A couple years ago, I gave myself this challenge to post something new to my blog every day in the month of December. I liked the alliteration of Daily December and I needed to practice the discipline of creating and posting something new every day.
At the time, I hoped it would sort of revitalize my blog, which had taken a back seat (in a vehicle that was parked in a garage across town) to social media and the like. I hoped I would be inspired to keep writing in the new year, maybe get that vehicle out of storage and drive it around town.
But I felt like all the effort was for nothing. I wasn’t creating to satisfy myself; I was posting to create content. Eww. Gross. And the numbers on my blog didn’t move at all. Hardly anyone commented, I didn’t see an influx of returning or new readers, and when January rolled around, I remember thinking, “well, thank god that humiliating waste of time is over.”
Until just recently, I didn’t see any value in the exercise. Like I said, the goal was to generate interest by posting new content every day. And I didn’t hit that goal, because generic content isn’t what people came to my blog to read (and it isn’t what I like to write). I wasn’t all that interested in what I posted (though I love the Blades of Steel post I did, and still laugh when I think of calling my team “The Los Angeles Los Angeleses” as they played the “Vancouver Vancouvers”) and the old adage “When you are interested, you are interesting,” has an equal and opposite adage “When you aren’t interested, you’re labored, or trying too hard.”
You can see — I can see, rather — the very meaningful difference between the two. And with the benefit of hindsight and experience, I get why I didn’t achieve what I wanted. I went about it in a way that was unlikely to deliver what I was looking for. Lesson learned.
Yesterday, I saw that my friend John gave himself a Daily December last month, where he wrote about a different comfort movie every day. He said it was to get that daily writing muscle stretched out and warmed up, because he has two novels due this year.
I don’t have anything due, at least not right now, but I do have some things I want to finish and release this year, and the muscles and discipline I need to use them have been neglected while I’ve been focused on mental health therapy and complex trauma recovery for much of the last year.
I’m not ready to commit to daily posts. I’m going to do daily writing (I’ve written this over the last six days), but I don’t know for sure that I’ll have something to publish every day. I’m not going to pressure myself with expectations. I’m going to start out with weekly posts from a list of topics that interest me, in the hopes that I will be interesting when I write about them, as well as looking forward to the creative process involved.
Inspired by a lifetime of RPGs, I made a table featuring all the different topics that are interesting to me. I’m going to roll on the table, and use the result as my prompt.
Today, my rolls landed on Classic Arcade Games: Bagman.
Okay, here we go.
Bagman was released in America by Stern in 1982, when I was ten years old.
I first saw and played Bagman at Shakey’s Pizza on Foothill Blvd. in La Crescenta, when we went there for one of those school fundraiser things that I weirdly remember were always on Wednesdays for some reason. This place had a dedicated arcade room, large enough to hold maybe five machines along one wall, with two pinball machines perpendicular to them. A change machine and candy machines were against the other two.
The routine was familiar: order dinner, drink as much soda as I could before my parents caught on, cram some mojos into my face and then go play video games while we waited for the pizza to come out. We sat a long, banquet tables on padded benches. Lamps hung low above the table, dressed up with fancy stained glass shades. The glasses were red, pebbled plastic. Mine had a chip out of the lip.
In 1982, video games were a huge part of my life, but my exposure to them was relatively limited. I didn’t get to go to arcades often, and never alone. I didn’t get to go to the mall where they had everything. I got to go to the 7-11 where they had two games and a pinball machine, and if they weren’t fun for me, tough shit, kid. Maybe they’ll be replaced next month, which may as well be a year.
Shakey’s was a place we only went to every couple of months, so there were always new games there, and they were always ones I never saw anywhere else. They had Pac-Man and Galaga, Space Invaders, of course, but they also had Star Castle and Vanguard … and Bagman.
In those days, everything you needed to know about the game was on the cabinet. Some games, like Karate Champ, had all kinds of combinations to refer to betwen levels or turns. Some games told you who the bad guys were and how to defeat them. Some games had vital parts of the instructions burned out by a player who carelessly let a cigarette burn down across it. (This happened way more often than you’d expect).
All games had gorgeous artwork on the sides of the cabinets, that hardly anyone ever saw, because most games were stacked right next to each other to maximize space. In 1982, I was starting to notice games with an attract mode, where it would play music and walk you through how the game was played.
Bagman’s bright, yellow, cabinet stood out in the dark arcade room. Other kids were clustered around Pac-Man and whatever was just past it, but Bagman was wide open. Nobody was playing it, and there wasn’t a single quarter on the “I got next” rail at the front of the marquee. I noticed that there was a comic strip on the marquee, and I took a closer look.
The marquee was so bright in the dim light, I had to squint to read it. Okay, so the Bagman breaks out of prison and goes into an old timey gold mine to collect bags of money he stashed there, with the prison guards hot on his heels. Okay, that makes sense, and it’s kind of promising an experience that is closer to Choose Your Own Adventure than Galaxian.
See, all the games I played up to that point were essentially about being a space ship, or whatever Pac-Man was. Occasionally, I was a car. Those games were about getting points and putting in my initials (or ASS if nobody was looking). This looked like a story, where I was a GUY. The only other game I played where I was a GUY with a story was Donkey Kong, and I loved that sense of being a person instead of a thing. (You know, something I was desperate for in my real life.)
While I considered what could happen should I take control of the story myself, and what (if any) animation I could expect to see when I picked up all the money bags, the game began its attract mode sequence. It played music, there was something that sounded like speech, and holy shit was there a lot to do! You could ride in a mine cart! You could break down walls with a pickaxe! There were multiple screens that were all connected! And though I would NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER admit it to anyone, the sprites were ADORABLE. The little Bagman in his prison suit, the guards with their giant mustaches and little shotguns? The money bags that could have come out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon? UGH! STAHP! happytearsemoji.png It got me the same way the Smurfs did, for the exact same reasons. I stole a quick, furtive glance around to ensure that nobody — especially my dad — had somehow heard my secret inner thoughts. Of course, nobody did. That was impossible.
And yet. Where my dad was concerned, I could never be too careful. I’d learned that the hard way, over and over and over and
Still. Even a single quarter represented a significant portion of my budget. My parents were so stingy with the quarters at these things, I’d get maybe a buck and a half to spend on six games (the 50 cent games didn’t exist, yet) and I had to make each one count. It’s funny, the parent in me is like, “Maybe it wasn’t as unreasonable as you think it was,” but I’m telling you this story from a specific point of view, and I’m just relating how ten year-old me felt, something he wasn’t ever allowed to do.
So. To recap: in Bagman, you walk around a mine, picking up bags of money that you carry up to a wheelbarrow, while you avoid the guards. Fun music plays while you do it, and the whole thing is adorable. Okay, very simple. I got it.
I reached into my pocket and fished out a quarter. I felt its ridges against my fingertips as I turned it around and held it flat against my thumb in a singular motion before pushing it into the slot.
The game skipped the “are you ready” formalities of Donkey Kong and, like someone who had just escaped from jail, threw me into the middle of the action, on the run, bottom of the left screen at the base of a ladder. The music played! The little guard guy came lumbering across the top of the screen toward the top of the ladder, and I realized that I didn’t know where I was supposed to go. All the way to the right, along the bottom? All the way to the top? I guess? To escape? Like Dig Dug? Wait. I have to get the money! First you get the money, then you get the mojos, then you get the pizza. The world is yours.
The guard guy was now coming down the ladder.
I didn’t even have to move to pick up the first bag of money. I just tapped the button and grabbed it. I started to go up the ladder, but the guard was coming down too fast. So I yanked the joystick as hard as I could to the right, running away from the guard whose singular focus on methodically, relentlessly chasing me down was rivaled only by Jason Vorhees. I was about halfway across the screen when he got off the ladder. The money bag was slowing me down so I dropped it, picked up speed near the edge of the screen, and got run over by one of those mine carts I was so excited to ride in.
A sad “you lost lol” tune played.
Shit. That was really fast.
The game reset, and this time I went straight up the ladder. AS the guard started coming down, I was off to the right, picking up a different money bag. I went back to my left and up a different ladder. The guard followed me and gained as I climbed to escape him. Desperate to stay alive, I dropped the bag of money, killing the guard guy, who fell all the way to the bottom of the screen. “Yes!” I hissed with quiet excitement, as I pulled the stick toward me to climb down and retrieve my loot.
I was picking up the bag when I discovered that the guard wasn’t dead. He was just resting, pining for the fjords. Beautiful plumage. The Bagman cried out a digital “aye yi yi!” and the game reset for a third and final time.
Up the ladder, to the left, up another ladder, back to the right, up the ladder to the top of the screen! Now off to the right to see what’s hidden one screen away! IT’S HAPPENING!
The guard, realizing he’d been fooled my my clever movement, ascended the ladder. I scoffed and tapped the button to push the wheelbarrow into the second screen, which revealed itself to me in all its glory. This screen had TWO mine carts, three pick axes, a silver bag of money behind a wall that had to be blown up with a bomb — A BOMB! — and an elevator you had to wait for if you wanted to cross the shaft in the center of the screen. An elevator that didn’t arrive before the guard from the first screen appeared and ended my game before he even touched me. There was nowhere to go. Game Over.
Well, that sucked, right?
Yes. And no.
There was SO MUCH to do, I just had to figure out how to do it. There was probably a pattern or something to get me started. I just had to find it in a book at B. Dalton’s in the mall. (more about those books another time).
It wasn’t fun. It was frustrating. Why give me all these things to do, and program it so that all I could do was run away from the guard? I wasn’t mad as much as I was confused. Crazy Climber would vex me in a similar fashion, as would Track and Field, before I finally figured out that I just wasn’t very good at these games.
I went back to the table a little dispirited and resolved to be more careful with my quarters. I didn’t like mushrooms on my pizza. Mom and dad knew that, and they always got them, anyway.
I saw Bagman again and again over the years. While researching a little bit for this post, I saw that it was actually quite popular. There’s something to be said about perception versus reality, but not by me, at least not right now.
I also watched someone play the first level on YouTube and … yeah, there is no way ten year-old me was EVER going to figure out the things this dude had to do to complete the level. Like, I honestly have no idea how he figured it all out. Trial and error would have cost me a fortune back then, so when I played Bagman — always as a second choice when the clock was ticking on getting picked up and I had quarters left in my pocket — I never got past the first level. I never even came close.
But I kept going back, trying to kick that particular football, and AUGHing onto my back each time.
I have Bagman in my gameroom. It’s why it’s on this list of possible topics. Of COURSE I played it before I wrote this, between drafts, and during the rewrite. It remains as compelling as it is unsatisfying, more of an oddity in my collection than a beloved source of memories like some of the games I will likely write about at some point.
But I have played it so much this week that I got to put my name in for the first time, ever, which was pretty great. Bagman allows for long entries, so WIL RULES is currently looking down upon FANCHOIS, GASTOUNET, PIERROT, and JOJO.
And that’s Write, You Fool, Volume 1, Number 1.
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I really enjoyed that story. I was always afraid to try video games because I was worried about looking stupid in front of my friends. At least you tried.
Bagman.
What was the name of that tune that played? That old-timer tune that I can replay note for note in my head but …wtf…can’t think of its name?
“Plinka-plink…plinkaplinka…plinka-plunkaplinka-plink…”
But yes. The halcyon days of video gaming. It doesn’t take much to…ummm…put a quarter in me on this topic.
Ready Player Me.
The beautiful and complex impossibility of “Stargate.” The sense of “wtf is this?” over playing that first game of “Baby Pac-Man” (not to be confused with the far superior “Junior Pac-Man”). The familiar music behind “Vanguard” (it was “Flash Gordon,” don’t ya know). Or the bump-bump-bump of those crazy spinning jacks in “Omega Race.” The taunts of Gorf. The kooky bongos in “Congo-Bongo.” The putt-putt-putt of smoke in “Rally-X.” The lightsaber sound of “Qix.” The droning hum of your tank in “Battlezone”, and the gnarly blare those zig-zagging ships would make as they dropped in on the green horizon, bobbed and weaved right up to your tank, and slam-cracked your windshield.
Remember when games first started to talk? And how amazing that seemed? “Wizard of Wor”, I’m looking at you. And, of course, “Red Five, standing by…”
Arcades were like clubhouses. There was always a certain thrill to seeing a new cabinet being hauled in. And the unwritten rules: placing a quarter on the deck sent a message that no one would violate. I once had the proprietor of the local family arcade pull out a .45 and point it at me. He was drunk off of his butt. Watched a guy head-butt a “Looping” game and had to be taken to the hospital. He was only 13. I once played a single game of Q-bert for 3 hours. Strangely, nobody cared after the first two. My friends and I, high on the concept of possible hidden easter eggs a la Atari’s “Adventure”, tried to uncover secret skills and messages in every game we played. I would scan through all of the gaming video game magazines for tips on how to beat Centipede, Robotron or Joust (I recently posted pages from one such magazine over in the GenX subreddit).
Yeah.
Wow.
Sigh.
Game over.
I am almost certain the tune is Turkey in the Straw.
Annnnd….yes. Verified.
Quote: “My friends and I, high on the concept of possible hidden easter eggs a la Atari’s “Adventure”, tried to uncover secret skills and messages in every game we played.”
There were some Easter eggs in arcade games, and some crazy bugs that kind of felt like Easter eggs. I remember watching a guy playing Galaga, and he deliberately didn’t shoot at all for what seemed like FOREVER. It triggered a bug where the alien ships, clearly moved by this incredible display of pacifism, stopped shooting back! And they never started again for the rest of the game! This guy kept playing until he had to go, and he let me finish his game. Except then I had to go, because the ferry was getting close to the dock! The whole thing felt like magic.
There were lots of Easter eggs in Space Invaders, I recall. I was awful at arcade games but had friends who were fantastic. I remember in the 2nd level, there was one dude that if you held off and hit him last the screen would light up in rainbows. Fun times.
My game was Centipede. If I had invested all those quarters I dropped into the machine at the laundromat, I’d have enough to go to Comicon by now. That moment when you line up the shots just right and wipe out the whole centipede… it was as sweet as writing a good recursive function.
Hey Wil, I know you hear this all the time, but dude, you gotta let me pitch you an idea. You may or not may not like the idea, but I guaran-damn-tee it’s got geek cred. It would be for Comicon and you would be the host. Email me and let me make the elevator pitch.
Hello Wil! I relate a lot to the whole issue of… making things for the wrong reason. I used to try to sell art and jewellery on Etsy, and at some point I figured out that doing those things for money took all the soul and enjoyment out of it. I found myself trying to anticipate what other people might like instead of doing what I want, and it killed the art. I stopped trying to sell my work a couple years ago and have been trying to give myself permission to do those things for me. Forcing productivity is a curse to creativity. You are correct that when you are interested, you are interesting! I’d never heard of Bagman before, but you tell a good story and your prose is visual. It sounds really frustrating, and not at all my cup of tea, but if I see it I may give it a whirl!
The pebbled red plastic glasses at Shakey’s Pizza… you just lit the fuse on a HUGE pile of nostalgia-TNT for me! 😀 I haven’t thought of that place in years. Like you, I went there as a kid every month or 2. But I guess my Shakey’s was even less arcade-oriented than yours, ‘cuz there was always the same single pinball machine and video game: Sea Wolf. I was so darn good at the Atari 2600 version of that game, and SO BAD at the full arcade version. SO FRUSTRATING for 7-10 year old me. But here I am 40+ years later, still recalling it. Thanks for the unexpected short trip down memory lane. Love you, Wil. Your genuine human decency shines through, and I think it helps lift others around you to be the same. ❤
Totally agree, I had forgotten about those pebbled red glasses! Also agree that Wil is awesome. 🙂
Great post! Lots of nostalgia around those video cabinets. I had similar experiences at Pizza Hut. Thank you!
I think Pizza Hut is the east coast equivalent of Shakey’s. I had similar red pebble glass, stained glass lamp, and video game experiences at the grand old PH.
I played at Round Table Pizza. Then worked there for a while during high schol
I love this story! It’s even more awesome because I have a very similar story, and because we were both 10 at the time (I might have been 11, it’s hard to remember).
Like you, my interactions with arcades in the 80s were sporadic. The only guaranteed place I could find them was on the BC Ferry, traveling between Vancouver (home of the Vancouver Vancouvers) and Gibsons, where my family lived. My mom would give me two quarters to play on the 45 minute ride.
I remember playing Gorf, because why wouldn’t I play Gorf? It had spaceships and Space Ranks and aliens and it TALKED! But then when I died, this random kid told me: “Hey, don’t play that game. Play this one. It’s way better.”
And that game was Bagman, and I had basically the exact same first playthrough as you did with my second and last quarter. Thanks for nothing, random kid, I could have made it past Space Cadet instead.
But the game was intriguing, and I didn’t give up. I watched other kids play, and one time I saw someone actually CLEAR ALL THREE SCREENS, which blew my tiny mind. To this day I’ve never managed it, even on an emulator. But I’ve come close. Maybe some day I’ll do it.
I remember playing Pole Position. I think I’d been playing it for over a year before I realized there was another race after the initial “prepare to qualify” because none of us (my friends and I) could ever qualify.
That said, what I really relate to in this post is your opening. At one time, I had 4 blogs going, each themed – one that was daily, two that had 3 scheduled posts a week, and one that I posted on as I felt like it. I was also writing my fiction regularly. Life happened, I consolidated to one all encompassing blog, but I still posted regularly. More life (my family’s major trauma) hit, and I stopped writing – blogs, fiction, poetry, everything.
And now I want very much to get back in the habit to get the creative juices rolling again, and I’m struggling to do so. Like you, I don’t want to create “content” just to have something up, but I need to figure out something. I love your idea of creating a table and rolling to see what you’ll write about. I may have to steal that idea.
Ah…that one Arcade game…vexing yet compelling…I think most of us have been there. A great text. Bonus points for the Monty Python reference.
Thanks Wil. You’ve just triggered a memory of driving down from Vancouver to Seaside, Oregon for weekend vacations in the 80’s when I was somewhere between 10 and 12. Where I spent what felt like hours in my first real arcade with dozens of games, and saw Golden Axe for the first time. My local corner store had Gauntlet, but sword and sorcery with fully detailed side view characters blew my young mind. And yes, it was 50 cents a play, but I spent all $5 trying to get past that first boss. 🙂
This was a great read Wil, looking forward to more!
I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this game, despite being really into old arcade games. Thanks for making aware of a new one to eventually check out! 🤘
I enjoyed this. A lot. Thanks, Wil.
I’m not a gamer, so didn’t expect to get sucked into the story, but man, sucked in I got, I was right there with 10 year old you, and laughed my ass off at ‘just resting, pining for the fjords’. Now I’ve got Monty Python running in the back of my mind. Thank you for an unexpectedly fun start to my day !
Your story brought me back to the ’80s and spending a lot of time in the arcade. I don’t remember Bagman, as the closest two arcades didn’t carry it. But the game sounds frustrating, so younger me probably would’ve moved onto another game after giving Bagman one try. 🙂
Loved Bagman, and Shakey’s too! This took me back Wil, I felt like I was drinking out of one of those red pebbled glasses again and eating a slice while watching you play over your shoulder. 🙂 If anyone wants to have a go at Bagman, there is a playable version available at the Internet Archive – https://archive.org/details/arcade_bagman
I really like the way you put the reader in your mind as you play this game. I was born in 1971 and probably played most of the games out there. My brother and I were not allowed to go to the arcade but we did anyway. Along with my friends, we spent way to much on Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2. As we played, in the background, was “body blow, body blow, upcut” and “ride the fairs wheel!” You brought all of those memories back in vivid color. I started playing DnD in sixth grade and would go to 7-11 to get soda, candy and to play what ever beat up pile of video game they had there, cigarette burns and all. This was all while living in San Jose, a million years ago. As I sit here in Oklahoma, it is a bright spot in my rear view mirror. Thanks Wes!
I was never allowed to play the arcade games we saw around, partially because my parents were super religious and thought the games were of the devil, and partially because we were only ever in an environment that provided those games if someone else was footing the bill as we were so poor.
This was exhilarating to read. I felt like I was there playing for my self! I could feel the glass in my head and taste the pizza in my mouth. Thank you!
This brought back so many memories. I, too, spent way too many quarters playing Space Invaders at the bowling alley; The Black Knight pinball at the pizza place; and Wizard of Wor at the arcade. My father, too, knew I despised mushrooms and would try to “hide” them in spaghetti sauce. Ugh.
I had a lot better access to arcade games as a kid. The mall had an arcade that I played a lot of Space Invaders and Asteroids. We went there a lot, and my younger brother and I would hang out there while mom shopped. Second was a pizza place named Mr. Ghatti’s that had a Mrs Pac-Man and Galaga. We’d go there most Sundays for lunch after church. I liked Galaga best, and it is still my favorite 80s arcade game today. Then an arcade opened within easy bike riding distance from my house. I spent the summer mastering Pac-Man and finally achieved the key levels. That is my main proudest 80s arcade accomplishment as a kid.
I also had an Atari 2600. Yars Revenge was my favorite of that system.
Thanks for sharing your memory and pulling mine out of deep storage, too.
Oh, “attract mode”…. My mom taught us kids how to “play for free” by telling us that we could just mash buttons and move the joystick when the game started and we’d be actually playing. That worked until I was about 7.
Total tangent, but it jumped out at me because I’m weird that way… “There’s something to be said about perception versus reality” FWIW, that’s pretty much the answer to happiness, life, the universe and everything, with us Zen Buddhist folks. I find that spending time pondering it is never wasted for me.
Thanks for the story. Your blog always reminds me that there are other people out there who would get why my wife and I cracked up the other night while at the local hardware store looking at paint colors, and one of them was Norwegian Blue.
FYI, I don’t know if it was this way for anyone else, but my feed aggregator didn’t pick up ANY of your blog posts from December.
In the late eighties, my family purchased a Commodore 64 at a garage sale. It came with a bunch of unlabeled discs/games. One was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The (in?)famous text-based RPG. I’d never been exposed to a text-based RPG. I had no instructions. I wasn’t familiar with Douglas Adams. I got killed by that bulldozer dozens of times (once I figured out how to get out of bed), and then I never made it out of the bar. Ever. But I tried. So many times.
I never got past the babel fish. Apparently there was a book that came with the game if you purchased it (instead of ripping it off a BBS like I did back in the day) where you could use an invisible ink highlighter to reveal hints that would help you out. Apparently this was absolutely necessary to get past some of the tricks in the game.
Being the same age as you, I too have fond memories of Shakey’s Pizza and playing games there. It was my go to birthday party pizza place as a kid. My game in their arcade was Missile Command, long before I understand the mayhem of Global Thermal Nuclear War.
Thanks for the post!
I spent far longer watching the Double Dragon attract loop than I ever did actually playing the game. That and XYBots where the two cabinets at the local swimming pool. If I skipped the can of drink from the machine I could get a couple of games in for that money while I waited for my older sisters lesson to finish.
Brings up memories of another great cabinet that I loved, Xenophobe. A bit newer than Bagman, but it had that same appeal. You’re ‘the guy’ in the middle of an alien infestation and you had to figure out how to navigate the base, picking up weapons and performing tasks. Plus the game had a super cool three-person split-screen mode so you could play with friends. Great memories.
Loved that game!
I loved Xenophobe. I remember playing it in high school. We’d drive to a convenience store near campus that had it. They only had one or two games. We’d get shitty frozen pizza and microwave it so we could spend lunch playing Xenophobe.
I honestly do not remember this game! Yeah, definitely some dig dug parallels but I love the originality of the concept. Sigh…I miss 8 bit games
Nice story! Definitely sad parts and hopefully writing this acts as a sort of catharsis. It brings back memories for me as well but not sad. I was as poor if not poorer being raised by a single mother. I was lucky to ever have spare quarters. I scavenged 5 cent refunds from soda cans for my extra funds on a daily basis. There was one arcade in my town which gave tokens based on your report card. So many for an ‘A’ and less for a ‘B’ and so on. It probably was one major reason why I actually tried to do well in school. I was never any good at the games either. Galaga was my fav but never got too far into the levels. I don’t think I ever got past the first screens in any of the other games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong. If I did, I most assuredly never got past the second screen. I was more introverted though and enjoyed playing with the Atari at home. Very lucky to have been gifted that. Pitfall was one of the fun games, and it involved a person. It was such a relief to be able to die and then just restart. I am very certain that it made it’s money back if I had paid a quarter for every game I played on that.
Man, I remember those days. I am a Man of a Similar Age, who also grew up in the LA area (West Siiiiide). There was an actual arcade near my house (Captain Video, I think it was called), and of course the arcade on the old Santa Monica Pier. The various Shakey’s, Round Table, Pizza Hut, and other such pizza places probably all ordered from the same catalog. The pebble red cups, filled with crushed ice and coke. I loved the games though. Dig Dug, Joust, Pac-Man, Defender, Galaga/Galaxian, and the wildly different Tempest… and the too-cool-to-be-believed Dragon’s Lair…
Thanks for the walk down memory lane, Wil.
CAPTAIN VIDEO! I only went there once. It was like going to Mecca for me.
I remember my mom gave me money for… something. Not sure what. I dropped $5 on quarters and spent them all. She was astounded and not very pleased with me. I regret nothing. 🙂
I used to play the machine at a local corner store, and for a while it had a game called Heavy Barrel that I loved. I think I was maybe 11 or 12 at the time. One day I was doing really well in it and had gotten through several levels. And then I realised I needed to pee. But I didn’t want to abandon the game, so I desperately tried to hold on … but ended up peeing myself. Luckily nobody else was in the store or watching at the time, but I was mortified. I sadly was forced to abandon the game then and I didn’t show my face for a few days. I’m hopeful whoever mopped it up later just thought it was spilled drink, but I’l never know!
I spent a lot of time in arcades as a kid (and adult) and I’ve never seen or even heard the name of this game. I just recently got a multigame arcade machine so I will check it out when I get setup all the way. I know your parents were absolute monsters but I’m glad you talk about what they did to you because it makes me appreciate both of mine more.
Thanks for still being here Wil. I look forward to reading every time
I don’t think I ever played Bagman.
My place was called New York Pizza in Arden, NC next to the K-Mart. They had Donkey Kong, Ms Pac-Man and a table top Pac-Man. The pizza always burned my mouth.
Nice!
I usually read your posts via RSS on dreamwidth, the LiveJournal fork everyone joined when
Nazis took over substackanti-LGBTQ Russians took over LJ. LJ used to be great back in the day, all my friends were on it, most of us posted most days, and commented on everyone else’s posts. Then social media happened, I guess, and that all stopped happening.So my dreamwidth feed these days is 98% RSS, mainly webcomics/cartoons like Dork Tower, Questionable Content, xkcd, Oglaf, and occasionally your posts. This week, though, people have posted (about the books they’ve read last year), and I posted, and I’m hoping it’ll be like that few months during Covid lockdown 1 when lots of people rediscovered journaling. Because it was good, y’know?
Anyway. Jeez. Arcades! So many 10 pence pieces spent! Donkey Kong. Yie Ar Kung Fu. Spyhunter. And the Star Trek:TNG pinball machine! Good times!
Thanks for writing! I won’t always comment, but I will always read! (And remember your numbers are always better than you think – RSS doesn’t show up in your wordpress stats!)
Great story, Wil! Thank you for sharing. I remember playing Bagman and the red pebble cups at Shakey’s. I also remember my dad being very stingy with quarters for my brother and me. My uncle was obsessed with Mrs PacMan and would take us to the local arcade in SLO county. Putting $5 in the change machine was like hitting the lottery!
Since you were not sure about Bagman, how did you end up getting it for your game room? What other games do you have?
It’s for the reason’s you mentioned in your story that I never did play video games and don’t now. Very good read though. Well done.
Oh this brings back my own arcade memories! Such precious quarters….
This brought me back to my childhood. It was very rare that I had a chance to play in an arcade. We weren’t allowed. Every once in a while though, our babysitter would take us to The Shooter’s Shack. The Shack was where the big kids could buy 25 cent smokes and the adults played pool in the back. My game though, with my two or three quarters, was Frogger. I loved that game. It frustrated me to no end and I never had the chance to put my initials on the screen. It was one of those really fun moments that I will always appreciate. Even it is was only for my babysitter to buy herself a 25 cent smoke.
It’s really hard to post articles while working a full time job. I know, for me, that after a day of working and getting hoe, I’m exausted.. No time to blog. I’m down to posting one post a week. Don’ts get me wrong, I would love to post more because I love blogging. Wish I could do it full time.
And now, to that F’n game! I hated it! but loved it at the same time. I was also 12 at the time. I refer to those genres of games now as Rage Quitting games, LOL!
So many memories triggered from your post. I just had a vivid memory of the time my brother and I went to the arcade down the road because he’d “found” an entire roll of quarters, and boy did we spend the heck out of that $10. I may have lost most of it in that 1941 game, never got the hang of flying that bomber…but hey, free quarters, right? Of course, when we got home and my dad was looking for his newly made roll of quarters to bring to the bank, and “where were you two kids all this time?” I don’t think we even got in trouble for that. The pleasures of being a Gen X kid where parents had no idea where you were for ages.
Great read! I’m getting some flashbacks to the 05-06 blog where this kind of post went up every other day (or so I remember).
Hey Wil, thanks for writing. It was enjoyable to see a younger me reflected in your words.
I’m not on any social media (and probably never will be), thus your blog is the only place I get to keep up with you. So I really appreciate you posting here, read pretty much everything you express in this space.
I love this post. Thanks. I remember, when I was younger, in the 80s…my brother in law or maybe just my sister’s boyfriend, would take me to a nickel arcade. We would play this robot football game, I can’t remember the name. We must have dumped dollars and I would almost never win but we have fun and it was just me and him. We were almost exactly ten years apart, one day only. Thanks for the memories!
Cyberball, maybe? My friend worked at the arcade at UCLA and used his key to play that a million times, eventually solved it, and could wreck anyone who challenged him.
I don’t really recall Bagman but I remember a lot of first arcade memories in the late 70s / early 80s.
The plastic red dimpled cups were Pizza Hut in Dallas. We didn’t have Shakeys, I don’t think.
There was a miniature golf place called Twin Rivers in Garland that had a great arcade. I remember seeing Space Wars for the first time there. And Battlezone.
Your description of the cigarette burns obscuring the instructions on the console is another vivid memory. That always bummed me out.