Past Amusements

Finding myself in a nostalgic mood, I thought back to days spent in amusement arcades. My hometown only had one, and it was full of fruit machines, one-armed bandits and the like. I had no interest in them. I had to wait for our holidays to Butlins in Ayr for those kind of kicks.

Back in the 1980s, home computers were still rather basic. My faithful old Sinclair +2, with it's massive 128k of memory, brought me many hours of gaming joy, but an arcade offered kicks on a whole new level. In the days of HD gaming with a Playstation and a decent sized TV, it seems like a different world that we had to leave the home to get gaming with full colour and amazing sounds.

As an aside, one time we swapped the joys of Ayr for the Pontins, in Southport. While in the arcade, playing what I remember as a kind of Spy Hunter clone, I was pushed aside by a bigger boy (I was seven) who took my turn. I was found in tears by my cousin, who was nine years older than me and a bit more "handy". Within minutes, I had my turn back and a few extra 20p pieces for my trouble. So, for you, big man, my hero ever since, here are my choice arcade classics on which many a coin was spent.

Out Run

Bloody Sunday drivers!

You see, living in a small town in the back end of nowhere, we didn't have much in the way of glamour. Out Run offered a whole warehouse of it. Drive a Ferrari, with a girl beside you, racing across exotic locations at high speed. What more could I want?

The selling point, I think I can state with authority, was the soundtrack. Talk to someone (OK, a man) of my age and play Magical Sound Shower and you'll see them glaze over.

I remember the first time I played Out Run. It was in Blackpool, on a day trip, and you had to sit in a car shaped cabinet in which my feet just touched the pedals - lucky I was tall for my age. As it happened, I wiped out on the first corner and stormed off in a sulk before my dad told me that didn't mean it was game over. Alas, the wasted seconds did mean it soon was.

Rampage

High rise living ain't too bad. Unless this happens.

So, some bizarre accident turns you into a huge monster. The obvious response is to destroy just about every city in the USA. I'm sure we can all relate to the premise that Rampage brought us.

Playing either a giant ape, lizard or wolf, the mission was to just destroy as much as possible, while avoiding the unwanted attentions of the military, who don't take kindly to your attempts at town planning. 

I'm not sure how "new" it was that you could have three players going at the same time was, but it felt amazing at the time. It meant my moaning brother could join in, though my dad remained constantly useless and would generally skulk off back to the bar area after being defeated early doors. On the plus side, it meant random strangers could join in - nice way to make friends amongst the usual "entertainment" that a holiday at Butlins involved.

Operation Wolf

What this had, which I'd never seen before, was a copy of a Uzi submachine gun attached to the cabinet. You had to aim with this to kill all the mooks that were unfortunate enough to cross your sights, which seemed revolutionary at the time.

Another quiet trip to the shops ruined, then

Needless to say, there was a lot of killing to be done if you were to rescue the hostages that had been taken for a reason I can't remember, if there even was one. All that mattered was that they were there, and about 5000 soldiers needed to be slaughtered to get to them. Not that I ever got to the end. No, I saw this instead:

Shouldn't have had that kebab last night, eh?

At least they were polite about your death.