Invade the Arcade!

On Wednesday, some of my friends and I swooped down on the 1984 Arcade in downtown Springfield, Missouri – a good 3 hour tour (a 3 hour tour) one way from my house – to check it out. To be honest, it was better than I imagined.

It’s a fairly unassuming location across from the YMCA. Springfield’s downtown area was much more active than I thought it would be, and at several points during the afternoon and evening the arcade had quite a crowd (and quite a young crowd at that).

Now you’re talkin’.

Reading material while you rest your wrists:

The atmosphere was authentically 80s – cramped in just the right places, low lighting (once the sun stopped blazing through the front windows), 80s music playing at all times, and most of the games turned up nice and loud.

The original Space Invaders control panel. I spent quite a bit of time at this machine.

Rob (Flack) and Brian (icbrkr) up to mischief – they’re trying to set this Winner game – a Pong knockoff – into a perfect loop where the ball will go back and forth between two stationary paddles and making that oh-so-70s beep, boop sound over and over again until someone moves the knobs. 😆

Sinistar controls. I spent a lot of time at this machine, and actually cleared the first level for the first time ever. Seriously. I’d never blown away that big metallic trash-talking face before yesterday.

Joust controls illuminated by the aforementioned blazing sunlight. If I played a machine whose screen faced those windows, I found myself having to shield the screen from the reflection with my body.

An absolutely freakin’ beautiful Tron machine. Kudos to the 1984 crew for preserving this game so well.

Study up, there’ll be a quiz: Battlezone controls. Tanks a heap. The only thing keeping Mason (Flack’s son) from kicking my high score out from under me at this game was because his dad got tired of holding him up so he could reach the controls. 😛

Xevious controls, illuminated only by, well, themselves.

We all stared at this giant toy display trying to figure out what it was, until Jesse (Crossbow) identified it: it was a huge G.I. Joe aircraft carrier playset that cost big bucks back in the ’80s, and costs even more now.

Okay, so you’re in a real live arcade, with two working Centipede upright cabinets, one of which is right behind you. So what do you do? You sit down and play 2600 Centipede on an Atari Flashback! 😆 Forgive the young, o Lord, for they know not what they do.

A Battlezone high score for me:

If this batch of photos makes it look like I have a control panel fetish, keep in mind that (A) this isn’t all of the photos, (B) I haven’t taken still photos yet from the copious video that I shot, and (C) I have a control panel fetish. Emulation is great, sure, but there’s no substitute for standing in front of the real game, at the real controls, with all of the goofy stuff that seems so extraneous and yet is so much a part of the experience: the glow of a fully lit-up Tron machine, the “rank” lights on Gorf, the heavy trackball of a Missile Command machine, the roar of the knob control on Tempest, the 64-direction joystick on Sinistar. I’ve probably put in more emulation time than I have real arcade time by now, but while it’s nice for practice, there’s nothing like the real thing.

I also found myself handling the controls on these – and I’ve caught myself doing this with coin-ops at CGE and OVGE too – very delicately, just tapping the buttons lightly and in some cases being very gentle with the joysticks, though in the case of Robotron you’re just not doing it right unless you’re slamming the joystick full in any given direction in your moment of greatest need. 😆 MAME has worn off on me, but more than that, I have a healthy respect for anyone who has gone through the trouble that 1984 Arcade obviously has to preserve these old machines, and I’m certainly not going to be the one who breaks a controller or kicks a machine. Funny thing is, I’m much rougher on that huge PS1 arcade joystick controller that I have at home – but I bought it, I paid for it, and I know where the buck stops. And it’s not 25 years old.

Games I played, just from memory: Scramble, Moon Patrol, Defender, Asteroids, Gorf, Sinistar, Dig Dug, Frogger, Tron, Bosconian, Zaxxon, Missile Command, Battlezone, Space Invaders, Galaga, Turbo, Tempest, Robotron, Gauntlet (“Red Warrior needs a clue badly!”). Saw, but didn’t play: Winner, Centipede (x2), Pac-Man (the machine wasn’t set up for free play yet), Joust, Pole Position (I couldn’t even get to this one – obviously very popular), Karate Champ, Time Pilot ’84, Xybots, 1942, Donkey Kong Jr., Burgertime, and quite a few that I’ve forgotten because I didn’t get home until 1 in the morning and am still just a little tired.

I’m not a pinball man, but it was great to see a bunch of pinball machines there, all lit up, like they’re supposed to be. It added so much to the atmosphere just to have a bunch of pinballs in the room with the video games. That is the arcade I remember growing up with.

I’ll definitely gather up the gang and go “invade the arcade” again at some point. Wednesday was my birthday, and as it turns out it was also the 2nd anniversary of 1984 opening its doors. Something tells me that I’ll definitely be going back there on that day again.