Remembering the Good Ol' Days

Ah, arcades, indistinguishable sound effects, horribly synthesized music, and incoherent spoken dialogue.  These are all things I remember walking into the few local arcades in town.  I remember a time when the term arcade was a destination, not a genre.  More of a noun, less of an adjective.  I would beg my mom to drop me off at my friend's house so we could stroll over to the nearby arcade and play.  I would also ask for quarters...LOTS of quarters.  When I ran out of quarters, the game over screen really meant something.  Time to call my mom to bring me back home.  I miss the arcades.  I often drive past areas of town where the arcades used to be and remember my first attempts at Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and Rampage.  Unfortunately when the arcade market dropped, my childhood entertainment destinations closed shop and never reopened.  Now we all just sit in front of out televisions with our Xbox or Playstation playing "Arcade" games.  As in the style, not the place.  I love it when games give you the option to play easy, normal, or arcade.  I feel that if I choose "Arcade" I should be given an address where I can find the actual machine.  It would also come with a warning: "Bring LOTS of quarters!"  It's not the same.  I was recently asked to speak with a group of young kids about video games for a project they were working on.  I felt like an old World War II veteran explaining the hardships I endured "back then".  "Well kids, back then I had to beg my mom to bring me to the arcade so I could play video games.  When I ran out of quarters I had my mom pick me back up and take me home."  One very perplexed young boy raised his hand.  "Let me get this straight.  You had to leave the house and be taken to a different location that had video games, put money into them over and over again, and after spending all that money you left the games there??!!  How many games where on that machine?"  "ONE!  One video game for each machine to spend your money on."  Upon seeing the look on that poor boy's face I though his head was going to explode.  Upon further explanations about how technology has progressed into our modern consoles, most of the children understood that playing video games was not that easy "back then."  Although one child asked "Why didn't you just play games on your smartphone?"  Um, yeah.  I'll just leave that topic for another post.