Arcades are just the best. They're part of my lifeblood. I wish every establishment had an arcade. Need your car's tires rotated? Arcade. Getting your taxes done? Arcade. Honestly how great would it be to carry an arcade with you everywhere you go, like those handheld gaming systems with one half of one hour of batter life... but I do so love having a place to go to play games. Home console and computer games are great too, so they're on this list. But there's a great social aspect of arcades. Family get-together at Ruddfuckers: Arcade (including Air Hockey!), concerts at Sud's: mini-Arcade (and laundromat!?), hanging out at the mall, actually both malls including the biggest one in the state (Arcade, Arcade, Lazer Tag, VR, Skeeball, Rides, Mini-Golf, etc), or even just grabbing a pizza at Little Caesar's: yes, even they have two arcade cabinets (one of them is The Avengers!). Hell, even our local Chi-Chis has Galaga in the waiting area.

The Lazertag is closest, and has a great arcade with Time Crisis (TWO!), Area 54, Cruisin, both Crazy Taxi *and* Jambo Safari, and classics like Centipede, Dig Dug, and the Donkey Kongs. It's not the biggest (especially compared to the mall), but it's decent sized and my crew goes every week. At the mall, I got to school people at air hockey since I've been playing that one from such a young age.

It's also where you learn the social etiquette of the arcade, such as putting your quarter up for next. Though to be honest I'm perfectly happy being a spectator of some of the versus games. Some of these guys are like turbo themselves, all the time. It's impressive to watch two really skilled people go at it in Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, or Mortal Kombat. I'm just button mashing.

Dave and Busters was a revelation: they have a big-ass Galaxian 3 theater-style arcade game, where you and your friends can all line up and play at once co-op. They also have murder myster dinners, bowling, driving games, games of chance, Star Wars Arcade, Jurassic Park.. oh yeah and...

Mech Pods are great. You get into these pods, and then you have all kinds of controls, buttons, screens and joysticks around you. You play in teams (so you can be with your friends) versus others. It really feels like you're inside a mech! After the game, you get a printout of your mech, code name, and score. A video plays with some highlights, as seen from 'outside' the mechs.

I was ten when we got our first PC, tho I liked playing games on computers much earlier than that (at school, or even earlier at day care, or anyone's house that let me play). At the big trading market I found cool monochrome screens like black and white (obviously), all-green and all-orange. I want to get an orange screen and have it as a duplicate of my existing screen, that would be so cool!

So of course the first games I played as a youngin were mostly educational types like Astro-Grover, Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, Carmen San Diego, Mixed-Up Mother Goose, and this fun game called ZooKeeper, fun since I always liked animals as a kid and wanted to be a zookeeper. Ha, maybe not so much anymore, but I do still love going to the zoo. Then you add in games like Kid Cad to learn some computer design stuff, Klik N Play to learn how to make games, Roller Coaster Tycoon to learn how to make rollercoasters, Sim City to learn about city planning, and Sim Ant to learn about... ants? I first played Sim Ant at a science museum, and ended up spending most of the time there! Maxis has some great games, so does Davidson. DK makes great nature documentaries but they also have a few fun CD ROM games.

We played a ton of games at school in computer class when we were supposed to be doing other things. I think this is how most people discovered games like Lemmings, Worms, and Snood. Snood is like Bust-a-Move but for Mac. And a lot of home PCs come with games included, beyond just Solitaire, SkiFree, Minesweeper and Chip's Challenge. They still have those, but it's more common to see games like Jazz Jackrabbit (a sidescroller) and Dark Orbit.

Probably the most fun games I've played for the computer (besides action shooter games like Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem) are the more chill point and click adventure games like LucasArts. Sometimes their games are more action-y shoot-y, like the Star Wars games Dark Forces and Rebel Assault. A lot of their Star Wars games are spaceship flight games, like X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But the point-and-click games are fun in a different way. You can rarely die, sometimes you can get stuck but they're usually made so you can't. They also have great stories and really great sense of humor, which most games really don't. The best ones are Sam and Max, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion (which was also on Nintendo) and the sequel Day of the Tentacle, and the Monkey Island Games. George Lucas, you've done it again! By hiring a ton of competent people.

A special mention to the game I played (on the computer) probably the most as a kid. That's the How To Draw The Marvel Way CD-ROM. They take that same idea from the book (and VHS) and extend it into an interactive workspace. You have a drawing desk, drawing lessons and exercises, portfolio, activities, including printed activities and comic book pages to make your own comics!

my friends found a place in a strip mall that is actually sort of an arcade but for computer games! They've bought a bunch of PCs, rigged or modded them or whatever specifically for gaming, and then networked them together. You pay by the hour, and they have a few vending machines, or will keep your food and drinks in a fridge for you.

Atari was the first console we had, but by 'we' I mean at my grandma's house. All us cousins would go into the finished basement with the dated wood paneling and ugly calico shag carpet, and huddle around an old TV that went 'plok' when you hit the 'on' button. We'd play impossible games like ET, or Pitfall, or the Atari versions of Q*Bert and Pac Man. There were actually a good number of cartridges over the years. I think my uncle has like four Ataris down there in boxes. Stepping into that basement is like stepping into a retro world. One of my cousins had a TurboGrafx 16, but I only played that one a few times with her. She had a fun game called Final Lap Twin where it was a cross between racing and RPG elements. Eventually I traded my grandma my nintendo for an old mini-fridge, so now the younger cousins have both Atari and NES to play.

Nintendo is the real original star. They had so many fun games, and absurd ones, and so bad they're hilarious ones. They had so many games. We're talking the first Nintendo, the NES, though I also had a Super Nintendo until I traded up for a Nintendo 64. They just keep hitting it out of the park, so we can expect to see more great things in the future I'm sure. Games we used to play a lot were: Mario Bros, Mario 2, Mario 3, Zelda, Castlevania, ExciteBike (you can even make your own courses!), Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers (great music), Darkwing Duck, DuckTales, Paperboy, Tiny Toons, Tiny Toons Cartoon Workshop (that's right you can make your own animations and record them to VHS), and so many more. We have one called Desert Commander that my older cousin Dude and I play, it's a war strategy game that's kind of like RISK but different, it has the different vehicle and plane types. When we're both over there, we still play it. I also rented a lot of games over the years, and some were just bad or bizarre, like Total Recall (bad!), Back to the Future (he throws bowling balls, what?), Crash Test Dummies, the 7-Up Spot Game (why) and many others.

But it always goes back to Mario, video games true superstar celebrity. Even bigger than Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Q*Bert and.. uh.. Pong. Sorry, but it's true! Mario and his brother are heroic plumbers pulled into a world of psychedelic surrealist dream imagery, every time they think they are out and can go back to Brooklyn, the Mushroom Kingdom pulls them right back in.

I used to hang out after school with a really good friend of mine, and we would play games (or Pogs) a lot. Whenever we started to fight over Madden or MarioKart, we'd eventually just fight it out in real life. Ah, friends!

I'm too lazy for most RPGS (besides Zelda) and Pokemon takes too much time to turn your weird Tamagotchi thing into a real evolved threat. I would just play Snorlax and lose. I tended to play a lot of Looney Tunes games, like the Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner games (where you could play as either) and Looney Tunes B-Ball which basically took NBA Jam and made it with the 'toons and their wacky abilities.

Once we hit the era of 3D graphics, everythign changed. I did end up upgrading to the newer 3D systems. I tried N64, Playstation and DreamCast. N64 was smooth, and opening up Mario's world with Mario64 was a blast. It really had countless hours of fun. The other roster of 64 games delivered as well: 007 Goldeneye, Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, Rainbow Six, MarioKart64, Ocarina of Time, Smash Bros, Mario Party, even Pokemon Snap (more my speed)

However the *first* game we played for 64 was Starfox! My friend (same one mentioned above with MarioKart) were at Wal Mart and we go to the electronics section. They have the new 64 set up with Starfox, so we play it and it was actually hilarious.

As much as I love Nintento, I have to say I have a special place for Sega. I may even love it more, in many ways. How can you choose! Sega brought us Sonic and Knuckles as well as Toejam and Earl, some really hot graphics and honestly? If a game did manage to come out for both Super Nintendo and Sega in the 16-bit days, the Sega one would usually be smoother and sometimes prettier to look at, or more fun. I'm not sure why but sometimes the games would be different from each other on different consoles (like Jurassic Park, Aladdin and Lion King). Anyway. I have very fond memory of playing each every Sonic game, including on the Game Gear. Both Sega Genesis and the Game Gear had some really fun X-Men games. I am pretty sure this is the console that I had NBA Jam for, but I also rented a lot of Genesis games like Comix Zone and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

I'm kind of a sucker for Sonic merch. I think the design of the characters is really great, and they're fun to draw. I have some Sonic figures, beach towel, some of the comics, those plushes from Denny's, and a sonic screwdriver (just kidding).

The addition of Knuckles made things even better - in a way Tails never could. The comics stories of Angel Island and the chaos emeralds are also interesting. As far as the animation goes, I was never that into the post-apocalyptic one. I actually enjoyed the cartoony Roadrunner type one that was on early in the morning when I was getting ready for school (I think alongside VR Troopers? Go figure). Urkel did the voice for Sonic in both cartoons, isn't that crazy!?

Playstation also really succeeds with their 3D. I don't have a PS2, but the games I do have for the first Playstation include: Frogger, IQ Intelligence Cube, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, GTA, Soul Reaver, Parappa the Rapper, and Metal Gear Solid! This Metal Gear improves on the original NES one a lot.. it's really clever and creative. I'm not really into RPGS like Final Fantasy like I said, or zombie games like Resident Evil. I'll watch others play them, but it's too much grinding. If I want to grind in a video game I'll play Tony Hawk Pro Skater. If you really want to see something insane, go find out anything you can about Pepsiman. There's a great fighting game for Star Wars called Masters of Teräs Käsi, it's like Tekken but better cuz you can play as Boba Fett.

As stated above, me and my core group (others are welcome too!) spend a lot of time at both malls in the arcade, and also the LazerTag. I've also played paintball, but it's way more expensive and lasers don't actually hurt. I guess your pride can get hurt if you lose? Idunno, that doesn't really seem to apply in games. For me anyway, some people take games waaay too seriously. Like, it's a *GAME*, bro. We love our local LazerTag arena and it's really one of my favorite ways to hang out with my buds. In addition to the arcade they have party rooms, so you can order a pizza, they have mini fridges to keep it cool, and they have vending machines. The arena itself is multiple levels, with a platform and ramps that goes all the way around, catwalks, walls, and a multi-level structure in the middle. You can get hit by automated traps, and there are even different power-ups and game modes. They have tournaments, and on Fridays they'll sometimes even schedule all-nighter ones (if you pay to get into that, the soda and pizza are included to keep you going). If you go enough, they'll basically let you ask for whatever game types you want. I don't know how much money I've spent there! It is seriously so much fun, when they start playing some cheesy techno with a beat and we just march down the ramp to it.. I don't even care what kind of score we get -- but we aren't that bad, really, if the tournament rankings are anything to go by!

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