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General Arcade and Retro Chat - Insert Coin -

LoGiE

Brand new Arcade and Retro Chat thread....careful now.

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Tom Mann Centuria

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I remember the year I got my commodore 64 for Xmas. I had wanted one since the year before after visiting the next door neighbours that Xmas to see them playing on a C64. It was a whole year but I finally got one.

Went next door that day all excited to tell the girls what I had got and to try some of their games.

Found them playing fzero on an import US snes their dad had got them while working in the US.

Pah, they missed the joy of waiting for a tape to load or even better, "R Tape loading error 0:1" (or commie equivalent).

I'm sure you had a load of games for your C64 too, doubt f zero is as much fun when that's one of hardly any games you have. Not like 1.99 specials on our 8 bits, or the fact a tape to tape recorder was all you needed for mass piracy.

/glass half full.

CiDeRmAn

I was a Speccy 48k kid in the mid 80's, and by '88 had moved on a little, sold it but never replaced it with anything.
Then, in 1990, I bought a Gameboy while a student nurse and never looked back, never been without a games machine since.
However...
In around '91 I picked up a C64, a computer I had never owned before, though I had played a friends Commie and was in love with the original C64 Uridium, the first game I bought!
Also, played a lot of Road Blasters on it, which was a great port of the Atari arcade game.
Where is this going I hear you ask...

I recall going into Easons of O'Connell St, back in '91, and the games dept was downstairs at the time, and I asked at the counter if they had any C64 games in stock, at which a pair of Standard Nerds scoffed and tittered at the request.
I withdrew from the shop, head down, wishing them some sort of necrotic process of the nether regions.

I got a lot of fun out of that C64 in spite of them, before replacing it with the newly released Megadrive.

super_furry

I got a second-hand Amiga 500+ the same Christmas that the SNES was THE thing everyone else was getting. Didn't feel bad though and it can with a shoe-box full of games, maybe 150 or so, when everyone else got one game.

CiDeRmAn

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Pah, they missed the joy of waiting for a tape to load or even better, "R Tape loading error 0:1" (or commie equivalent).

I'm sure you had a load of games for your C64 too, doubt f zero is as much fun when that's one of hardly any games you have. Not like 1.99 specials on our 8 bits, or the fact a tape to tape recorder was all you needed for mass piracy.

/glass half full.

TBH I wrung every gramme of enjoyment from the games I owned back in the day.
Particularly on the MD and Snes, while I was bringing in a wage as a student nurse at the time, I still had to pay rent and food bills and it left a pittance for games, so I made sure I got the most from them.
Biohazard Battle, Batman Returns, Cybernator, Road Rash 2, my games collections were often in single figures, but that was okay as long as the games were more Zelda LttP and less Rise of the Robots.
We could also rent games at the time, from video shops.
I know Xtravision used to do the same, but the presence of "Platinum" titles from Sony and similar promotions from other publishers meant we got AAA titles at cheap prices, before that games were a significant chunk of change.
A MD might be £150 and a game was £50, so today it might be a €100 equivalent.
Renting was an affordable way to play a range of titles, I know Gamesworld had a great rental scheme back in the day, and it ran for a number of years with surprisingly little theft.

CiDeRmAn

super_furry wrote: »

I got a second-hand Amiga 500+ the same Christmas that the SNES was THE thing everyone else was getting. Didn't feel bad though and it can with a shoe-box full of games, maybe 150 or so, when everyone else got one game.

The great thing with the Amiga was that it was so powerful, especially compared to the PC's of the time, when they were trying to play Wolfenstein in EGA you were playing Bitmap Brothers titles in full colour!
Plus, a lot of development went straight to the Megadrive, so the content on the Amiga didn't feel dated at all.
Plus, while Snes owners were living with a PAL copy of Starwing, Amiga owners were living it up with Elite II, happy days!

um7y1h83ge06nx

I missed out on the home computer scene (Spectrum, Commodore, Amiga). I was envious of a friend that had a C64 as the games were so cheap and they had a double tape deck.

In the late 80's when I was probably around 5 I got a 2600 when most were playing with their NES's or computers. For Christmas 1993 I got a SNES with the Mario All Stars bundle.

In the summer of 1997 (only reason I remember is that I got Rage Racer and Soul Blade with it and Soul Blade was just released) I got a PS1. Not sure when I got my PS2.

Back then it was a case of time rich, cash poor. Now it's a case of cash rich (well relatively!), time poor.

o1s1n

Renting and trading was how I got new games (Birthdays and Christmas aside!) back in the day.

There was a videogame rental place in the back of a horse riding shop in Bray called 'Riders'. (in retrospect, that sounds really dodgy :pac:)

It cost five pounds to trade in a game. However, there was one catch, they had different coloured dots on different games. You could only trade a game for another game that had the same colour dot. I guess it was their way of stopping people trading in their aging copy of Sonic 1 for brand new games.

I don't remember the second hand market taking off properly until the PS1 days. Used to pop into Gamesworld of Liffey street and pick up PS1 titles for 15 euro or thereabouts.

Other than that, it was swapsies with mates!

sweetie

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I recall going into Easons of O'Connell St, back in '91, and the games dept was downstairs at the time, and I asked at the counter if they had any C64 games in stock, at which a pair of Standard Nerds scoffed and tittered at the request.
I withdrew from the shop, head down, wishing them some sort of necrotic process of the nether regions.

I got a lot of fun out of that C64 in spite of them, before replacing it with the newly released Megadrive.

I remember the same in Peats, though they did have that girl who talked about games on the Den working there!

Doge

My first entry into the world of computing was the C64 back in 1989 me thinks.

In about 1991 we got a Sega Master System and in many ways it felt like a downgrade despite the higher resolution.

Games were less colourful mostly, and lacking a bit of imagination and the c64 Library dwarfed the SMS.

A lot couldnt hold a candle to detail, interactivity and imagination of the Last Ninja 2 especially.

I did love the Sonic games however, especially the awesome port of Sonic 1, (well its more like its own game than a port).

After that we got a Mega Drive, which I have fond memories of to this day, and then moved onto the Playstation systems.

The PS2 got very little use as i was in my 20s experiencing life, and gaming didn't really appeal to me at the time.

I never owned a Nintendo system until I bought the Super Famicom a few years ago. The Mega Drive gets about 90% more usage though!

Mr.Saturn

The only game I recall renting for our N64 was Mortal Kombat 4 and that was around the point they stopped letting me make decisions.

o1s1n

Doge wrote: »

The PS2 got very little use as i was in my 20s experiencing life, and gaming didn't really appeal to me at the time.

Exact same thing happened to me. I would have been 17 or 18 when I got a PS2. Played a handful of PS2 games, thought at the time that I'd pretty much 'played them all already' on the PS1, so gave up on modern gaming and decided to pursue women and booze instead. :pac:

It was actually a couple of years later that I became interested in playing older games. Picked up a Snes on ebay around 2003 and dug out my childhood Megadrive. Retrogaming wasn't really a 'thing' back then from what I remember, so I was able to hoover up stuff for nothing. You'd still regularly pick up 8 and 16 bit games and consoles in Oxfam and other second hand shops back then.

CiDeRmAn

Oh to have a time machine...
Go back and buy up a few copies of games like Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid, import some copies of Earthbound, even a few copies of Legend of the Dragoon, stick em all in a cupboard then, in 2017, use them to pay off the mortgage.

CiDeRmAn

Doge wrote: »

The PS2 got very little use as i was in my 20s experiencing life, and gaming didn't really appeal to me at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAA67a2-Klk

Jack burton

o1s1n wrote: »

It was actually a couple of years later that I became interested in playing older games. Picked up a Snes on ebay around 2003 and dug out my childhood Megadrive. Retrogaming wasn't really a 'thing' back then from what I remember, so I was able to hoover up stuff for nothing. You'd still regularly pick up 8 and 16 bit games and consoles in Oxfam and other second hand shops back then.

Picked up Streets of Rage 2 and Hyperstone Heist in an oxfam in London for £5 each back around that time.

I was maybe 11 or 12. Wish I picked up the whole shelf they had there. It was someones full collection.

From about 16 onwards I was big into Xbox live with my mates every night for hours on end. Call of duty was the main culprit. Pretty sure I still had the mega drive hooked up to my ****ty "portable TV" the whole time.

Regularly like to wind up my fiancé by telling her I have toys and games longer than we are together :pac:

DinoRex

My first computer is older than my girlfriend.

Inviere

Doge wrote: »

The PS2 got very little use as i was in my 20s experiencing life, and gaming didn't really appeal to me at the time.

Same. The entire PS2 catalogue, in all its marvel, is something I more or less intentionally missed out on. Still today, I've little interest in the PS2...and have more interest in older, and newer consoles than it. Strange!

Retr0gamer

Shame. As a console it's got one of the most diverse libraries of games on it. Everything from massive blockbusters to utterly bizarre stuff that just doesn't get made anymore.

CiDeRmAn

DinoRex wrote: »

My first computer is older than my girlfriend.

I have video game t-shirts that are older than some of the staff in my location.... damn.....

Shapey Fiend

First game I played was a Qix arcade machine that was giving out free credits on holiday. Then we got a C64 when I was about 4. Used to play a bit of Spy Hunter, Kendo Warrior and a couple of other things I don't really remember cos it broke when I was about 6. Guy at the shop told my parents we'd to get a disc drive at some extortionate rate to fix it so they just said nah.

Instead I got an Atari 2600 which was an awful step down. I tried my best to enjoy dire ports of Double Dragon, Roc 'N Rope and such but spent most of my time trying to find arcade machines.

So when the Sega Mega Drive came out I was all over that. Got Golden Axe and a japanese copy of Wonderboy III: Monster Lair in Savins in Limerick. Got a Genesis copy of Revenge of Shinobi ordered from whatever the hifi/computer shop in Galway opposite Easons was called. Remember being initially very disappointed it wasn't the arcade original.

From there I rented a game every weekend. Most of the games you could finish a couple of times in a weekend so wasn't fussed about buying that many. One of the stores I rented from were super lax if you were polite. They fined me 50p for keeping Landstalker for two weeks cos I kept getting stuck.

Out of the 8 games I owned about 4 of them were swapped at any one time to different people across town who I didn't actually really know they were just friend of a friends older brothers.

Got a PSOne after that. Got a PC in 97 and got hooked on Quake 2, Half Life and Total Annihilation multiplayer. Then got a PS2. Then a Dreamcast for like 30 quid after it had flopped. Gamecube same scenario. I got a PS3 a couple of years ago but didn't really end up playing it. Same scenario with 3DS. I mostly play PC games now.

Stoner

1986 Spectrum 48K plus with 19 poxy games. I'm going to try to name them, I was about 10 or 11

Horace goes skiing (not much to it)
Ouchi Mata (rubbish)
Invaders (a classic)
Battlecars (sold without the code book)
Chess, poxy
Konami Golf (great game)
Subterranean Striker , (not bad)
Chequred flag (alright)
PSST (good)
Survival (had a hawk on it , that's all I remember)
Jetpack (good)
Mrs Pacman (never worked)
Escape from colditz Castle (I liked this one)
That's all I can remember, might be a ringer in there

Largely they were poor games, Golf was the best.

Later on games like
Target renegade
Rastan
You aer Kung Fu
Bomb Jack
Barbarian
Double dragon
All added to the experience.

Then there was a fire. Followed by a vic 20 with a game called rats, a step backwards, Atari 800, master system

College time, I switched to PCs then most of my gaming was on PCs linked up in my old office, carmageddon MOH 1, operation flash point, SWAT, rainbow 6
With the standalones like Doom etc, lots of command and conquer games, these all played far better on top PCs
Battlefield, Half-Life, lots of Counter Strike.

The consoles were PS1, N64, Dreamcast,Wii, PS2, XBOX, up to the latest Xbox and PS4

I never had a megadrive or NES, SNES had to rent them from Xtra vision.

Never had much time for handhelds apart from the first Nintendo DS

TBH I think I've bought so many retro consoles because I wanted them years ago when I'd no money but time

I've replaced nearly all the spectrum games and then some.

I've lots of machines I've never even played or turned on since I bought them

Sega Saturn, Neo Geo ( one from you ciderman I played once)
Atari Jaguar
Amigas, Amiga CDs Atari STs, Amstrad 64, C64s, Spectrum 2 and a reconditioned 3, Sega CD, NES
All with multiple numbers of each bar the +3 and neo geos never even bothered to switch them on

I've revisited Mega drives, SNEs and GameCubes a lot altough I wouldn't bother with the game cube now.

I've money now but no time, I think when I was 21-24 was the period when I had time and money

geotrig

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

So when the Sega Mega Drive came out I was all over that. Got Golden Axe and a japanese copy of Wonderboy III: Monster Lair in Savins in Limerick.

Forgot all about savins having games at one point . cant remember where i bought most of my c64 games ,but do remember browsing in the place that was on mallow street down in the basement. It was like a little treasure trove to me back then.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

geotrig wrote: »

Forgot all about savins having games at one point . cant remember where i bought most of my c64 games ,but do remember browsing in the place that was on mallow street down in the basement. It was like a little treasure trove to me back then.

What was the place in Mallow St? Never remember Savins having games, should ask my brother and where they got their C64 stuff.
I used to get Game Gear games up near the Roundhouse in the second hand book shop outside Game that's all I found as a kid.

geotrig

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy wrote: »

What was the place in Mallow St? Never remember Savins having games, should ask my brother and where they got their C64 stuff.
I used to get Game Gear games up near the Roundhouse in the second hand book shop outside Game that's all I found as a kid.

ha i remember the place up by the roundhouse it was great ! got a nice cheap copy of ff7 there not long after it came out ! Savins got out of all that stuff early on I barely remember them selling music tapes !

The place on lower mallow street was there in the 80's just around the corner from where smyths was (smyths wasnt there at that point id say)they basically had a few shelfs that held tapes of c64 /speccy games or that ,i was young so dont remember it very well as with savins.

it was on one of those basements.
https://www.google.ie/maps/@52.6606329,-8.6317436,3a,75y,238.34h,73.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxyAhbluBYp1TKN5WIJZyPA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

There was a video rental place on Roches street as well in the 90's up by where just split is now where you could rent the consoles as well ..i never used it though.

Shapey Fiend

More Clare/Limerick/Galway musings.

Think my C64 and 2600 games were got in McMahons Toyshop in Ennis. Maybe a few from Hurdy Gurdy's music shop in Ennis also. There were 4 different arcades in town from maybe 1989 to 1991 so spoilt for choice at this point. Some of the chippers had 3+ cabinets too.

That hifi shop in Shop Street I mentioned had a whole computer game section down the back with various computers on demo. Lots of point and click games if I remember right.

Later on in the very early 90's there was a computer shop at the bottom of the first escalator when you go into Eyre Square shopping centre. Whoever it was running it had several PC's and computers set up with games and didn't seem to mind you hanging around half the day playing Turrican.

Galway was the GOAT for arcades. The Funland above Supermacs in Eyre Square got everything. They switched back and forth between charging by the hour instead of by credit. Being able to play an hour of all the major pinball and 50 different arcade games, later on including dedicated machines like Daytona for like 2.50 was a good deal.

Salthill had a ton of stuff too. There was a modest sized one near Seapoint that got every single new Sega machine right away and Leisureland had a huge one to the right of the main entrance that had everything else.

Can't remember Limerick having any really good dedicated arcades before The Buzz which didn't open till 1994 or so. I used go to the Two Mile Inn which had Ghosts N Goblins and 3 or 4 other machines. The Vic had an arcade but that place was kind of intimidating to me and by the time I was old enough they didn't have many machines left and I was hooked on snooker. Oh yeah, the Savoy Cinema had one around the time Mortal Kombat was on the go down in the lobby. Then upstairs in the bowling alley they'd more. Lobby area was kind of intimidating as well I was 3 or 4 years younger than the regulars so used to get some grief if my brother wasn't with me.

Smyths used to be on Sarsfield Street? It was the toyshop I got my Mega Drive in anyway. They'd demo units of NES, Gameboy and Mega Drive so that was a frequent haunt of a Saturday.

geotrig

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Can't remember Limerick having any really good dedicated arcades before The Buzz which didn't open till 1994 or so. I used go to the Two Mile Inn which had Ghosts N Goblins and 3 or 4 other machines. The Vic had an arcade but that place was kind of intimidating to me and by the time I was old enough they didn't have many machines left and I was hooked on snooker. Oh yeah, the Savoy Cinema had one around the time Mortal Kombat was on the go down in the lobby. Then upstairs in the bowling alley they'd more. Lobby area was kind of intimidating as well I was 3 or 4 years younger than the regulars so used to get some grief if my brother wasn't with me.

Smyths used to be on Sarsfield Street? It was the toyshop I got my Mega Drive in anyway. They'd demo units of NES, Gameboy and Mega Drive so that was a frequent haunt of a Saturday.

we had great arcades !
The buzz was a dive tbh and machines where crap(It didnt really last long),it was flashy but i remember it attracted a bit more hassle than the other places .The savoy upstairs was excellent at the start early 90's 91-92 ish it dipped in popularity after that but was always worth a rush over for a credit on something from speights before the bus came ! it had a great selection of games.
The vic had the best selection of games and machines and always had machines going and coming and was well maintained ,never really had any hassle up there.The ennis road bowling alley used to have an after burner deluxe when it 1st opened up,the rest was meh. stixx as well needs a mention for enduro racer ! but didnt venture there much ever.

I dont remember smyths being on sarsfield street ,i can only remember roches toystore there and toymaster was down where clohessys was. Where abouts was it ?

Shapey Fiend

The Savoy was great I only remembered it half way through the post.

The toy shop I'm thinking of was next to where Time 4 Tan is opposite Debenhams.

I'd forgotten about the one near Clohessys. They had all the at the time fancy shmancy wooden toys. Maybe they had NES games too? Seem to recall playing Mario 2 for the first time there.

geotrig

yeah i think that was Roches stores Toyshop that was in there (maybe smyths where in there a some point I dont remember for sure), surprising big shop from what i can vaguely remember. i spent most of my time in the arcades so had no money left to buy games in these shops !:pac: i definitely played nes in the odd setup in some stores but am struggling to remember where exactly

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

The Parkway my brother got his C64 he thinks, there was some kinda demo.
Dad said Finnucins, Kielys and Clancys he thinks sold games too?

We used to go to the Vic but there was no cabs, we just used the jukebox and sit on the pool tables :pac: .

Smyths had Crazy Taxi one time on Henry St, I used to love going up having a go. They're building something in there now maybe extending the Youth Center.

Either if ye play the Turtles game in the Mall? I never remember which one, was it Turtles in Time?

geotrig

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy wrote: »

The Parkway my brother got his C64 he thinks, there was some kinda demo.
Dad said Finnucins, Kielys and Clancys he thinks sold games too?

We used to go to the Vic but there was no cabs, we just used the jukebox and sit on the pool tables :pac: .

Smyths had Crazy Taxi one time on Henry St, I used to love going up having a go.

Either if ye play the Turtles game in the Mall? I never remember which one, was it Turtles in Time?

never say turtles in any mall or arcade that i remember
yeah alot of those shops would have had small setups of some sort,I think i pre-ordered my ps2 in rtv on oconnel street ! I spent alot of time in the vic in the early days when they still had cabs it must have been 96-97 when it started to get a bit quieter and smaller id say. maybe a bit later ? Id discovered clubs at that point !

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

geotrig wrote: »

never say turtles in any mall or arcade that i remember

Only one mall (mal I probably should have wrote), it was on William St, beside Greene 's cafe. It was clothes shop and jewelry shop but for a time they had a cab in there.