How long did you spend in......Arcades ?

[muppetboy]

I was a regular at Southend-on-Sea in the eighties and got a huge buzz for amusement arcades thinking nothing of spending an entire afternoon in these (probably about 4-5 hours). I'd pump a lot of money into games like space invaders, Pacman, Asteroids, Rampage, Defender, Pole Position, Galaga, Outrun (sit-down version and the only game I ever "completed". What a feeling that was!) to name a few, any Pinball games and Fruit Machines.

Still feels strange these days playing all my favourites via emulators for free!

[shiftytigger]

Local to us there weren't many - best ones I can recall are

Wolverhampton - down near the market there used to be one - discovered it around 1993 and had a play on a few machines including IIRC an original Street Fighter cab with the 'sensitive' controls. We lingered for about 45 minutes but had this encroached feeling as we were surrounded by what I can only assume was a group of people who 'owned' the turf round there.

Stourbridge - not many but the chippy in coventry street used to have R-type 2 and Double Dragon 2 - on which we wasted many 10ps - though I hate chippys and this may be one of the reasons - the smell of fried food on you was awful afterwards.

Merry Hill Cinema - ah back in the days - went to see an advance screening of the original TMNT , late going in cos we were playing the TMNT coin op. Along with the Simpsons and a few sitdown racers after a while. Some great times in there. I may be mis-remembering , sure they had an arcade cab of the awful Street fighter movie - (the live action guff)

Stourport - several good sized arcades there - used to be good but succumbed to the inevitable , as they all do. Watching my bro play a tank game , with the periscopey thing i think (its a long time ago - i remember Battlezone - maybe the periscopey thing was a submarine game)

Borth (near Aberystwyth) - MANY MANY holidays here and still a place I love despite being a ghost town with now sub standard arcades. Most memorably one attached to the ITS A GIFT shop - 10p a go on the pool table , which if you fiddled it right , you got back and could re-use. But the sounds in the background i can still hear to this day. The wonders of 4-player gauntlet , Buck Rogers , Xybots , APB , original Star Wars stand up and several more - all very very cheap at 10p , right up until 1995 - then it started to change and it is sadly now a cafe with a paltry 'arcade' of fruit machines. Also the campsite arcade and the strains of Pole Position from near the front , with Crude Buster , sure i remember a Pang / Buster Bros game and a shooting game , Ivan Ironman and a couple of other car based games (f1 circus type i think)

I could ramble on and already have , but those really were the days. Would love to set up an old style arcade - minus chavs.

[Sixteen Plus]

Earliest memory was maybe Pontins, Camber Sands, UK back in the real early 80's. I remember being blown away by Phoenix. Probably where I first discovered Space Invaders too, but Phoenix is the one I remember.
Other early memories around the same time was Riverside holiday park in Bognor Regis. This was where I discovered all the other main classics such as Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Gorf, Rally-X, Hunchback, Defender, Asteroids, etc etc etc. I must have spent most of my time in there, certainly most of my money went in those machines, I was always on the cadge to my dad for more. I remember one kid got his arm stuck up a crane machine and had to be rescued by firemen, that was a bit of a LOL.

Also Canvey Island, Essex. I have a relation who still lives there and we used to visit quite often. Maybe this was my earliest memory, I can't reecall. But the arcades were my main point, back in that day they had a great little funfair too but now it's sadly gone. I ended up living there for about 6 years upto the mid 90's and they still had all the old classic machines and newer ones then. The whole area now looks a bit decrepid which I've seen on google maps, and all the games are now likely gone

[yakmag]

Grew up in Barton on Humber, yes there was an arcade in town!!

On my street as well, had Pac-man, Missile Command, Breakout (5p for 1 credit!), Space Invaders, Scramble and a few others.

How long did I spend?

As long as it took before my brother started crying, you see I was 'charged' with taking him out, I must explain, he was about 18mths old in a push chair, so what I used to do was take him for a quick run round the block then head off to the arcade, leave him out back (it was in a very secure yard, high walls with barbed wire on top and everything

I'd play the games until...

a. My money had gone, (50p a king's ransom in them days!)
b. He started crying so had to take him home.

Does that make me a bad brother?

[Rinoa]

Sadly I spent no time at all in arcades when I was younger as I lived in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes when we were on holiday in Southern England I'd get the chance to have a go on a couple of machines (Tekken was always my favourite), and when I was younger still I used to accompany my Mum to her aqua aerobics classes and in the café they had a machine with a game similar to Streets of Rage which I'd play while I waited for her class to finish.

[The Polar One]

9 hours a day, 6 days a week, for the 2 months I worked as a cashier in an arcade. This was back in the late 90s, in a fairly uninspiring place but still mostly game focused considering the rise of fruit machines. Every lunch break I would spend about an hours worth of wages on quick games like Soul Calibur, Operation Thunderbolt, and something like Virtua Cop 2. Although wages were a pittance so I wasn't spending much. Good fun anyway. I spent most of my day sat in front of a Wonder Boy machine and that title image is just horrible and burned into my memory.

[pantal00ns]

I grew up on the Isle of Wight, basically an arcade in the sea.

So too long would have to be the answer, including when I should have been in French Lessons. Which as my boss and several sales rep are now French would have been time better spent.