If you grew up playing games at arcades in the 1980’s then this is bound to bring back some nostaligic memories for you. My earliest arcade memory was from about 1987 or ’88 but at the time I never had the opportunity to really hang out at an arcade. But for one guy who did, he decided to take a tape recorder with him to his local arcade (the Space War Arcade in Ithaca, NY) and he would just record what went on while he played. He has recorded kids playing tons of games from 1982 up to 1988 and I don’t know what it is about these recordings but I find it completely fascinating to hear people playing games “back in the day”. It’s kind of funny on occasion too, such as on the recording of Berzerk from 1982 where you hear the player die and then a kid declares “You suck!”.
Check out the recordings at Coinopvideos.com
These are pretty fun.
That Robotron recording in Video Games 2 collection is classic! The kid dies on the first board at about the 8 second mark and says “this game sucks”. His game finishes in a little over 1 minute at 24,000 points with him saying “yep I stink at it”.
This could have easily been my first play on this game in the arcades as well, as I considered it a quarter eater, and refused to waste my hard earned money (mowing lawns) on it after that.
Wasn’t until I bought this cabinet as an adult that I learned operators would track usage via the game’s reporting menus and adjust difficult to keep plays at under 2 minutes to earn more. Gah! I knew this game was cheating me out of my money!