How far would you go?....

[atarilovesyou]

....to get to your favorite arcade as a kid?...back when you didn't have a car, I mean!...I remember the arcade in my hometown was a 35 minute bikeride, which my best friend at the time took using back streets because it was "too far" of a ride, plus our parents weren't the biggest fans of video games PLUS we didn't have any damn money, so we had to go bottle picking to fuel our habit!!...I swear I have some good calf development to this day from all that bike riding! And no stolen bikes outside the seedy place!

 

On a sadder note, I was so damn addicted to games that if my buddy wasn't around and my tire was flat...and all I had was TWO DAMN DOLLARS (yes, EIGHT quarters!...which lasted for many hours in my skilled hands..hahaha!), I'd WALK that distance...about and hour and 20 minutes....I was routinely late for dinner....oh the ensuing lies!!! "Homework study class after school!...You know how it is!!"...

 

...man. But really, I looked at it this way: Less bottles in the landfills, and we were damn healthy from all the walking and riding of bikes!...at least enough activity to negate the standing around in front of machines....I guess we had some 7-11 type stores nearby with games, but they usually sucked...so the long haul was needed!

 

Anybody else go to extreme measures to play those old great games?

[A.J. Franzman]

I did the 30-minute bike ride to the mall once in a while. At the Puente Hills Mall there was always a Time Out arcade, and often one other arcade but the others never stayed in business very long. About 5 minutes beyond the mall in a sprawled-out shopping center were Showboat miniature golf next door to Malibu Grand Prix, both of which had decent arcades most of the time. Now where they were is Speed Zone, which still has minigolf (along with several different go-kart and other racing activities) but I've never played in their arcade.

 

I also went on long unicycle rides now and then, just for something to do, but never that far - a standard unicycle is not even half as fast as a single-speed bike, so the farthest I rode it was about a 30-minute ride in a different direction to a local independent toy store.

[maibock]

We didn't have an arcade per se in our town, although there was a very nice one in the mall, but that was about 1/2 hour car ride.

 

No, our town just had arcade games scattered about and yes, my buddy and I would ride our bikes all over town just to play them.

 

Our local Wawa had Defender - The pizza place a couple hundred yards from there had Tempest, Centipede and Ms. Pacman - The Acme a few more hundred yards down the road had, Berzerk and Asteroids.

 

In between rides, we'd try to stay out of trouble

[SteveW]

In the late '80s, after I had a job and a decent amount of money coming in, I used to ride my 10-speed to the Forum Mall in Arlington, TX to play games. It was about 40-45 minutes by back roads. Every once in a while, when I really wanted something different, I'd ride my bike all the way to Six Flags Mall. That was a good two hour ride away. But the area also had a Toys 'R Us, where I used to pick up new Atari 2600 and 7800 games, along with new INTV games, and marked down games still hanging around from the game crash in 1984.

 

To this day, I still have really strong calf muscles because of all the exercise I was getting from riding my bike back then. Alas, my bike was stolen (along with the one after that), so I ended up buying a car. And the Forum Mall died years ago, and turned into a Mexican bazaar, which is also about to die. And Six Flags Mall is near death, too, with only one anchor store left out of the original four. And the Toys 'R Us closed down in the early '90s and converted into a manufacturing plant of some kind. That whole area has turned into a total slum. I wouldn't ride a bike through those neighborhoods without a bulletproof jacket nowadays.

[atarilovesyou]

..ah, memories. I can't think of one old arcade still open. It'll have to wait till I retire in many years to make the labour of love a reality!...calf muscles not included!

[BeerGnome]

ahhh the huge calf muscles of bike riding everywhere as a youth. no.. the closets arcade I had available was a two hour ride via a bike.. so that was a no go.. what I did have with in reasonable pedling distance was a suburban multiplex, and a rollar rink.. that at some point made the very smart buisness dicision to ban people from playing unless you had bought a ticket to get in....

 

the damn capatalist PIGS!!! there were just so many times I could see "one crazy summer" just to play star wars..

so it began.. the bike upgraded.. no longer a single speed BMX with the mag coaster rim in back and the Z rim upfront..

nope.. we went hightech with the hand me down Ten speed.. a huge beast of a bike.. all steel.. with steel accesories.. wieghning in at a good 30 pounds.. perched pecariously on those inch wid slick road tires.

this was before such things as "mountain bikes" or.. cross country trainers" this here was an honest to god.. big as 27inch rimmed ten speed piece of technology witht he side pull caliper brakes that really didnt stop shit and the crazy butterfly shifter levers mounted onthe frame..

the brake levers.. mounted on the bent down bars with the triggers onthe down swing.. and the pull handles on the lift.. what the hell did it matter? they never worked worth a damn.. and besides.. hit one pot hole, or take a corner too tight and that piece of shit steel rim woulf flex and distort anyways.. leaving that caliper to bump in that bend just enough to slow you down and make that low gear acent up dead mans hill all that more of a pain in the ass..

of course.. dead mans hill wasnt named for the climb.. it was named for the DROP!!!! oh.. cresting that hill to see the mile or so of drop.. it seemed to go on forever.. why they choose to build houses onthis hill no one knows.. but they all had the sunken basement ust to level the foundation.. and why the hell they would make this road end with a T at the very bottom was .. well at the bery least poor civic planning.. but there you are .. in spite of yourself.. cresting the hill and felling gravity take over.. you catch your breath as you peddel the derailer down to the high gears and feel that drag of the gear ratio let you know that high torque is going to yield some fast acceleration as start down the hill..

you look down at the shitty speedometer you found attached to your older brothers dusty old bike a couple of months ago in the garage.. a simple affair really.. you attach this cog to your front wheel and the cable jogs into this spindle and some magic of gear ratio tells you how fast yer going on this little display..

 

for some reason.. the speedometer only reads up to 45mph and the little

built in tach? 22 miles are recorded..

 

we'll just have to do something about that won't we?

 

speed is picking up now.. your hair is whipping faster and faster.. you can HEAR the wind flying around the curves in the cartilidge of your ears. harder you pump into the pedels.. its getting ewasier now.. almost like yer going faster than the bike is supposed to go.. you start to really lean into the run.. the speedometer reads 20mph..

you tuck in.. the feet.. still pumping the pedels.. the houses coming up and falling behind.. the sparkles of the glass asphalt shimmering like diamonds and the roar of the wind is like a lion and the speedometer reads 30.

you reach halfway down the hill and the yer sailing.. theres no need to peddle anymore.. they''ll pin faster then yer feet can do anything to throw any more power down.. hold on for the ride.. lock the feet into a nutral position, and listen to that ratchet in the free whell turn to a angry hiss.. your squinting now as the wind is tearing at your eyes.. and you can see the bottom of the hill coming up.. theirs maybe a yard length ahead of you as the hill bottoms out and the road dead ends to the intersection.. its okay.. just a blind intersection at the bottom of a hill in the back of a subdivision.. and yer tucked in screaming. and that shitty little spedometer is reading 40 now..

the road levels out.. tuck and nip into that corner.. hard LEFT!! you shoot past a forth grader on a skateboard with handle bars wearing an over sized styroam helmet a look of shock and aw on his face as go flying past him at what has to be the fastests thing on earth just sucked the wind out of his lungs..

brakes dont work any ways so need to apply them.. pull the gears back to a climbing ration and come out of the tuck.. let your body be the sail and slow you down.. you tuck right to the dirt path leading to the power lines to cut thru the yard for the next connection point..

 

sure.. coming backs going to be a pain.. hit westlake drive.. same incline.. just longer and slower.. mid gear will do.. right now.. elevator action is only ten more minutes down that road

Edited October 31, 2005 by BeerGnome

[Flack]

I used to routinely ride my bike to my local neighborhood convenient store to play the games they had there: Joust, Track and Field, and later Shinobi.

 

The furthest I ever rode was about 45 minutes to go play 720. A friend of mine had spent the night and we came up with the idea. I had two bikes: a ten speed stuck in 10th gear, and a dirt bike with a bent sprocket which caused the chain to fall off about every 10th rotation. Between those two piece of crap bikes it took us forever to get there. At one point my friend (who was on the 10 speed) rode up behind a guy weed-eating his yard. The guy swung around and weed-eated (is that a word?) my friend's leg!

 

After getting to the arcade and spending all our money, we called my dad to come pick us and the bikes up in his truck.

[BeerGnome]

great story! look it this way.. you had an adventure!

its like a man far wiser than me once said.. its the journey.. not the destination

[atarilovesyou]

....yep, I didn't have a very reliable bike and at time me and my buddy were forced to do the old "one guy riding on the handlebars" trick...ha, that was usually me, since by our logic if it was your bike, YOU had to do the work!...ha!

 

...I'd ride 2 hours to play games, for sure. Elevator Action?...I remember that one was at a bowling alley...one of the most unique games I had ever played at the time. Didn't see it again till the port for the NES...by then it seemed pretty dated...with Trojan and it's like!

 

The main arcade we'd go to was a good distance, but it didn't have ALL the games needed to satisfy our cravings, so sometimes we'd venture into the seedy poolhalls and downtown arcades...man, that was risky. Still remember being chased out of one by hoods, wanting my cash!...bastards!...didn't they know I didn't have any cash anyway??..oh well, their ill spent time thugging and mugging and smoking cigs couldn't handle THESE lightning wheels, trained by biking everywhere!...ha, ain't no shame in running if you're outnumbered!