Sorry it's been so quiet lately, I went on vacation with the family , where a few things happened that I'm going to be talking about the next couple days, and I just started school (Something from there I'm talking about too). Anyway I have an insane schedule. (4 AP, which means for college credit, classes.) I'm not quite sure yet how much spare time I'll have, but I'm going to do my best to keep up my gaming and blogging. (Plus I need a job. And to do all 3 of those I need to be practically superhuman >.>)
Okay, now for today's post. The first thing I'm going to talk about is the arcade I went to. It was small, only half a dozen machines or so, a pool table (with really crummy cues), and a ping pong table. Among the games were Pacman, Mrs. Pacman, Centipede, Mortal Kombat (I think that was the broken one, sadly), Time Crisis, X-men something or other, and one of the Street Fighter games.
Anyways, I played Pacman a little bit, did quite a bit better than I've done on web or console based games (really liked the stick). The experience was completely different. The music just seemed so much better, the art on the cabinet was just cool, and standing there using the stick was just an incredible experience.
I played a bit of Centipede. Interesting game, that. I even got on the high score list, albeit with a score of like 14,000. (You get a life every 12,000, I think, and it only took me a couple minutes) It wasn't Pacman, but it was still pretty cool.
Played Time Crisis, but the machine sucked and I've done that before, so moving on. I also tried out the Street Fighter game, but I was really, really bad at it because I don't have a clue what the combos are.
Finally, I played the X-men game. That was better! It was a button-masher, fortunately, as I wouldn't have a chance at anything else. Even came up with a few really cool looking moves as Iceman, and almost managed to beat the CPU after beating my sister. Personally I had a lot more fun with that than the move-oriented Street Fighter.
All in all, I had just enough of an experience to be able to imagine what an arcade might have been like in its heyday. Crowded, loud, full of people clamoring to be next on their favorite machine, a cluster around the Street Fighter game where the resident champion was beating up on a challenger, or around the Pacman or Centipede machines as someone tried to break the high score.
It was just enough for me to able to regret the loss of something I had never truly experienced. Amazing. Now I wish I could find a popular one in the area!
Make sure to check in a couple days from now, and I'll have something else up. Oh, and would you please nominate something for the vote? You don't have to think about it that much, just pick one (or more!) of the ones you actually remember, and the poll will be up all next month, so you'll have plenty of time to choose!
P.S. I can make a Java program that says "The cake is a lie!" or "The princess is in another castle.", or "Do a Barrel Roll!" now! Is that not awesome?!? That's all I can do so far, though.
Next year I think I'll be taking the graphics programming class, including making games like Tetris, so maybe I'll be able to make something cool!
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