Demise Of The Video Game Arcade
What a coincidence, I was thinking for the past week to write about my video game arcade experience when I was a teenager, then I stumbled on Wil Wheaton's blog about the demise of the video game arcades.
I was in Puerto Rico at the time, between 1978 and 1980, when I was an arcade junky in Aguadilla Mall. We were living in el Munequin (a 16 story high-rise apartment building) on the 11th floor, apartment 1106.
Next to the building is the Aguadilla Mall, on the number 2 highway. There is a new wing across the number 2 now, as well. In the Mall's movie theater I saw movies like "Clash Of The Titans," "Super Man," "Mad Max," and all those great movies of the late 70s and early 80s. Those were the good old days!
But I digress.
What I really wanted to say and write about is that the video game arcade for me died in Philadelphia, PA. Most of the kids hanging out at the arcade at the time in center city were there to jump on the naive shits like me to steal any money we had left! Money that I needed to take the bus back home, or to buy a hot dog, or ice cream if it was summer. I don't think management gave a shit either about what was going on outside, even if it was perpetrated by the arcade's most visibly known customers. In the end my friends and I just stayed away, and the arcade quickly disappeared from our lives. In a year we were going nuts with the home video game consoles, the Commodore 64, and the Atari 8-bit computers–a new and exciting phase in our lives was starting.