Post by VectorX on Feb 27, 2012 19:27:13 GMT -5
As I posted elsewhere, someone had written about this in my local e-mailing group, so here's my two cents...
A local place known as Memorial City Mall was pretty much THE big one, having five or six arcades at one point. One of them, though--Quiptars 2-- didn't make much sense, as it was really small and didn't last for long. The original Quiptars was damn big, having dozens of machines that gave you like 8-10 tokens for a dollar. Another place, Celebrity Cafe, used to be a cafe indeed but switched to gaming, which was also pretty big, doing business against a smaller, but more established game room next to it called Games Games Games.
One game room called Greens started in a local Sears, being very small and not having many machines, then they decided to open up their own arcade at the end of that wing, adding many more machines then in the much bigger space. Interesting move, to say the least.
And even in my immediate neighborhood were a few small arcades, a bit of a different one being Jason's Game Room, just a few doors down from a dollar cinema, which was run by two ex-cops. Too bad it wasn't around for very long, as no trouble would occur there due to those two. That was the only place I ever saw a Warrior, Professor Pac-Man and Make Trax. And there was also Games 'r Us not far from my high school, not a big one (maybe 20 machines?) but it was the only place I ever saw Space Fever, a blatant Space Invaders rip-off but it's one of the few arcade machines I want, as it has three games on it. At one point the owner (nice guy) said he was going out to get something to eat for a few minutes and if he could just lock up and leave just me and my friend in there. Too bad we were out of money (my mom wouldn't be picking us up for another half an hour or so) but the thought was still cool though.
And on a last note, at one point I noticed the aforementioned Quiptars tokens seemed to be the same size and weight as a nickel. I put one in Star Trek and it worked! I told a friend of mine that they ran on nickels, which he freaked (and I had like 20 nickels sitting on my desk at home at the time) but I tried one on another machine and it spit it out, another machine it got stuck in. So I quit there and just used them for Star Trek...think it only worked on the right coin slot. Ha ha.
A local place known as Memorial City Mall was pretty much THE big one, having five or six arcades at one point. One of them, though--Quiptars 2-- didn't make much sense, as it was really small and didn't last for long. The original Quiptars was damn big, having dozens of machines that gave you like 8-10 tokens for a dollar. Another place, Celebrity Cafe, used to be a cafe indeed but switched to gaming, which was also pretty big, doing business against a smaller, but more established game room next to it called Games Games Games.
One game room called Greens started in a local Sears, being very small and not having many machines, then they decided to open up their own arcade at the end of that wing, adding many more machines then in the much bigger space. Interesting move, to say the least.
And even in my immediate neighborhood were a few small arcades, a bit of a different one being Jason's Game Room, just a few doors down from a dollar cinema, which was run by two ex-cops. Too bad it wasn't around for very long, as no trouble would occur there due to those two. That was the only place I ever saw a Warrior, Professor Pac-Man and Make Trax. And there was also Games 'r Us not far from my high school, not a big one (maybe 20 machines?) but it was the only place I ever saw Space Fever, a blatant Space Invaders rip-off but it's one of the few arcade machines I want, as it has three games on it. At one point the owner (nice guy) said he was going out to get something to eat for a few minutes and if he could just lock up and leave just me and my friend in there. Too bad we were out of money (my mom wouldn't be picking us up for another half an hour or so) but the thought was still cool though.
And on a last note, at one point I noticed the aforementioned Quiptars tokens seemed to be the same size and weight as a nickel. I put one in Star Trek and it worked! I told a friend of mine that they ran on nickels, which he freaked (and I had like 20 nickels sitting on my desk at home at the time) but I tried one on another machine and it spit it out, another machine it got stuck in. So I quit there and just used them for Star Trek...think it only worked on the right coin slot. Ha ha.
)