I am a child of the late 80's / early 90's and have many fond memories linked to arcade games.
When I was really young I recall attending Sunday morning children's groups at my synagogue. There was a back office which had Donkey Kong Jr. & Dig Dug ,where I spent all my time, and most of my quarters, instead of whatever arts & crafts project I was supposed to be working on.
It was always a big treat when my family would go out for dinner. Nothing fancy, of course. I can still remember the different fast food places we would go to by the games they had. Sabra's Pizza had Pac Man, 1942, & Ninja Gaiden. Hunky's Pizza, which was further away, had Ms. Pac-Man & Jungle King. The burger place had a sit-down Pole Position. My parents would almost always give me a quarter or two to play.
There was a Hallmark store 2 blocks from my school that had Street Fighter & a few others, and my friends and I would hang out there whenever we had a free period.
Hot Skates, the local roller skating rink, had plenty of machines, of which I can remember my favorites Battlezone, Star Wars, Popeye, TMNT, Gauntlet, Paperboy, & Spy Hunter. I was terrible at all of them but that never stopped me. Between the ages of 8 & 12 I attended countless birthday parties there, where you were usually given a roll of quarters and left alone for 2 hours of electronic bliss.
I wasn't really into pinball back then. I can remember playing occasionally, pretty much always draining the ball quickly and moving back to the video games. The only machine that consistently pried any quarters from me whenever I saw it in an arcade was Star Trek: TNG. It had great sound effects and I loved that you could just push a button to launch that really cool cannon right from the beginning. I had no concept of the potential gameplay pinball had to offer.
Fast forward 20+ years and I am happily playing vintage arcade games on my iPad with my iCade when I read a review on TouchArcade about a new game, Farsight's Pinball Arcade. I am a huge fan of the writing on Toucharcade and the review made the game sound fantastic, so I bought it. I was blown away by the ruleset, strategy, and depth of the games. I bought every new table pack as they were released.
Of course, this was all digital pinball. The real thing still eluded me. It took me until 2014 to find Arcade Odyssey, an hour away from me, which has a nice selection of actual physical pinball machines. A small oasis in the pinball desert which is South Florida.
I spent a Sunday there with my kids, introducing them to the arcade classics I played growing up and all of us learning to appreciate real pinball. I never thought I would actually have a machine of my own some day. That story will have to wait for another day.
