So many awesome memories came pouring in during the Hive Gaming Community's Best Video Game Memories contest. There were a bunch of great entries and shared experiences. It was quite an amazing initiative that bonded the Hive community and not just in the gaming category either. Here, as promised, i will share my follow-up to that contest post, which i was fortunate enough to win with.
For me, one of the best things about video games and the memories that go with them are the places and times that come back to mind when reminiscing. I almost get transported in time and space when i think enough of wonderful memories of my youth surrounding video games.
Angelo's
There is an Italian restaurant that was just down the street from the house i grew up in called Angelo's. It's still there and if you are ever in Irving, Texas you should stop by and try the Lasagna!
I remember going there as a kid and in the waiting area, where you hang out until a table opens up be seated at, they had a Ms. Pac-Man sit down table arcade game (that looks just like the one in the image below) that we use to love to play. I haven't been there in years but the last time i was they still had the same Ms. Pac-Man game in the same spot.
We used to try and play every chance we got. After we ordered our food we would sneak away and try to get some game time in before the food arrived at the table. Of course, we would also speed eat to get some more gaming in before time to go home.
Later, when i got older and used to walk home after soccer practice from school, i would stop by and play a little every now and again. Some great memories were made on that sit-down arcade game!
Mid-Cities Skateland
Another place with great memories was Mid-Cities Skateland which apparently closed down just last year. It was a roller skating rink that many birthday parties were had at. It was between my city and the next one over, hence the name! While most dudes were trying to check out the chicks... i was playing the arcade games!
One of my favorite games to play there in between skating was Rampage.
In this game, you could be a giant ape that was like King Kong, or a giant Lizard that was like Godzilla, or a giant Werewolf. This arcade game had 3 spots with joysticks and buttons. You were limited to the character that was associated with the spot. Unfortunately, my favorite character had it's buttons stuck from too many people just smashing the buttons.
All you did in that game was pretty much smash up city-scapes. You would climb buildings and punch holes in things and eat people. Try not to get shot to death by the helicopters or eat the wrong things. It was a fun game anytime you played it. I used to play with the broken buttons from time to time just to keep my character loyalty!
Nintendo came out with a version that was very true to the Arcade version and it was fun too... it just didn't have the same experience that being at that Arcade game had, stuck buttons or not!
Home
Of course, some of my best memories are playing games on home consoles with my brother and sisters! Some of my worst game memories were at home with them too! hahahaha Putting the NES games in at a certain angle or blowing the dust out of the cartridge to get it to work better was at the time a pain but now something i kind of miss.
One game that always stuck out to me that i played with my brother was Skate or Die! He was a skateboarder and i always wanted to skateboard too. Skating was growing to be very popular at this time with movies like Gleaming the Cube with Christian Slater and cameo appearances from Tony Hawk and other pros promoting the sport.
Skate or Die had a few different games within the game. I preferred joust because it was one that i could compete with my brother in and actually win. They also had a freestyle half-pipe competition where you could do tricks. A lot of good memories associated with that game... and no, i never did get good at skateboarding, in the game or in real life!
Another one of the early games that has a lot of great memories associated with it would be Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! Mike Tyson was super popular in boxing at the time and he was one of the first people i recall having a video game. Rocky was one of our favorite movie franchises and Little Mac sure was a lot like Rocky.
I can still here the music in the training sequence with Mac jogging behind his Mick/Trainer!
This game was super tough. Mike Tyson was challenged to play against himself in the video game and it was no surprise that he couldn't win like the rest of us. I remember we used to have the code to get straight to Mike and it never helped me beat the game. I thought we had solved one of the world's greatest problems when we discovered you could hit the select button in between rounds to get an increase in health!
Collecting the stars to perform the special uppercuts was quite rewarding. It was always interesting that Mac had to jump to get that uppercut to connect! Figuring out each opponent's weakness was a fun challenge.
There are many games that i will probably share in future posts associated with the NES games and system. For now we will move on to a game that i am disappointed in myself for not remembering until after i posted for the contest.
I mentioned that we got a Sega Genesis for Christmas one year and how rad that was!
One game that really stood out to me on that console was Earthworm Jim! They made a version for SNES that was good too but the graphics seems to look nicer on Genesis in my humble opinion. To simply put it... this game was weird! You can read about the game in detail in the link below.
An Earthworm named Jim gets a suit that makes him have the ability to do human-like activities. He had a gun and could slip out of his suit to be used as a whip or lasso! It was super strange and i would still recommend this game for your playing pleasures! The art was pretty amazing and the idea was so extremely unique and creative that the game won many awards.
One last game, for now, worth mentioning was Super Mario Kart! We enjoyed the levels and the competitive nature of the game in general. My siblings and i would often play after school and on the weekends. Our favorite thing to do was the battle mode.
Not all of us were good on the racing aspect but we enjoyed killing each other with red and green turtle shells. I personally enjoyed leaving banana peels behind strategically that would get them by surprise.
BeltLine Station
Probably the most special place to go in my formative years was BeltLine Station. It was a place that was the standard when a birthday party would take place. They had a mini put-put golf course, batting cages, and go-carts. But my favorite thing to do was play the arcade games, of course!
Shinobi was one of my favorite games. It was extremely difficult for me but i just wanted to make it to the bonus round where you got to throw the Chinese stars in the first-person point of view.
I liked anything having to do with martial arts and/or ninjas... so Shinobi was a perfect fit. I never beat it or even got that far but i still love this game to this very day! I always thought the special was trippy where the ninja hero duplicated himself and bounced around killing all the enemies. I always tried to save up for this boss... and it was still rarely enough to get me to pass the level!
One of my all-time favorite ninja games was Ninja Gaiden! It is pretty good on the console but the arcade was an amazing experience. It didn't matter if it was on console or arcade to have a creepy vibe about it though!
This game was an import so it was a difficult arcade game to find. Beltline station had it early on. This was one of the only games that had a button on top of the joystick. You could push that to grab on to poles, signs, and enemies.
You could do this swing kick move like in all the movies or flip over and enemy and toss them into other enemies. It was a very difficult game but extremely fun to play. I didn't know until researching for this post that the continue scene, where you have to scramble to grab another token or quarter to continue while the clock counts down before it's too late, was apparently very controversial.
I guess the pit and the pendulum style saw dropping down was too violent for many of the adults at the time. Video games, especially the violent ones, have always seemed to have an heir of controversy surrounding them.
One of the games with the most memories associated is Street Fighter 2. I remember at BeltLine Station there being rows of quarters stacked on both sides of the game to indicate who was going to play next. They had the control consoles with the buttons and joystick on a podium and the screen was a giant screen display a few feet in front.
They truly had it set up in a tournament fashion before that became the norm. You had to have some courage just to put your token up on the player board to enter yourself into the queue.
I was usually one of the younger ones playing so i was often intimidated watching the big kids play. This game was one of the first that had command-based moves. I could tell all of them had way more knowledge and experience than myself. Every now and then i would end up winning against one of the best dudes that underestimated my ability!
At the time, this game had some of the most variety when it came to playing with different characters. Considering that it cost money to try one out... you better have chosen wisely! Nobody ever enjoyed running out of tokens!
My first favorite character was Dhalsim and i used to call him rubberband man. His unorthodox style was what threw off a lot of my opponents. Then i liked Blanka because of the roller-ball attack and the electricity attack!
I saved a lot of money once the arcade game came to my local grocery store for only a quarter to play rather than the .50 cents or two token charge at most other places. Then they came out with a SNES version and i recall one of my neighbors that all the kids in our neighborhood would flock over to his house in order to play.
Everyone at that point was an expert and the wait time was almost worse than at the store or BeltLine Station. Even though it was free, i never excelled with my peers so i moved on!
They did come out with an abomination of a Live-Action movie which we will not speak of, even though Jean-Claude VanDamme was in it. But they did come out with an awesome anime movie that the band Korn did the soundtrack for. I always liked that movie.
Lastly, one of my favorite games to play at BeltLine Station was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. This was another game where based on your spot at the controls your character was selected.
I am a nerd in more ways that one... and i grew up absolutely loving all things Ninja Turtles! This game had all the action of the cartoon. It had all 4 turtles to choose from. It had most of the best villains... and it even had the opening music as the intro.
I didn't even mind hanging around watching this one. It was difficult for it's time because it had so much going on. You really needed a team of buddies to participate to make it far. This was awesome for birthday parties when we would all have our party sack with all our tokens in there. Sometimes we couldn't wait for the cake and presents to get over with just so we could go run and play the games.
While many people would rather do the go-carts or the mini-golf... me and my nerds were gaming out. I even thought April O'Neil on the side of the game was hot. Her hair was a bit overdone but i wasn't picky.
This game really had it all. The skateboarding sequence was intense. Even though it was a standard side-scroller it was everything a video game could be! NES came out with a game that was extremely true to the arcade version. Unfortunately, it was only two-player though. They also came out with another Ninja Turtles game that is still impossibly hard even today. I never cared for that game... but the Arcade version is still LEGENDARY!
Bob's SNES
I mentioned Bob in my last gaming post. He was the guy with the computer and the FPS games that i mentioned in that post. Well, Bob also had a SNES that we hooked up in my friend's room when i was staying with him in High School. One game that i spent most of my time playing on there besides Die Hard was Final Fantasy.
I had a difficult time figuring out exactly which one it was and for good reason after researching. Technically, it was Final Fantasy 6 but here in North America is was part 3. This was the first Role-Playing Turn-Based game i had ever played. I always rename the characters so that didn't help me track the version down either!
At first, i didn't care for the childlike graphics and animations. Eventually, the music and storyline got me hooked though. After getting far enough to understand why the turn-based action made sense for the way they had this game set up i was quite enjoying the graphics.
I couldn't tell you how many hours i spent playing this game. I had gotten stuck on part of the game where i had no idea what i was supposed to do. I guess i shouldn't have smoked so much! I was sad when Bob eventually moved out and took his SNES and Final Fantasy with him. One day, maybe i will find the time to go revisit this old gem.
It wouldn't be long before i bought a Sony Playstation and Final Fantasy 7... but that is a story for another post, another time! I hope some of my favorite gaming memories on this ThrowBack Thursday have jogged your memory as well!
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read this post. I would be curious to hear which games came to your mind while reading this post. I am sure we all have some awesome memories and experiences to share!
Game Over Man... Game Over!
