What was Chuck E. Cheese like back in the 1980s?

[Syzygy1]

 

Every day, just in case it was someone's birthday, the wall puppets would sing the birthday song. Instead of "Happy birthday dear so-and-so" they would just sing "Happy birthday, happy birthday" which I always thought was weak, but hey, mass production.

 

I remember some reeeal obscure games showing up at times, including Gypsy Juggler and Leprechaun. That last one was by a company called Moppet, but I misread it as "Muppet" and always hoped Kermit the Frog would show up at some point. No such luck.

 

"You're the birthday you're the birthday you're the birthday boy or girl"

 

Also at the Moppet-Muppet thing, I thought the same exact thing!

[Turbo-Torch]

 

 

…I never saw a CEC that looked like this, but this room looks identical to the dining room of our (now long gone) Shakey's Pizza. Almost the same_exact_layout and decor sans the CEC stuff of course, where there was a bar counter where you got ALL of your drinks (beer, wine and soda), buffet was to the left, dining area and a game room off to the right.

 

I'll have to ask some of the natives if the Shakey's Pizza used to be a CEC BITD. Might have been!

 

I worked at a Shakey's Pizza when I was in high school and it does look 100% identical.

It's actually still there and is now a Texas Corral. Floor plan has changed a bit but much of it still the same.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Pizza grease on all the joysticks, and the ball pit reeked of urine...

Family Guy

Are you serious? Dad's gonna run the house? Hey, I can do it.
I mean, it can't be any harder than that job I used to have at the bowling alley.

Bowlarama.
Yes, we're open.
Oh, yes, we have a wide selection of balls that are way too heavy or have too-small finger holes.
Uh, no, you will not be able to do anything with your wrist for seven days afterward.
Yes, sir, all of the joysticks in the arcade are completely covered in pizza grease, no worries there.
What's that? Oh, absolutely, there is always a group of teenagers throwing the ball real hard and scaring everyone.
No, there is no smoking, but we do let you smoke.
Yes, it's all terrible, come on down.

Fun story, one of my childhood friends had a birthday there when he was 13. Way too big to be dancing around with Chucky. His face was red as a fire hydrant. I could tell he was dying of embarrassment but it was hilareous!

Edited August 23, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Hahaha, those are called C-band sat dishes. Besides Cable, VCR's, Beta, Laserdisc and CED's - THOSE were really the shit back then!

 

Oh and did_not_know you grew up in Alaska - neato!

 

dish02s.jpg

My aunt and uncle live out in the country and still have one of those. It's been in disuse for years, replaced with one of those stationary X-band dishes. The original 6-foot dish still sits outside, rusted over and covered with vines...

[Patrick Boots CEC]

*bump* Just found this topic. I was never there in the 80s but I hear it was way better than it is now..

Retro Pizza Zone and ShowbizPizza.com are 2 great resources for research.

If you have any questions you want to ask about PTT, CEC, Showbiz, or Animatronics just message me.

[Patrick Boots CEC]

When did the Skytubes get introduced?

Skytubes got introduced with the 1994-2001 remodels..In the earlier stages they featured "Ball Crawls" but they later changed that. Some stores nowadays are replacing them with Bumper Cars and a "lazer maze" game..It's Neat stuff.

[Aldo]

One thing that stands out in my mind versus how Arcades became, was the variety. Off the top of my head (I was very young back in those times) I remember seeing a Congo Bongo machine, Bubbles, Kid Niki, a Turbo machine.

 

Also, Chuck E. Cheese was where I was introduce to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. There was a huge crowd of people gathered around it watching the four people playing it.

 

What I remember most of all though, is it felt like you were lost in a maze of arcade games. Those were the days.

[Nebulon]

A kid's paradise.

 

I recall those places being packed full of great arcade games.

 

 

... that's where I saw the Star Wars vector arcade machine for the first time.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Nebulon

[Keatah]

CEC/Showbiz was a great place for kids of the 70's and early 1980's. They had a nice selection of classic games and minimal ticket dispensers. It was worthy of having itself called an "arcade". Today not so much. It's so low class it got thrown out of the ghetto even!

 

And yes, people do get sick going there. My family did. And so did the neighbor's.

 

But back in the day I clearly recall getting the Atari 400. I had the choice of going to CEC or staying home and opening up the Atari 400.

 

[Keatah]

What was it like in 1977, people who are old enough to have been living in that time?

 

It was a simpler time. Less structure. More creativity in the videogame field. Discovering telecommunications through BBS'ing and 300 baud modems. Dreaming of bringing the arcade games home. Science experiments with model rockets and RadioShack project kits. Kids could stay out till it got dark. Less helicoptering..

[Ransom]

What was it like in 1977, people who are old enough to have been living in that time?

 

Parents didn't worry about every little thing like they do now. You could play unsupervised. You could ride your bike around the neighborhood, in the street, with no helmet, knee pads, or elbow pads. Heck, it wasn't uncommon to find Dad driving down the highway at 60mph, kid next to him, no seat belts on anyone. And he probably had a cigarette going, clouds of smoke everywhere.

 

Good times.

[Keatah]

Yup. I remember doing somersaults in the back of the old Chevy, while barreling down the turnpike. Parents completely oblivious to our antics.

 

Crawling around in the sewers. BMX'ing underwater. Shooting model rockets at the neighbors houses. Converting a bathtub into a boat. Being amazed at waterproof flashlights. Running a 100 meter extension cord to the power drill we hooked up to our bikes. Gluing model airplanes together.. A time when science was still about Rocketships, Flying Saucers, and Radar Dishes. Best of times indeed.

[Aldo]

 

Parents didn't worry about every little thing like they do now. You could play unsupervised. You could ride your bike around the neighborhood, in the street, with no helmet, knee pads, or elbow pads. Heck, it wasn't uncommon to find Dad driving down the highway at 60mph, kid next to him, no seat belts on anyone. And he probably had a cigarette going, clouds of smoke everywhere.

 

Good times.

 

 

I always wore my belt, but back then cars didn't have those shoulder strap belts in the back seat. I can still remember when cars started doing that.

 

Not just Chuck E Cheese, but during the heyday it wasn't uncommon to have some random person walk up and join you in a multiplayer game. While some people would argue that Turtles wasn't really in the "heyday" I remember playing alongside two other guys who conspired to get me out of the game by eating all the pizza before me, even if they didn't need it.

[iesposta]

It was like my first job after a paper route during the end of high school.

Nolan Bushnell's pizza arcade with animatronics.

Did just about every job in the whole place over a few years.

I was amazed that the kids hugs showed that they believed that giant mouse costume was a real thing.

Oh yes, during one birthday party, I leaned too far forward and my giant mouse head fell off!

 

I set all the arcade machines to max lives and easy settings so the kids tokens could last a bit longer. That's when I first found the grasshopper sprite in arcade centipede! It's in the ROM and shows up during the self test menu, but never made it into the game. Carl's Intellivision Donkey Kong has The Lady's speech sample "help" and an end tune that he found in the Arcade ROMs that never made it into the game.

 

Did you know? Management told me a large pizza with everything used about 35¢ worth of ingredients and they got $15 for it!

Business lesson 101: Huge sell profit vs cost to the store.

[Aldo]

 

 

Did you know? Management told me a large pizza with everything used about 35¢ worth of ingredients and they got $15 for it!

Business lesson 101: Huge sell profit vs cost to the store.

 

I work at a craft store and occasionally I'll scan an item just to see how much we (the store) pays for it and how much it's sold for. The mark up is ridiculous, even a few dollars mark up would make a profit, but this is like 30 dollar items being purchased from the seller for ten bucks.

 

Anyways, I remember another story from Chuck E Cheese, although this kind of thing isn't specific to that place, but I was playing a game (Kid Niki, actually) and some kids came up to me and started telling me I was playing their game because it was on their credit. Why they put a quarter in and never played is beyond me. I wish I could remember what happened after that. I think I would have remembered if I was physically thrown off the machine. What happened is probably more mundane than that though, they probably just left after they realized I wasn't going to budge.

[Nebulon]

Yup. I remember doing somersaults in the back of the old Chevy, while barreling down the turnpike. Parents completely oblivious to our antics.

 

Crawling around in the sewers. BMX'ing underwater. Shooting model rockets at the neighbors houses. Converting a bathtub into a boat. Being amazed at waterproof flashlights. Running a 100 meter extension cord to the power drill we hooked up to our bikes. Gluing model airplanes together.. A time when science was still about Rocketships, Flying Saucers, and Radar Dishes. Best of times indeed.

Nice. I recall my cousins making a giant slingshot in the backyard out of two posts and a bunch of surgical tubing. They were lobbing potatoes over the house and into the street out front.

 

Personally, I find That 70s Show to be a pretty accurate depiction of the 70s in North America.

 

Oh, and I had to start with a 150 baud modem and work my way up to a 300 baud machine. That and the fun of test-plotting your graphics on an ordinary piece of graph paper. Yep, that's some resolution alright.

[AceHart]

Back then, it was called Show Biz Pizza where I lived... Same theme, same characters... Chuck E Cheese was just one of many characters in the small stage show.

 

 

Where we lived, it was also Show Biz Pizza - but this was the older days, before they merged with Rick Rat's. They did not have the same characters - it was a competing franchise. Rocka-fire Explosion FTW. Aaron Fletcher is trying to keep it alive, but I think with little success.

http://engineeringcreative.com/

[Syzygy1]

On 7/27/2015 at 8:03 PM, Syzygy1 said:

I had a grudge against Ninja Gaiden back in the day so when I went to CEC in 1989 (I started going in 1987) I played NG only to see the game over screen. Then I started breaking the machine. I REALLY wanted Ryu Hayabusa to die. Maybe that's because I went on the Ryu Must Die BBS so often.

OK, this didn't happen because I was faking my age back then (I was 12 when I posted that) but I have an INTERESTING story connecting Ninja Gaiden and CEC.

 

You know the game over screen I mentioned in that post, where Ryu is bound to a table about to get a buzzsaw to the chest? Well, I enjoyed that a whole lot when I was 12, and I only now realize that's probably what was responsible for my bondage fetish. Now for the CEC part of it, you know the Spider Stompin' game they used to have in the 90s? Well, judging by the cartoon boxes on the marquee, the marquee itself, and the queen spider's line when you do bad ("Well, well, well, look what we've caught!"), the spiders tie you up if you lose. Around last year I fell in love with the idea with the spiders tying up my crushes, like Cyborg from DC and more recently, Hanna-Barbera's Birdman. So because of Ryu being tied up like that, I now have an obsession with cartoon spiders from a children's redemption game tying up Victor Stone and Raymond Randall part of my bondage fetish. Yeah. Sounds about right. Thanks, Ninja Gaiden.

[RJ]

4 hours ago, Syzygy1 said:

OK...Gaiden.

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

Last time I was in a Chuck E Cheese was for one of my sister's friends birthday parties around 12 years ago... they had 2 arcade games Galaga/Ms Pacman and Mario Kart Arcade... Mario Kart was broken (the game would play but the item button was broken)… so I just spent the whole time there playing Galaga. Now there's an Aldi grocery store where the CEC used to be... lol

[Syzygy1]

On 12/31/2019 at 10:55 PM, RJ said:

 

It gets better: I have changed the Cyborg scenario so instead of the spiders tying him up, it's his arch-nemesis Grid. (In my headcanon, Grid is gay for Cyborg.) And now I've added Wolverine to the characters I'd like to see tied up in silk. But he could cut it with his sharp claws, so...

[Tempest]

TMI dude.  TMI.

[eightbit]

Funny stories about Chuck E Cheese:

 

We had one in Wayne, NJ when I was a kid and I went there for my sixth birthday (1981). It was very different than today...like a really large and busy arcade. A bunch of roughneck kids used to hang out there as well. I was wearing a baseball cap with my name on it that I think my grandmother bought me. Not sure why she would buy me a cap with my name on it, but being the kid I was I just could not understand how all of these kids there knew my name!

 

Anyway, that Chuck E Cheese didn't last much longer...maybe another 10 years? There were a lot of fights there and a lot of "element", so they shut their doors. I remember walking to the mall (we all biked or walked to the mall, didn't we?) and every day I would walk over the Chuck E Cheese sign that they took down and unceremoniously threw in the grass. Huge sign that was all cracked into pieces and became more cracked into pieces as the years went on until I would assume the new owners of that building finally picked up the pieces and threw it away.

 

And the new owners? Well, it became a "Nationwide Computer". A bunch of real sleazeballs who had a location in Wayne, NJ, one in Rockaway I think and one in NYC. I ended up getting a job there as a technician when I was out of work at the time. Met up with one of the sales guys at a local bar and he urged me to join. My first day at work I looked up and there they were. Those animatronic Chuck E Cheese figures where up high on the wall in the back. They remodeled the place into a computer store but never bothered to take them down.

 

Well, I worked there for about three years and started having problems getting a paycheck. That is, they just stopped giving me a paycheck and saying there was a payroll issue and it would take a few weeks to clear up. Then, one day, I came to work and all of the employees were standing outside peering into the windows. The owners cleared the building out overnight and took off on all of us. This time they DID take those animatronic characters!!

 

The building became a Chinese buffet and closed after a year or so in the same way. Just up and left. Now it is some kind of sushi buffet now.

 

 

The story is not exactly all Chuck E Cheese, but I figured some people might find it interesting or funny.

Edited May 8, 2020 by eightbit

[Cebus Capucinis]

I knocked myself unconscious in a CEC when I was 5-6. I remember a small amount of it, actually. I was climbing around in the tubes, and there was one up near the ceiling with a ladder leading to it (for kids to climb up and into etc.). I had gotten out of the ball pit, climbed up the slide, and was crawling my way down the tube when 5-year old brain forgot that there was a gaping hole halfway through. OSHA would be excited to see that one.

 

Anyway, plummeting down goes 5-year old me, and WHAM, I hit the ground and blackness. Woke up maybe 1-2 minutes later, I guess? Not completely sure but I remember being completely surrounded by giants (adults) who were all speaking tongues at first, sounding concerned about something....as my consciousness faded back in I remember they were worried about me and I then recognized my parents.

 

Fortunately that was in the days before massive pedo issues so I'm glad some nonce didn't see a passed out kid and stuff me in his FREE CANDY van.....

 

Not only did they not do an accident report, but no ambulance was called or anything (in modern times that would be SHOCKING and warrant a lawsuit, I'm sure, but admittedly, I was either completely fine or it has affected me to this day without my knowledge) and my parents just scraped me off the floor, dusted me off, and handed me some tokens to go play Roadblasters or something.

 

Good times, man, good times....

[ClassicGMR]

8 hours ago, Cebus Capucinis said:

 my parents just scraped me off the floor, dusted me off, and handed me some tokens to go play Roadblasters or something.

LOL!

 

Not at a CEC but at Rocky Point Park I passed out while waiting in line to ride the Flume. I woke up panicked, got out of line and pissed off my friend because we were almost at the front! By the time I found my mom I had eaten two hot dogs, had a drink and been on 3 more rides. I almost forgot to tell her I passed out! ?