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View Full Version : Ever been to an "arcade party"?



Cryomancer
04-24-2005, 07:13 PM
the "my arcade adventure" topic has re-remindede me of a rather badass moment in my life that I thought i might share with you guys.

I'm not exactly sure what year it was, I was still pretty young but thankfully I can remember this pretty vividly and could already appreciate it. Dad came home one afternoon and said he knew guys who were having a party (it was probably a benefit of some kind but I'm not sure), and that I could even go to this one. We drive out to this warehouse place, and walk in. Turns out, the party is taking place in some vending/arcade machine owner's warehouse! This place was packed with cabs. there were three main areas, the entrance area had free food, a jukebox, and pool tables, and probably beer. Past that was the bulk of the room full of cabs, not all of them were on, and there were ANCIENT ones lined up the wall on some bigass shelf setup. But there were probably a dozen or two working, turned on machines. The smaller room past that has three or four pinball machines, a few more cabs, and some of those bartop touch-screen units(anyone know if these are emulated/simulated?). And the nicest part: everything's on freeplay!

So we rocked out there for several hours. it was great to not only arcade-out hard and loud for free, but to be surrounded by adults who could also find the fun in it and have a good time. Dad and I had always played atari together, so I knew he'd be into it, and he was. Played a lot of pinball, can't blame him either since they had the Tommy machine! Other stuff i remember playing there included one of the die hard arcade games, Pulstar for neo geo, and i'm pretty sure they had a SFII cab but...there was stuff there i'd never heard of, no time for a game I had at home!

All in all, I wish I could remember more, but what I do remember is that it kicked a lot of ass. I recently talked to dad about it, wondering if he knew the owner or someting, and if he could try and set up getting me a cheap empty cab, but it turns out he didn't actually know the guy that well. Too bad. Thought you guys might like this story.

AtariBuff
04-25-2005, 06:01 AM
when my wife and me had our housewarming-party a few years ago, many friends headed down to my basement to play "House of the Dead", "Terminator II", and a cabinet where different pcbs were rotated till the early hours.
was pretty funny to watch that many people in the basement. BTW, all games were set to "free play" ;) :D

Flack
04-26-2005, 03:54 AM
In the late 80's, my friend's mother's friend opened an arcade here in town. The owner said my friend and I could be his "advisors" and tell him what games to buy and stuff. In trade for that, we would get to come in on the weekends and eat and play games for free. We must not have done a good job as that place was gone within a year.

The only other arcade parties I ever went to were official ones, where you got x amount of tokens for someone's birthday.

76pinto
04-27-2005, 11:53 PM
I live in CO and they just had a PINBALL SHOWDOWN event in Lakewood. They had about 100 Pinball machines from 71 -05 and a dozen arcade games - defender, tempest, pacman, DK, etc. $15 to get in for all you can play - it was pretty cool, even though I am not a huge pinball fan the arcade games were great!!

a couple of years ago I bought a working heavy barrel for $60 - but I gave it to a friend of mine who has 4 other old ones including Journey, Tempest and galaga.

Uzi 9mm
05-06-2005, 02:38 AM
I have been to quite a few GameWorks parties, where they give you unlimited free play on all the games. It was pretty awesome, I got to play DDR for at least an hour. :D