In 1997 I worked part time at Timeout in Dunedin for Phil Rasmussen. I think it was there that I played Gauntlet Legends (the 3rd gauntlet game).
Now Gauntlet Legends let me save my progress through a system of entering my initials and birthdate in I think and after I beat it, it displayed various stats including how much money i'd spent (not that I'd actually spent any because I worked there). I was kind of appalled to see that i'd theoretically stuck about $80 into it! It was a $1 game but still thats a hell of a lot of bread on a video game...actually it's less than a new game for your xbox I guess.
This post however is not about Gauntlet Legends, or Gauntlet II, or even the groundbreaking Gauntlet...i'll post about my experiences with them another time...it's about the early arcades where I spent ludicrous amounts of both time and coins, especially in the school holidays.
The first arcade I hung out in was called 8-ball on the corner of Princess Street and Police Street in Dunedin. They even had 10 cent machines there, and it was in this building.
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This was way early on eh, think I was probably 9 or 10. They had a game there which was like the front of a vending machine with a cushioned surface and a picture of a martial arts guy on it. The idea was to punch where it lit up and it would score the hits, but it was often broken. I don't remember much about this place, there were gun games that pointed at screens, and primitive driving games but all up it was sort of a mix of mechanical carny attractions and early video games, and I was the kid who would go round the coin slots looking for free games.
About a block away was Video Village in Manse Street, Dunedin and this really was my first spiritual video game home.
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While it wasn't too pretty inside it was chock full of games, and a guy in a window at the back would have piles of 5 20c pieces sitting on top of each other like some kind of 2 dimensional pyramid. There was a backward L-shaped ground level and a raised mezzanine on the left which had maybe 6 or 7 more games up a small flight of stairs. One of these was, and still is a favourite: 10 Yard Fight.
During the school holidays if i'd gone into my mum's work for the day i'd try to spend most of it either in 8-Ball or here.
Video Village got a game in called MACH 3 that had superimposed CG planes and explosions over real vision of landscapes. You could play as a bomber (top down view) or shooter (forward view). It was fun to try but more expensive than all the others, oh and it was broken a lot of the time.
The place was the first to get in the laserdisc games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.
I think I even beat Space Ace and while it looked great it was actually a bit of a gimmick because I only got to select directions or buttons when prompted. Both games were really glorified reaction testers, but they were new and I threw small buckets of 20s into them.
I didn't really know what wrestling was but I loved playing games like Big Pro Wrestling, Main Event, eventually WWF Superstars of Wrestling, and my favourite: Wrestlefest, all at Video Village over nearly ten years. The fighting games like Streetfighter didn't grab me but the wrestling ones sure did, even though I didn't know what most of the controls were.
I really wish I could remember the final time I went into Video Village, i'd have liked to say goodbye before, just like 8-Ball had, it shuffled off into the video game night as another bright new arcade stole it's thunder in Moray Place: Wizards.
Can't speak for these arcades you mention, but I'm waiting with baited breath for your post about Wizards :)
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