Yeah, you remember, don’t you? Playing those old games on an arcade machine; perhaps at the bowling multiplex, perhaps on a rainy day at Blackpool pier. Boop… boop… boom, aaand you’re dead. Another 50p in the slot, ker-chunk, 1 credit, would you like to continue, yes please I would. Repeat until pockets are empty.
Now take that experience, and remove the bit involving money, and increase the density of arcade-machine/m2. Now put it in a cricket pavilion with a bar. You are imagining what we were doing all last Saturday, because we went to the Retro Ball. Let’s not be under any illusion, it’s not that kind of ball with dinner jackets and dancing, it’s essentially a large area filled to bastardry with classic arcade machines, pinball machines, and consoles, which are all free to play all day. The best fun was found in trying out these old games you’d never heard of but were immensely fun, though it also had its fair share of classics such as Time Crisis (the one with the light-gun) and Street Fighter 2 Turbo (the one with the fighting). They even had an old computer running Lemmings.
After all this of course, we were even more into retro arcade games than before, which was quite a lot to begin with anyway. Jeff and I in particular have been raving about a game called Metal Slug (which I’ve just managed to get on my computer - a very productive day is ahead of me, proven possibly by the fact that the first half of this sentence was written about 8 hours ago).
It won’t be long before we start getting retro-style controllers like this awesome pants thing:
Psh, it was 10p in Skegness in my day, laddy Jim
My only regret is that I didn’t beat the owner’s score on time crisis.
I’ll get you next gadget. Next time!