On Wednesday, we went to 1984, the local vintage arcade, as part of my beautiful wife’s birthday celebration.
As in years past (2017, 2018, and 2019), we visited right after the arcade reset its annual high scores, and everyone in the family was able to get a high score on something. My wife got the high score on Joust again, of course.
One of the machines I got a high score on was Sinistar, but I did not register it immediately, as I was going to make just one trip to the counter as I was only going to get one free voucher and pin no matter how many high scores I set. When my oldest said he’d beaten the arcade’s high score, I went to look to see if it was higher than mine, and it was. So that triggered the boys’ sibling rivalry, and they swapped high scores on it for a while until the youngest blew us all out of the water. But by making a quick trip to the desk, the oldest secured a voucher for having a high score that did not last long at all. So we all ended up with vouchers.
How did I do?
I got high scores on the following:
- Arkanoid
- Asteroids Deluxe
- Circus Charlie
- Commando
- Elevator Action
- Spy Hunter
- Xevious
They might not stand for long. Hopefully not. We were there early on a Wednesday evening for roughly two hours, and the very light crowd turned over a couple of times. The number of games that were offline was a bit concerning, and many of these machines are 40 years old, so I imagine spare parts are getting thin. A lot different than when I dabbled in video game collecting 20 years ago.
At any rate, the intersection with the recycler tour comes from something I posted on Facebook and on this blog on July 27 and 28, 2011:
I sent the image to both of the boys.
Here in 2023, I don’t have to explain the forty-year-old game from 1983 that they’ve recently played.
I will have to explain Farmville on Facebook and the teaser of the wandering sheep. Or no, perhaps it’s better if I not try.
