Twelve Days of Christmas, Part V: ShowBiz Pizza, Dragon’s Lair and the most difficult games

*Creepy now? Sure. But, back in the day, ShowBiz Pizza was legit.*

One of my first experiences at an arcade came during a trip to Springfield, Missouri, in 1984. We had just moved to Lebanon when Dad and Mom surprised us with a trek to ShowBiz Pizza, at the time the coolest place an 8-year-old could be.

ShowBiz hasn’t been a thing since the early 1990s, when all of its locations were converted to Chuck E. Cheese, but for several years, it was the cat’s pajamas. The restaurant/arcade also had an animatronic stage show featuring Billy Bob the Dancing Bear, a wonderful distraction from subpar pizza.

For my brother and I, the arcade was the main attraction. While we didn’t have an Atari, the home video game console back in those days, we had been fascinated by arcade cabinets since spotting an Asteroids machine at a tiny café in Fort Scott, Kansas.

“I loved pinball when I was a kid, so I understood it,” Dad said. “I could take you guys to an arcade, and you’d be in there all day, if I’d let you.”

I’m fairly certain I heard “Hallejuah” playing as we opened the doors to ShowBiz on that fall evening in 1984, greeted with an electric haze of neon lights, ear-busting music from the robotic band and the telltale sound of a token being dropped into a cabinet.

That night, one game in particular caught my eye. It was one I’d never seen before, and it was different than any game I’d ever seen. The graphics were exceptional, clearly advanced for the time, and it looked like a movie.

I patiently waited my turn with the old man by my side, then inserted a token.

“Insert one credit,” the screen read.

That also was my first time paying more than a quarter for a game, as this one was 50 cents to play. The game, Dragon’s Lair, is still the most difficult video game I’ve played all these years later. It presents predetermined animated scenes, and you use the joystick or press a button to clear each quick-time event. Obviously, way too advanced a technology for an 8-year-old to manage.

I was reminded just how difficult the game is recently when I discovered that the arcade at the Oak Park Mall had a Dragon’s Lair cabinet. I played it for the first time in more than 40 years that day, and, much like that night in 1984, the game was over in less than 30 seconds.

While playing DL again, I thought of a few games I rarely played at the arcade, almost entirely because they were simply too hard:

Dragon’s Lair. For starters, the game is insanely difficult. Secondly, it cost 50 cents. When you’re a kid, you try to maximize your quarter investment with more than 30 seconds of game play.
Donkey Kong: Full disclosure, I enjoy this game now and even play it often on my NES Classic. But, back in the day, I rarely made it past the first screen, and the game typically was over in less than a minute.
Ghosts N’ Goblins: In most games, your man takes multiple hits before dying. In GNG, you’re done after two hits. In addition, one hit strips you of your armor, and you’re running around in your underwear. This game also is on NES Classic … and in the seven years I’ve had that console, I’ve never advanced past the second level.
Missile Command: An insanely difficult game made famous (infamous?) by Roy Shildt in the classic documentary “King of Kong.”
Rush’n Attack: A game clearly designed to take advantage of the Cold War in the 1980s, a player is a special ops Green Beret battling the Soviet Union to save POWs. I rarely made it past the first of four levels and usually passed on wasting the 25 cents.