Into the aracade Part 4
Arcaders are a passionate bunch. They fall roughly into two camps. The casuals that wander around with a pocket full of change, eyes bouncing from marquee to marquee, ears tuned to the loudest of machinery and you can't blame them, I mean who could resist Discs of Tron at full volume? Especially when it's the step in version, bathed in blue neon and black light, a vision of the MCP in the distance and Saak booming “GREETINGS! The MCP has chosen you to serve on the game grid…”
Then there are the hard core gamers whose initials are burnt into the phosphor week in and week out and the only real chance anyone has to see their tag at the top is to get there super early, just after the arcade comes to life, and the machines switch on for the first time that day in a blaze of electrons and ozone.
Hardcore gamers demand a lot out of the machines. They are intense and not afraid to let it out. Slapping a joystick or mashing a button to within an inch of its life, only to smack the side (open palm of course, and out of sight of the change guy) of their favorite machine as the last life falls.
Inevitably, the components get worn from this rough handling and things start to break down. Joysticks wont go left, buttons wont register every time and as a result word gets round and the machine stops being used, except maybe by the odd casual. This is probably the way the owner actually knows his machines are broken as no one has the courage to tell him.
If a machine was up for repair, we were all in a Schrodinger's cat state of being. If it was too hard or costly to repair, say it was more than a dead fire button, then it could be returned to the manufacturer and that meant only two things. It was going to be great and the machine that was replacing it was better than before (Ms. Pacman, Moon Patrol, Burger Time, Mappy) or it was going to suck (Claw machine, ticket machine, Mikie… holy cow that game sucked) The relief of seeing a decent game taking up that clean and unsticky square of carpet was as good as an ice cold coke in a glass bottle.
Of course the casuals didn't care or notice any of this, it was the regulars that knew their arcade and the games within it and when one game fell and was replaced by a generic cash grab (or Mikie!) we all felt it together while the casual fed the monster, however if we were lucky and the stars were right, we got a classic, we got a new game that reset the high score table and created heroes.
This is how I discovered MR DO! And through the kindness of an elite gamer, learned how to get past the fourth board.
Nyx
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