Mark is offering a walk down video game memory lane and he’s focusing on the console. Poor benighted soul that I am, I’ve never owned a video game console – although Father’s Day is coming up.
I have played plenty of video games, especially in my youth, when they had game parlours — the forerunners of places like Dave & Busters. So my trip will be a bit different, and I’ll start off with my senior year in college, because I lived off campus (across the street is still off campus) at 555 B Stanford Ave. (which I see from the magic of the internet needed repairs for dry rot in 1998) and spent my lunch time playing video games downstairs at Tresidder – I imagine the games and bowling alley are both long gone by now. That was when we had games like Tempest which was just amazing when it first came out. Coin ops give a completely different feel than the home console – in part because having a good game could lead to free games – I still remember the day I kept playing Tempest on one quarter because I kept winning free games. By that time Pinball was on the way out, and the machines were kept segregated although I often crossed over and took a walk on the Pinball side.
But my favorite game, and that of my brother too, was Beserk which we had to go to some place in Menlo Park to play, which was followed by it’s successor Frenzy, which was just a way cool game and if I remember right was available in Tresidder only after I graduated.
