Man, I was playing SS today and couldn’t help but flashback to the early to mid 90’s when arcades were absolutely blistering! I live in LA and the scene here was so awesome back then!
I remember when Samurai Shodown had just come out and I spent an absurd amount of quarters on that game at various rental stores, donut shops, laundry mats, etc. Then games like the Alpha and MK series were coming out and started to pick up steam. I remember Alpha 2 and MKII were EVERYWERE! Couldn’t walk into a rental store or donut shop without seeing one or the other.
I remember hanging out at arcades in Westwood, Del Amo Mall, and one on Vermont and 3rd. Lots of comp there and peeps were always trying to show their skillz. A friend of mine was so good with Nicotine(SS2) he actually got banned at one of the arcades cuz no one could beat him lol. Hi-tech 21 in Little Tokyo also brings back VERY fond memories. Used to spend HUNDREDS of bucks there on Daytona USA and SS2!
Man those were the days. I can’t tell you how much I miss the arcade scene from the 90’s. Sooooo many great games came out back then it’s not even funny. It’s really sad how the whole arcade scene is dead and we have to rely on online gaming(with lag) get our multiplayer fix on. Don’t get me wrong online play rocks, but there will never be a replacement for actually standing next to your opponent and talking shit to each other in a 100% lagless game.
I so wish I could turn back time and relive the gaming scene from mid-90’s again. It was one of best times of my life.
You’re right, but when you have to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to a good arcade (Chinatown Fair) and the price of fuel… kind of defeats the purpose of enjoyment
We have two arcades near my house. Problem is no one cares to fix the machines.
For some reason, the original post brought back some memory of me racking up a streak on SS2 with Nicotine… on roller skates. Man I miss the days when the local Skateland wasn’t a segregated piece of shit. Hell, for all I know they probably still have the same games…
Also, playing HF at Aladdin’s Castle against some dude that might as well been Mark Henry, considering I was 12 at the time. Dude had some token trick where he would slide in the token and bash the coin slot door so the token would pop right back out. I wasn’t about to narc him out, I don’t think the staff did shit about it either. That place only lasted a couple of years, wonder why…
I grew up in the arcades. I remember they were so popular some malls here in Indy had 2 of them. Nothing compares to when the original SF came out. KI flipped the script and got heavy play here too. I used to collect tokens from all the different arcades I went too. The good old days.
Anyone from Cali remember the Space Station arcade at the Northridge Mall, the old mall? I also remember the old Topanga Mall had the Gold Mine in the food court area as well. Those were some good arcades back then.
Being from New Jersey I used to spend my summer down the shore with my grandparents. They have a house in Bradley Beach.
Me and my best friend Teon were huge fighting game adicts, Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2/3 etc. There was a bowling alley 2 blocks from my summer house, they had SF2 and MK, me and Teon spent hours there playing the local kids. We were there all the time during the week.
On the weekends we would walk over to Belmar and go to the Penny arcade with the golf course on the roof. I swear walking in that place felt like Fight Club, people were all around the Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat cabnets watching whoever was fighting. If you wanted next you had to put your quater on the screen, it was awesome. Nothing felt better than beating new challenger after new challenger and getting on a nice hot streak.
I miss those days, I consider them the best gamming days of my life.
Unlike a lot of people I don’t remember Street Fighter II in the arcades. For me I remember Killer Instinct, and how EVERYBODY and their mothers were obsessed with it (including me), and finding new stuff and all.
There was a mall on the way to my grandmas that had an arcade, then my grandmas mall had an arcade, and I remember going to both and learning so much about that game. In the mall they had posters and cardboard cutouts promoting the SNES release of KI, and I remember being so exicted the first time I heard about it. After that I went to the arcade and I remember people talking about how it was giong to be “just like the arcades”
Mortal Kombat II was another big one I remember seeing people play a lot. I know because the stuff I still know today was learned while watching people.
Then of course seeing neo geo machines in cafe’s and random places… who can forget that.
Those early memories stuck pretty hard for me, because now i’m an arcade hardware nut. but still, even though I own most of the cool games I used to play in the arcades when I was a young lad, it’s still not exactly the same as being there playing them.
One time when I was in maybe 9th grade on my birthday I got a note home from school saying I’d skipped some classes. When I got home my mom chewed me out and instead of doing anything for my birthday I walked to the mall, ate fast food and played in the arcade for 5 hours or so.
That right there is pretty much the story of my life from age 12-18. The day I took the SATs as soon as I was done my friends and I drove an hour to another mall to play Virtua Fighter.
That was the test site for Samurai Showdown and King of Fighters. Pretty good spot for Street Fighter as well. Roger Chung used to play there…he was one of the top 4 players on Street Fighter 2.
(sigh) Aladdin’s Castle. Every time I hear that name it brings a tear to my eye. :sad: Good times, good times.
I could go on and on about stories concerning the arcade scene and the games I played. My favorite was when I would play SF II over at the neighbor convenience store. The other kids and myself didn’t know how to do a lot of the moves for most of the characters back then (who did?), so sometimes we would have two people play as one character; one person rocking the joystick and another person mashing the buttons, just so we could pull off a successful hadoken (I was 10 at the time, can you blame me?).
Now, the arcade scene here in Iowa is crap. Not counting the arcade cabs a friend of mine bought and put in the comic shop a few months ago, all we have is Golden Tee and Big Fuck Hunter. The last good arcade we had was in Coralville, that place rocked hard. Stopped down almost a year ago and half of the place got taken out and turned into a nail salon. The only good games they had were Tekken 5: DR and Time Crisis 4, DDR as well for those who like it. Sadly, the best arcades for me are in another state these days.
