I was very lucky to grow up during the Golden Age of Video Arcade Games. I always loved pinball machines since I was very young, so when video games became popular in the late 70s and early 80s, I was hooked.
My earliest video game memory is wandering away from my parents’ camper at the campground in Rainbow Springs State Park and heading up to the community center just to play Sea Wolf. I still remember where all of my favorite video games were located – arcades in shopping malls, single machines in convenience stores, games lining the walls of smoky pool halls, and more. I was never an expert at playing any of them in particular – I just loved the whole electronic gaming experience.
As I graduated from high school and joined The Real World(tm), coin-op video games began to be overtaken by the power of home machines. The Nintendo NES had just been released, followed by the Super NES, Sega Genesis, and more. The allure of the coin-op games began to fade.
To honor that bygone era, I’ve started a new series of geocaching puzzles called Arcade Classics. The Arcade Classics series is not a quest (such as my PS101 Series) – all of the puzzles are of the completely standalone solve-at-your-desk variety. They’re on the easyish end of the difficulty spectrum and will take solvers to interestingly relevant places I’ve discovered on my trips around town.
Enjoy!
-eP
PS: If you want to experience that coin-op goodness for yourself, you can do so right at home. The freeware application called the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, or MAME, lets you play all of those old games on your Windows computer at home.
PPS: If you like classic video games, you’ll LOVE these YouTube videos: Pong, Space Invaders, Pole Position, Tetris
And if you liked those videos, you might appreciate this as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QNI3W8UB-s
You’ll probably like this, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf56jYDv2fc