Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Replay-Old School Arcade Games

Trying to do things with my kids. Its hard now that they are too old for all the little kiddo things usually offered.  Parks, cartoons movies, library reading...etc. And its hot as fuck here in Florida, so unless they are in the pool, forget about hanging around outside! both my kids, ages 9 and 13, love Museums and thrift shops...both of them are kinda old school. My 9 year old daughter, Avery, loves Joan Jett and Tracy Chapman, no new pop music...My 13 year old son, Evan, loves 80s and 90s alternative music, both kids love wearing clothes from thrift shops. 

Lucky us, I found out about this place about 30 minutes from our home called


It's full of all the old school video games like Pac Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Qbert about 50 of them and about another 50 old original pinball machines. You pay $12 to get in and then you get to play all the games for free for the whole day! Meanwhile my kids came to learn that these old games are every bit as challenging as the new games. Maybe even harder in some cases....

First of all, my kids were pretty much the only kids there. It was full of old people (like me) trying to relive their childhood. 

The kids ran around trying to figure out what to play first...Avery set her eyes on this:



Qbert! I think she was drawn to the little cute bouncy guy with the swears...I immediately told her to stay away from Qbert, as it would ruin her day. Its very frustrating and it would just piss her off! Of course, she ignores me...cause that's what she usually does. Don't tell her what to do, she is going to do whatever she wants! So go ahead, Avery, don't say I didn't warn you....





Well, she proved me wrong, she stayed glued to this game for 2 hours and made the leader board every time! 


See the Burger Time game in the background.....



BurgerTime has a special place in my heart. It was actually my very first video game I ever played. Even before Pac Man....My dad's break room at work got one of these and my dad was explaining it to us and he would always be taking quarters to work...so one day, my mom drove us to my dads work to we could see what all the fuss was about. It was amazing and we stayed for hours, my brother and I, making burger patties and avoiding the enemy, a hot dog. To be able to play this again, and expose my kids to this, was so awesome!

Now MY game was always Centipede.



This is the game I spend all my money on as a kid and guess what? IT IS STILL EVERY BIT AS AWESOME AS I REMEMBERED IT! God, I love this game! If I could afford it, I would own this game and find somewhere in my house to put it and I would just play all day until my fingers decomposed.


Even though there are a lot of 2 player games, we tried to find a game that all three of us could play. And this was it:



Michael Jacksons Moonwalker. Here is how the game is played: We were all Michaels, just with different colored clothes. So we would all just moonwalk around and then shot mafia robots, and at anytime we felt the groove coming on, we would press the "Dance" button and everything we stop and a spotlight would come down on us and we would dance. It served no purpose. But for some reason we really enjoyed this game. Couldn't stop laughing at the ridiculousness.

Meanwhile Avery was being a game hog on Qbert, so every once in awhile I would have her step away to see if anyone else wanted to play, actually, no one ever did, I guess they knew how frustrating it was. I just felt it was good courtesy to give other people a chance. 
Not everyone felt that way....
From the time we arrived, until many hours later a 50-something lady hogged Pacman the whole time! And that is THE game! Pretty rude, I'd say...My son was getting really pissed off, needless to say, he eventually got right behind her, "go left now!" and "get the cherries!" and "run, run run, the ghosts are coming!" He started barking all sorts of orders two inches from her head....  until she got so pissed, she just got up (finally) and left the game. My son played it for 2 minutes and said "this sucks, too hard"......hahaha


I highly recommend this place, something new and different for the tech savvy video playing pokeman go catching glued to their phones generation, to see where it all started and how much fun they still are!

Here is the final run down of the favorite games:

Avery: Qbert was her favorite (of course)
Evan: BurgerTime was his favorite
Me: CENTIPEDE!

We also did play several pinball machines and those were also fun and addictive. But we gravitated more to the video games. 

If you ever go, or have already experienced this place, let me know what you think?


What was your favorite video game?

7 comments:

  1. If I win the lotto I will buy you the Centipede game, OK???

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  2. My 8 year old is a pinball fiend so he loves that place too. Just don't go on the weekend- it's super packed, at least this past Saturday was anyway!

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    1. yea...we figured the weekends would be ugly. We went on a weekday and it was not too bad at all....except the pacman lady...

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  3. The Leepa Rattner Museum in Tarpon has an interactive pinball exhibit right now that's much cheaper (kids under 17 free)so I think we're going to stick with while it's open.

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    1. https://www.leeparattner.com/explore/exhibitions-on-view/

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    2. we went there first. they only have 2 you can play but its still a great exhibit. Thats how we met the curators and Evan is having his own art exhibit there from the 7-28th of august. We went there for the pinballs and left with an exhibition. Its such a cool museum.

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