☆ Why I Love .........Arcade Video Games ☆ #Retrogaming #Arcade

As a kid I would spend endless hours at my best friend Paul’s house playing video games of every type on all sorts of consoles and computers.

We’d play anything we could get our hands on. Great video games, rubbish video games, unplayable video games!

To us it didn’t matter, we’d give anything a go. We had hundreds of video games between us. A massive box of Amiga disks. A cardboard box full of C64 games and a massive pile of cartridges from NES, SNES, Master System and MegaDrive. We played them all and loved every minute of it…..

BUT… there was one thing that trumped all those video games and that was a trip to the local video shop!

The video shop in most towns in 1980’s UK was the place which housed the very latest arcade machines and the video shop was a magnet for us video game mad 10 year olds thirsty for awesome graphics and brand new gameplay. 

We’d go to the video shop with every last penny we could pull together in order to get as many credits as we could on the latest arcade release.

When the video shop had a new cabinet it was a major event and word would spread like wildfire that there was a new game to play. 

We’d sprint down the road to the video shop as soon as we could in order to catch a glimpse of the new game. Sometimes we would just go there to watch as we had no money between us. 

I’m actually not very good at video games and  I never have been so sometimes I would give Paul my cash so as I could watch him play the game and hopefully beat it!

Someone ‘clocking’ an arcade game was extremely rare. If you are looking for examples of people witnessing it then you will find those accounts are ultra rare. 

One such occasion that will always stick in memory though was when we witnessed Altered Beast being ‘clocked’

I always loved that arcade game as it seemed like something so special at the time. Transform from puny guy to fully formed beast by gathering power ups whilst hearing the immortal “POWER UP” cry from the machine as you scooped up these transforming collectibles. It was like something from another world when I first witnessed someone play it. I just had to have a go. 

Although I have to admit I hated being watched while I played as I was generally garbage and would need to spend a lot of pocket money in order to get anywhere in any game! Often I would wait my turn patiently and wait till it was just me and friends.

The time I saw Altered Beast being clocked I vowed to get good at it so I could clock it too. It became a bit of an obsession for me. I pumped stacks of money into that machine as I took on whatever the game could throw at me. I managed to get reasonably good and was regularly getting to the final level.

One day I went into the video shop and was ready to clock Altered Beast and then there it was 

………………. GOLDEN AXE!!! 

The Altered Beast machine was no more……Golden Axe had taken it’s place!

I was crestfallen. I’d lost my opportunity to clock the beast. My disappointment was short lived as I launched myself into Golden Axe in an attempt to complete that awesome arcade game.

To this day I am yet to complete an Arcade Game in the ‘arcade’. It’s like it was never meant to be.

My dream is to one day own my very own arcade where I can spend my days honing my skills and finally complete Altered Beast.

Have You Ever Managed To ‘Clock’ An Arcade 

Game In The Arcade?

Let Me Know In The Comments Box Below

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