Moose O'Malley's Software Valley Established : July 1996 Please bookmark this location only : http://move.to/moose

This page contains my collection of true stories and annecdotes concerning Arcade Games from the 1970s / 1980s, and the impact they have had on all our lives.

I am planning to one day compile the stories I have collected below into a book on Arcade Games.

The stories below are Copyright (c) and cannot be used / reproduced without the express written permission of myself.

If you have any information / annecdotes / interesting stories please Email me

Comments / Questions / More Information ?

If anyone knows any additional details to what I have given below (such as dates, places, names, magazine articles, etc) that can help verify these, please Email me.

If anyone knows any other good stories, please let me know with as much detail as possible (such as dates, places, names, magazine articles, etc), please Email me.

If anyone is named below and wants to be removed, or if anyone wants their story removed, or if anyone takes offense to something, or if anyone has any objections to using their stories in a future book, or if anyone has any other comments / questions, please Email me.

How Much Did People Spend ?

Space Invaders When Space Invaders hit the streets in Japan, it caused coin shortages until the Yen supply was quadrupled. After Space Invaders arcades opened in Japan : A girl stole $5,000 from parents to play game. Gangs of youths knock over grocery stores to fund their playing addiction. Killer List of Video Games (http://www.vaps.org/klovsrch.cgi) Does anybody know who the Girl was or have any dates, articles, or details that could verify these stories ??

How Long Did People Play ?

I played in various competitions around the Seattle area during the peak of the video-game fad (1980 and 1981), winning cash prizes of up to $1,000 while working as a programmer at Boeing. On January 26, 1982 I was the first person in the world to play the fast-paced video game Defender non-stop for 24 hours on a single quarter !! The Associated Press picked up the story of a new video-game marathon record, and the ensuing publicity led to a job in Chicago as Technical Editor of JoyStik Magazine, the leading coin-op game players' publication. In this position, I played all of the latest video games, interviewed players and game designers, wrote strategy articles, and traveled to popular arcades and video-game software companies around the midwest and west coast. My Winning Edge column covered advanced strategies for hard-core players. (Gee Doug, it's a tough life but someone's got to do it - hey ? - Moose) Doug Mahugh (http://www.secondcitysoftware.com/defender.htm)

The longest I ever played was for around 8 hours. If I had to go to the bathroom or get a drink, I would just drape my coat over the controls and run off to take care of business, counting on the fact that I had many many extra men. Most of the patrons of the arcades I went to knew I would be back shortly and they would leave the game alone. Once, I returned to find some new guy playing the game and I had to tell him to get away. I wouldn't have minded him playing for awhile, but my coat was better at Robotron than he was. ;) Ed Armenta (eddiea@bnr.ca)

Amusingly, one of the only places left in Manhattan where one can go and play Robotron (and Defender, for that matter) has a single Robotron machine set on the highest difficulty level. The game starts at breakneck speed and gets worse from there. However, there is a hardcore clientele of players who play for long periods on it, racking up millions of points. My first game on that machine lasted about 45 seconds !! E-Glide (http://www.users.interport.net/~e-glide/ WILLIAMS/williams.html)

Once two Atari engineers went on a skiing vacation in Utah and Dan Pliskin came back with the following story: "We were at Snowbird, and we had only been there a few days when we started to miss video games. So, we found a little arcade and my friend got onto a Missile Command (which was a pretty old game by then) and I got onto some pinball machine. We broke the high-score tables, and he had, like, 200 free cities and I had, like, 60 free games. When we got tired of playing, we just left them to these kids that were just wide-eyed, staring at us. The kids were standing there with their mouths open. They had never seen pinball wizards and video game masters." Mark Nias (http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/markn/Arcade/battz.html)

I have such fond memories of playing Gauntlet !! I remember years ago when Gauntlet first came out I used to pump tons of quarters into it. There was an arcade that I used to go to in Richmond, IN about every weekend and play that game for hours. I met a guy there one day who taught me everything about the game. We all used to call him the "Dungeon Master" since he knew all of the mazes and knew how to make the game fun for everybody. He was also real good at being a leader. If one of the characters was running low on health, he would instruct the rest of us to protect the one character and not get any food until we brought the dying character up to a safe level. In doing so, we could all play for as long as we wanted on one quarter. He taught me so well that when he wasn't at the arcade people looked to me to be the "Dungeon Master". It was a real thrill for me to have three strangers looking at me for guidance! It was all respect back then. You don't see much of that any more in the arcades. Never knew what happened to that guy, he just seemed to stop coming around the arcade. Probably moved away or something. Don't think any of us knew his real name either. It's kind of strange, but it was never a concern. We all had a lot of fun joking around and playing Gauntlet. We all just referred to him as the "Dungeon Master" and that was cool with him and us. Keith Parker (parker@ai2a.net) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on November 07, 1996 14:04).

How Much did People Score ?

I achieved a score of 56,550,191 (on Defender). This was on WAVE 99, having gone through it many times. Essentially once you're on WAVE 32, it's just like any other wave, the number just does not increment past 99. Glenn Mandelkern (gmandel@corp.megatest.com)

A high school student named Steve Juraszek was profiled as the "Defender champion of the world." Juraszek played 16 straight hours on a single quarter racking up 16 million points. While Juraszek's feat was amazing, his status as "champion" is a bit misleading. Around the same time, there were expert players who were literally playing the game for days. One guy, Doug Mahugh (see his story on this page), quit his job at Boeing to play Defender full time !!

When I was young and really loved Defender. A long time ago (around 1982), I came across this guy in the UK who was playing the game. He looked rather tired to be honest... Not surprising when he told me he'd been playing for over 2 days and had racked up a score of 70 million. Damn I was impressed then ! Mat Allen (gmandel@corp.megatest.com) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on November 03, 1996 4:59).

I played a Robotron for 36 hours once in 1984. I scored about 138 million points. I would have played longer but the machine overheated and locked up (I did have it open and a fan blowing on the PCB's but...) Aaaahh for the glory days..... Alan Letterman at Berry Plastics Corp. (aletter@berryplastics.com)

I saw a Joust high score in a game mag of 107,000,000 (would take about 3 days (i.e. 72 hours), if they weren't cheating. My friend scored in the 40,000,000 range at a week-end arcade highscore contest (not cheating). I once scored 27,000 million at an airport during a snowstorm delay (not cheating) took about 19 hours... basically it takes a little off 7 hours for each 10,000,000. Chris Bright at Northern Telecom. (cbright@bnr.ca)

I used to play Mr. Do at the campground I went to for the summer. It was a sit down machine. The place it was at was only open for 5 hours a night, but in those five hours I tallied over 2 million points, and flipped the screen number back to 0 and beyond before having to leave. MondialLtd at America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) (mondialltd@aol.com)

It's fun to see how long you can play one game. You can make Xevious play itself so to speek. If you max the score every time you kill somthing you gain a life. Even dying gets you bonus life, so you can walk away from the game and it won't end. wildkatt@community.net

I have played Gauntlet I to level 999 and beyond. After level 999, the next level is level 8 (it wraps around). I've played Gauntlet II up to level 652, with no end in sight. Eric Crabill (crabill@stanford.edu) in The Almost Ultimate Gauntlet I FAQ (http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~crabill/atari/gauntlet_1/gauntlet_1.faq)

I wanted to see if Gauntlet had a Level 1,000 since the Level number seemed to occupy at most 3 digits. I did this at a bowling alley in Miami, FL which is open 24 hours a day, building up my health to about 52,000 on one quarter. I would have loved to have seen an ending too after Level 999. Altogether it took me about 16.5 hours. I remember one thing I liked about Gauntlet was the ability to take a break by clearing out an entire board so nothing would attack the Elf while I went to the restroom. Glenn Mandelkern (gmandel@netcom.com)

Development of Major Havoc was taking a long time at this point, Atari added Mark Cerney to the project to help get the game out the door. Mark was responsible for "the finger", and the infamously "impossible!!??" last four levels. Since the game was going to go into production before being completed, Mark made his levels so hard that no one could possibly get past them (or so he thought). The quirk that made people insanely addicted to this game was the message on level 12 that says "keep going, the homeworld is near". Well, it wasn't. There is no ending to Major Havoc. Apparently Owen added the messages VERY early in the games development, and they forgot to change that one. Someone actually sent Atari a picture of their game at level 65 saying "Where is it?". Atari gave them a dedicated Major Havoc game to soothe their wounded hands. But I don't think they will give out any more, so I wouldn't try. Jess Askey (http://magenta.com/havoc/alpha.html)

Back in '83'84 my friend and I play Joust alot ! After awhile, we all had it mastered. My top score (set at the Montreal airport during a 24 hour plane delay, was 27,000,000. When you get more than 10,000,000 points your highscore is posted as 9,999,999. We used to call this "Puting up 9's". Someday, I'll have to do it on WAC, but it takes about 7 hours to score 10,000,000. The highest score I remember seeing was about 110,000,000 points which must have been set by two people because this would take about 3 days. This highscore was in the same magazine as the month I had my name in for around 1,200,000 on Pengo. Chris Bright (cbright@bnr.ca (BNR400)) Newsgroup : rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:53:31 GMT

When I was about 10 years old, all I did was try and get quarters to play Donkey Kong. And, after a while, I became quite good at it (for a ten year old at least). I won all the contests at all the local arcades (I even won a month's free play at one arcade, boy was I happy!). They had one arcade called the "International Scoreboard", which supposedly kept a record of the Highest Scores at it's arcades internationally. I don't know if this was a gimmick or not. For all I know, there might have been only one "International scoreboard" arcade located solely in little ol' Carolina Beach, North Carolina. But, regardless I had a recorded Hi Score of 310,000, which I think is pretty dang impressive. (Once you get to the dang 3rd Elevator level, it's all uphill!) But, then again I had only my cohorts in that small town to compare myself to. Gabriel Chupka (Azeroth@concentric.net) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on Dec 12, 1996 12:12 PM).

Crime and Punishment !

In secluded areas, I'd sneak in behind the game cabinets and pry out the back cover with a screwdriver.. then get to the coin box .... Heh.. heh.. damm I was mean little asswipe.. But I had fun in those days (and free games too). An Unknown AssWipe !!

Heh, Heh, Heh, I was a mean little asswipe, too !! Only my first job (when I was 15-16 years old in 1981-82) was working in an arcade, trying to fix the problems that jerks caused. (Don't you hate trying to restore vandalized machines today ?!) However, I was "Sreaming for Vengence", and I got it. The same jackoffs who were vandalizing machines were also using the screwdriver trick to pry the back off of the machines, and reaching into the coin box from behind to steal the money out of the coin box. I got the idea of mounting about 4 straight edged razor blades on the back lip of the coin box, one hell of a burgular alarm, huh?!!! Needless to say, when the jackoffs showed up, I didn't need much evidence to catch them, one kid was screaming holding his slit wrist, blood everywhere, while the others stood there shocked and speechless. My boss locked the back door, they had no way out, and the cops even laughed at them when they showed up to "take them in". Heh, heh, heh. I was a mean asswipe, too. I'd like to have hit them for every time they beat on the machines, and that was my chance for some payback. Kind of like hearing the "other side of the coin" ! MK DUD (mkdud@aol.com) Newsgroup : rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, Sun, 26 May 1996 13:21:54 -0500

In the early 80's, I heard some kids talking about jamming a knife into the door of the coin slots to jiggle the mechanism to get free games. Of course, my local 'arcade' was in a small store, under the watchful eye of the cashier. (The 3 games were DK, Time Pilot, and a screwy PacMan-type maze game called Popeye...) So, I never had the guts to try it. Around 13 years later, a college bud of mine confessed to this trick. He would chew a plastic drinking straw until the end was flat. He stuck the straw into the gap between the door and cabinet to get free games. He said he would play until nausia set in. Now, my bud has every known console and cart known (or rents it). I suppose his free ride on DK lead to his sentence of Nin64s, Jaguars, Playstations and Saturns !! ;) We break out the 2600 occasionally. Jason Palmer (palmerj@earthlink.net) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on March 08, 1997 15:21).

There's Nothing better than a good Kick in the Coin-Box !!! I was talking to a friend the other day and we were reminiscing about the fun times we had playing video games. The funniest one we remembered was the time when we use to kick all the Taito games at a local Chuck E. Cheese's because each one of them would tilt and reset. This place had an Alpine Ski and when you kicked it, it displayed "TILT" and reset with the screen flipped upside-down. This was a lot of fun when we were kids and pissed-off the operator and the person who came in on a regular basis who was an Alpine Ski master. If we saw him coming we would "alter" the machine for him. Now that I think about it, it was a pretty shitty thing to do. At that age, it was fun. This place also had a Turbo cockpit that would register credits every time the coin-box was kicked. That was pretty cool !! Patrick J. O'Reilly (oreillyp@execpc.com) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on April 01, 1997 10:22).

I had heard of people using a 9V battery and a wire to freak out machines to get credits, and I actually saw it happening once or twice. Some people also suggested the coin on a string trick - but I think all operators were wise to this by the late 70's. Another way I heard of to get free games was to turn the power off and on repeatedly. My brother worked in a big arcade on the Gold Coast (Australia) in the early 80's and he would occasionally find young punks with little crowbars trying to pry open the coin doors to get to the coin box and the credit tickler. I also heard of other scams to get free games. But, I was never really game to try any - especially any that would have damaged the machine and brought the law and my parents down on me. I have always wanted to try the 9V battery one though .... But, then again, I didn't really need to either .... Seeing my brother worked at an arcade, he used to *very* occasionally grab hand fulls of arcade tokens and give them to me. So, I could play a bunch of games all day for free and it would just appear that I had just got paid or something. I used the tokens mostly to play new games or games I wasn't good at, or games I had seen but never played. In this way, I got good exposure to loads of extra games. Hey, this all sounds like it could be an Annecdote for my own Annecdote page as well ...... Moose O'Malley (Email me) (As confessed by Moose O'Malley on April 08, 1997).

I have something to add to your annecdotes list regarding the "coin on a string" trick. That trick worked for me and my friends until about the mid 80's on just about any machine. In my area it was called "fishing". The "trick" was to tape the string to the coin and insert it *slowly* down the coin slot. We would then lightly jerk on the string (as if you were fishing) as we lowered it down the slot. When you hear the credit sound, the string would be tugged up and down ever so slightly to trigger more credits. This did take some practice but it worked almost every time. When you had enough credits, you just yanked on the string to get the string back (the coin would never come out, something stopped it from coming back up). It was risky business "hunched" over the coin slot, someone would always have to be a lookout while you did your delicate work. It wasn't so much fun when the owner caught on to what we were doing. I just want to add that I've seen kids using this trick recently. I've worked in a theme park as a security officer and this park had a couple large arcades. We've caught kids using this same trick several times ! I couldn't believe it ! I was floored the first time I saw a bunch of kids in our office, sitting down, looking all upset, waiting for their parents to pick them up and all their "fishing" gear laid out on a table beside them! I had to grin. Kinda ironic I suppose.... Kimmo (kimmo@idirect.com) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on June 05, 1997 7:32).

Watch Out !! Those Machines are Fragile !! - Fiction !

N.B. Sadly this story has now been proved to be made up. i.e. It is not true. Still, it is an entertaining story, and is left here to give people a laugh - or cry !! Not for the squeemish !! There is a mate of mine (Keith Ainsworth, of Liverpool, England) who *had* a Pacman machine. In the summer of 1995, he was moving out of his flat. The trouble was that the flat happened to be on the third floor of a six storey apartment building !! Not to worry, the apartment was in an old warehouse, and there was an old pulley system outside the window (3 storeys further up !), which he thought he could use to lower the machine down to the van waiting below. Anyway, he tied the machine to the rope and pushed it to the window. At this moment he realised that in those days, miniturisation must have been in the early stages cos the thing weighed a ton. Indeed it has taken 3 men to get the damn thing up there in the first place ! So he grabbed hold of the rope, gave it a slight tug to get the machine out and prepared to take the strain. Unfortunately the strain took him, with the result that Pacman went quickly down and he went quickly up. The neighbours must have wondered what was going on as he whizzed past the upstairs window. He ended up at the top (6 storeys off the ground) where his hands met the pulley with a massive jolt. The injury was later described as 'minor' but it hardly seemed like that at the time. As pain washed over him, there was a loud bang below. Looking down, he saw that his beloved Pacman machine was now in 3 bits, and the van was on its side with 2 of its windows broken. Not good... Then the machine creaked a bit and he dropped 10 inches. Then part of the machine broke off and he went free-falling down to meet some of Pacman machine coming back up. The neighbours definitely knew something was wrong as he flew down the other way ! Right in the middle the two came together. Unfortunately, Pacman was a bit more spikey and dangerous than he was ! Ouch !!! In the end Keith was lying on the ground by the van with Pacman grinning down at him him from the pulley - 6 storeys above. What a bad day, no more Pacman, a destroyed van, and all the pain !! Then he made the biggest mistake of the day, and let go of the rope .... Mat Allen (m.allen@ic.ac.uk) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on November 03, 1996 4:59).

Other Interesting Tit Bits :

Cinematronics' pornographic Star Castle star field Star Castle was written in 1980 by Scott Bodden. For the star constellation in the background, Scott traced the outline of a centerfold form a 1980 Oui magazine. When the management found out (after they had shipped about 5,000 units), they flipped out and almost stopped production of the game. But, they came to their senses later and nothing was changed. Cinematronics History by Bill Paul, Copyright 1996. Moose's note : I have played the game, and the star field in only vaguely in the shape on a naked reclining woman, and it is certainly nothing to get over excited about - but an interesting story all the same !! In fact, here is a screen capture of Star Castle running under the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) if you are interested in judging this for yourself ... ;)

Military BattleZone * Regarding Battlezone I read in microsoft arcade classics that 8,000 units * of the special military type were manufactured. The actual figure is two (2). There is one extant, somewhere in storage here at Atari (Games, not Corp.) It was actually hooked up and running earlier this year. The cabinet is a Battlezone cabinet with a hand-drawn "Bradley Trainer" marquee and some silkscreened stars on the side. The controllers look like two sets of Star Wars grips with more buttons (one on the cabinet, one attached someplace else) and there are a bunch of buttons and dials on the lower part of the spectator windows. It's not much fun as a game -- it's basically a targeting exercise. Kind of a neat piece of history, tho. They had to dig dead mice out of the cabinet to get it running... John Grigsby (grigsby@acid.agames.com) Newsgroup : rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, Thu, 15 Dec 1994 00:08:00 GMT BATTLEZONE programmer ED ROTBERG left Atari after he was forced to convert his favorite game to Army specifications. Dubbed the MK-60 by the Army, it included 30 game variations, improved steering and magnification, and simulations of Russian and American tanks. It sold for $30,000. Computer Games - February 1984, 30 Secrets of Atari, pp 40-43 Moose's Notes : On 11-October-2000, I personally started a campaign to preserve a Military Battlezone (aka the "Bradley Trainer") machine and a Marble Madness 2 arcade machine - which were for sale. The campaign was later changed to attempt to purchase the rights for these games. By 23-Jan-2001, people had pledged $10,000 US for the preservation and purchase of these games. Check out the campaign WEB page for further details. On 15-Jan-2001, support for Military Battlezone (aka the "Bradley Trainer") was added into the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME).

PAC MAN Fever I must have been about 11-12 years old and I had brought the Pac Man Fever record over to a friends house (who also loves TRON) and we listened to it there. When it was time for me to go, I threw the album into a plasic bag that had handles on it (it was from a computer trade show earlier that year) and jumped on my bike to make it home before supper. As soon as I started pedaling, the bag (which I was holding on the handlebars) swung into the spokes and met the fork. "Aw FORK!" I said, except I didn't say "fork". I looked inside the bag to find that the corner of the album cover and internal dust sleeve were chopped off. I rode home more carefully, and to my relief the record played JUST FINE. The moral of the story is: If I had the pac man fever *CD*, this would NEVER have happened. :) BTW, the liner of Pac Man Fever has all the cool patterns for winning at Pac Man. Thanks to Dave Spicer's arcade emulator, I can finally get to the 9th key! Matthew Fries (freeze@visi.com) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on December 15, 1996 19:28).

PAC MAN Patterns : the "Donut Dazzler". Back when I frequented arcade (many moons ago), I would generally play games that no one else played. Either the game was unpopular or the game was old and everyone had pretty much abandoned it. This meant that I could pretty much just walk into the arcade and start playing the game immediately. The local custom was to place a quarter on the dash of the game to reserve the next game. If you dropped your quarter in the slot, you risked getting stung by a wizard who'd be playing the game for the rest of the evening. Placing the quarters on the dash meant you could take your quarter back if you wanted to. The more popular games would have several quarters lined up as people waited to play the latest and greatest games. I wasn't quite so trusting. I didn't care to place my quarter out in the open where anyone could swipe it. (In the defense of my fellow game players, I must say I can't remember any incident of any one stealing another player's quarter. There always seemed to quite a few beggars around, but never any thieves.) Pac Man was pretty much abandoned when it caught my attention. It had only been in the arcade a few months when someone figured out a pattern and rolled it (the score only went as high as 999,990 and then it would wrap around to zero). After the first guy figured out a pattern, everyone else memorized it and could play the game until they either became tired of it or messed the pattern up enough that they lost all their men. There were no more free men after 50,000, so there was really no room to be adventurous. You had to stick the pattern or die. Along with wasting my money on video games, I also wasted it on video game books and magazines. I had quite a few different books with patterns in them - all different. I started to memorize a few, practice them until I had them down cold and then learn a few more. Along the way I invented patterns of my own. Being able to vary the patterns meant the game wouldn't get boring. Half the fun of hanging around arcades was watching other people play the games. You could learn from players who were better than you and quietly snicker at those who weren't all that good. But no one was watching me play Pac Man. They just thought I was another person with "The Pattern" who could play forever. Then one day, a kid started to watch me play. "Hey," he shouted to his friends across the arcade, "this guy isn't using the pattern !". People started to crowd around me, and when I had a big enough audience I hauled out my show-stopper - a little number called the "Donut Dazzler". The pattern consisted of chasing the dangerous non-blue ghosts around the maze right on their tails, then reversing course just as they'd reversed so that they were now chasing you, and playing chicken with them - heading straight towards a ghost that's heading straight for you, only to have the ghost reverse course at the last second. The first time I did this, someone said "you are the luckiest bastard I've ever seen play this game". I said nothing and proceeded to run the pattern again. Knowing I had nothing else to prove I walked away from the machine, leaving the guy with his mouth hanging open and a bunch of little kids fighting over who'd play the rest of the men. From this point on, I would use the this pattern when I realized someone was trying to memorize (steal) my patterns. The Donut Dazzler would usually shake them up and break their concentration, as no one else seemed to be able to master it. Unfortunately, this pattern didn't work past the eight key. On the ninth key, the Pac Man slows down and the monsters speed up, so you need an entirely different set of patterns. And eventually, the power pellets do not turn the ghost blue, making it very hard to improvise if you mess up the pattern. After much experimentation, I came up with a ninth key version of the Donut Dazzler that had the added bonus of allowing the Pac Mac to PASS THROUGH a ghost, not once, but TWICE. I could never figure out an ending for the pattern though, so I would end up with a large part of the maze that I had to improvise and occasionally would lose a man. I would only use it if I really wanted to impress someone (especially girls) or if it was someone else's quarter. Pac Man was one of the few games where, to become the "game master", it was not enough to just be able to play the game for a long while and rack up a lot of points - you had to be able to play the game with style and entertain the people watching you. And when you got tired, you could earn extra "cool" points by giving the rest of the game to someone else there. Never let them see you lose the last man. :) J. Kevin Wells (CrowTRbt@AtCon.com) (As told in an Email to Moose O'Malley on December 30, 1996 2:53).

Shoegazer's Confessions of an 80s arcade nut: Scramble's landscape of fuchsia - fuchsia !!! It's Saturday and I had a little time, so I thought I'd share with you all one of my most memorable experiences with arcade games from the 80s. I'm sure many of you can relate. I'd love to hear from others on this subject as well. Not a list of experiences, just a memorable one. =================== I grew up in southern Vermont, a state that hardly sees much action, so you can imagine how scarce my arcade gaming opportunities were. To make matters "worse" I also lived on a mountain, far from any semblence of "action" one might encounter in the valley. But I was drawn to the allure of arcade games like a moth to a candle. I clearly remember the first time I discovered Scramble at our local bowling alley, an adjunct of the "Gaslight" restaurant. It was in a small, smoked-glass room set aside from the alley itself, which was charged with equally smokey atmosphere contributing to the feeling that, at such a young age, maybe I shouldn't be there. Having been born in 1971 I must have been 10 or 11 at the time. I was challenged to see far beyond the control panel, but the spectacle above drove my curiosity to new heights. The eerie glow around the game's sprites was particularly fascinating to me, especially given the game's indigenous environ of a hazy and dark hideaway - a private cave in a public place. The hulking wooden obelisk containing its guts was mysterious and intimidating to someone of my stature. I remember thinking, and sharing with my friends, that the technology driving the game (as well as the others there) must be orders of magnitude higher than anything we were likely to find anywhere else. After all, it was enormous! Little did I know, each game's brain amounted to barely more than a few scant chips on a PCB. Still, the excitement of Scramble was overpowering and irresistable. The thundering "whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop" sounds combined with the smoothly-scrolling mountainous landscape of fuchsia (fuchsia! The hue presented a terrain even more alien to me than most I suspect, given my dwelling within the emerald Green Mountains of Vermont), and the oddly-shaped spacecraft you piloted towards a conclusion I would not reach for another 25 years on my MAME cabinet - all challenging my ability to think of anything else, and dominating my thoughts in class. Class. Ring. Sit. Listen. Chalk. Frogs. Grammar. Multiply. Gravity. An open window. DRAW. Terrain. Spaceship. Projectile. Explosion. High-tech death canvassed in low-tech graphite. Another bell, and I'd scramble to the bowling alley. Starving from the lack of food - after all, the quarters were intended for lunch - I'd watch my silvery tokens disappear with my hunger, one after another. It was almost worth the money just to hear the opening theme, a synthesized rendition of the old "Charge" progression sans any hint of soul and bugle. A symphony of destruction would inevitably follow, and once again I had answered the call... UPDATE: it's funny, I only remembered fuchsia - but upon playing the game again I realized it was actually multiple colors, all equally crazy and each plunging the game deep into the realm of fantasy. I just love it.. Ref: MAMEWorld MAME Chat Forums - Confessions of an 80s arcade nut: Scramble (05-May-2009) Moose's Comments: I laughed out loud at the fuchsia bit. Very poetic. Gold, pure gold. Thanks Shoegazer !! :) Shoegazer also runs these two excellent web sites: Shoegazer's NonMAME Arcade Games Shoegazer's NonMESS Arcade Games

Comments / Questions / More Information ?

If anyone knows any additional details to what I have given above (such as dates, places, names, magazine articles, etc) that can help verify these, please Email me.

If anyone knows any other good stories, please let me know with as much detail as possible (such as dates, places, names, magazine articles, etc), please Email me.

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