are battling it out in Mortal Combat or Street Fighter or something like that.

Chris Pollette

I remember when people used to put a quarter up on the screen glass to let you know that they have the next game. It’s etiquette.

Jonathan Strickland

Let’s wrap this up with; do you have any favorite arcades stories at all? I have one I can tell if you wanna think of one.

Chris Pollette

Okay, go right ahead.

Jonathan Strickland

I attended a Science fiction convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee in early 90s maybe. Sadly, one of the biggest attractions at this tiny, tiny convention was a copy of Gauntlet II that was in their little game area for the hotel. It was the hotel’s arcade machine. One of the convention guys decided that it would be fun to go ahead and invest and get tons and tons and tons of quarters. I know that some people hate me using the phrase tons of stuff.

Anyway, lots of quarters and allow people to play this game as long as they wanted to. I got in on level I and played Gauntlet II with three other people until we got to some ridiculous level like in the hundreds. That was one of the most fun experiences because it was just again; you’ve got four people working together. They’re cooperating, trying to play through this game. The jokes that come up as people accidentally do things like shoot the food.

If you’ve ever played the Gauntlet games, they have some very distinctive phrases that come out as you play like, “Warrior shot the food.” “Elf, your life force is running out.” “Wizard needs food badly.” That just ended up becoming a great community experience.

Chris Pollette

I don’t really have a story like that so much but I do remember going to my friend’s parent’s arcade and I was pretty guaranteed to see somebody I knew there, which was really cool. Then I used to go to this one pizza place all the time when I was a kid and my parents would just give me $5.00 to play until the pizza showed up. There was always something good; Marble Madness, Spy Hunter, Tapper.