What's the hardest type of nostalgia to recreate?

[Keatah]

What's the hardest aspect of classic computing and retrogaming to recreate these days? What flavor of nostalgia is difficult to recreate, so to speak?

 

I find BBS'ing most difficult and rather annoying. Land lines are all but becoming extinct and hard to find. Even harder to find is anyone running a vintage BBS using real modems. And while there are some telnet "powered" boards, it's still not the same.

 

Not the same as when you pulse-dialed out on a 300-baud modem, in the pre-WarGames days, and listened to primitive negotiation tones and carriers. Yeh yeh I know 300 baud didn't really negotiate anything except maybe Answer/Originate, and that would've been pre-determined as the call was made.

Great fun, getting dropped into another world that was both existent and non-existent as the modem noise went quiet and the text scrolled left-to-right slower than reading pace.

 

All the long nights reading astronomy books, and eating junk food, and awaiting your first caller as a virgin Sysop.. hoping they're bringing warez or special utilities and gamez that did seemingly magic tricks with your computer, somehow, vaguely. Making mix-tapes and playing games on a console or 2nd computer (if your were super lucky to have one)

 

While, yes, with the internet we can blast disk images around the world instantly to anyone, there's great nostalgia in doing it old-school with those rickety and temperamental modems!

 

---

 

Recreating that seems rather difficult today. The internet got in the way!

 

[spacecadet]

Yeah, I've been thinking about BBS's and also ddial/cchat lately. I was heavily into both of those scenes in the 80's, but I don't know of any way to really recreate it. I have thought about trying out some of the few remaining BBS's that are now on the internet, but I just haven't bothered figuring out how to do it, especially on old hardware. (I would think you could do it with an Apple IIGS and a Uthernet card, but not sure and I don't have one of those anyway.) Doing it on new hardware really just wouldn't be the same.

 

I started thinking about this again just a few days ago when I got my Atari 800 setup that clearly originally had an acoustic modem with it - I got the power supply that says "for use only with the Atari 830 modem" and also the Atari 850 interface that has nothing else to connect to it, but no modem. I was disappointed! But then I thought, "what the hell am I going to do with an acoustic modem these days?" I don't know if I could use it even if I wanted to. It's not like I have one of those old Bell phones lying around, or POTS wiring to connect one to. I also now have two external Hayes-compatible 1200 baud modems but I'm not sure what there is to dial into, and I'm not sure they even work over VOIP.

 

My use of forums directly grew out of my use of BBS's back in the day; I've just always been doing this! But it's obviously a lot different now. There's no real analog (so to speak) to ddial anymore, which is just amazing. I guess the closest is twitter, which is definitely a lot bigger, but it's less immediate. It's funny that we've actually gone backwards in that way. You used to type something and instantly it would appear on everyone else's screen. Now you have to wait until twitter decides to refresh, which makes having a conversation that way basically impossible. As a teenager, ddial was basically how I communicated with all my friends. I completely stopped using phones once ddial appeared.

 

I think a few ddials do still exist too, but not local to me, which was the whole point. I don't have interest in talking to people in Chicago. My thing in the 80's was talking to my actual friends online who I'd see regularly. I still use Facebook sort of in that way, but again the immediacy is not there.

[CaptainBreakout]

The hardest type of nostalgia to recreate? Hmm. That's a thought provoking one.

 

I got one... Being 'stuck' with a game.

 

It's probably happened to all of us... Once upon a time. You've got a console or even a computer with a limited number of titles. You've played them all... And Xmas/Birthday is still X months away.

 

What I mean is, some console or even computer games I grew to like because it was just way too much of a hassle and expense to get something new. Those tired old bargin bin carts got a lot more spins then they probably would have if there was any kind of instant on-demand options available back then... The kind of thing we enjoy today.

 

A friend of mine at my work got caught in her car in a snow drift in an obscure road. There was a blizzard and it covered her car and the road. She was stuck there for about two weeks... Nobody knew where she was and pretty much everyone thought she was dead. She survived as she happened to have a ton of food and provisions with her. ANYWAYS, she only had one book... 'Still Life with Woodpecker' by Tom Robbins (just texted her to confirm the title). She read that book six times before her rescue. Needless to say she's got a special relationship with that book.

 

That's an extreme example of the situation a lot of us found ourselves in with our choice of carts for our consoles. So there ya have it.

 

I can remember giving the old stack of 10 or so Atari, then Nes, then Genesis, and then SNES games a sneer after I already felt I had my honeymoon with all of them. Still, I would always pop in one that I felt I was the least tired of and try it again.

 

I remember feeling the same way with my Apple II library, which existed concurrent with my console options, but it seemed to occupy a different headspace. What baffles me looking back is that I had maybe two orders of magnitude more games for the Apple then I did for any console... Yet I still felt I 'used em up' for the most part in terms of me feeling them worthy of my attention.

 

It made me feel like a record store owner who can't find anything he wants to listen to on his store shelves. Is there a name for this effect?

 

Back to the limited cart thing.

 

Some of the carts and games I had got WAY more play then they would have gotten if I had had easy access to something new. I'll list a few in my case just for a trip down memory lane for me.

 

Anyways my point being that with instant access, I wouldn't have played any of the games below half as much as I would have otherwise, and fitting with your theme, I think that's kind of a hard bubble to recreate these days.

 

Here's those titles of games I developed a special relationship with due to them being the titles that were always playable even though I wished I had something newer/better...

 

APPLE II

Kid Niki

Beachhead I and II

Spiderbot

Spare Change

Black Magic

Drelbs

Adventure Construction Set

Sky Fox

Warlock

Columns GS

One Arm Battle

Plunder

Milestone

Captain Goodnight

Agent USA

... Probably more

 

Atari

ET

Beany Bopper

Snoopy vs the Red Baron

Hero

Pitfall

Space Attack

Defender

Adventure

Strategy X

Star Master

Laser Blast

Berzerk

Venture

Bowling

Star Fox

 

NES

Blaster Master

Metroid

Balloon Fight

A Boy and his Blob

Xexyz

Faxanadu

Final Fantasy

3d world Runner

Any MegaMan

 

Genesis

Thunder Force III

Star Control

Golden Axe

Toejam and Earl

 

 

SNES

Actraiser

Super Mario All-Stars

Street Fighter II

 

PC

Star Control 2

Doom

Several Apogee demos

A gravitatar clone

Tubular Worlds

One must fall (demo)

Master of Orion

Command and Conquer

Warcraft II

Mech warrior II

Novastorm

Diablo

Vikings

... This is about in my life when the internet started making the scene change to the point where other games were available very quickly.

 

Still, now... I don't really play new games. Maybe I trained myself to make the best of a limited palette now that I think about it.

 

So I hope you enjoyed my take on this.

Edited June 2, 2018 by CaptainBreakout

[Flojomojo]

Experiencing (or figuring out) something for the first time is almost impossible to recreate.

 

You can buy everything you had a kid, and set it up in the exact same way, and you can even invite the same friends to share it with you, but you'll never get back the thrill of that Christmas morning, or solving that tricky puzzle after so many tries, or the satisfaction of earning enough cash to get the thing you wanted for a long time.

 

It's also pretty hard to see things thru the eyes of a kid again when you're older.

 

Better to give to others, teach new kids new skills, hang with them and experience new worlds together.

 

I wonder if anyone from my high school is arranging a 30th reunion this summer? It won't be me, I'm too busy living in the present to look back in that way.

[7800fan]

Experiencing (or figuring out) something for the first time is almost impossible to recreate.

 

This many times over. I Still enjoy playing original Zelda or Super Metroid but there isn't any new mystery for me to find having done 100% run on both levels and even tried a difficult 3-hearts wooden sword only clear on both level or no extra energy tanks on Super Metroid. The first 6 Ultima games (well except for U2, it sucked) were the same way. Spent many hours on my C64 (about half of those just waiting for the damn game to load) and checking every NPC, getting every clue, drawing map, and solving it. Not too long ago I played U5 for the first time in a few years and it was finished in just a few hours because I already knew everything I needed to know.

 

I can still remember the first time I played the game. Having to figure out the riddle (which was often poorly translated and confusing back in the day), no internet to get clue or help, and I had lots of fun solving them.

 

I wish there was a way to selectively forget one entire game completely so I could actually re-discover all the secrets there are to find.

[AMenard]

Running my first Basic program designed and coded by myself. It was a character sheet and random monster creator AD&D utility. I coded it on my Atari 130XE and it printed out the generated characters or monster on my 1027 printer.

[Tanooki]

BBS's, legitimately stuck in the pre-gamefaqs era, simple (basic) coding languages are good calls. I do miss some times with Legend of the Red Dragon. And I do miss the ability to experience a game again for the first time, because unless you're amnesiatic even decades of loss you'll still start to remember some stuff in flashes.

 

For me I think I'll take it another direction, but it's more cost and space barrier more than anything else. The Arcade experience, at least at the cabinet level. Sure you can get some dopey iCade / Multicade mini PCB device in some weird cab with a LCD in it, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm speaking of owning a legitimate arcade cabinet, multi (like a few of those 2in1s or the Neo-Geo) or stand alone -- and I'll throw pinball in there too. You really can not recreate that stuff accurately at all without some serious expense in many cases. Sure you may be able to resurrect something dead buying it in pieces, or a deal with dumb luck, but for most it's a lost art you'll have to make up using some barcade, multicade, pi-box on a tv, or some other form of emulation and it's not the same. Sure they look and feel samey enough, but it's not the same.

 

And if that experience further goes into the smell and look of things, weird 80s carpet, dim lighting mixed maybe with some neon, the stench of hotdogs nachos and failure, some 80s music in the background, or at least the sound of a couple dozen machines going at it. If that has to be part of it for you, you're likely just out of luck. Well unless you're loaded and convert a basement, or open up a modern barcade establishment and maintain dozens of machines but that's rare.

[Tempest]

For me Id say its enjoying a crappy game because its all you have. Theres just no way to recreate that without artificial limits because Im an adult and I can buy as many games as I want. Why spend time with crappy or average games when you have a multicart or a stack of better games? Back in the day I loved all the games I had because I only had a few so even the crappy ones got played constantly. Theres just no way to recreate that.

[Flojomojo]

For me Id say its enjoying a crappy game because its all you have. Theres just no way to recreate that without artificial limits because Im an adult and I can buy as many games as I want. Why spend time with crappy or average games when you have a multicart or a stack of better games? Back in the day I loved all the games I had because I only had a few so even the crappy ones got played constantly. Theres just no way to recreate that.

Especially if you live with Responsible Adult Syndrome, which means you have more money than time in inverse proportions from when you were a kid. Age is cruel.

[fiddlepaddle]

Chess by telegram? ENIAC wargames?

Edited June 3, 2018 by fiddlepaddle

[CaptainBreakout]

For me Id say its enjoying a crappy game because its all you have. Theres just no way to recreate that without artificial limits because Im an adult and I can buy as many games as I want. Why spend time with crappy or average games when you have a multicart or a stack of better games? Back in the day I loved all the games I had because I only had a few so even the crappy ones got played constantly. Theres just no way to recreate that.

Thank you Tempest. That is very succinctly what I was trying to get across in my post. Moreover, I wanted to express that a mediocre game had a chance to actually make a lasting impression on a player when they were stuck in that situation.

[Keatah]

Yeah, I've been thinking about BBS's and also ddial/cchat lately. I was heavily into both of those scenes in the 80's, but I don't know of any way to really recreate it. I have thought about trying out some of the few remaining BBS's that are now on the internet, but I just haven't bothered figuring out how to do it, especially on old hardware. (I would think you could do it with an Apple IIGS and a Uthernet card, but not sure and I don't have one of those anyway.) Doing it on new hardware really just wouldn't be the same.

 

I started thinking about this again just a few days ago when I got my Atari 800 setup that clearly originally had an acoustic modem with it - I got the power supply that says "for use only with the Atari 830 modem" and also the Atari 850 interface that has nothing else to connect to it, but no modem. I was disappointed! But then I thought, "what the hell am I going to do with an acoustic modem these days?" I don't know if I could use it even if I wanted to. It's not like I have one of those old Bell phones lying around, or POTS wiring to connect one to. I also now have two external Hayes-compatible 1200 baud modems but I'm not sure what there is to dial into, and I'm not sure they even work over VOIP.

 

You can buy POTS line simulator boxes for a couple a hundred bucks. They simulate ringtone, dialtone, and line voltages and other sounds. They are made exactly for "testing" old-school phones and modems. You can also build a line-level simulator, something that provides the voltage of a POTS line and just wire the two modems together. You'll need to manually connect them as they won't auto-answer or dial out with the simple $5 LLS.

 

There's the WiModem232, which plugs into the serial port of your classic computer and can "call" a BBS through the internet.

 

You can set up 2 emulators on the same (or different) computers and have the the emulators talk to each other. You can use Comm0comm to help that happen. Or use TCPIP in Applewin.

 

And then you can tel-net into BBS'es, too, but that's no fun.

 

1200 might be the upper limit of what you can connect over voip. I had 300 baud working though.

 

 

The hardest type of nostalgia to recreate? Hmm. That's a thought provoking one.

 

I got one... Being 'stuck' with a game.

[..]

... This is about in my life when the internet started making the scene change to the point where other games were available very quickly.

 

Still, now... I don't really play new games. Maybe I trained myself to make the best of a limited palette now that I think about it.

 

So I hope you enjoyed my take on this.

 

I did.

 

Back in that Apple II era I had two or three flight simulator programs. A2-FS1 had the most and best detail and framerates. And I liked the genre a lot. So I played the heck out of it testing the limits of the flight model. Trying to make it do a loop-da-loop! The manual I think was ambiguous on that and what the aerobatic limits of the nose heavy Sopwith Camel were. So I must have spent hours and days trying my damnedest, only to keep failing. Later I discovered (read someplace) it was a limitation of the flight dynamics engine and that the simulation would never let you do a 360 vertical loop. But, still, I learned so much about absolute and rate control how airplanes worked. The manual was really well written and Stars, Stripes, and Banners way above any consumer product manual of today.

 

I also spent hours and many a-night mapping out the "terrain" off-world. By flying off the grid/world you could see some artifacting or stray lines. I thought I bagged the cat's ass doing that even though it was mentioned in the manual.

 

I first discovered this program in the Compu-Shop located in the strip mall off of Golf Rd. and Arlington Heights Rd. That was back in 1979 and I just ABSOLUTELY had to get an Apple II. That's all there was to it. I could finally learn how Captain Bullet did his job!

 

And today I love the genre. Both for aircraft and spacecraft alike.

 

Experiencing (or figuring out) something for the first time is almost impossible to recreate.

 

You can buy everything you had a kid, and set it up in the exact same way, and you can even invite the same friends to share it with you, but you'll never get back the thrill of that Christmas morning, or solving that tricky puzzle after so many tries, or the satisfaction of earning enough cash to get the thing you wanted for a long time.

 

It's also pretty hard to see things thru the eyes of a kid again when you're older.

 

Better to give to others, teach new kids new skills, hang with them and experience new worlds together.

 

I wonder if anyone from my high school is arranging a 30th reunion this summer? It won't be me, I'm too busy living in the present to look back in that way.

 

Whenever I pick up my modern-day DSLR it's not that hard to imagine and feel like I'm back in the 80's with my first SLR. Though going back further to my 110 pocket camera from the 70's is rather elusive.

 

I also don't give a rat's ass about reunions and other crap like that. Reunions are just contests or self-reassuring to see who became what and did what. I likely didn't hang around (you) in school, so why would I care to do so now? And I don't care what (your) brood grew up to be either.

 

I wish there was a way to selectively forget one entire game completely so I could actually re-discover all the secrets there are to find.

 

There is. Contract some sort of memory disorder or brain disease. And what's old is new again!

[omegadot]

Freshness, focus, and time.

 

Chrono Trigger was big for me. My cousin had it and I'd never played a game like it where the graphics, music, and battle system were so good (to me) It was also fun because we took turns playing for like 3 straight days. I can buy Chrono Trigger now that I'm a big boy with a job but I can't recreate any of that very reliably.

 

Just accepting that has caused me to change how I collect these things. I've started to enjoy the surrounding media a lot more and just get ports of the games. I find the net payoff to be greater. If I happen to get the time, I focus on enjoying it, not what I'm playing or how.

[Flojomojo]

Freshness is a good word for it. One other facet of your Chrono Trigger story is how you played it when SNES graphics and sound were state of the art. I like 16-bit aesthetics but I'm unlikely to be wowed be that game like you were as kids -- even if I come in fresh to the experience because I haven't played it before. As much as I know I "should" play that game because everyone loves it, I know it's going to be a retro JRPG which will inflict repetition and grind on my fragile little brain. Even though I want to.

 

So I do the opposite, which is "social RPG" on mobile, a little bit a few times a day, because that's how the monetization drives the design. I wonder how this will monkey with player expectations such that a self contained JRPG is just an oddity like 78RPM jitterbug records?

[+x=usr(1536)]

What's the hardest aspect of classic computing and retrogaming to recreate these days? What flavor of nostalgia is difficult to recreate, so to speak?

Valid nostaligia.

 

What I mean by this is nostalgia that isn't a pre-packaged marketing exercise designed to pander to someone's nostalgia for <insert item here>.

 

There's no easy way to do this because it's really difficult to make an appeal to nostalgia on the basis of being genuine and having it not feeling forced or cynical. I think that the NES mini was a good example of doing this right: it wasn't trying to be something it wasn't, but it did do a good job of saying, "hey, here's a device that might remind you of one you had when you were younger. It's not the same thing, but there's still room to enjoy it and relive some of the memories that are important to you."

 

 

I find BBS'ing most difficult and rather annoying. Land lines are all but becoming extinct and hard to find. Even harder to find is anyone running a vintage BBS using real modems.

 

I'm doing this using a real modem and VoIP; it's effectively the same as a landline BBS. Details on the hardware / software stacks I'm using for this are here. And I need to update some of the info in that thread; the modem hardware has changed.

 

BTW: I'm able to consistently pull 9600bps in testing with occasional connections at 14.4Kbps.

 

And while there are some telnet "powered" boards, it's still not the same.

 

Not the same as when you pulse-dialed out on a 300-baud modem, in the pre-WarGames days, and listened to primitive negotiation tones and carriers. Yeh yeh I know 300 baud didn't really negotiate anything except maybe Answer/Originate, and that would've been pre-determined as the call was made.

 

Great fun, getting dropped into another world that was both existent and non-existent as the modem noise went quiet and the text scrolled left-to-right slower than reading pace.

 

All the long nights reading astronomy books, and eating junk food, and awaiting your first caller as a virgin Sysop.. hoping they're bringing warez or special utilities and gamez that did seemingly magic tricks with your computer, somehow, vaguely. Making mix-tapes and playing games on a console or 2nd computer (if your were super lucky to have one)

 

While, yes, with the internet we can blast disk images around the world instantly to anyone, there's great nostalgia in doing it old-school with those rickety and temperamental modems!

 

---

 

Recreating that seems rather difficult today. The internet got in the way!

Totally agreed on all of the above.

 

Coming back to the nostalgia point as it relates to BBSing: this is why my project is running on modern hardware and software. Time moves on, and I know that certain things (like landlines) are going the way of the dodo. In that world, I can't make a 100% complete version of what we grew up with - but I can at least give anyone who never got to experience BBSing a very close taste of what it was like, and let anyone seeking to relive a bit of nostalgia an avenue for doing that.

 

But I will not claim that this is totally, completely, and utterly authentically what it was like BITD. It's not, and I'd be lying to both myself and others if I tried to say that it is. This is a large part of what I mean by 'valid nostalgia': it accepts that nostalgia and memory are not necessarily the same thing, and that it's OK for one to be a little different to the other as long as they're both honest about it.

[7800fan]

There is. Contract some sort of memory disorder or brain disease. And what's old is new again!

 

Unfortunately a lot of diseases aren't selective in what to forget. I'd rather forget what I knew about the games I loved to play, not forget my own family that I still love!

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I'd probably say the sort of social nostalgia that requires other people and intangible things like websites, message boards, and chat groups that no longer exist. BBS was a little before my time but I still have a lot of nostalgia for my first experiences getting online with a computer, which would have been around 1995 to 1997.

 

These days I could go build a old beige box HP Windows 95 PC with a 56K dialup modem like I had growing up, and I could find an old version of Netscape Navigator that would run on it, and if I searched really hard I might even be able to find an internet service provider in my area that still offers landline modem services. But even if I did all that the websites I frequented and social groups that I loved participating in back then are almost all long gone.

 

All the Yahoo groups I visited and chatted in every day, AOL Instant Messanger, the endless sea of GeoCities sites, and more than anything just the vibe of the internet at the time. There weren't that many people online in the mid 90's and back then everyone who was seemed a lot more intelligent, kind, and friendly than many of the people you run into online today.

 

I've always chalked it up to the fact that you had to be reasonably intelligent to even get online in the 90's, since setting up a modem and getting internet service wasn't exactly a simple affair at that point in time, but who can say really. What I do know is that internet culture was so different back then than it is now, and that's something you just can't recreate with any amount of vintage computer hardware.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Jin

[Silverfleet]

There are two things I can't recreate in 2018:

 

Rental Stores

When I was a kid, every Friday night after school, I would go with my dad to the local video rental store and rent a couple NES or Genesis games to play for the weekend. I had their rental rack practically memorized, and I'd spend all day thinking about what I was going to bring home to play. Some of my favorite games were discovered from renting them at this store! The store (and basically all other video rental stores) went the way of the dinosaur, but every time I drive by where that store was, I get hit with the feels. If you told me that I would be nostalgic for this when I was a kid, even with the availability of 5 rental stores' worth of games and emulators that will play entire console libraries at the click of a button, I would have laughed. But here we are.

 

The All-Nighter

Back in high school, a friend of mine let me borrow Chrono Trigger on the SNES. It was during the summer, and I had a few days off from work. I popped it in around 6pm with nothing to do one night, and what do you know... next time I looked at the clock, it was 6AM!!! I slept for a little while and then went back to playing. Within a few days, I had the game finished. It sounds lame, and I feel like a total loser for thinking this, but that marathon session with Chrono Trigger changed my gaming life. I hadn't played a JRPG quite like that before, and while others came and went, I'll always remember the 1st. It remains my favorite game of all time, and I've played through it countless times over the years.

 

Why can't I replicate it? I'm now 36, married, and have responsibilities. I can't take 3 days off from work to marathon a game. Hell, my wife went away last weekend, and I TRIED to do this, and ended up just getting tired and just went to bed!

[DustyKramKram]

I don't necessarily try to recreate this for myself, but the smell of my childhood bedroom where I spent most of my time gaming is a big factor in capturing that old feeling. Every so often I'll catch a whiff of that odd and specific combination of smells and it takes me right back. If I managed to experience that while gaming, I might just die of a nostalgia overdose.

[Keatah]

The smell of those small office-like computer stores on a hot day was pretty awesome. Especially when they had the air conditioner going. Any self-respecting fat kid would rather stay in there rather than go out BMX'ing.

[spacecadet]

There is one really specific memory I have that's almost singlehandedly what converted me from an Apple to a PC guy and that I don't think it's possible to recreate, and that was the first time I heard the *sound* of an IBM PC at my friend's house. My computer didn't have any fans and neither did the Vic 20, Atari 8 bits or other popular computers of that time. My friend's dad had his IBM PC set up in his den or something and he let us go in there and use it. I remember the lighting was very dark, the room was very quiet and when he turned on the PC, the fan inside just softly filled the room with this beautiful, calm white noise. The combination of dim lighting, the adult room and it being the first time I'd ever heard a home computer with a fan gave it kind of an unfamiliar, mystical feeling, like I was experiencing something meant for someone with knowledge and riches beyond my understanding. I remember me and my friend were actually whispering to each other because it felt like the way we were supposed to act in the presence of such a computer.

 

Of course I've had plenty of PC's with fans in them since then but for one, you can never re-experience something for the first time, and that was a big part of that feeling I had. Nothing else I've had has sounded quite like the original PC either; over time computers have required more and more cooling so my current PC is a lot louder. I'm sure it's possible to build a PC that sounds just like the IBM 5150, but it would take some trial and error and I've never intentionally gone for that. And it wouldn't be the same feeling anyway; I have an IBM 5150 of my own now and I don't get the same feeling hearing it now. It's one of those "you had to be there" things.

[VectorGamer]

It's difficult to re-create the arcade of the early 80s with 80s hair, 80s music, 80s fashion and only games from the early 80s.

[+frankodragon]

The way bowling alleys were in the 80s. That smell when you'd walk into the entrance hallway, part of it would be the lingering cigarette smoke and part smell from cooking burgers and fries from the bar and grill along with that other familiar smell like in department stores. The panel above the pins would be lit up with those planets and stars with the Brunswick logo at the side. The arcade machines near the alley all back-to-back each other. One would be Ms. Pac-Man another Q*Bert and the jukebox nearby.

 

Now that there's Wii bowling, it's pretty much staying at home instead.

[+Spriggy]

Being Gen-X, recreating those tense 2600, late night/early morning, covert ninja gaming sessions, hoping the old man doesn't wake-up and find me in my jammies, sitting cross-legged with CX40 in hand, volume at zero, within the glorious glow of the wood-framed TV!

 

In general, as Flojo and others have alluded too or touched on, recreating those 1st memories and experiences!

[Silverfleet]

The way bowling alleys were in the 80s. That smell when you'd walk into the entrance hallway, part of it would be the lingering cigarette smoke and part smell from cooking burgers and fries from the bar and grill along with that other familiar smell like in department stores. The panel above the pins would be lit up with those planets and stars with the Brunswick logo at the side. The arcade machines near the alley all back-to-back each other. One would be Ms. Pac-Man another Q*Bert and the jukebox nearby.

 

Now that there's Wii bowling, it's pretty much staying at home instead.

 

Man, you just reminded me of the long-gone bowling alley near my childhood home: the East Weymouth Bowl-A-Wey in Weymouth, MA. In the richest of New England traditions, it was a candlepin-only alley. It was a long, brick building, and someone spray painted "SOX '86 AL EAST CHAMPS" on the front in white spray paint, which they never bothered to clean off. The place was admittedly a dump (as most of them were), but they always had awesome arcade games! I played Roadblasters, Rastan, Final Fight, TMNT, and more for the first time there. Also, EVERYONE in my area had at least one birthday party there growing up. The "Party Room" was this sparse, rectangular room with a long, orange Formica table in the middle, and they always, and as far as I know, only, served cheese pizza. Everything in there was red, orange, and brown, and woodgrain.

 

Today, it's a parking lot. There's zero photo evidence on the interwebs of it's existence.

 

Hell, going even further back was another long-defunct bowling alley in Hull, MA that is now the site of a fancy hotel. It was even more of a dump, but it was the site of my discovery of arcade games. There, I played my first stand-up arcade game: Moon Patrol. I was small enough that I needed a step stool! That game remains a favorite to this day.