Arcade coin-op video games

[Dave_Watts]

Hi all,

Any other video arcade ex-junkies out there? *I was into it big back in the late seventies - early eighties. *It has been amazing to see the progression in video games in the last thirty years. *First there was Atari pong and it just kept getting better. *My buddy and I would always be on the lookout for any airplane or war type video game that would come along. *Of course Red Baron was most memorable with its procession of still images of planes that would only appear for a few seconds and you had to "hit" a vital part to cause the plane to explode with the overlay of an explosion, you would hear the shrill death dive song of the motor and an indicator light would tally your victory. *Of course after feeding God only knows how many quarters into the machine my fellow ace buddy and I could anticipate where the next plane was going to appear so often through the smoke and dust of the last explosion you would hear another explosion and before that cleared another and so on.

There was another game very similar to this one that I believe was called the Desert Fox and in this one you were a fighter plane taking out Rommel's tanks. *Much fun, and as before after about $100 worth of quarters you could anticipate where the tanks were going to appear before the smoke cleared.

Other ones that come to mind are Flying Ace where you again shot down still photo images of the planes and the victories continued to tally up. *The deal with this one was if you shot down something like twenty victories before your quarter ran out you achieved the status of "Flying Ace" and the machine would actually award you with a "Flying Ace" trophy token. *I gave up on the game but my buddy hung in there quarter after quarter. *Finally after a couple of months of Friday night visits he did it. *I can remember it well, just as the game was running out of playing time credit and the screen was beginning to dim and the sounds fade he hit his twentieth kill and the game just caught it, came back to life and a siren began to wail and a blue light on top started flashing....it was really something! *My buddy kept playing on the extended bonus "Ace play" and finally ended up with twenty-four kills. *He immediately reached into the dispenser for his award token, but it was empty! *We ran over to the arcade operator complaining vehemently. *At first he couldn't believe someone had "beaten" Flying Ace, so he put in a free credit and asked my buddy to show him. *Well, my buddy didn't make Flying Ace but he did get nineteen kills and other gamers vouched for him so he went to the back office and dug out the award token. *Soon my buddy was "lighting up" the machine regularly and the arcade operator would have the awards handy and after a while when he heard the siren go off he would simply toss a Flying Ace disk to my buddy across the room. *I'd hate to know how much he spent for those "awards". *I do have to say it was a lot of fun and we weren't spending our money on drugs!

Anyone else remember any classic coin-op machines they loved?

Best,
Dave W.

[VictorVonDoom]

Hi Dave...i can understand what you were feeling while you wrote that.
I got a shiver down of my back. 8)
I remember the first coin-op videogames appeared here in Italy, i remember when i was a child and cried to my mum for achieve one coin to put into Space Invaders or Pac-Man, never before to have waited at least half hour to queue... :
I don't remeber the game called Flying Ace that you have mentioned, but i remember in the early '80 i loved a coin-op whom i don't remeber the name...in that game there was a white screen like the cinema one, over it were throwed a sort of shadows of WW2 german planes and i had an anti-aircraft gun to manage for shot'em down...the sound effects were very poor...just a "BOOM" when i hit the enemy aircraft.
It was a very funny game, i spent a lot of time and money playing it during my school vacation!

Regards

I can remember that the local Sears store by me had the Red Baron video game back near their customer service counters and I popped many a quarter into that thing. What was odd is that it was the only video game they had anywghere in the store and I have no idea why they even had that one. I figured I was probably the oldest person playing that game until a buddy of mine started telling me about this new Red Baron game at Sears before he realized I had already played it! So...now I simply figured that I tied for the oldest person playing it!

By the time I played the REAL Red Baron game on a pc, I was shocked at how far the technology had advanced. I can remember playing the little WW1 flying game on the early Microsoft Flight Simulator and that that was great until Dynamix came out with Red Baron.