Since we've essentially been living in the post-arcade era for a while now, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the good times we had during the days when the coin-op experience simply couldn't be replicated on home consoles.
Growing up in Florida, I had the standard consoles that many kids of the late 80's/early 90's enjoyed: the NES and SNES. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve going over to a new friend's house for the first time and getting to play all of the games he had amassed over holidays and birthdays. Needless to say, most young kids during that time spent most of their gaming time on home consoles.
It was on the weekends, however, that I led a completely different gaming lifestyle. At the ripe age of seven, I was in arcades competing against teenagers and men over twice my age in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I would frequent several arcades in the area (yes, kids, there used to be a wealth of arcades to choose from in the 90's), and each one usually had a fighting game that I played competitively. My love for arcade fighting games continued all the way until the sudden decline of the arcade scene, when I had to watch all of the arcades in my city shut their doors one-by-one.
Inescapable nature of change aside, I would like to share with you my favorite arcade memory from my childhood:
Mortal Kombat II was the first game I can remember being super-hyped for as a young kid. My older friend had introduced me to the first Mortal Kombat on the SNES, and all it took was a feature article on the upcoming sequel in EGM to set my young imagination ablaze. Reptile, as a hidden character in the original, was my favorite character. Before MKII was ever even a known possibility to me, I was drawing Reptile in my notebooks, writing up movelists and fatalities for him as if he were a playable character. I was so into fighting games back then that I used to create rudimentary game design documents for the dream games that existed in my mind, complete with full movesets, character bios, and even concept art. The EGM article went into detail about a lot of the new features in the game, but none of them stuck out as much as their vivid description of Reptile's head-chomp fatality. For one, that was when I realized that Reptile would be playable in the sequel, and that was enough to blow my seven-year-old mind. Secondly, the fatality sounded fucking awesome!
After picking up the EGM for myself, I read that article countless times, never thinking to look for some kind of release date within the write-up. So my family went to Michigan for Christmas a month or two later, and we went to a local mall to kill some time before a movie during our first day there. As was the case with practically every American shopping mall in the 90's, this mall had an arcade. I went in there, expecting to kill a few minutes on some ticket games... and that's when I saw it. There was a small crowd of people around an arcade cabinet that was emanating music and sound effects that reminded me of Mortal Kombat. I squeezed my slender, seven-year-old frame between two of the onlookers and saw two players going at it: Reptile vs Sub-Zero. It was fucking Mortal Kombat II. I watched in awe as Sub-Zero unleashed his new ground freeze move among other new intricacies, and just seeing someone control Reptile (complete with his own unique moveset this time) put me into a state of euphoria. This was the sense of discovery that existed for a kid in the pre-Internet days of the early-to-mid 90's.
And just when I thought I couldn't be more excited, the player controlling Reptile won and did his head-munch fatality. It was right after seeing this, the coolest thing ever, that my mom grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me away from the machine. The movie was going to start soon, so all of my family was waiting for me. I pleaded with my mom to let me stay, but she declined. It was only through more pleading that she agreed to let me go back to the arcade once the movie was over. I can't remember what movie we saw that day, but I can tell you that it was the longest hour-and-a-half of my young life.
When we got out of the movie, I only got to play one match against someone who handily whooped my ass with Kitana before we had to leave the mall. I would go on to play plenty of Mortal Kombat II over the course of the next year via frequent trips to the mall near my house, but that first, unexpected glimpse was my favorite arcade gaming memory of all time.
Hell yeah.
Growing up in Florida, I had the standard consoles that many kids of the late 80's/early 90's enjoyed: the NES and SNES. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve going over to a new friend's house for the first time and getting to play all of the games he had amassed over holidays and birthdays. Needless to say, most young kids during that time spent most of their gaming time on home consoles.
It was on the weekends, however, that I led a completely different gaming lifestyle. At the ripe age of seven, I was in arcades competing against teenagers and men over twice my age in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I would frequent several arcades in the area (yes, kids, there used to be a wealth of arcades to choose from in the 90's), and each one usually had a fighting game that I played competitively. My love for arcade fighting games continued all the way until the sudden decline of the arcade scene, when I had to watch all of the arcades in my city shut their doors one-by-one.
Inescapable nature of change aside, I would like to share with you my favorite arcade memory from my childhood:
Mortal Kombat II was the first game I can remember being super-hyped for as a young kid. My older friend had introduced me to the first Mortal Kombat on the SNES, and all it took was a feature article on the upcoming sequel in EGM to set my young imagination ablaze. Reptile, as a hidden character in the original, was my favorite character. Before MKII was ever even a known possibility to me, I was drawing Reptile in my notebooks, writing up movelists and fatalities for him as if he were a playable character. I was so into fighting games back then that I used to create rudimentary game design documents for the dream games that existed in my mind, complete with full movesets, character bios, and even concept art. The EGM article went into detail about a lot of the new features in the game, but none of them stuck out as much as their vivid description of Reptile's head-chomp fatality. For one, that was when I realized that Reptile would be playable in the sequel, and that was enough to blow my seven-year-old mind. Secondly, the fatality sounded fucking awesome!
After picking up the EGM for myself, I read that article countless times, never thinking to look for some kind of release date within the write-up. So my family went to Michigan for Christmas a month or two later, and we went to a local mall to kill some time before a movie during our first day there. As was the case with practically every American shopping mall in the 90's, this mall had an arcade. I went in there, expecting to kill a few minutes on some ticket games... and that's when I saw it. There was a small crowd of people around an arcade cabinet that was emanating music and sound effects that reminded me of Mortal Kombat. I squeezed my slender, seven-year-old frame between two of the onlookers and saw two players going at it: Reptile vs Sub-Zero. It was fucking Mortal Kombat II. I watched in awe as Sub-Zero unleashed his new ground freeze move among other new intricacies, and just seeing someone control Reptile (complete with his own unique moveset this time) put me into a state of euphoria. This was the sense of discovery that existed for a kid in the pre-Internet days of the early-to-mid 90's.
And just when I thought I couldn't be more excited, the player controlling Reptile won and did his head-munch fatality. It was right after seeing this, the coolest thing ever, that my mom grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me away from the machine. The movie was going to start soon, so all of my family was waiting for me. I pleaded with my mom to let me stay, but she declined. It was only through more pleading that she agreed to let me go back to the arcade once the movie was over. I can't remember what movie we saw that day, but I can tell you that it was the longest hour-and-a-half of my young life.
When we got out of the movie, I only got to play one match against someone who handily whooped my ass with Kitana before we had to leave the mall. I would go on to play plenty of Mortal Kombat II over the course of the next year via frequent trips to the mall near my house, but that first, unexpected glimpse was my favorite arcade gaming memory of all time.
Hell yeah.
) I played the entirety of Giga Wing with a friend while another friend ran and got more tokens.
