Twelve Days of Christmas 2024, Part V: Video games then and now

*Retro arcades: Great then and great now.*

If you’ve read the annual Twelve Days of Christmas blog series, you’ve learned that video games were an important part of the big day (and my youth). Heck, while I don’t have much free time these days, I still fire up my Super Nintendo and NES Classic several times a year.

I fell in love with arcade games in the early 1980s after spotting an Asteroids cabinet in a small café in Fort Scott, Kansas, where my dad was working a craft show. I begged him for a quarter, and he finally relented. Even though my first game lasted less than a minute, I was hooked.

A few years later, my brother and I were addicted to Atari after spending several weekends with a neighbor. Their son had graduated from high school and left the house a few years early, but he left the console behind.

Dan and I started with games like Demon Attack and Pitfall, before graduating to Jr. Pacman on the Atari 2600. I was 10 and Dan 8 when my mother and father surprised us with a trip to the Battlefield Mall in Springfield, Missouri. While the old man took my mother Christmas shopping, my brother and I spent a few hours in the arcade.

“I could give you guys five dollars each, and you were entertained for hours,” Dad said. “I practically had to drag you out of that place.”

Arcades surged in the 1980s, but they were virtually gone by the mid-1990s. I remember frequenting the Aladdin’s Castle at the since-demolished White Lakes Mall during high school, and my last trip there was during the summer before my first year of college.

Though our electric paradise went on hiatus for the better part of two decades, vintage arcades made a comeback about 10 years ago. There’s one in Topeka now and several in Kansas City. And my wife is likely tired of my insistence on hitting at least one arcade on any vacation.

My taste in games has changed, though. Here are my rankings then and now for classic arcade games:

MY TOP FIVE THEN

Cyberball: Not a well-known game, Cyberball was a two-cabinet football game played by robots. I discovered this game at the Westridge Mall in Topeka during the eighth grade and spent way too much money on it during my freshman year of college at Kansas State, which had a cabinet in its Union.
Wild Gunman: An early shooter cabinet, I fell in love with Wild Gunman while “working” the Columbia Mall with my father. I remember it being fun but incredibly difficult. One quarter might buy you three minutes of joy.
Super Mario Bros.: This was one of the hot games at the Columbia Mall, and the lines to play it were several quarters deep. It was and is also significantly more difficult than it is on the Nintendo console.
Track & Field: What gamer doesn’t remember the pencil/comb trick with the run buttons? Another game that wasn’t easy … I never could get past the high jump round.
World Series: The Season. An obscure game based entirely on the 1985 World Series, it featured separate joysticks for hitting and pitching/fielding and, of course, the Royals and Cardinals. Ironically, though arcades had more or less died, the Memorial Union had a small arcade in the basement that included this game during my senior year at Washburn.

MY TOP FIVE NOW

Galaga: I rarely played Galaga as a kid and considered the game boring. Now, if I walk into a vintage spot and they don’t have Galaga, I think, “Is it really an arcade without Galaga?”
Ms. Pacman: Another game I rarely played, I warmed up to Ms. Pacman while playing it at Tapcade in Kansas City, which has since closed. The great thing about Ms. Pacman is you can play for a long time once you’ve learned the patterns.
Track & Field: It’s still a great game, but I still haven’t mastered the pencil trick or figured out the high jump.
Off-Road: Back in the day, you could lose a fortune playing this game. After winning a few rounds, it’s virtually impossible to beat the silver truck without 50 bottles of nitro. Now, assuming you’re playing in an arcade with a one-time entry free, you can play Off-Road for hours.
Donkey Kong: I hated this game as a kid. The average game might last a minute back then. It is still widely regarded as one of the most difficult arcade games of all time. Nowadays, I enjoy the challenge, though I’ll never come close to matching the skills of Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe from the classic documentary “King of Kong.”