Posted by JP4 on 9, 2000 at 4:55 AM:
In Reply to: HardCore Gamer Stories posted by Phydeaux Brigands on 9, 2000 at 12:31 AM:
For the longest time, there were NO arcade games in the town I grew up in. Of course, I'd be ecstatic whenever one my friends' birthday party was at Showbiz Pizza, and I would badger the crap out of my parents to take us out to eat at the nearest Pizza Hut (which had a cocktail Galaxian and Ms. Pac Man), but there weren't any games within bike-riding distance.
I don't know how we happened to find this out, but myself and the kid across the street from me learned that this seedy bar (which was a mere 2 mile bike ride) had a video game! Sure enough, around mid-afternoon one day, we slunk in the door and found a cocktail Asteroids Deluxe! We thought that we were the shit.
And when I say "seedy", I mean it. These were hardcore drunks slamming 'em down at 2:00pm. The bartender sees us - these 12-year-old kids in his bar dorking around - and he flipped out. But we someone cajoled him into letting us stay. I think that we just promised him on our mother's graves that we would NOT get in the way of anyone there, and that we'd fly out the back door if any cops came in. I don't know how we did it, but he let us stay. Yay!
We didn't venture back in there though, for fear of getting the crap beaten out of us. I've always wanted to go back into that bar (yeah, it's still there) just on the hopes that Asteroids Deluxe table - MY Asteroids Deluxe table - is still there.
-JP4